The Sticking Place

Review – Macbeth, The Globe Theatre, 20th October 2023

Directed by Abigail Graham

It’s a rare experience indeed…

To see a production of Macbeth and make the claim that Ferdy Roberts’ largely non-verbal performance of Seyton was the absolute standout and that Calum Callaghan’s interplay between Witch, Porter, and Murderer ran a close second.

Outstanding performances!

Daylight was third in a late season show in which the understudy playing Macduff was still on the book. Young fella: you had many weeks to get off that book. People paid up to 65 earth pounds for you to get off that book, sir. To be fair, this may have been the company’s fault.

As for Matti Houghton’s Lady Macbeth – I’ve seen vastly more nuanced performances from graduate students in regional centres in the southern hemisphere. Houghton’s two gears were drama killers. When an actor does little more than accuse, she is judging her target. When an actor lingers in this playable action, the audience leans back in their seats because their task has been done for them. This actor trap is readily sprung because many actors remain convinced that accusation, blame, judgement, and general displays of yelling and emoting equate a strong performance.

No.

Act I, scene vii. Why don’t directors ever read the stage direction at the start of this scene? Or, if they do read it, why can’t they manifest the dramatic situation from the significant hint that Shakespeare leaves us? This analysis of I, vii explains much. The key is in understanding that great words on their own do not equate the dramatic situation. There is something happening upstage. We are told this. Just because it’s Shakespeare doesn’t mean that it’s not a situation comedy/tragedy.

Lady Macbeth has to offer at least a semblance of seduction in this scene; Macbeth, in this scene, needs to be won. From Lady Macbeth’s point of view – all is at risk of fizzling out before it begins. Credibly, Macbeth cannot be won by a woman’s dominance and accusation alone; there needs to be another trick. Macbeth needs to be coaxed and to some extent nurtured. To motivate Macbeth via emasculation, there can even be some playful taunting.

Granted, there are many ways to interpret – but let’s see some of that. Let’s see an exploration; let’s see some leavening. Overall, I got the impression that the actors worked on this scene for an afternoon.

And then there’s the space. Do the text and do the space. I always tell my actors that we are also playing for the deaf guy in the third row. The use of space tells a story in equal measure to the speaking of lines. To paint the picture of Lady Macbeth’s point of view at her entry in I, vii: my partner is having second thoughts; winning him will mean that I will need to take the territory in the space. I cannot assume that winning is inevitable. It’s on a knife edge. My aggression may scare him off.

In I, vii, Houghton entered and assumed that victory was already at hand. Again, this is a drama killer because all doubt and vulnerability from her performance were removed. The audience leant back in their seats (or upon their heels). Ideally, in a performance that extracts dramatic potential from the scene, the audience will lean forward askingly: will she convince him? How will she go about it? He’s quite twitchy. The plot could end here…

In a well-performed scene, she will take the territory gradually to the point where only at the turning of the scene upon ‘…if we should fail?’ will there be real proximity and physical touch. Macbeth’s line is a concession that releases the pressure valve and she is upon him. This way the physical, the spatial, and the textual are unified. Her journey in the scene is to this end.

Act V, scene i (the sleepwalking scene) was no less disappointing for the absence of exploration and originality.

Here’s what you can do with V, i. 

The persistent train-wreck, however (the train-wreck for all time, it seems), is IV, iii. I posit that the Malcolm/Macduff scene has rarely been staged effectively since the play was written. In this context, effectively means in a manner in which dramatic potential is extracted and the audience receives more than a reading. It’s a longish two-hander and you have to do more than just say the lines. What about an activity? What is an activity that enables the audience to see that Malcolm is somewhat suspicious of Macduff? Given that the scene is in England, what could they be doing?

In an interpretation of the play that presented a confused temporal landscape (automatic weapons, swords and daggers, telescopes, and mobile phones), why not set Macduff the task of shooting clay pigeons? Let’s say that he needs to reach a score of eight out of ten to prove his worth to Malcolm in this scene. In a staged version of clay-pigeon shooting, Malcolm could loose the targets and vary their height and direction to test Macduff further. This is a first thought, obviously. Top of the brain stuff. Probably madness! Some might say sacrilege. Nevertheless, a director plying her trade at The Globe Theatre ought to come up with an activity that communicates the scene physically, spatially, and textually; this is especially important when doing otherwise results in a static exchange of lines. The scene would end when Macduff passes the test (inherent with the activity) and unity is achieved.

With the understudy playing Macduff on the book, however, the scene looked like something out of a high school production. And not in a good way.

Act II, scene ii (the murder scene) is challenging in an open-air theatre when the performance is a matinee. Of great intrigue is the length of time it takes for Lady Macbeth to notice the bloody daggers. One reason that it takes so long for her to notice the bloody daggers is because it’s dark. However, she also takes a long time to see the daggers because she is distant, cerebral, distracted, and removed. Simply put, he is trying to reach her emotionally; she can no longer be reached. They are now upon different planes of existence. They have different needs. He is lingering on feelings at what is, in practical terms, the most inopportune moment; she wants to get the hell out of there and is quite pragmatic.

This contrast is the comedy potential in the scene and should be conveyed physically. Performatively, she needs to be a bit selfish (you don’t have to look at each other all the time!). This incongruity, her absence of emotional support, ensures that he will reach for her more; it also means that it can credibly take her 47 lines to see the daggers because her focus is on the pragmatics of an exit strategy. However, when she’s looking at him broadly throughout and ‘notices’ the daggers when the scene is over halfway through, as happened with Graham’s production – well, one wonders how much work they did on it.

Did I mention that all of this took place at a venue called the Globe Theatre on the south bank of the Thames? The Globe Theatre – in London. London’s Globe Theatre. Nietzsche’s eternal ‘people believe in the truth of all that is strongly believed in’ leaps urgently to mind.

On a positive note, Graham’s merging of dream, design, and Witch visitation was inspired and Brook-like, with the present flowing from the previous. It was an all too isolated moment, however; how I longed for two hours of such an ideal coalescence of elements at The Globe Theatre.

Finally, Macbeth is many things. It can be seen as a warning against so-called masculine problem-solving. It attempts many things; one of the things that it attempts is to expose the frailties and by contrast the strengths of masculinity via several key figures: Duncan, Macbeth, Banquo, Malcolm, and Macduff. Indeed, it may be argued that the singular exploration of the play is that of the performance of masculinity within the sphere or possibility of power. If we choose to, as many have, we can say that the play itself is a denunciation of masculine potency. Many have said with some certainty that this is what the play is.

So, why be so determined to substitute Duncan for a queen? What is the rationale for this beyond, because we can? If the denunciation of masculinity is the name of the game at the present time, at least have the full array of male characters on the pitch so we may properly gauge that which is worthy of denouncing.

Copyright © Cameron Sievers, 2023

I have a confession to make. While I appreciate that there are many reasons why people go to the theatre, and many genres and spectrums, tastes and predilections within the sphere of artistic judgement and participation; I go to the theatre to look at good scripts in action – scripts that spring from a vivid ear for language and dialogue tempo, with storylines that derive from an imagination that goes beyond the reproduction of the wholly verifiable. I feel that the script has to be at the centre of things. (I’m an old fool like that!) It’s kind of a basic standard or benchmark for a range of different theatre styles, manifestations, and definitions. After all – doesn’t a decent musical still require a good script? Doesn’t some of the most ‘unscripted’ content still require scripted ideas that facilitate quality control and dramatic potential? Even good improv has scripted boundaries, conditions or ‘rules’. But is the ‘good script’ what’s being offered on Melbourne’s biggest stages, such as Malthouse Theatre? And is it even a priority?

‘What a great script.’

‘I really liked the script.’

‘The script was excellent!’

You don’t hear these refrains too often anymore. Praising the script as an immediate or automatic response to a piece of theatre appears to have fallen down the pecking order of critique – and I have a theory as to why.

It’s because we’ve long moved away from a ‘script’ culture in favour of a ‘proposal’ culture, and our responses to theatre have been conditioned or re-programmed as a consequence.

Take one recent example from Malthouse Theatre. The question to ask is not whether Looking for Alibrandi was good or bad theatre; the right questions to ask are why it eventuated in the first place and what that process looked like.

A proposal culture often ensures a theatre proposal for a well-known novel, film, identifiable piece of literature, or zeitgeist opportunity. In other words, in too many instances, the starting point for writer and theatre company is not at ground zero, idea inception, or point of originality. That would be far too risky.

No-one’s heard of Looking for Daphne.

This concept is then transferred or translated to an event on the stage, the motivation being that people will recall (in this case) the novel or film and an instant clientele of support will transfer to a transient, but immediate, theatre audience.

One of the many problems with this process is that it is one in which there is no discernible basis in ensuring a good script, or rather – the need for it to be a good script is secondary, or tertiary. People attend the show on the basis of familiarity with the original source material – not the adapted script. Such marketing stratagems are commonplace and are designed to facilitate the goodwill of patrons who will likely embark on a generous assumption i.e. in this case, that the theatrical production will match the novel from 1992 or the film version of 2000.

The ‘proposal’ is then judged according to such markers as ticket sales. A ‘good’ proposal might equate to identifiability among patrons, which transfers to profit.

