Sarah Jansen | Writer | Editor | Web Geek

One of the most intriguing and impressive elements of the fest was the music. The musicians were an integral part of many shows, contributing to the action, both following and leading the other performers.

One such muso is Dan Walmsley who plays with Melbourne impro group The Crew.

Trained as a classical pianist, Dan quit when he was 15 once he had reached grade 8 because the options for continuing down that path were decidedly narrow. “I didn’t want to go to uni and do music and I didn’t want to be a music teacher,” he said.

Meanwhile, he was busying himself writing and acting in sketch comedy shows at Monash University before getting into stand-up comedy.

Dan joined the Crew in around about 2002 as a performer of the non-musical variety.

“I did say to them ‘oh, you know, I can do piano too’,” he recalled of his early days. “But they didn’t really believe me.” That was until he jumped on a keyboard at the Kitten Club one night and bashed out a few tunes. The penny dropped and he became the troupe’s regular tunester.

These days, he provides the Crew with a soundtrack most weekends and meets up with members at random to do overseas shows.

“All the members of the Crew have stand-up careers as well, so sometimes a few of us will all happen to be at, say, the Edinburgh Fringe at the same time and we’ll throw together a late night show for the week.”

Oh the life of the international artist!

But artist’s life is not all fun and games as another of the festival musos, Brisbane pianist Tim Wotherspoon, attested.

For the talented musician studying jazz piano at QUT, the last minute gig playing this weekend was a godsend.

Tim wrote impressive on-the-spot scores for a few of the shows, including an interlude of the theme from Doctor Who, which drew hoots and cheers of excitement from the audience.

“That theme used to freak me out as a kid,” he said when asked how he knew it off the top of his head. “You probably noticed that I didn’t really get it at first, I kind of got it about half way through and that’s when everyone cheered.”

At the moment he’s working on an as yet untitled EP, which he says is jazz–pop–funk fusion. The album, Argo, is due out sometime next year.

Local muso Matt Hadgraft, who plays with festival sponsors Impro Mafia, got a great response from his instant rendering of Mozart to give one of the improvisors a clue in the game they were playing.

Unfortunately it didn’t help.

While Matt, an aspiring actor, plays impro regularly, he has supporting gigs teaching and writing radio copy.

He’s also a talented singer, having sung with the Brisbane Chamber Choir, Choir, Canticum, St Stephen's Cathedral Choir and the ACU Choir.

---
Stay tuned for more post-fest articles, interviews and deconstructions over the next few days.

Tonight, QPAC's Cremorne Theatre will host the opening night of the Queensland Theatre Company's production of The Glass Menagerie, one of American playwright Tennessee Williams' best known works.

Now we all know that a show being on at the illustrious Queensland Performing Arts Complex definitely does not guarantee us audience members a good night out. The last two shows I saw there were utter, utter garbage. One was an adaptation of a classic 1980s film and one was a certain recent production of a certain world-famous opera that painfully extracted three and a half hours out of my life.

That said, and deep breaths taken, I think we're pretty safe with this one. Firstly, Tennessee Williams wrote it. Secondly, the meddlesome matriarch Amanda Wingfield is being played by veteran of the screen and stage Carol Burns. Thirdly Michael Futcher, a long time fixture on the Brisbane theatre scene as director and playwright, is directing.

Add to these capable hands assistant director Marcel Dorney and actors Conrad Coleby (best known to the masses as a cute ambo on All Saints) and Helen Cassidy, and we can all rest easy in our comfy QPAC seats.

The Glass Menagerie was written in a time of change in America. World War II was over and there was a new mood in society that was, as always reflected in the theatre. According to a contemporary theatre reviewer, "the mainstream of Broadway was essentially a realistic tradition." Then along came Williams.

Many theatre buffs were agreeably surprised by this more dreamlike "memory play", including Anton Chekov who “...was young and not prepared for a stage language in an American play of such exquisite lyricism.”

The word "lyrical" comes up a lot when people discuss Tennessee Williams.

