by
forcemajeure
on Tuesday, March 20
The one-hour show, Never Did Me Any Harm, is about the challenges of parenting in modern Western society, and was prompted by the book The Slap, by Christos Tsiolkas. Neither Tsiolkas nor the director of Force Majeure, Kate Champion, actually are parents. This could prompt cries of 'what do they know about it?' from parents caught in the vortices of self-doubt, loss of self-esteem, dismay at how their own children have 'turned out' and other forms of egotistic blindness; but in fact it gives both of them a position of distance which enables them to see the range of absurdities that characterise modern parenting, and to bring to the surface certain very powerful taboos involved.
To prepare for this play (what does one call, it?), Kate Champion had conducted countless interviews with parents, and some with non-parents, on the subject of having and bringing up children. The play was put together in a rehearsal process, by Champion and Andrew Upton, where each actor played in an improvisatory manner with fragments of texts taken from these interviews. As usual with such processes, an enormous amount of material was generated, from which the play was distilled. The result was an immensely powerful, condensed sequence of short scenes which gave a bewilderingly kaleidoscopic view of the challenges of parenting.
The text is powerful enough, but for me the theatrical side of the performance was staggeringly effective, and increased that power immensely. The seven actors played multiple roles during the evening. No two scenes used the same technique. The opening was mimed over the text read through the sound system, a technique which made it possible for the actors to transmit the emotion behind the words in a way impossible when one is actually speaking. The training of the actors in physical theatre enabled them, in other scenes, to fold into and out of each other's emotional states, and they did this with a timing that was on another level from that usually seen in theatre – well, I would call it musical timing, that is to say, on the level of micro-seconds. Astonishing.
The result was that Force Majeure could present those impossible sequences of emotions that happen bewilderingly fast as parents – where parental love tinged with pity changes in a split second (and that's not an exaggeration) into resentment and spite, and even hate. The short sequence involving the discovery that their son was autistic was devastating.
Most profoundly of all, these scenes brought out an aspect of parenting that has hardly been aired at all yet – the particular quality, or kind, of egotism that causes parents to harm their children. I could see that the terrible violence (verbal and physical) was because the parents treated their children as parts, or projections, of themselves, and could not work out when those parts were ones they loved or one they hated in themselves. After all, most of us have parts of ourselves we hate – often, crucially, including those transmitted unfiltered by our parents. This explains why it is accurate to speak of hate between parents and children (in both directions).
This was a brilliant, brave, and deeply stirring show. It did not answer many practical questions, but I think our society isn't able to do this yet. A preliminary stage to this is to bring the problems, passionately yet mercilessly, to light. This Kate Champion and Force Majeur achieved, using all the powers of the theatrical techniques fostered and developed in the last few decades.
By Nicholas Routley
Friday, 16 March 2012
For the full article, go to http://bit.ly/GBVxaK
Photo (c) Lisa Tomasetti
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by
forcemajeure
on Monday, February 27
We're delighted to announce that Adelaide Festival will be presenting NEVER DID ME ANY HARM as part of their exciting 2012 season.
WHERE
Space Theatre – Adelaide Festival Centre
WHEN
Wed 14 Mar – Sat 17 Mar 7pm
Sat 17 Mar 2pm
Artist talk
post 2pm show on stage Sat 17 Mar
TICKETS
Adult $49, Friends $42, Concession $35,
Fringe Benefits $30
(For Fringe Benefits bookings, please call BASS on 131 246)
BOOK NOW AT BASS ONLINE OR CALL 131 246
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by
Sydney Theatre Company
on Monday, January 30
You can smell the stage before you see it: the dry sweet-stink of dead grass permeates the Stables Theatre in Sydney's Kings Cross. The stage is set for Gordon Graham's play The Boys, which takes place in a backyard in the city's rough western suburbs.
Designer Renee Mulder describes the scene with a screen door, a brutal corrugated iron fence and a patch of real grass with the life trammelled out of it. There's even a totemic Hills Hoist, a clothesline with a life of its own.
Across town at the Wharf Theatre, another backyard is the setting for Kate Champion's physical-theatre piece, Never Did Me Any Harm.
Although the lawn is astroturf, designer Geoff Cobham has re-created a suburban garden with astonishing verisimilitude, complete with shed, tree, flowerpots, chairs and untold childhood hazards. The tyre swing is even spotted with realistic bird poop.
The two shows could not be more different - one is a scripted drama of almost primal violence, the other a choreographed work about contemporary social mores - although both, in their way, are about families and child-rearing.