Here’s where it gets interesting. The role of profit for a theatre company creates a paradox by ensuring that a theatre company cannot produce art – when it is driven to profiteer from the proposal culture that is, in turn, wired-in to the matrix of the zeitgeist of issues-based opportunism, identity politics, and populism – if the strictest of Wildean definitions are applied, given that profit is entirely functional, and ‘all art is quite useless.’

World’s best theatre practice reads scripts, not proposals. In the proposal culture within much of contemporary main-stage Australian theatre, this means that programming and development decisions have never been more unrelated to actual quality of theatrical expression of an original idea. This is because it’s particularly easy to write a proposal – it’s much more difficult to write a challenging script that will stand the test of time. Moreover, it is debatable if a proposal-based, middle-management dramaturgical ‘committee’ has the capacity to teach writers the dark art of demonstrating an ear for dialogue. Such an essential talent in dramatic literature is either innate or evolves over decades.

For those who are less familiar with Oscar Wilde’s preface to his novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, the writer reasons that creative expression fails the definition test of art if it flies too close to offering a discernible function. In this respect, all issues-based theatre or that which dogmatically seizes upon an overt zeitgeist opportunity would also fail the Wildean definition, being as such works tend to push an overtly authored opinion, with the resultant tendency – to paraphrase and transpose another of Wilde’s maxims – of revealing the artist and concealing art.

(As a poignant aside, if there’s any truth to the claim that the function of so-called Woke Inc is not to primarily promote visibility and social justice for minority participants, but to profit from them or to ensure the sustainability of third parties, as some moderate voices from such backgrounds, including indigenous cultures, do substantiate – then the most famous homosexual in the history of art would also have a thing or two to say about that, perhaps offering something along the lines of: the hand that thrusts an entity to the limelight of the free market, does so with an acute eye upon self-interest. The following, deliciously paradoxical quote from Wilde’s, The Soul of Man Under Socialism goes further: ‘The arts that have escaped [uniformity] best are the arts in which the public take no interest… We have been able to have fine poetry in England because the public do not read it, and consequently do not influence it.’)

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It’s not that the recent expression of adaptation at Malthouse Theatre, one of Melbourne’s largest stages, was or was not good, it’s that the mechanism of societal and economic forces that created it and the priorities that reside therein are too often preoccupied with creating a marketing hook whose function, arguably, has little to do with creating that which is ‘good,’ much less that which is enduring. World’s best theatre practice asks a writer to submit a script. It is the role of the artistic team to then discern whether the writer possesses the required something. In many instances within main-stage professional Australian theatre, the proposal stage for new work attempts to ‘measure’ the work in its infant, proposal form and does so according to a range of criteria. Again, the proposal takes precedence over the raw script. It is a process that often asks for form-based conformity, urging the aspirant towards identifiability and popular reach. More insidiously, the proposal culture within much of the main-stage Australian theatre establishment appears to have a pre-determined end point that is governed by populism and various other socio-cultural benchmarks; to a great extent, such a methodology determines and defines what one can write. Whether this constitutes a form of censorship is a matter for reasoned debate. One thing is clear: a completed script is not necessarily a submission requirement.

According to its policy in ’23, and in defiance of world’s best theatre practice, one of the larger Melbourne companies rejects unsolicited scripts outright. If this isn’t culturally embarrassing enough, the platform designed to connect scripts with companies (Australian Plays Transform) won’t be accepting or reading scripts in 2023. On the question of ‘how do I get my work published by you,’ this was from their website in July ’23: ‘APT lacks the core funding and resources required to facilitate a public submissions call out and will not be calling for Submissions in 2023.‘

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The mistake that many people make in this space is to assume that because something premieres on the main-stages of professional Australian theatre, it somehow deserves all manner of abstract accolades – such as good, strong, successful, important…

It is not, by reason of its premiere and the public perception of the four-walls that houses it, any such thing necessarily or by assumption; in many instances, it is a mere commodity and will soon be overtaken by the next season of commodities. Such a course appears irresistible and sadly pre-destined in the contemporary landscape of what might generally be termed creative development or entertainment. We are fed a globally and (to some extent) pandemic inspired sugar-hit of comfort culture that metastasises the creativity crisis, in which the past is looped and consumers seem trapped within it or conditioned to the cookie cut creed by risk-averse entities that too often capitalise on the low bar of ‘what works’ by offering peak-optimisation and on-trend dreck. Ironically, both the creative team and the theatre company’s desire for relevance, immediacy, identifiability and profitability, and their lack of imagination in bringing the development of that which is so verifiable, so located, and so utterly determined to be about something, renders such projects not only redundant at season’s end, but also entirely consumed.

In the hobbyist Australian theatre landscape, I cry for actors and directors who must, for economic and cultural reasons, confine their talents to a popular classic or musical, a C-grade production of Shakespeare, an adaptation of the known and pre-existent, or through the expression of issues-based dogma. None of this qualifies as new writing or a new theatrical experience.

People will say that the greats always resorted to populism and had a keen ear for the zeitgeist, and that adaptation has essentially always occurred. To the latter point first: simply that it is limiting and deeply problematic when adaptation, sequel, and prequel become the go-to for artistic ‘product’ or definition, cultural output or vision. I doubt this warrants further explanation. The now deceased and somewhat famous Australian crime writer once ruefully opined: ‘We live in a semi-literate country.’ The proposal culture exacerbates this problem because it doesn’t promote (perhaps no longer understands) dramatic literature from source, often o’erleaping the unopened script in favour of the pre-packaged concept.

As to the point about populism, let’s consider a couple of random subjects from history. The Tempest, like all of Shakespeare’s plays, is not wholly an ‘issue play’ or one for the masses; if it merely ticked these boxes, it would have been forgotten. It would have been consumed at the time of inception. Like all great works, it touches on the immediate and goes beyond it. It doesn’t ‘locate’ or create ‘relevance’ too overtly. In other words, it transcends function, which has ensured its immortality. Pinter wrote about mental illness, trauma, and abuse without labelling or signposting to the effect of ‘Here is my new play about mental illness, trauma, and abuse.’ Look at the people in The Caretaker and The Birthday Party, along with many of his other works. He elevates story, character, dialogue, situation – not zeitgeist or dominant pathology. Such zeitgeist ‘tapping’ is a by-product. TBP was indeed a flop that changed everything. Pinter railed against ‘verification’ till his dying day, and revelled in ambiguity.

If these plays were written – here – today, they wouldn’t feature on main stages.

However, Pinter’s quote from the mid-eighties about the writing process pierces to the marrow of the issue:

The trouble about writing a play from a particular point of view is that the play is written before you’ve written it and therefore is, in a certain sense, dead.

Harold Pinter

The above quote will sound odd, perhaps, to a contemporary audience. What the playwright is saying is that he never absolutely knew where the writing process was leading him; he didn’t have a pre-determined end point governed by populism. He had instincts; he had an awareness of what a good idea amounted to, he had an acute ear for dialogue – but he didn’t have a highly authored end point at the beginning (i.e. he wasn’t writing issues-based plays or works that elevated identity politics over plot, character, and the dramatic situation – One for The Road is perhaps the exception). This means that the end point to some of the greatest dramatic literature of the twentieth century was found through the pure writing process – a process that placed the script at the centre of things and one that therefore contradicts the proposal culture that we so often see in this country. As a corollary, it is highly doubtful if one can ‘formulate’ an enduring piece of dramatic literature through the proposal apparatus – particularly if such a mechanism is governed by the strictures of populism and contains a pre-fabricated understanding of audience appeal.

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Taking this to its logical conclusion, the conditioning process of the proposal culture ensures that a great many people are not attending theatre shows for a new experience; they are attending the theatre for a shot of comfort in which the outcome is a known or trusted commodity, and the economic risks associated with generating curiosity in the original and unknown can be side-stepped. The known is the raison d’etre of the pre-fabricated audience; it’s what such an audience craves. Indeed, this is what the pre-fabricated audience is designed for. The greatest theatre experiences of my life have been those in which, instead of knowing, I leant forward in a transfixed state of not knowing. This state of wonderment, in which one suspends the need to know – absolutely – is akin, I imagine, to what some describe as divine bliss. McCann’s tearing of the newspaper to open the second act of The Birthday Party is a seminal example.

My London professor once told me to have sufficient respect for an audience in order to demand more from it – to be partially unrecognisable to the present (unlike Macbeth, I haven’t killed a king), yet oddly or un-demonstrably triggering aspects of present and immediate lives at the same time (Duncan’s murder signals the death of the Macbeth’s relationship, a trauma that most adults have experienced). The highest complement a writer/director can receive from a random punter, indeed a stranger, is not, ‘Wow, it was great because I absolutely understood everything.’ Rather, it is:

That was one of the best things I’ve seen, even though I can’t claim to have understood it entirely.

With the latter claim, the punter is responding favourably to a work that has transcended empiricism and the absolute, something that has perhaps transcended time and place, something that excites through its intangibility. Something more…

For those who enjoyed encountering Looking for Alibrandi at Malthouse Theatre, at least consider the possibility that we deserve far more and that the brand-new-second-hand mindset that brought it to fruition is deeply limited and highly risk averse. For those who were bitterly disappointed by their experience of Alibrandi at Malthouse Theatre, perhaps understand that because of the socio-cultural, political, psychological, and economic conditions, motivations and priorities outlined in this post, this assessment might have been assumed from the off.

