Elizabeth Schafer

Unsettling AustrIllyria: Twelfth Night, Exotic Englishness and Empire

Examining a range of productions of Twelfth Night in Australia not only indicates the variety of approaches that Australian directors have adopted in constructing their own versions of Illyria but also that a recurring motif circulating around these productions is ‘exotic Englishness’ or a performance of Englishness grounded in Australian stereotypes of the English (and British). Acknowledging this dynamic helps to indicate how well the class war of Twelfth Night sits with, and complements, responses to the British Empires former presence in Australia and suggests that, although Twelfth Night is not ostensibly concerned with issues of land ownership, it can very readily speak to those issues, particularly in a post-colonial theatrical environment.

Theatres of Instruction, Theatres of Learning and Shakespeare's Tempest

In this document, Cozzi speaks of his internment in Chile in 1974 and the role that Shakespeare played in helping him to survive his ordeal and then in facilitating his emigration to Britain. In Cozzis reading of the play, Prosperos pedagogy gives way to a ritualised theatricality that becomes a metaphor for the way learning may occur through dream, through hallucination, or through close encounters with death. Schafer sets this discussion in the context of a recent production of The Tempest by Tara Arts.

Editorial: Unsettling Will?

In his interview with Elizabeth Schafer for this special issue of Contemporary Theatre Review, Enzo Cozzi recounts a telling anecdote which epitomises well the paradoxical centrality of Shakespeare in a range of contemporary theatre-scapes around the globe. In 1975, having been a prisoner and tortured in Pinochet’s Chile, Cozzi was trying to enter the United Kingdom. The immigration officer was concerned that he would turn out to be a Chilean refugee, and thus liable to become a burden to the state. Cozzi persuaded him that his real motive for entering the UK was his love of Shakespeare, and quickly reeled off a series of recitations from Shakespeare’s texts. The officer was convinced, by this performance, that Cozzi’s motives for entering the UK were legitimate, and issued the entry permit. He also told Cozzi how to get to Stratford-upon-Avon. The anecdote is laced with many levels of irony. Cozzi knew Shakespeare well enough to present his works, effectively, as a passport. The officer knew his Shakespeare well enough to recognise his works even in Chilean form, and so allowed Cozzi, and his Shakespeare, to pass. The anecdote underlines the centrality, circa 1975, of Shakespeare to English culture, even in a space as far from the academy or the theatre as passport control. Cozzi’s quick-thinking performance of Shakespeare shows how important Shakespeare was (and continues to be) for a wide range of Englishand also non-English-language-speaking cultures. An important paradox resides in the fact that, for those represented in this special issue, there is no desire to ignore and forget Shakespeare’s works. Rather, the various material and theatrical practices discussed here seek to unsettle prior modes of presenting Shakespeare and, at the same time, to unsettle in various ways the local cultures these Shakespeare productions address. Frequently such approaches meet with resistance, as audiences and readers fail to recognise a Shakespeare with which they are comfortably familiar. Theatre practitioners, on the other hand, take at Contemporary Theatre Review, Vol. 19(3), 2009, 265–268