But the choice of a backyard setting sends the audience back to a familiar and almost archetypal place. It's where so many of us spent our formative years.
Suburbia is often ridiculed or condemned for its deprivation and violence: the unspoken background to The Boys is Blacktown and the brutal murder of young nurse Anita Cobby in 1986. But suburban backyards are also places of the happiest memories of summer, childhood and make-believe.
It's a fallacy that artists or arts professionals are children of a privileged class - with its private schools, ballet subscriptions and babyccinos - and that in adulthood they automatically join the ranks of so-called inner-city elites. Nor does the national creative impulse necessarily arise from close proximity to the sea or affinity with the wide brown land. Creativity also begins in the suburbs, with their backyards, sandpits, sprinklers, clotheslines and garden sheds.
By Matthew Westwood
For the full article go to http://bit.ly/zTsEib
This article first appeared in The Australian, 31 January, 2012.
www.sydneytheatre.com.au/2012/never
Photo by Lisa Tomasetti
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by
Sydney Theatre Company
on Monday, January 30
It’s a delicious irony that neither Christos Tsiolkas, author of the bestselling novel The Slap which started it all, nor Kate Champion, the director of Never Did me Any Harm, are parents. In some conversations about the dos and don’ts of parenting, the views of people like them without children of their own carry less weight or are dismissed with a ‘What would you know?’
Yet both are actively engaged in the lives of children and families. And even if they weren’t, they are entitled to have an opinion just by virtue of the fact that, hey, they were kids too, remember? But when it comes to parenting we tend to endow experience with exclusive, ultimate, unassailable authority.
Of course, looking at family dynamics from the outside presents a different, detached perspective, which can make parents feel uncomfortable and judged. After all, the job is hard enough without feeling as if you have to justify why you do it a certain way.
When did it all become such a minefield? When did the boundaries between discipline and abuse get so blurred? Is the child who has been hit carrying emotional scars that will mark the rest of their life? Or as the title of this work (drawn from one of the many interviews Kate used as the basis for the piece) suggests, is it of little consequence?
Like Christos, Kate has a forensic eye and ear for the comedy, pathos and complexity of human relationships. She proved that, together with her longtime Force Majeure collaborators Roz Hervey and Geoff Cobham with The Age I’m In, her study of three generations. This time, she’s tuning in to some of the most vexed questions that face mothers and fathers today about their roles as guardians: discipline is one thorny issue, but so is the overwhelming amount of advice that more seasoned players volunteer to bewildered newcomers to the field. Somehow, we’ve professionalised parenting, creating two camps: those with competent skills and those who are left feeling distinctly inadequate. At the same time, parenting (remember when that used not to be a verb?) is now so much more public than it used to be – didn’t all this stuff used to get sorted out in private?
And then there’s the less acknowledged territory of competition: the rivalry and superiority of parenting styles, the boasting about one’s children as if they were all prodigies and champions, the pressure to provide meaningful opportunities and stimulation at every turn, and the anxiety, the fear that so-called helicopter parents feel about the vulnerability of their offspring, coupled with the often absurd legislation that makes every act, no matter how innocent, into an opportunity of lethal potential. Since when was riding a bike in the park or walking home from school such a big deal?
And what about the ultimate taboo that no one ever raises: the feelings of the dissatisfied parent, who fails to find the experience rewarding? You don’t have to go to the extremes of emotional frigidity of the mother in Lionel Shriver’s We Need To Talk About Kevin, (another non-parent who entered the debate fearlessly) to acknowledge that the bond between parent and child is not always all you might hope it to be. But such an admission, were it ever aired, would be made with shame and met with shock and revulsion. To be an unfulfilled parent is, for some, to fail as a human being.
Where does the myth that parenting is natural come from? It’s so entrenched we even idolise and sentimentalise good parenting in the animal kingdom. You only have to look at how popular wildlife documentaries are: we seem to have an insatiable appetite for scenes of endless licking and rearing of cubs and pups, a need to watch the passing on of hunting skills, the teasing of adolescents testing boundaries as if these rites of passage could reassure us that we are doing it right according to the immutable laws of nature. On a recent visit to a sanctuary for orphaned apes, it was refreshing to hear a keeper talk about the animals that were just hopelessly indifferent or bad parents. They had little interest, empathy or instinctive care for their offspring. But unlike humans, they suffered no guilt over their lack of interest.