An old man yelling at clouds? Of course! And what’s wrong with a bit of money for a sector whose participants die young? Nothing. Profit as the by-product of a creative endeavour is all well and good, but as the great Oscar Wilde himself long ago attested: function, in this case profit, that motivates, underpins, and is baked into the cornerstone of inception of a creative endeavour must logically preclude art itself.

Art, if it is to be so defined, will endure by its quality or capacity to transcend function.

So here’s hoping for Looking for Daphne sometime soon. No idea what it’s about – but I’ve heard it’s a stonking script!

Click here and scroll down for interview

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Copyright © Cameron Sievers, 2022

“Never underestimate or disregard location: as one of the givens in the play; it is there for a purpose.”

– Patsy Rodenburg

Understanding the geography of a scene and the signposts of meaning has arguably never been more of a challenge for actors, theatre directors, educators and learners due to the sheer weight of images that are immediate, unearned and accessible in today’s world. Through the analysis of a scene from Macbeth, I propose that the world of a play, the plot elements within it, and its thematic concerns can be entirely understood through stage direction. To be able to accurately ‘predict’ a play based on a handful of lines is a useful skill for time poor participants. As a society, we are hungrier than ever for ‘relevance’ and immediate access to a text – so, the ability to perceive foreshadowing is invaluable. Given the attention that the narrative text receives, it is understandable that the role of geography and stage direction is less clear in this paradigm.

Shakespeare, stage direction and drama in Macbeth, Act I vii:

To continue the analysis of the objectively dramatic situation, and the theory of presence and absence in drama, it will be important to challenge conventional wisdom and the strict idea of soliloquy in Shakespearean texts.

When Shakespeare offers us clear stage direction, particularly in the scene introduction, it is important to acknowledge its impact:

The same. A room in the Castle.

Hautboys and torches. Enter, and

pass over the Stage, a Sewer, and

divers Servants with dishes and

service.

Then enter Macbeth.

The stage direction tells us, foremost, that this is a public space; indeed, it is a thoroughfare in which musicians, servants carrying food, even a food-taster or chief butler are duty-bound to be intermittently present, as they move to and from the banquet held in honour of King Duncan. In short, the low-status characters must play a crucial role if this scene is to be effective in carrying out the objective function of drama.

It is clear that Macbeth has left the banquet. How long, conceivably, can a host maintain his absence in such a protocol setting that a king’s presence demands? He proceeds to deliver a speech of nearly thirty lines, stretching the tension that his absence has created (remembering that he is also absent from the greeting scene, previous).

Most productions leave it here, having audience members suspend their disbelief that a person in Macbeth’s shoes would happily belt out such contentious information, in what has been established to be a public space. There is a deliberate reason why Shakespeare has enabled Macbeth to speak in this part of the castle (remember: it is Macbeth’s castle and he has chosen this part of it, at this time, in which to raise the subjects of regicide, ambition and conscience).

The reason is a dramatic one because it ensures the physical juxtaposition of low-status servants and high-status king-aspirant. This allows Macbeth’s words to become more than a private and passive communication with the audience. Suddenly, the words become dangerous; they are potentially incriminating. The tension between presence and absence – of Macbeth, due to his guilty conscience, knowing that he cannot be absent from the king for too long, but cannot bear to be present with the man he will soon murder – jolts the audience from passive listening to actively anticipating when the scene will be disrupted or interrupted, and if the protagonist will incriminate himself with loose words.

In short, the public-private tension that the low-status characters bring to the scene, through the stage direction, raises the stakes in the scene itself and the audience’s investment in it. To what extent do the low-status characters, in turn, become conscious of Macbeth’s ruminations? To what extent do they, themselves, become conflicted by the tension between presence and absence? Their master is obviously attempting a private moment – yet the given and physical circumstances demand that they, as servants and underlings, be present.

This scene from Macbeth, therefore, falls short of becoming a dramatic situation if the servants do not appear intermittently, or if their ‘clamour’ (dishes, etc.) is not heard. Unfortunately, most productions ignore them or treat their presence as a cosmetic ‘starter’ for the scene, ignoring the crucial – and equal – role they play in the establishment of drama.

If a sense of danger, that challenges the physical existence of both high and low-status characters, is not established in Shakespearean tragedy then something is not working. The literal and deliberately irregular upstaging of the high-status by the low-status, evidenced in the stage direction, plays a crucial role in the escalation of the objectively dramatic situation in this scene, even after the advent of Lady Macbeth. This will aggravate some readers, but to sum up: Macbeth’s speech is not the drama in this scene; it is one element of the dramatic situation. It is the desires and fears that the speech houses, weighed against the prospect, in the scene itself, that said desires will be exposed via the three-dimensional and ongoing world of the play in operation, that completes the objectively dramatic situation. The laws of soliloquy enable a great speech to be heard in the back row, but adhering to the stage direction enables drama itself.

Drama is the tension between presence and absence.

Macbeth, Stage Direction & the Dramatic Situation – a Summary:

The feature of all great plays is that they involve key moments of meaningful and logical change and transformation that are transferred viscerally. There is inhalation and exhalation, expansion and subtraction, movement and retreat on a physical and visual scale. They are human accounts of evolution and devolution, and they are live. The great play is as vibrant today as it was four hundred years ago, or in times of antiquity.

The apparatus, scaffolding, or code by which these immense stories are guided and illuminated, and through which such meaningful change and transformation can be grounded is the compressed language that conveys the geography of the play’s dramatic world, and the direction of those within it. In this respect, a play’s extant non-verbal, physical, and metaphorical features provide a gateway for the verbal and the textual.

To put it another way: understanding the context of place – the principle of where we are – will complement and clarify meaning for all participants. As actors and directors see the world of a play and absorb language in the body by doing, so will all participants stand a better chance of perceiving textual information by exploring the symbolic, non-verbal relationship between people and properties occupying a space and the material constructs that bind them together.

Many participants will be inexperienced in the art of perceiving the language of geography and stage direction that so often foreshadows theme, meaning, and character in a dramatic text. In spite of time constraints in the contemporary world, preliminary lessons on the symbolism in stage direction and other visual cues in the geography of a dramatic text should form a crucial part of the exploration, and will save time in the long run.

Bibliography:

Rodenburg, P. (2002) Speaking Shakespeare. London: Methuen.

Shakespeare, S. (1988) Macbeth. Toronto: HBJ.

Copyright © Cameron Sievers, 2021

This was written hours prior to the fire that destroyed La Mama HQ in 2018, and long before the recent Australia Council funding cuts. To say that it has been peer reviewed since that time would be a stretch. However, it has been read and endorsed by a number of experienced theatre arts participants, including key stakeholders. (‘Current’ in the context of this blog is intended to mean the period before both fire and Australia Council funding cuts).

Context:

La Mama Theatre is the only effective unsolicited script-house in Australia’s second-largest city. The way the arts process works in relation to theatre in a weak arts culture (i.e. an under-funded-arts environment) is that it becomes closed and insular. This may not be deliberate, for there is the pragmatic economic concern dictating that the bulk of opportunities for writers are contingent on third-party agents.

In short, strong arts cultures spend more on arts and have far greater opportunities for unsolicited scripts. Moreover, they are transparent. The Royal Court (epicentre of UK script-houses for six decades), The Bush, Theatre 503, etc. are able to offer generous windows for writers due to a far more generous funding model, and a culture that acknowledges strong writing as volatile and that which often derives from unpredictable and remote sources. Furthermore, strong arts cultures actively seek new writing through these unsolicited and often year round opportunities.

Distinctiveness:

Many of these points are interrelated, but La Mama’s ‘Summer Program’ and ‘Winter Program’ are arbitrary and therefore quite meaningless program titles, other than to those already acquainted with the venue. Contrastingly, the Exploration Season communicates a clear message: it is a season for developing and predominantly young theatre makers. The distinctiveness of this message needs to be applied to the entire programming calendar. As it stands, La Mama Theatre has an Exploration Season of 6-8 weeks and a generic season that spans the rest of the calendar. This is certainly the perception. Greater segmentation invites greater clarity of definition (and the perception of more): a three-week season of physical theatre, for example, juxtaposed with a three-week season of very tight, well-scripted, two-handers. In short: control and communicate the programming narrative more vigorously.

Identity:

La Mama Theatre cannot effectively assist with the development of mid-career playwrights in its current form. The perception of La Mama Theatre is that it’s a place for experimentation, from which artists move on to a ‘bigger or better’ environment (or fizzle out). In absence of an effective theatre for new writing in Australia (as per the UK models listed), La Mama is nonetheless the nearest thing to a script-house. This message needs to be communicated in a way that ensures greater quality control. It has the market cornered in Melbourne, but this idea isn’t fully realised due to many of the above points.

By implementing a clear program for mid-career playwrights, of 9-12 weeks of the calendar, La Mama Theatre will again become a destination theatre company with strong brand integrity – rather than a too isolated and largely developmental one that is often inundated with submissions because of venue scarcity. In an environment of the sternest, coldest economic rationalism, moving with the times will mean that the venue may not be able to support 10-15 theatre genres and many works that are essentially incomplete.

