The Green Rooms (& some Airplay)

Ms TN is not a morning person. I was supposed to be at Footscray Hospital bright and early this a.m. so I could be injected with radioactive isotopes and put on a treadmill (don’t ask) but yesterday I entirely forgot about this appointment and drank a vat of coffee, thus invalidating the whole exercise. So I had to heave my carcass out of bed early so I could phone the Department of Nuclear Medicine, confess my idiocy and cancel the medical experiment.

So perhaps I was in a slightly misanthropic mood when I studied the Green Room Awards press release listing 2009’s winners, announced last night, which slid into my inbox first thing this morning. But I suspect that even had I bounced out of bed with a happy cry and greeted the dawn with rapture, my sunniness might have been a little eclipsed. It is a duty to disagree with awards, but it’s been a while since I’ve felt so at odds with their results.

Awards in the arts are always contentious. They depend, for a start, on committees of people agreeing on something, and in areas like the arts, perceptions of quality are inevitably – and in my view, necessarily – subjective. Even so, the conservatism of this year’s theatre awards is notable. Not that conservatism is, in itself, a bad thing – I don’t have many quibbles with Robyn Nevin’s gong for Best Female Performer, for her extraordinary performance in August: Osage County, nor for Simon Phillips’ direction, his best for years. But When The Rain Stops Falling as best mainstage production? And that script the best new writing of last year?

Michael Kantor’s Malthouse production of Happy Days – one of the shows of last year, and Kantor’s best direction yet – didn’t even make the shortlist for production or direction. (And yet the Malthouse’s indifferent production of Knives in Hens was up for both direction and best production.) Equally baffling is Daniel Schlusser’s superb and thoughtful Life is a Dream losing out in the indie best direction to Bagryana Popov’s disappointingly banal take on Chekhov, Progress and Melancholy.

There are, of course, worthy winners among them. You can’t miss the target all the time. But I might drink another vat of coffee today, as I reflect on the world’s folly and resistance to quality.

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On a cheerier note, I hear that ABC Radio National’s Airplay is broadcasting Corvus, a beautiful script by ex-Melburnian and now Berliner Jasmine Chan. Featuring Bojana Novakovic and Ming-Zhu Hii, it will be worth twiddling the dial to hear this one. It goes to air on Saturday, March 28. While I’m at it, look out for Paul English reading Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet on ABC Radio’s First Person, airing from May 24-28. Now, that’s writing.

Green Room Awards

The 2009 Green Room nominations were announced today. You can peruse the nominations – in music theatre, main stage theatre, independent, alternative and hybrid, opera, dance and cabaret – at your leisure on the Green Room website. Congratulations to all those nominated, and to the hard-working panels (of which I am no longer a member – over-commitment forced me to resign at the beginning of last year). Most of all, congratulations to Melbourne theatre, for serving up such a diverse feast of performing art.

Notes on the back of a seat

Last night, the theatre glitterati of Melbourne clustered at the Playhouse for the Green Room Awards (winners here). Benedict Andrews’ production of The Season at Sarsaparilla for the STC Actors Company, seen here at the MTC, won practically everything going in the Companies category (aside from Best Ensemble, won by another Andrews production, Malthouse’s Moving Target, and Best Music, won by the inimitable Andrée Greenwell for Bell Shakespeare’s Venus & Adonis). Sarsaparilla’s domination is, I guess, some compensation for its notable snubbing earlier this year in the Sydney Critics Awards, and it’s a wholly deserving winner; but despite my own involvement in all this (as alleged panellist), I can’t help feeling some reservations about the whole premise of prize culture. But I’ll just rhubarb in the corner about that, and leave you to sort through the rest of the winners yourself.

As for me, I was down the road at Hamer Hall, reviewing Dylan Moran for the Australian. Where I and my partner in crime went to some trouble to photograph the plaque on the back of the seat in front of us with my crappy phone camera. Ah, Austrlian poetry lovers. Bless them.

Ushering in an old era?

Will the new Age arts editor, Michelle Griffin, herald a new era of accurate, in-touch arts journalism? Not if alleged arts journalist Robin Usher’s report on the Green Room Awards in today’s paper is any indicator. But maybe she hasn’t had time to settle in yet. In today’s report, Usher gobsmackingly manages not once to mention the Malthouse Theatre – even though, with 24 nominations, it garnered more than any other single theatre company. He also misunderestimates the MTC’s haul by more than half – he says they got eight nominations, rather than 18. I thought he was, very eccentrically, refusing to count co-productions, but even on that basis he’s got the wrong figures (nominated non-co-productions run five for the Malthouse, six for the MTC). (Update: See comments for further discussion on the non-co-pro question). To be fair, Usher does mention the Malthouse/STC’s The Women of Troy – but only crediting it as an STC production.

This plumbs new depths, even for Usher. Perhaps someone should remind him that it is a news story, not an opinion piece.

Before I forget…

I should have been on the quivive, as I’m a member of the Companies panel … but better late than never. The 2008 Green Room Awards nominations were announced yesterday. The Green Rooms cover musicals, theatre, dance, opera, cabaret, independent and mainstream theatre. There’s also something called “alternative/hybrid performance” which I’d just call “theatre”, but you know me. Given the cross-over nominations in other categories, the hybrid category tells you a lot about the present fluidity of theatrical form since the good old days – not so long ago, actually – when things were neatly divided between “fringe” and “mainstream”. A quick trawl is a reminder of what a rich year 2008 was for Melbourne performance lovers, and also gave me a few pangs in reminding me of what I missed. Big winners in theatre are the Malthouse, with 24 awards in total across four categories, with the MTC coming in with 18.