In the rehearsal room, (where parents outnumbered non parents five to two), conversations kept yielding fresh material – even during the tea breaks: about terms like yummy versus slummy mummies, and wondering what the dad equivalent might be? Sometimes a proud mother showed off their adored son or daughter doing something remarkable on their iPhone... When you are both parent and performer, you don’t leave that role at the door of the theatre, it accompanies you everywhere you go. Several of the cast have very young children. The memory of months of interrupted sleep is still raw in their minds, not to mention their bodies. And unlike some workplaces that prefer to downplay the demands of child-care, here, these concerns are quietly factored in to the schedule. Behind the dance you see on stage is another parallel dance, a to-ing and fro-ing invisible relay between partners that is never overtly acknowledged, but without which the work simply could not happen.
Creating a space where trust and safety are implicit in the process, where experimentation and play are encouraged and words of praise and guidance flow freely, while leaving no doubt about who is in charge, Kate proves herself to be a natural parent. Nurturing, forgiving, patient and loving she creates an inspiring alternative version of the modern blended family with its disparate personalities, attitudes and behaviour, its push and pull of will and altruism, its moments of absurdity, frustration and tenderness. Only without slaps, tears and embarrassing temper tantrums.
More of Caroline Baum's notes from the Never Did Me Any Harm rehearsal room are at www.ndmah.posterous.com
The program for Never Did Me Any Harm is $10 and available from the bar at Wharf 1.
Never Did Me Any Harm runs in Wharf 1 until 12 February, 2012.
www.sydneytheatre.com.au/2012/never
Rehearsal photo by Grant Sparkes-Carroll
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by
Sydney Theatre Company
on Tuesday, January 17
A SHOW that is devised and staged by Kate Champion's Force Majeure physical theatre company is pretty much guaranteed to demand that you expect the unexpected and check your own preconceptions at the door. With long-time collaborators, set and lighting designer Geoff Cobham and co-creator Roz Hervey, Champion has given us - most recently - the memorable Not In A Million Years and The Age I'm In and the quality and variety of their work goes back to Same, Sam But Different and altogether they place the company in a unique and hugely admired place in Australian performance.
The least likely and oblique sources tend to launch Champion's imaginative leaps and Never Did Me Any Harm was sparked by Christos Tsolkas's The Slap. It's merely the spark, however, and the creative heat caused by it has fashioned something else entirely. Over the past couple of years, the Force Majeure crew has conducted some 60 hours of interviews with people who have shared their thoughts and beliefs on kids, parenthood, corporal punishment, discipline (notably its absence), breastfeeding, disability and so on. Fragments of these recordings begin the evening, anchoring it in the place of "real" and "ordinary" from which the theatre and spectacle then take off.
Typically, Champion has chosen a company of actors and dancers whose distinct talents and abilities are melded, apparently effortlessly, into a coherent whole. It's deceptive, of course. The ease that flows in the exchanges between, for instance, actor Marta Dusseldorp and dancer Sarah Jayne Howard, is the outcome of willingness on the part of both to leave their own assumptions and comfort zones behind; inventive minds and bloody hard work.
Similarly the fusion of audio, breathtaking lighting plots (see the main photo for an inkling of what happens) and the performers is made to appear simple and easy when it is not. Text and gesture, light and sound combine to make poetry of the human body and rhythms of everyday speech. The rest of the cast - Kristina Chan, Vincent Crowley, Alan Flower, Kirstie McCracken, Heather Mitchell and Josh Mu - assume various roles: father and son, lonely kids, bullying kids, a snippy middle class matron, lovers, mothers, friends, enemies. All have a discrete language of movement and voice; for the dance inclined there are sly pas de deux, trios and fractured ensembles. But Never Did Me Any Harm is impossible to pigeonhole.
Geoff Cobham's hyper-realistic set of a suburban backyard with a neatly mown lawn, herbaceous border, a tree and a shed is both reassuring and unsettling as it's washed in the already mentioned light plays and Max Lyandvert's rich soundscape. Dogs bark, children laugh and play in a nearby swimming pool and playground, birds sing, cicadas trill. It's all so normal … average … and yet, as we all know, some of the most ferociously uncompromising cultural and ideological battles are fought out in the privacy of normal, average homes and backyards.
Kate Champion's Force Majeure is never less than madly interesting; most often they have profound, amusing and moving things to show and tell. In this instance, anticipation is rewarded in spades. Warning: don't go expecting run of the mill contemporary dance, or performance art or theatre. Do go to be thrilled, entertained and emotionally engaged and you won't be disappointed.