Opportunity:

3-4 experienced playwrights per year are given a three-week season. The gate ratio may be changed to a 50-50 split to account for the risk. Put simply, many new plays cannot be staged by La Mama Theatre in its current form, meaning that the intention to support the strongest new theatre is not being realised. Actors are motivated by longer seasons and challenging works of substance. Such works are more extensive technically and developmentally, and often warrant longer runs. This initiative is an act of the utmost purpose and distinctiveness. It will help to re-position La Mama Theatre and challenge the perception that it is a place for first drafts. Internally, this will create a three-tiered system, with each level inspired to grow beyond itself. This need not invite elitism.

Other initiatives:

• Playwriting competitions, not unlike the one offered by Griffin Theatre Company. Prize money would be offset by an application fee. There might be three of these per year, for writers at different stages of development. An objective such as this will achieve many positive linkages to the arts community, and help to cultivate year-round interest in the venue.
• Selective commercial and artistic flexibility: the consideration of offering three-week seasons if an independent theatre company provides some of the financial heft. Two week seasons often fail to provide presence for artists.
• The submission policy must be more focussed, in order to move away from a ‘proposal’ culture – a feature that often generates or replicates issues-based theatre and ‘verification’ as opposed to art.
• Improved technology at both venues.
• Anonymous submissions: this is in line with international best-practice for theatre companies and competitions, and is the surest way to negate nepotism and improve programming.
• Quality control improvements in digital communication, proofing, marketing output and related staff training and professionalism.
• Draw new patrons (and revenue) to the site through the licensed bar (4-6 days out of 7). i.e. make it a permanent idea for the general public; not just an incidental idea for theatre-goers.

Copyright © Cameron Sievers, 2018

Theme, Opposition and Sensory Analysis through stage direction in Summer of the Seventeenth Doll

“Never underestimate or disregard location: as one of the givens in the play; it is there for a purpose.”

– Patsy Rodenburg

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Understanding the geography of a scene and the signposts of meaning has arguably never been more of a challenge due to the sheer weight of images that are immediate, unearned and accessible in today’s world. I propose that the world of a play, the plot elements within it, and its thematic concerns can be entirely understood through stage direction. To be able to accurately ‘predict’ a play based on a handful of lines is a useful skill for time poor participants. As a society, we are hungrier than ever for ‘relevance’ and immediate access to a text; so the ability to perceive foreshadowing is invaluable. Given the attention that the narrative text receives, it is understandable that the role of geography and stage direction is less clear in this paradigm.

Act 1, Sc. 1:

The extensive stage direction and setting notes in Ray Lawlor’s Summer of the Seventeenth Doll provide innumerable clues about the play’s subjects and its trajectory.

Writing at the time of publication in the mid 1950s that the ‘house of the play is situated in Carlton, a now scruffy but once fashionable suburb of Melbourne,’ the playwright is alerting us to an important subject: ideas, dreams, relationships, buildings, and even entire facades fade. Colours also fade, and the pale pink of the house’s interior is an ironic choice in that pink is said to pacify through its association with the maternal. Nonetheless, the fecund shrubbery, the wild garden, and the collection of ferns do suggest the vibrancy of life and the idea of the urban oasis.

Participants need to develop a clear mental image of the entrances so that scene arrivals and departures, and the crucial meaning that they often bring, can be understood in the context of space. In the case of this play: ‘Narrow-leaf French windows give entrance to the room from the back veranda, and a front door lets on to the other.’

The piano gives the impression that the room is known for its communal warmth, although the presence of the sixteen dolls is perhaps incongruous: a public space displaying, throughout, a peculiar private collection. The themes of youth fixation and of hoarding the past are strongly depicted in this design. Emma’s image in act three of her daughter crying over the seventeenth doll is telling. It is also curious that the room houses stuffed birds and images of tropical butterflies: representations of flight and flight curtailed, perhaps coinciding with the life of Olive and the idea of the life unlived.

As the first scene begins the playwright informs us that ‘The room of the play has a dressed up look that is complementary to, and yet extending beyond, the usual decorative scheme,’ and that a table ‘is heavily set for the big meal of the week.’ The dramatic point in such an opening is that it suggests the idea of peaking too early, of trying too hard, and of a façade that will inevitably be breached. Linking to character, it might be said that Barney, as a man, peaked too early from which point (with the ensuing female attention and popularity that such a young man evidently received) he had not developed the intellectual or emotional capacity to adjust to the leaner times that age can bring. These notes from the beginning of the scene indicating the room’s cosmetic or artificial qualities also warn of the dangers of expectation and anticipation, and how hope itself can lead to distortions in reality.

Act 1, sc. 2:

While it is common for additional scenes within acts to provide fewer references to geography than what is contained in the opening, given that the geography of a traditional Aristotelian drama is set, the stage direction to begin scene two nonetheless advances the story with further clues and crucial layers of meaning in a mere seven and a half lines.

The writer informs us that it is the following morning. In this instance the transition of days has not brought the freshness of dawn, but has instead brought a new dawn signifying decay and disruption: ‘The room has a stale, used look; the remnants of last night’s meal still clutter the table; empty glasses and bottles are scattered about…’ Significantly, the audience meets this uninhabited holocaust so that comparisons to the preparatory and puffed up stage direction of the previous scene can be adequately made. There is an incomplete aspect to the scene: it will have to be remade again if we are to move on from the spectre of antecedent joys, historic triumphs, and interpersonal glories of the past. The wrapping paper suggests that the gift is now worn; that it can never be what it was, and that its best days – as a symbol of giving, renewal, and love – are behind it. Furthermore, the unveiling of a gift and the remnant wrapping paper help to foreshadow the significance of shedding and de-layering as important avenues to growth through uncovering truth.

Emma, Olive’s mother, enters and is immediately associated with the act of cleansing – entering from the kitchen ‘with a floor rug which she takes on to the front veranda and hangs over the wrought iron rail.’ Her action of looking at the weather and sniffing the air captures the old-school cunning and common sense of a bygone age. A change is in the air. Clearly, Emma is far more than the cranky antithesis that we might choose to ridicule or ignore. Despite her caustic persona, Emma has wisdom and compassion, and proves a good judge of character. Her entrance to this scene may seem obvious or heavy-handed, but it’s worth remembering that the non-verbal is no less significant than the verbal when it comes to the formation of meaning.

Act 2, sc. 1:

Quite often, stage direction introducing a scene will house the incongruity to be explored thereafter. In the case of this scene, given the context of New Year’s Eve, it is the incongruity of mood.

The writer informs us that it is a warm summer night: ‘Inside the room it is an electric, sweat-reflecting pink.’ Although lighting design differs from production to production, the playwright is clearly intending to maximise the perception of heat and irritability – along with distance, stillness, tension, and a sense of exhaustion. Observe the state of the French windows – or any showpiece design element: in this scene they are open; but offer little assistance, given the lack of breeze. Olive and Roo are playing cards, in what is perhaps an unconscious bid to normalise their lack of communication through non-verbal, socially acceptable combativeness. It is hardly the type of celebration that Olive had been promising. Furthermore, there is no sense of occasion in their attire: she in a dirndyl – everyday dress, native to Bavaria, historically worn by older women – perhaps as incongruous as the mood, and slippers; he in ‘drab shirt and pants.’

In a wonderful show of irony, it is Pearl who makes the effort here. The playwright informs us that she has blossomed ‘from the suspicious, tentative approach’ she held previously; yet, she again proves to be at odds with herself and her environment: her attempt at youth and life through a bright outfit sees her camped, knitting in a rocking chair; while her daring ‘dominant note of red’ clashes with the claustrophobic pink of the walls. Barney, too, is wonderfully drawn against the grain of our perception: sitting in silent self-control, dressed in silk and, almost unbelievably, writing a letter!

Audience members or readers who have bought into the drama on account of the first act, and with it the central and consistent setting of the house, must now face the subversion of a writer who, by offering an anti-climactic opening to the scene, is perhaps establishing the idea that the action or life (or central setting) is somewhere else entirely. In this respect, distance is a crucial element in the scene’s establishment – not least between the four individuals, but also carried by the ‘distant and various sounds of New Year’s revelry.’ Even the ‘drawn out cries of children’ reference a remote location to which the adults no longer have access.

Act 2, sc. 2:

Fading sunlight is an image that could be said to sum up the play, suggesting the eventual twilight of lives, dreams, and bonds – even illusions. The fact that the sun takes on a ‘deep blood tinge’ as the scene progresses signifies the rage that concludes it. The playwright again makes mention of the French windows – their closure in this scene changes the audience’s relationship to space and the idea of access. Participants need to be aware that such geographical alterations are usually the result of something beyond the merely practical or functional. While a door closed against the impending night depicts nothing exceptional, the greater inference here is that access is being denied and that what once was open is now blocked. If open doors can have the effect of enlarging space, their closure minimises or confines. It is amid this reduction that we find Roo: himself reduced by the fatigue of his new identity. For such a man to be asleep ‘sprawled on the sofa’ so early in a public part of the house is an admission that things are not well and that he is not himself. His paint-bespattered shirt reinforces this idea, indicating that Roo’s life has grown messy and that he is now, in symbolic terms, the victim of some practical joke or abuse.