As well as the beautiful words, Menagerie, like many of Williams' plays, includes copious stage and lighting directions. It is said that he included these because he was concerned that there wasn't enough hard plot to communicate his intentions to the director.

It is a semi-autobiographical story of an overbearing mother, a shy and disturbed daughter who spends her days playing with the glass animals of the title, and a dreaming son who wants to be left alone to write poetry, and if he can't do that, wants to run away to sea. Williams' own sister suffered from chronic mental illness and he actually did run away with the navy.

The parallels end there, however, hence the semi-autobiographicality. For example, the Wingfields of the play are in financial hardship whereas the Williamses never were.

The Glass Menagerie is showing from tonight until 11 August 2007.

Tickets are $26 to $56

Performances are captioned at 7.30pm Friday 27 July and 2.00pm Saturday 28 July 2007.

For further information, see QTC's website.

---------

What do you think of this article? Love it? Hate it? Spotted a spelling mistake? Comment! What do you think that button's there for?

Tonight I am off to see Micro-Trip — seven brand new plays in 70 minutes!

All the plays are new work by emerging playwrights, some of whom are performing as well. They are:

Kale and Verona: a story of flatmates who may also be lovers
Grace: a black comedy about partying and loss
It’s Hot: an award winning screenplay about two con men adapted for the stage
Ten Commandments: a satire about Catholic confession
Moving Fast: something about politics and world domination
In the Park: a 30-something dating story
A Trip Down Brunswick: all about our very own Valley

It should be interesting — the producers, performers and special guest director Elise Greig are all long-established features of Brisbane theatre, talented artist Kitty Taube has designed the set, and composer Brian Cavanagh has lent his skills to the sound design.

A review will be here in a couple of days. In the meantime, see what the Courier-Mail and Australian newspapers have to say about it.

Micro-Trip is Part of Metro Arts' Independents 2007.

Credits:
Producers: Jo Thomas and Sean Dennehy
Performers: Nick Backstrom, Sean Dennehy, Christina Koch, Nigel Poulton and Jo Thomas
Playwrights: Nick Backstrom, Shaun Charles, Sean Dennehy, Dan Evans, Adam Gelin, Brendan Glanville and Sally Rodda
Special Guest Director: Elise Greig
Set design: Kitty Taube
Sound design: Brian Cavanagh

By all accounts, the Australian film industry is under the pump.

Apparently, independent Aussie films are lucky to pull $3 million at the box office and usually cost between $3 million and $10 million to make.

Not difficult sums to work out.

Those films that do manage to get close to that $3 million mark are the relatively big ones like Romulus My Father that have actual marketing and publicity budgets.

This situation leaves the others to survive on word-of mouth. Only they don’t usually stay at cinemas long enough for word to get passed through enough mouths that are attached to bums which will end up on cinema seats.

People in all sections of the industry seem to agree that the business model is faulty.
Although it isn’t as faulty as the one Australian independent theatre makers are currently negotiating.

Independent films at least have budgets that include paying cast and crew, whereas it’s pretty rare to find an independent theatre production that manages to pay for its public liability insurance and time in the performance space, let alone its director, performers, and the myriad of highly skilled behind the scenes players it takes to put even the most humble of shows on the boards.

The comparison may not be that of apples with apples, but the two are related artforms: both tell stories through image and sound; both need collaboration between several people; and actors, directors and writers often cross over and back from one form to the other.

Film and theatre are two of the more expensive artforms because they take a lot of equipment and a group of people to create a piece.

To practice as an actor or director or lighting designer, you need a specific project to work on.
It’s not like being a writer, musician, dancer, painter, sculptor—those forms of expression you can practice on your own with a pen and paper, instrument, the right shoes, canvas and paint, clay or wood or a piece of rock and a chisel.

If you’re moved to express what’s in you through one of those mediums, you can do so by yourself, in your own time, outlaying no more than a couple of hundred dollars, and without needing to relay on convincing other people they want to consume what you produce.

Sure, you don’t make any money off it unless you convince someone that they want to swap it for your art, but you can still do it.

And doing it, in the end, is what allows an artist in any medium to hone their craft, get better at expressing themselves in a way that resonates with others.