Introducton Theatre Australia: or London is a long way from the centre

‘Theatre Australia’ was the title of a periodical that was published 1976– 1982, a particularly exciting time in Australian theatre when important questions were being asked about what theatre should be; when Currency Press was beginning to publish Australian plays and give them a life beyond the theatre; and when much Australian theatre was claiming to throw off the shackles of British influence, and striking out in new directions. ‘Theatre Australia’ however is also a usefully permissive title – it can encompass theatre made by Australians all over the world as well as theatre made in Australia – and can encourage those of us who are a long way from Australia not to be unduly daunted by our distance from the centre of the action. In recent years, however, some of that action has been available to those outside Australia. For example, theatre loving Australophiles in the UK have been able to see a stunning range of Australian theatre including: Kevin Gilbert’s landmark Aboriginal drama The Cherry Pickers (2002); Jane Harrison’s evocation of the tragedy of the generation of Aboriginal children taken from their parents, Stolen (1998); David Williamson’s take on the world of art, Up for Grabs starring Madonna (2002); Joanna Murray-Smith’s saga of middle class marriage break up Honour, at the National’s Cottesloe theatre, with Eileen Atkins and Corin Redgrave (2003); Hannie Rayson’s examination of the ethics of privatising higher education, Life After George (2002); Nick Enright’s and Justin Monjo’s adaptation of Tim Winton’s novel Cloudstreet (1999, 2001); and in 2004 the British-based theatre company Border Crossings produced Thomas Kenneally’s 1980 play of Aboriginal dispossession, Bullie’s House. In the USA, exposure to Australian drama and theatre has also been on the increase: for example, Cloudstreet’s 2001 visit to the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York played as part of a month long festival entitled ‘Next Wave Down Under’, which also featured Bangarra Dance Contemporary Theatre Review, Vol. 14(3), 2004, 1 – 4

Self-effacement and Self-fashioning: Michael Blakemore and the Craft of Directing

In a career lasting over fifty years, director Michael Blakemore has enjoyed box office success, critical acclaim, and long term, and fruitful, relationships with leading playwrights of the English speaking world. Over the last ten years Blakemore’s international profile and name recognition has also increased as his successes in the USA have gained enormous publicity: for example, in 2000 Blakemore was awarded one Tony for his production of Michael Frayn’s Copenhagen and another Tony for his production of Kiss Me, Kate. In 1967 Blakemore directed the first production of A Day in the Death of Joe Egg, when no other director would take on the play and thus he helped to launch Peter Nichols’ career by taking the production on from Glasgow Citizens to London and Broadway; he has directed the premieres of most of Michael Frayn’s plays; and he directed the historic and highly acclaimed National Theatre (NT) 1971 production of A Long Day’s Journey Into Night, starring Laurence Olivier, which was subsequently filmed and shown on television in April 1973. Blakemore has directed Brecht’s The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui several times, most famously in 1969 with Leonard Rossiter as a ‘cataleptic Hitler arousing a terrible and riveting hilarity’ at a time when much contemporary Brecht was solemnly serious. In his commitment to directing new plays and nurturing the careers of writers like Peter Nichols and Michael Frayn, Blakemore has had a major impact on the repertory of most English speaking theatres. Blakemore’s directing practice is grounded in self-effacement and this commitment to professional self-effacement has probably resulted in a certain underrating of his work, certainly in relation to some of his more self-promoting, auteur inclined peers, whose logo is printed onto any production they direct. Blakemore’s self-effacement is also in tension 1. Blakemore’a production of Kiss Me, Kate later opened and did good business in London’s West End in autumn 2001, at a time many productions were closing as theatre goers avoided the centre of London in the aftermath of the 11 September attacks.

Whose Country's Good? Anglo-Australian Bicentennial Exchange

In 1988, the Bicentenary of the foundation of white Australia, unleashed an orgy of theatrical activity celebrating, mourning, and critiquing both the original event and the decision to invest so heavily in celebrating it. Many Bicentennial productions were specifically commissioned and so partly circumscribed by the terms of their commission. Male playwrights dominated and they tended to produce plays which worked with the notion of history and historiography with varying degrees of critical and commercial success. 1 As Helen Gilbert argues, this focus on history made sense as it responded to the fact that:

Shakespeare's Cleopatra, the Male Gaze, and Madonna: Performance Dilemmas

Shakespeares Cleopatra offers much material for feminist analysis; however, her circumscription by the male gaze is disabling both for herself and for women caught in the trap of believing ‘infinite variety’ to be a desideratum in a woman. Consequently Cleopatras success in playing to the gaze needs to be deconstructed. Cross reference to the example of Madonna suggests that even an intensely self‐conscious and analytical performer is likely, finally, to collude with the oppression of the male gaze.