Act 3:

Apart from setting up the confrontation between Olive and Pearl, the stage direction at the opening of the final act is the visual equivalent of the purpose of tragedy: the stage is not merely deserted, tidied, and neat; the removal of the dolls and souvenirs signifies that it is cleansed of the impurities of illusion – foreshadowing the sacrifice of essential good in Roo and Olive’s relationship. The sparseness in the conclusion of Summer of the Seventeenth Doll insinuates the future for each of the characters, and Pearl’s stance of ‘imminent departure’ with suitcase is made more poignant by her funereal black. 

Bibliography:

Lawlor, R. (1988) Summer of the Seventeenth Doll. Sydney: Currency Press. Rodenburg, P. (2002) Speaking Shakespeare. London: Methuen.

Copyright © Cameron Sievers, 2019

Textual storyboarding Death of a Salesman – a vital skill for actors and theatre directors

Six reasons for storyboarding a play:

Textual storyboarding involves dividing the dramatic text into beats of action:

• Manageability: participants often see a wall of text, or a sea of arbitrary scenes and acts. Storyboarding a script into components of action provides a much-needed sense of manageability.
• Juxtaposition: changes in action often demand a change of colour and tempo. Without the slightest regard to a play’s chapters is to risk monotony. Designating components of action can be a way to observe contrast and juxtaposition in the text.
• Focus: storyboarding textual components enables meaning to be focussed in a way that allows the micro-elements to complement the macro.
• Action: textual storyboarding, perhaps above all, is about joining meaningful episodes of action together.
• Identification: the arbitrariness of, for example, act I, sc iii means little to actors other than a rigid or abstract division. Naming each division provides a visual and physical code to the text.
• Investment: it is essential that participants invest in the story of each component of action. Collaboratively naming each physical and visual episode greatly focuses participants on what the scene is really about. This can go a long way in shaping the entire look of a scene or play, and saves a lot of time in rehearsal.

From storyboarding components of action and aptly naming them, one develops not only a physical picture of each scene; but is directed into the deeper layers of character and conflict, enabling one to challenge binary perspectives and stereotypical treatments of dramatic texts, and to more incisively explore the complexity that lies beyond simple hero/villain polarisations.

Death of a Salesman:

Act One:

Let’s read the first part of the play. I would draw the first component of action at Linda’s departure, after she takes Willy’s jacket. Arthur Miller makes the distinction of action in this play quite straightforward.

I have named the first textual component Swiss Cheese. This is a strong image taken from the scene. What do we know about Swiss cheese – it has holes!

• The family unit has holes (the ratio of chairs to family members).
• The image of the workingman has holes, and the all-American worker, at that.
• The image of Willy’s sons, Biff and Happy, is full of holes.
• The image of the competent husband is full of holes: ‘It’s all right. I came back’, suggests an air of expectation that he may not have done.
• The image of prosperous post-war America is in holes (look at the sparsely filled house and the man’s sense of exhaustion).
• Willy’s façade as a man with a contention, as a man with purpose is in holes. He often contradicts himself: ‘There’s one thing about Biff – he’s not lazy.’ This also applies to his authority and his hypocrisy as a man: he chooses Swiss cheese over American, in ‘the greatest country in the world.’
• Holes signify the emptiness in Willy’s life and/or the emptiness of the American Dream as suggested by the playwright. There is also a link to the holes in Linda’s stockings.
• Swiss cheese is harder than American cheese, an idea linked to the hardness of Willy defined by his reluctance to change.

These are signposts for greater holes, character flaws, and conflicts. Swiss cheese is a memorable, concrete image that introduces us to the play’s central problem of illusion.

Simonizing is a term Willy uses on a regular basis. It means to polish a car with wax. If you look at the scene, this is what all three are doing, metaphorically. After expressing concern about Willy’s eyesight they leave the discussion with Happy’s: ‘…he’s got the finest eye for colour in the business.’ In so doing they gloss over a very important detail about the degeneration of their father.

After conveying disgust at the idea of working indoors for someone in shipping, sales, or business, Biff concludes the scene with the idea of seeing Bill Oliver – a wealthy businessman. He glosses over his contempt for a system that his father ostensibly champions, in order to progress with the dream, however genuine, of owning a ranch. One feels that this dream is more of a desperate alternative to the life that Willy has led. The idea here is that by addressing the surface, gaining $10000, Biff feels that his problems will be solved.

Happy, though less conscious than Biff, and more settled according to the values of post-war America and those of workingman Willy, nonetheless expresses self-disgust at his lifestyle and those in his employ who sit above him. He is, in many ways, the product of a consumer society that we see today: he has money, and a surface respectability, but his soul is questionable. He takes his frustration out on women, consuming them in a manner he hopes will fill the void. He is repulsed by, yet reveres his job, and cannot leave it until he shows ‘those pompous, self-important executives that [he] can make the grade.’ In this respect, he shows deep concern for how he is perceived in a masculine business environment. His focus lies on the surface. In many ways Happy is the ultimate simonized human: all surface, all show, and very little substance. He typifies many of the automobiles of the 1950s and 1960s: all chrome, not much engineering, and faux sophistication.

Willy is interesting in this scene, and it is perhaps forgivable to overlook his contribution as the ramblings of a tired man. However, his continued reference to the red Chevvy that Biff simonized to the point of deceiving the car dealer is perhaps the quintessential image of the play. In this respect, Willy is also simonizing the past. His other contributions to the scene: ‘You gonna wash the engine, Biff?’ and ‘Don’t get your sweater dirty, Biff!’ also suggest an obsession with the superficial, and the importance of maintaining image, appearance and status. Moreover, it brings to mind Willy’s aspirational crisis, and his misguided belief concerning wealth and material success. Such laser-guided storyboarding of textual components can direct participants into a richer understanding of action and meaning. This particular component of action ends when the light on the boys’ room fades and the focus returns to Willy in the kitchen.

In the third scene, up to the advent of Bernard, Willy is intoxicated on images of masculine health and virility, harmony, and promise from the past. In this fantastical springtime fantasy Willy is impressed by the fact that Biff, his finest, is attracting female attention. It allows him to pontificate with unchecked fatherly authority on the subject of women, the correct simonizing technique, manual physical chores, sports such as boxing, the nature of people, the qualities needed for success, American towns and cities, and the world in general. In this reality, Willy is adored and elevated: his sons dance about vying for his attention, hanging on his every word. His boasts are devoured with awe and relish. He is a god who, in a bid to trump Happy’s positive reference to ascendant Uncle Charley, recounts a meeting with the Mayor of Providence. It is an exaggerated memory of invincibility, the apex of which is the image of father and son united in a kiss. It comes before the calamity, before the fall of his virile and popular football-playing son, before the irreparable schism. It is the feeling one gets at the early point of an alcohol-fuelled evening, before reality sinks in, before the embarrassing truth is exposed and, in many cases, before the physical collapse. It is a visage accessed through Beer Goggles, in which everything is totally awesome, and life is a fun game.

The Hangover is Bernard’s entry and his tugging on the arm of the ecstatic dreamer. His presence signals the foothold that reality must eventually gain against such inebriation. Young Biff and Bernard could not be more contrasted: the former is physical, sporty, confident, manipulative, and popular; the latter is earnest and worried, and associated with a vigilant study ethic and a penchant for math. In Biff we are presented with the mistake of youth: unchecked, irresponsible, and peaking too early; while Bernard’s growing presence in the scene reflects an approach to life that honours the long game, hanging in despite the ridicule he receives from the Loman males.

Willy’s wife, Linda, enters, and for a time completes the false sense of perfection in Death of a Salesman. Upon turning the conversation to the pragmatism of earning a living, however, Willy’s façade begins to peel away from the surface: from ‘sellin’ thousands and thousands’ Linda is able to whittle down his fabrications to a mere ‘seventy dollars and some pennies.’ Compounding the problem is the reality of how far seventy dollars and some pennies will last: after expenses for the refrigerator, washing machine, vacuum cleaner, roof, and the carburettor there is seventeen dollars and fifty cents remaining.

Perhaps the quintessential image of transition between fantasy and reality relates to the Chevrolet, superficially potent in red, paradigm of American post-war productivity and energy, symbol of the Dream. After praising it as the ‘greatest car ever built’ Willy, a mere two pages later, condemns ‘That goddam Chevrolet’, declaring a desire to prohibit its manufacture. Willy’s economic reality leads to serious introspection and guilt. He starts to question himself in manner and appearance. He is emasculated. He compares himself unfavourably to friend and neighbour, Charley. The hangover is upon him. Wife, Linda, boosts him as a man, bringing forth the memory of The Woman and his Boston transgression, and eventually – with the association of the stockings – his shame and guilt. Reality closes in on Willy upon Bernard’s return: an exasperated presence that signals the prospect of failure in his great hope, Biff. The scene climaxes in an explosion of denial from Willy, resulting in Linda’s devastated exit.