Diana Simmonds, 15.1.12
http://www.stagenoise.com/review/1811
Never Did Me Any Harm plays in Wharf 1 until 12 February, 2012.
www.sydneytheatre.com.au/2012/never
Photo by Lisa Tomasetti
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by
Sydney Theatre Company
on Tuesday, January 17
Never Did Me Any Harm plays in Wharf 1 until 12 February, 2012.
www.sydneytheatre.com.au/2012/never
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by
Sydney Theatre Company
on Thursday, January 12
The Daily Telegraph 13.01.12 – Daring to be Drab
"Using a cleverly curated blend of dance, spoken word and recorded interviews with parents, children and childless adults over three years, Champion raises questions we daren't ask.
How far do we go to discipline our children? How do we raise self-assured kids in an image-driven society? How to provide meaningful opportunities without spoiling them senseless?
Despite the bleak undertones, the play imparts a feeling of hope. Mainly: you are not alone."
For the full review go to:
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/specials/sydney-festival/daring-to-be-drab/s...
The Australian 13.01.12 - A Lively Slap in the Face
"People don't just have children and haul them somehow into adulthood as in the olden days, before contraception, smaller families, greater prosperity and fewer books on child-rearing. The verb parenting came into vogue, and there are many views and judgments on what that involves.
This is surefire material, and Never Did Me Any Harm scores a lot of direct hits. It is quite chilling to hear, in a voiceover, a lad talk quite calmly about his ability to get absolutely anything he wants, any time.
Heather Mitchell has a wonderfully passionate speech about not wanting children; Marta Dusseldorp gives an equally powerful account of a mother reading her teenage daughter's diary, and of the crushing discoveries she makes. Alan Flower, the other non-dancer in a multi-skilled cast of seven, is divine when playing a little kid forced into a dare-devil game."
For the full review go to:
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/arts/a-lively-slap-in-the-face/story-e6f...
SMH 13.01.12 – Emotions Flow in Heartfelt…
"Never Did Me Any Harm makes you laugh, cringe and possibly even cry inside at the sheer difficulty of this everyday challenge…
Almost immediately, it takes off in a poignant movement sequence featuring the powerful dancer Sarah Jayne Howard, who happens to be conspicuously pregnant. With the partnership of Joshua Mu and a jagged, mind-wrenching lighting effect by set and lighting designer Geoff Cobham, this is one of the most engrossing sections of the production.
Seven performers take on the roles of children and parents in a cornucopia of painful - yet often amusing - happenings. How could that father play so roughly with his son? And so unkindly knock down the ''castle'' his daughter was building? Does that wilful daughter have any idea how cruel she is to her parents? The autistic son is a trauma of another kind, wrapped in helpless love by his mother."
For the full review go to:
http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/theatre/emotions-flow-in-heartfelt-explor...
Time Out 13.01.2012
"Combining contemporary dance, theatricalised gesture and text garnered from over 90 interviews, director Kate Champion and her team explore an issue that seems to lie at the heart of middle-class Australia: how do we raise children well?It’s an important question and, from the audience reactions on opening night, obviously one which many people have contemplated. Without realising it, we’ve all formed opinions and battlecamps around the issues of parents and children. Never Did Me Any Harm taps into the conversations a lot of people are having at dinner parties, in offices, online, and the sense of familiarity (enhanced by Geoff Cobham’s realistic backyard set design) is occasionally eerie. The choreography, which draws so much from our day-to-day physical language, enhances and heightens this."
For the full review go to:
http://www.au.timeout.com/sydney/theatre/events/27587/sydney-theatre-company-...
And have a look at this fantastic piece on Stvdio:
Studio / Festival TV http://www.stvdio.com.au/arts-news/sydney-festival-tv-never-did-me-any-harm/
Never Did Me Any Harm plays in Wharf 1 from 6 January, 2012.
www.sydneytheatre.com.au/2012/never
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by
Sydney Theatre Company
on Tuesday, January 10
From MattRavier Mathieu Ravier on Twitter:
Very impressed by preview of Force Majeure's NEVER DID ME ANY HARM at @sydney_festival. New STC pop-up bar makes for a sweet night out too!
and this on Facebook:
Never Did Me Any Harm plays in Wharf 1 from 6 January, 2012.
www.sydneytheatre.com.au/2012/never
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by
Sydney Theatre Company
on Tuesday, January 10
We’re in the handover phase when Kate, as parent, surrenders her baby to Erin, the stage manager. Headphones on, enunciation crisp, she’s in charge at the production desk, inviting the performers to get ready for their entrances in her impeccably polite cheery voice, making notes of last minute alterations to the dozens of lighting and music cues. This is the kind of cool, calm purpose and unflappable focus you need in a crisis (not that this is one, but in an emergency, I’d follow Erin, no question).
