In an ideal world a big company in a big city would be constantly
re-assessing and refracting works from the past; it's one of the
core purposes of theatre. Each generation and each artist remodels,
re-interprets. It's an important way of breaking bread with the
dead (pace Jonathan Miller) and of assessing the way a society or a
culture thinks; you can learn a great deal about how militarism or
patriotism is felt at a given moment in time by looking at a
production of Henry Vfor example. But in order for a play
to be both canonical and a theatre classic (which is a different
beast to a literary classic) it needs to be known and remembered by
a sizeable chunk of any audience on any given night.
In Australia it's very hard to make that assumption about more than
a few plays and these tend to be produced repeatedly, partly out of
familiarity, partly because of the qualities that made them popular
in the first place. Shakespeares that have been interpreted as
great works of high humanism since the time of Garrick are
privileged over 'problem plays' by the same writer; they are
studied for their literary merit, and become literary classics.
Part of their status as theatre classics comes from their
recognisability as literary classics, the old phenomenon of the
audience members in the front row mouthing the lines, which has put
off more than a few Hamlets.
So, if you have a theatre culture that is as pathologically
addicted to earning massive box office as Australia's professional
theatre is, producers will look askance at taking risks. If
audiences know and love Twelfth Nightor A Midsummer
Night's Dreamthen why have a fresh look at Troilus and
Cressidaor All's Well That Ends Well? A prominent
leading actor or a distinctive directorial voice is one way to cut
through, as Peter Craven points out (in his article for The
Australian, read it here http://bit.ly/kc3B5O).
There's more to it though than plays from hundreds of years ago...a
dynamic company culture would also be reviving pieces from fifteen
years ago or thirty years ago, and in an ideal world (or even a
braver one) the mainstage companies of Australia would be
consistently reviving Australian plays and seeing how they work in
their 'afterlife' (again pace Miller). At STC over the last ten
years we've taken new looks at Summer Rain, A Hard God, The One
Day of The Year, The Club, The Christian Brothers, Morning
Sacrifice, The Removalists, Scenes from a Separation, Don's Party,
The Season at Sarsaparilla, Honour...contemporary and
'classic' plays always sit in conversation with each other, both in
the experience of their audience and the creative life of artists.
They feed on each other.
The breadth of writers, languages (in translation) and eras that an
Australian company can present is always circumscribed. Still,
whilst it's great to able to see Ibsen, Miller, Shakespeare and
Chekhov over and over, it would be fantastic to be able to offer
Bulgakov, Strindberg, Marlowe, Calderon, Horvath, Bernhard,
Feydeau, Pirandello et al too. Some companies do try to help keep
the pool of classics broader, and hopefully deeper too. But in an
age where a cast size over seven causes shaky hands, and where
audiences like to 'know what they're getting', we have to pick our
moments.
Tom Wright
Associate Director, Sydney Theatre Company
Feature: Tackling classics
Date posted: 25 Jun 2011Author: STC