Act Two:

The heartrending climax to Death of a Salesman is memorable for the catharsis that it brings, from ‘Where the hell is that seed?’ to ‘That boy – that boy is going to be magnificent.’ Biff and Willy’s relationship is linked to seeds, fertility, and Willy’s inability to grow his vegetable garden and his vision of life. The fertility metaphor reinforces the significant role that geography and non-verbal action play in the life of a dramatic text. In this scene Willy moves from the darkness of his yard to the light of the meals area indoors. He is moved from an old vision to a new insight. His son, Biff, loves him, and the fertility aspect is sustained with the idea that Willy really did plant something successful – Biff.

Through Biff, the seed, the family is doing something that it has never done before. He is the catalyst for growth, future, change and truth. Biff’s final line in the component of action (‘Put him – put him to bed’) is telling in that it transposes father and son, adult and child: the son now growing, the father diminishing – letting go of the pain. Importantly, Biff’s final line in the play, ‘Let’s go, Mom’ is future orientated, suggestive of imminent progress. The blockage is removed and there are signs that the organism will move into the next zone of experience. In this respect the opening line to this component of action is also ironic: ‘Where the hell is that seed?’

He was right beside Willy all along.

Copyright © Cameron Sievers, 2014 All Rights Reserved

Ever wondered why the centre left doesn’t know how to win elections? In this essay, titled ‘Battles and Causes’; I address the ongoing failure of the ALP.

The Immediate:

I’m not suggesting that Bill Shorten lost the election on the back of his performance on 7.30 two weeks prior to the 2019 election. It turns out that he had perhaps already lost. I acknowledge the many causes and moving parts to victory and defeat. I am suggesting, however, that his performance was fundamentally weak and summed up an unchecked approach to media work that, since his inception as opposition leader, was never going to bring the ultimate success of an election victory.

I am also suggesting that, to the question on costings for the ALP’s climate policy, the line:

‘It will cost a lot less than the cost of inaction’ can only be trotted out once (perhaps twice) during an election campaign. It’s not a bad line. You can use it in doorways as you depart a press conference. It’s a sharp departing rebuke.

But when you’re in the studio sitting opposite Leigh Sales, the exit is a long way off. And when you’re asked the inevitable question on climate policy costings on prime-time television, you need to have an answer that either deals with the question or turns the situation in your favour. If you are responding with:

‘It will cost a lot less than the cost of inaction’, you are failing to understand the room you’re in because you are present on prime-time television to engage. This line was deliberately penned to avoid engagement, as I said: in doorways or closing stages of press conferences.

When you’re sitting opposite Leigh Sales in an ABC studio and you’re an aspiring prime minister, you need to understand why you’re there. You are there to engage, and if you don’t engage with Australia’s premier current affairs host and journalist two weeks out from an election, you insult her and the Australian people.

And then you get defensive. And then the interview turns to pot. And when a person gets defensive, they show (for better or worse) their true selves.

So, when Mr Shorten showed his true self in this interview and started using words like ‘bugger-all’ live on prime-time television, many people were moved to ask: ‘Why weren’t you real at the start of the interview; it might have gone a lot better?’

Less forgiving people might have assumed that Mr Shorten was rattled.

How to Win Elections – The Cultural Problem for the Centre-left:

Mr Shorten’s problem in failing to quantify his climate policy, or turn this ‘how long is a piece of string’ inquiry to his favour, derived from poor advice. The eternal problem of the ALP, indeed the eternal problem for the Left or Centre Left globally, is its proclivity to assume that a diverse range of people are aligned with its causes.

The art of persuasion is to bring the neutrals and moderate hostiles to the table. They simply won’t accept a moral or ethical crusade as a justifiable reason for doing X or a plausible reason for doing Y.

By failing to connect in a meaningful way, the neutrals and particularly the moderate hostiles can only see how such a policy hurts them financially.

To criticise self-centredness, as many are, is unhelpful because self-interest is nothing new.

The failure of the political left is a failure of psychology.

To not attempt a valid answer to the unerring question on climate policy costing is, if nothing else, sadly naïve because the respondent is essentially saying: ‘The cause is enough.’

But the cause is never enough to people who are not already with you. They need you to address the battle because the battle is for the mind.

Never assume you have their hearts.

The Solution: If you Want to Sell Nuclear Power, talk about the Golden Gate Bridge

When primitive humans discovered fire, they didn’t say: “Ouch! Gee, that’s hot. Put that stuff away! It’s dangerous.” In a similar vein, the thousands who travel across the Golden Gate Bridge each day are neither holding their breath nor muttering prayers. The Golden Gate Bridge represents an enormous architectural nose thumbing to earth-quake fault lines and danger. It is a celebration of humankind’s triumph over the natural world. If humankind was not overtly adventurous in this way we’d have never stood upright, we’d have never eaten meat and our brains would not have put on the growth spurt that they did…

In other words: the pursuit of nuclear power, like the construction of the Golden Gate Bridge, is an extension of the human spirit.

This diversionary tactic is designed to move the conversation towards positive imagery and human inspiration. Consider it a metaphor for shifting the discussion away from the negative logos of measurement, such as the number of deaths at Fukushima (or the cost of a climate policy in the debate at hand), towards a positive ethos, hope, possibility and future orientation.

To continue the metaphor: to dwell solely in a head-to-head discussion on nuclear power without the positive imagery is a road to oblivion.

Bear with me.

The word ‘reform’ has a negative connotation; yet the word ‘superannuation’ has a positive association.

They are one and the same thing.

Yet, the workers of QLD didn’t vote Labor.

The workers of QLD didn’t vote for the party that made superannuation compulsory.

The workers of QLD didn’t vote for the party that made superannuation compulsory – for all workers.

I’m spelling it out in this fashion because the party that devised this reform assumes that we all know this.

The party that implemented this reform doesn’t mention it anymore because they do not have a sense of the psychological battle they’re in. They won the cause on superannuation but fail to realise that this universally popular cause can become the centre-piece of future battles.

If people don’t know their history then it is up to the ALP to remind them that compulsory superannuation for all employees was an immensely challenging nation-building exercise.

It didn’t just happen.

There was a battle to make it happen. There was a battle to ensure that it extended to all Australians.

There was a battle to communicate the ideology of investment and to expel the primitive associations of cost.

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Returning to the question:

‘So, what will your climate change policy cost the Australian tax-payer, Mr Shorten?’

Avoidance is disastrous for many obvious reasons and one reason that is less apparent.

A politician should always see hostile situations as opportunities. If they can only see threats, they are not very effective politicians.

The tactical failure of the ALP for decades is its inability to communicate (indeed eradicate) the word ‘expenditure’ from the lexicon.

If you look up a competent undergraduate text book on economics, you’ll see a definition that fits the ALP: expansionist. It has an expansionist fiscal policy that is aligned with generating greater equality in society.

Says nothing about costs.

To answer a question such as this head-on is problematic but avoidance is worse because it communicates that ‘cost’ is a dirty word.

Is your super fund that has perhaps trebled over a period of six to ten years also a dirty word?

No. It is an investment in your future.

And all of society appreciates the ALP’s investments over time. In thirty years, a statue will be erected of Mr Daniel Andrews: ‘The Infrastructure Premier’ will be the inscription.

It won’t be erected today, because today you and many other people are sitting in a traffic jam on account of road infrastructure works across Melbourne.

Returning to the response that Mr Shorten might have made to the above question:

‘Leigh: you know, and the Australian people know and many of the children of Australian miners (appeal to moderate hostiles) know, based on anecdotal evidence of student climate action protests across the country, that this is a massive investment in the future of all Australians. Like superannuation and universal healthcare before it (humanising appeal to all parties), nation-building policies of investment infrastructure that were challenging at their inception stage, we simply don’t accept the simplistic labelling of ‘cost’ because ultimately it’s about improving productivity, future-proofing the nation and confronting the fact that there is a global de-investment in fossil fuels. The world is transitioning. Pension funds are transitioning. All we’re really doing is keeping up with the world (normalise and globalise the decision-making) and many of our business partners who have already transitioned to cleaner energy sources. It’s like when your computer can no longer upgrade to the latest version of Google Chrome: it’s time for a new model (light-hearted appeal to youth and modernity).’

Deal with the issue of quantification head-on by admitting that it will be an investment of billions over time:

Ask me a nebulous question about the length of a certain piece of string. If I answer it in a nebulous but broadly quantified way, you can’t accuse me of not answering the question and you certainly can’t accuse me of not dealing with the brutal matter of measurement.

Put the issue to bed as soon as possible in the election campaign, spin cost into investment and return fire with this question to the Conservatives:

‘I say this to the Coalition: stop deceiving the Australian people! Explain to them what the cost of inaction will be? (now you can use the word ‘cost’ in its rightful place). You run with the mantra of sound economic management – yet you cannot explain to the Australian people how your failure to future-proof this nation will sacrifice the very wealth that you claim to be building. Your failure to explain to the Australian people, and particularly its youth, the cost of your unwillingness to cooperate with the clever countries of the world on climate policy is a swindle and you know it!’

By vocally playing the same rhetorical game as the Conservatives, you remain engaged and on the offensive in the battle; by avoiding the question, you are assuming that cause is enough.

Why didn’t we hear this?

This is a lot better than what Mr Shorten came up with that night on 7.30 – and he has political advisors.