Green Room Awards

The Green Room Awards were announced on Sunday. I would have been there – I’m on the Theatre – Companies panel and had more than a passing interest in the results – but had that other pressing commitment up in Canberra. But other bloggers are onto it – Chris Boyd has the lowdown on The Morning After, and Ming, who is presently putting the fire back into feminism, quotes panel convenor Katerina Kokkinos-Kennedy’s judging notes, which comment on the continuing gender imbalance in major company directors.

Green Room Awards

The Green Room Awards were announced yesterday. The big winners were La Mama and the Malthouse, with the latter winning 10 awards. La Mama in fact doubly won the new play category, with Gabrielle Macdonald’s Debt and Peter Houghton’s The Pitch sharing the gong. Peter Houghton also scooped the Best Male Actor for The Pitch (La Mama, opening next week at the Malthouse) and his performance of Hamm in Eleventh Hour’s For Samuel Beckett. The Malthouse productions of Kage Physical Theatre’s Headlock and Nigel Jamieson’s Honour Bound, which is soon to tour to Europe, both figured prominently.

The big loser is the MTC, which won a single award (for the design of Festen) and dipped out badly to Dusty: The Musical in the musical theatre category, where it had nine nominations for The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. Something is a little flat in South Melbourne, methinks…could Simon Phillips be too busy with commercial projects like Priscilla: Queen of the Desert to keep his eye on the ball?

Newsy bits

TN has got a little behind lately on various Bits, but I’m not going to make any more mimsy excuses. You all know why, and if you don’t, well, it’s not because I haven’t been complaining. Below the fold, as they say, is a quick catch-up for all you breathless thespian newshounds snuffling at the door of the nouvelle…

• La Mama Theatre has been getting a fair bit of coverage lately, reminding us all why it ill deserves its current “on notice” status at the Australia Council (news broken, sort of, by TN last year). The latest mark of its value as theatrical gem is La Mama dominating the Best New Australian Play category in the 2006 Green Room awards, with three of the five plays nominated being La Mama productions: Debt by Gabrielle Macdonald, Haul Away by Glynis Angell and The Pitch by Peter Houghton (which coincidentally opens in a new season at the Malthouse next week, where I will catch up with it). The other nominations are Stephen Sewell’s It Just Stopped (Malthouse) and Joanna Murray-Smith’s The Female of the Species (MTC). Hmmm. Guess I’m barracking for La Mama. In all, La Mama received 12 nominations across all categories.
• Over in New York, George Hunka has joined the rest of us hoi polloi, and has moved the premises of the excellent Superfluities to Blogger. So note the address change. And while you’re noting, note also his thoughts on theatre blogging, prompted by a blogging panel (we’re a bit behind here, we don’t have blogging panels. Yet.) Mr Hunka makes a clarion call for the blogosphere to leave its adolescence and grow up by providing a serious space for serious discussion about theatre, as no longer practised in what we new media types call the Mainstream Media (MSM to the cognoscenti). “If the arts blogosphere is to provide that space for the criticism and reviews that have fallen into disfavor in the print media, it has to begin providing the quality of criticism and thinking about theatre that critics like Gilman, Eric Bentley and Robert Brustein demonstrated,” says The Man. Too right, say I. SF Weekly theatre critic Chloe Veltman has her own view: “Arts coverage is disappearing from ‘old’ media and moving increasingly online,” she says on her blog. “The most interesting cultural journalism is happening online these days, on blogs and in the pages of web ‘zines.” Not least in sunny Melbourne, where it’s all happening. Which brings me to…
• Spark Online, a blog established by the Victorian College of the Arts student arm, includes reviews, poetry, scripts and news of upcoming VCA events (put that rare performance of Hélène Cixous’s The Perjured City in your diary). The theatre reviews are very impressive: probing, serious and well written. Another source of local reviews that are a cut above the usual is Matthew Clayfield’s Esoteric Rabbit; Matthew is presently infiltrating Melbourne Stage Online with his dangerously thoughtful responses. Go Melbourne, city of glittering conversation!
• It seems that some nudity in Sir Ian McKellan’s performance of Lear is causing a little consternation in Stratford-Upon-Avon, with theatregoers reporting “dismay” at the fact that they were not warned that they would get to witness Sir Ian’s jiggly bits. Will Melburnians blink when the RSC production comes here in July? Expect to see the Arts Centre plastered with warning signs for delicate arts consumers – there’s eye gouging, adultery and excess poetry as well as nudity, you know…
• And a PS: a whack on my forehead for being parochial – I shouldn’t forget Sydney, where the blogscene is beginning to spark… After a bad time at The Nightwatchman at the Griffin, Nicholas Pickard has a passionate post in which he thinks through how his responses to theatre stem from his own preoccupations as a director. Here he discusses his belief that a “plague of realism” is infecting Australian directing. Meanwhile, David Williams, director of Sydney performance group Version 1.0, has begun his own blog, Compromise is Our Business, which is well worth a squiz or two: it includes discussions of shows (a review of Chunky Move’s Glow) and some illuminating and even amusing reflections on politics and theatre. (Will update my blogroll soon, promise…)

Green Room Awards

In my new guise as Green Room Awards theatre panellist for 2007, I took more notice than usual of the nominations for the 2006 Green Room Awards, announced yesterday at the Princess Theatre. Quite a few of my personal favourites in the three theatre divisions (and very good to see the sadly underrated Eldorado getting a few deserved nominations) but it beats me how anyone could think Jason Donovan’s catatonic face-pulling in Festen is noteworthy acting, or that It Just Stopped shouldn’t have been quietly filed away in a bottom drawer and forgotten. I guess if everyone agreed, life would be a sight more dull…