The technical rehearsal is a slow painful process of plotting lights, fiddling with shutters on projectors, and generally refining details. It means doing things over and over again to get timing perfect and digital effects synched to human performance. In a theatre with an inexperienced crew, it can be murderously stressful. Here it’s made as painless as possible by five star professionalism.
Marty puts finishing touches to set-dressing, adding bunches of weeds he’s pulled from a nearby park to the garden beds and filling out the shelves in the shed with tools and knick knacks. "Oh, the glamour of theatre," he jokes.
There’s even time for Max to watch a bit of the cricket on his iPhone while playing in the music. "Ponting’s out," he says in the darkness while Kate moves around the theatre, considering every scene from every angle, any inner turmoil or anxiety well-concealed.
There was a tough decision to make yesterday, pulling a scene from the show at the last moment. Telling the performers concerned was not easy, but it’s all part of the process, this relentless fierce scrutiny of the material: if it does not add to the show’s impact, if it cannot justify itself dramatically, then it’s out. No room for sentiment here.
And suddenly, there’s an audience. First preview, friends, family, colleagues. Kate invisible, nowhere to be seen in the auditorium; Roz lippied up. The first laughs come almost immediately, as soon as Josh and Sarah Jayne begin their parental duet. You can feel the audience recognising themselves. They are along for the ride. So much so that at one point, while Vince is mid-rant, a woman shoves her companion in the ribs with her elbow and says "You do that too!". You can sense them fizzing with responses to what they are seeing and hearing, there are murmurs of agreement and recognition and then the best kind of silence: attentive, complicit. Moments that have become so familiar to me provoke surprising responses. Lines get unexpectedly generous laughs. Like childhood, it goes so fast. Suddenly there is Vince, saying the last line with a poignant candour I never heard in rehearsal. And I find there are tears in my eyes.
Text by Caroline Baum
Production photos by Lisa Tomasetti
Never Did Me Any Harm plays in Wharf 1 from 6 January, 2012.
www.sydneytheatre.com.au/2012/never
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by
Sydney Theatre Company
on Thursday, January 5
While the rest of the world is relaxing and feasting, Kate’s team have to crank up their energy again after the interruption of Christmas. It’s hard to get back into the groove. Best of the Secret Santa Christmas Kringle is Vince’s Blue Box: a physical representation of the metaphorical blue box where he keeps any good ideas he’s had that don’t make it into shows.
That blue box is part of company language; a shorthand that is baffling to an outsider. Halfway through the morning I overhear another snippet of it when Kate mentions doing a Sarah Jayne. Turns out she has a step named after her that she created at ADT and that is now taught as such! It’s these things that make Force Majeure feel like a family: so while Kate may not have chosen to have children, she is a parent.
Right now, she’s doing something very un-parental: showing Marta how she might fall when Vince gives her a shove. “We need to find a way you can do it safely every night. You’ve got to watch your wrists,” she says, demonstrating a couple of options and sounding more like a sensible mother after all.
*****
After a final run through in the Bangarra rehearsal space it’s bump out day and the sound of drills dismantling the set takes over as it is moved to its new home at Wharf 1.
While everyone is packing up, I take the opportunity to ask Max Lyandvert, Kate’s long time sound designer, about the brief for this show. Max is Russian and Jewish, a combination that he says means he has a tendency to always stray towards dark, gloomy sounds. “I’m always writing requiems,” he jokes.
During the development phase in July 2011 he created an atmosphere that was sinister and drony. Kate wanted something lighter, so he’s had to think in a different palette. More treble, less bass is his solution. He’s also recorded sounds made by his own two small children in amongst the sampling of forty musical cues, which includes tracks by the Ramones and from Warwick Thornton’s film Samson and DelilahThe trick is to underscore and create a mood without intruding on the moments of drama while enhancing the moments of pure movement. Just like everything else about this piece, it’s a balancing act.
Photos by Grant Sparks-Carroll
Never Did Me Any Harm plays in Wharf 1 from 6 January, 2012.
www.sydneytheatre.com.au/2012/never
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