As an extension, raise the subject of the NBN in relation to infrastructure projects and the fallacy of financial prudence – an inherent feature of visionless contractionist fiscal policy – that will see the network patched and amended over decades at a cost far greater than the ALP’s initial outlay. Who could possibly put their hand up and claim that Australia has world-class broadband?

By linking the discussion of investment on climate action to such populist themes characterises the political opponent negatively and demythologises the idea that the Conservatives manage money effectively. Furthermore, it reinforces the perception that the Conservatives are bereft of vision by linking the debate to visible and identifiable self-interest. Remember: the speed of one’s broadband is a tangible idea; whereas, for many people, climate change remains an abstract notion. The logical appeal is that if you want a policy to work, you must invest now.

Finally, at the 101 level, the long answer eats up precious and finite interview time, while the short answer: ‘It will cost a lot less than the cost of inaction’ invites further scrutiny and frustration from the interviewee and the Australian public.

A Side Note on Measurement:

Always use the language of quantification to your advantage. Equivocation is effectively death. The Labour party in the UK makes the same mistake. It imagines that avoidance wins. The ALP lost on a policy of equivocation in relation to Adani. In other words, its equivocation was seen as a decisive negative in the relevant QLD seats. Imagine if the ALP had summoned the courage to address the issue head on, as in: ‘The Adani mine, due to its mechanisation, is unlikely to be a sustainable source of employment in the short to medium term.’ It’s true, we did hear this voice, but not from the ALP.

Such an unequivocal position may have yielded the same or similar result, but it may have also drawn strength from elsewhere. By addressing the issue of sustainability in terms of the metrics of employment, you can avoid a discussion on the environment altogether, in this instance, thereby avoiding an attack on the ethics of the participants and removing the prospect of engendering a sense of guilt among them. The guilty retaliate by rage-voting against you because they seek comfort in the known. They are frightened. By returning the discussion to the language of quantification that deals with basic security needs (i.e. the Adani mine will only provide X jobs and won’t provide for you or your family in the medium term and will do little to address the high rate of youth unemployment in QLD) is to understand that such people are desperate and will be prepared to cling to grass while drowning.

What occurred, or rather, what was implied with this aspect of the campaign (and the notional alignment with Bob Brown) is therefore typical of ALP campaigning. In plain terms, the assumption of a morally superior cause was a factor that crushed any hope of victory in battle.

How to Win Elections – The Conclusion:

The tragedy of Kevin Rudd is now laid bare. Hubris does indeed beget nemesis.

The election result in 2007 was not a landslide. To have claimed eighty-three seats is not an enormous majority; but it was the powerful spirit of change at the time that should have ensured two further majority election victories for the ALP.

Perhaps three when you consider that the ALP would like its chances of holding up to ten or twelve seats in QLD with a QLD PM.

The climate war would have been run and won. It would have been, like superannuation and universal healthcare, normalised, in spite of the kicking and the screaming. The Overton Window would have shifted appreciably.

Now, of course, this is all a fiction.

Looking at the results of the 2019 election, we can surmise the difficulty that the ALP has in Queensland through a sharper lens. Though favoured to win the 2019 election, their seat count in that state is almost identical to the number they held there in the landslide defeat of 2004.

This is a debacle.

Given the external circumstances of this election in relation to the support for minor parties – in particular, the behaviour of the UAP that could well become the norm – unless the ALP embarks on a fundamental change in psychology; unless it engages more effectively in the battle over the cause, it is unlikely to ever govern this nation again.

This applies to centre-left parties across the globe. Moving further to the left, while an understandable response, is to entrench the failure.

Mr Albanese – take note: Tories will vote for Starmer; I know them personally.

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Copyright © Cameron Sievers, 2019

Hamlet Characters: Shakespeare and the art of persuasion.

Those who study Shakespeare will know that the resemblance that many of his characters have to contemporary leaders is uncanny. In this blog we will tackle Claudius, one of the shadier characters in Hamlet, who nonetheless presents us with a gift: a significant insight into the modern politician. Let’s take a close look at his speech from the second scene. 

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Act I, scene ii

A room of state in the castle.

Enter KING CLAUDIUS, QUEEN GERTRUDE, HAMLET, POLONIUS, LAERTES, VOLTIMAND, CORNELIUS, Lords, and Attendants

CLAUDIUS
Though yet of Hamlet our dear brother’s death
The memory be green, and that it us befitted
To bear our hearts in grief and our whole kingdom
To be contracted in one brow of woe,

Consider how the use of metaphor, imagery, and other language devices are designed to generate a sombre and compassionate tone of unity. What is the effect this might have on the audience?

Yet so far hath discretion fought with nature
That we with wisest sorrow think on him

The alliteration, here, plays to the idea of the importance of sound. Don’t underestimate the sonorous nature of certain sounds, in relation to the role they play in persuading and soothing a potentially hostile crowd. Don’t ignore the iambic perfection (that it has ten-syllables) of the line, and how the musical component of iambic pentameter verse structure can be used to endear an audience to a speaker. Placing such sound devices in alignment with the inherent inclusivity of ‘we’ and the appeal to wisdom (or the characterisation of Denmark as, in fact, possessing wisdom) is deeply complimentary of the audience and therefore likely to massage and mollify. Consider the usage of a compassionate or benevolent tone.

Together with remembrance of ourselves.
Therefore our sometime sister, now our queen,
Th’ imperial jointress to this warlike state ,
Have we—as ’twere with a defeated joy,
With an auspicious and a dropping eye,
With mirth in funeral and with dirge in marriage,
In equal scale weighing delight and dole—
Taken to wife.

In his vindication of his union with “sometime sister” Gertrude, Claudius is careful to convey a sense of equanimity with his people in suffering and to distance himself from the joy of his marriage. Notice how he again uses the royal “we.” In this, he is Denmark and so are the people. It is a useful ploy that attempts to devoid him from taking personal responsibility for the marriage. There is even an air of benevolence. The active and personal initiative of matrimony is reduced to a passive and public gesture for a state in mourning. Consider how active and passive voice can be used to persuade: to illuminate and distance information and control the audience’s gaze.

Sometimes the justification of the questionable is aided through strong imagery. In this case, ‘warlike state’ plays upon the values of the people to whom it is directed.

Nor have we herein barred
Your better wisdoms, which have freely gone
With this affair along.

Such a generalisation, or sweeping statement, may well appeal to commonly, or even somewhat, held beliefs. However, the tactic is clearly designed to manipulate those in the room into feeling that their opposition to the marriage is the minority view. Generalisations often have the power of stifling or simplifying debate and of moving the conversation forward. Consider the brisk nature of the remark and alliteration of the Ws.

                                     For all, our thanks.
Now follows that you know. Young Fortinbras,
Holding a weak supposal of our worth
Or thinking by our late dear brother’s death
Our state to be disjoint and out of frame,
Colleaguèd with the dream of his advantage,
He hath not failed to pester us with message
Importing the surrender of those lands
Lost by his father, with all bonds of law,
To our most valiant brother. So much for him.

The anecdote now shared with the people of Denmark is timely, for it positions the audience to see Claudius as a strong and decisive leader, who is in charge of the affairs of state and is a man of authority, who has intimate and first-hand knowledge. Moreover, he raises the valour, glory and gains of the dead King Hamlet – whom the people are presently mourning – as being in jeopardy, thus generating opposition to the upstart Norwegian. In a further attempt to unify, Claudius appeals to nationhood, patriotism, and justice by drawing reference to the threat from Norway and, more specifically, Fortinbras. Don’t ignore the emotive language in this section. What effect does it have on the audience? Consider how it operates to shape the idea in the audience’s mind that it is in the process of being wronged or usurped in some way; or that a great injustice is being conveyed at its expense. Despite all the inclusive language and attempts at unity, he appeals to fear and the threat of disunity.

Thus much the business is: we have here writ
To Norway, uncle of young Fortinbras—
Who, impotent and bedrid, scarcely hears
Of this his nephew’s purpose—to suppress
His further gait herein, in that the levies,
The lists, and full proportions are all made
Out of his subject; and we here dispatch
You, good Cornelius, and you, Voltemand,
For bearers of this greeting to old Norway,
Giving to you no further personal power
To business with the king more than the scope
Of these dilated articles allow. (gives them a paper)
Farewell, and let your haste commend your duty.

Claudius’ reference to haste and duty is a further appeal to national security and loyalty, and stifles debate and a more protracted public moment. He is able to execute his role by carrying a commanding tone.

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Hamlet Characters – A Summary:

The characters in Hamlet are, at times, confronted with a difficult sell; and newly crowned Claudius is no exception: acutely aware of how he rose to power he must show the required level of grief for the death of his brother, normalise his marriage to his dead brother’s wife, and offer the state of Denmark hope in strength at a time of leadership transition.

When politicians are behind in the polls they will often crave a new war, or victory in an existent one – particularly if that war is in distant lands or provinces. Wars focus the populace away from local issues and offer the statesman (no matter how incompetent, impotent, or simply ignorant of the issue they happen to be) the opportunity to be statesmanlike. Claudius’ guilt, as yet unknown to the audience, nonetheless features in his opening speech. In this respect he is aware of being behind in the polls.

He begins dutifully, as expected, with words that mourn the death of his brother and the former king; but it doesn’t take him long to warm up. His: “To bear our hearts in grief and our whole kingdom / To be contracted in one brow of woe” is a common ploy of the politically minded, as it seeks to use the situation to unite. How many politicians have milked grief to offer the paternal hand to a people? The crucial aspect to Claudius’ opening seven lines is his use of inclusive language together with images of solidarity: “our dear brother’s death”, “it us befitted”, “bear our hearts”, “our whole kingdom”, “contracted in one brow”, “together”.

The insidious aspect to the speech is that he attempts to massage, engineer, and temper the people’s grief in order to justify his own behaviour. “Yet so far hath discretion fought with nature / That with wisest sorrow think on him, / Together with remembrance of ourselves.” Here, the royal “we” implies that this sentiment or reaction from the people of being measured in grief is self-evident. It reads: you will have discretion and not allow your emotions to get the better of you, and it is a fait accompli that we will all move on and not abandon ourselves and the future. He is also suggesting that something more urgent is at stake – the nation itself.

It is in this vein that Claudius attempts to normalise his marriage to Gertrude, and to justify the inevitability of moving forward: “Have we, as ’twere with defeated joy, – / With one auspicious and a dropping eye, / With mirth in funeral and with dirge in marriage, / In equal scale weighing delight and dole, – Taken to wife…” In his vindication of his union with “sometime sister” Gertrude, Claudius is careful to convey a sense of equanimity with his people in suffering and to distance himself from the joy of his marriage. Notice how he again uses the royal “we.” In this, he is Denmark and so are the people. It is a useful ploy that attempts to devoid him from taking personal responsibility for the marriage. There is even an air of benevolence: our nation has taken a wife, and aren’t we all the better for it. The active and personal initiative of matrimony is reduced to a passive and public gesture for a state in mourning. Consider how active and passive voice can be used to persuade: to illuminate and distance information and control the audience’s gaze.

Politicians seem to understand Nietzsche’s principle: “People believe in the truth of all that is strongly believed in.” It rarely pays for a political leader to admit fault, weakness, or blemish. Claudius knows that not all of his subjects could possibly approve of such a hasty marriage – that indeed they haven’t “freely gone with this affair along.” This kind of well-delivered, belligerent and deliberate self-deception is not only designed to stare down unpleasant truths, but it puts in the mind of those listening in opposition that perhaps it is they who are in the minority.

Having delicately taken care of local business Claudius, in a further attempt to unify, appeals to nationhood, patriotism, and national security by drawing reference to the threat from Norway and, more specifically, upstart Fortinbras (lines 17-25). In: “Or thinking, by our late dear brother’s death / Our state to be disjoint and out of frame” Claudius is again vindicating his marriage and ascension to the throne by linking these personal triumphs to the necessity of providing the perception of strength and stability to local rivals.

Claudius’ response to Fortinbras, nephew to the King of Norway, is particularly interesting. Norway and Denmark share a similar fate in the transition and lineage of kings: brothers have succeeded instead of sons. Here, he offers a kind of doublespeak: he motivates and inspires the people of Denmark through a show of strength by offering to “suppress [Fortinbras’] further gait herein” (thus taking their mind away from local events), and at the same time delivers a veiled threat or warning against the one person in the audience who will hear it – the young Prince Hamlet, his nephew. To achieve a hit without landing a blow, or to strategically marginalise a potential foe by preaching unity and strength is the forte of the politically minded.  After all – who else in that room could thereafter assert that the newly crowned king Claudius is nothing if not benevolent, strong, decisive, and kind to the masses? In this respect, he’s one of the characters in Hamlet that, like our present-day politicians, must be seriously watched.

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Copyright © Cameron Sievers, 2019

In the famous sleepwalking scene (V, i) of Macbeth, the examination of status, through Lady Macbeth, could hardly be more intriguing. It is to be assumed that a doctor, although superior to the gentlewoman, is no match for an ostensible monarch when it comes to the question of status. It is of course the state in which Lady Macbeth enters the scene that alters the status relationship. Deferring to royalty by language, gesture, and proximity is now redundant, and the lower status participants are free to challenge these conventions by being themselves.

A number of performances simply have Lady Macbeth inactively observed by the doctor and gentlewoman. This is to underutilise the scene’s potential by some margin, as it is an interpretation that fails to consider the stakes of the lower status characters. The health of Lady Macbeth is very much in the interests of her appointed doctor. She is no ordinary patient. Furthermore, her husband, the tyrannical king, has appointed him. The king will demand a report on the nature of his wife’s physical health. Although mental illness is a new phenomenon in the world of the play, the doctor has observed the condition of sleepwalking (lines 54-56). It is the malady that presents itself on this occasion that is the cause for such alarm. It will be deeply problematic, therefore, perhaps incriminating, for the doctor to deliver an account of his patient’s mental illness, with its associations of guilt. Equally unpalatable is the prospect of the doctor’s public admission of professional failure, or worse: the failure to prevent the queen from self-harm or suicide.

The conflict for the doctor can be condensed into a single sentence: how does he successfully conduct his appointed duty? To help Lady Macbeth in her current state is to learn too much – yet it will be tempting for the doctor to protract the scene for this very purpose. Then again, to merely protract the scene for the sake of eavesdropping is to fail in his appointed duty. In a similar vein, the livelihood of the gentlewoman hinges on the life of the monarch. She is an invested participant, and her role in the scene cannot be passive. She may even have an emotional investment in Lady Macbeth, the person. It is clear that Shakespeare has presented the perfect conundrum; it is the model idea of a captivating situation and the complete conflict in which status ebbs and flows and is rarely fixed or binary in the exchange. By extension, it should be made known to participants that the scene is an exemplar for all good writing: that the difficulty or lack of a convenient resolution, the heightened stakes and investment in the scene’s central problem, and the concern with ordinary people make it a fascinating investigation. Contrast the sheer impossibility of the scene (that the problem is insoluble, yet the participants must remain within it) with the simplistic understanding of situation, conflict, and resolution that is often demonstrated.

The question, then, of how the doctor and gentlewoman might actively participate can be considered by addressing the complex relationship between self-preservation and selfless action. The doctor may well fail in his ability to cure Lady Macbeth of her malady, but he will do what he can to prevent the woman’s physical death or injury – in spite of what she seems to be confessing. How close, for example, is she to burning herself with the candle? What is the geography of the scene? How familiar is Lady Macbeth with said geography given that she and her husband have only recently moved to Dunsinane from Inverness? How dark is it? The extent of the doctor and gentlewoman’s involvement will be determined by a number of factors. One might imagine the doctor paying special consideration to the proximity of flame, face, and hair, while the gentlewoman frantically clears a path by moving aside furniture, and chairs, etc – then having to move them again when Lady Macbeth changes direction. The scene, performed in this way, very much conveys the assumed status relationship between the three participants, and shows how in many cases high status is conferred. If Lady Macbeth unconsciously threatens to walk into a wall or well-lit candelabra and the doctor and gentlewoman are impelled to use physical force to usher her on a different path or direction – the status relationship is challenged, with the taboo of touching a monarch broken.

Extending this idea might consider the question of avoidance in which the objectives of self-preservation and selfless action are perhaps confused. What if, for example, the doctor and gentlewoman are guiding Lady Macbeth away from the proximity of her husband – who happens to be in the adjoining room, or nearby? We are told that he is on the battlements – yet, given the nature and emotional state of the protagonist, this may not be wholly relied upon. By now, Dunsinane is awash with fear. Let’s not forget: Macbeth has murdered sleep and is rendered an insomniac by his acts of murder. Perhaps he will also know that his wife is a threat from having heard her somnolent confessions. Might he have her killed? By separating the self-preservation component, there is the sense that the inferior subjects have the power to save the life of a queen, in part by saving her from herself. There is also the argument that knowledge is power, and that any successful attempt at saving her in this scenario will result in them learning more about Macbeth’s gruesome deeds. However, if they fail in their attempt, and Lady Macbeth is exposed to the king in this way, the mutual discovery of her confession will be disastrous. Ironically, it is in this immediate action, despite her mental state and in spite of being disempowered by sleep – indeed, despite her very illness – that Lady Macbeth’s status will trump all, threatening to expose both king and underlings, demonstrating that great scenes from great writers will often contain a fluidity of status and that the idea of antithesis, in this case expressed by an individual who has no control of her actions or external senses, is a powerful dramatic principle that can challenge our assumptions about a scene.

When performed in this way the scene becomes, as it should – for this is the intention of great playwrights – objectively dramatic: each character finds the situation difficult to endure yet cannot avoid. Moreover, with effective exploration, as shown, the scene becomes more than ‘the sleepwalking scene.’ The problem with simplistic labels of this kind is that they reduce the scope to a single character, thereby negating the prospect of drama created by the tension between the presence and absence of multiple (and varied) participants. To put it another way: if the scene merely shows the observation of a vulnerable woman sleepwalking from the perspective of two disengaged participants, as many funded professional productions have it, there can be no prospect of drama because the observation of behaviour is not, in itself, dramatic. For drama to occur in this scene, all participants must become vulnerable, as demonstrated.

Copyright © Cameron Sievers, 2019