All posts tagged theatre

• September 28, 2017

  The Weekend Australian Review story: ‘Sight Unseen: Audio description for blind theatregoers’, September 2017

  A feature story for The Weekend Australian Review. Excerpt below.

  Sight Unseen

  For theatregoers with impaired vision, audio description services help to make sense of what’s happening on stage.

  

  You are sitting in the front row of a theatre when a calm, male voice begins­ to speak into your ear, welcoming­ you and setting out key details about the play you are here to see. “The Merlyn theatre is a flexible, black-box theatre space,” says the voice. “For Elephant Man, the audience sits in a rectangular seating bank opposite to the stage. The stage is raised about 40cm off the ground, and takes up the full width of the Merlyn, about 10m wide.”

  You are listening intently to the voice because­ you cannot see what it is describing. You are blind, but you love going to the theatre, and you want to better understand the performance beyond the dialogue that all attendees can hear from the stage. This is why you are at the Malthouse Theatre in Melbourne’s inner city on a rainy Friday night, listening as the shape and layout of the stage begins to take shape in your mind’s eye.

  “A black proscenium arch frames the playing area, about 5m tall, creating a wide rectangul­ar space,” continues the voice. “A ­curtain of black gauze covers the entire width of the stage at its front edge, separating us from the playing area. We can see through the sheer material, but it softens the edges of everything behind it.”

  You are hearing the voice because your earphones are connected to a wireless radio receive­r that sits inside the palm of your hand. Later, this wonderful technology will allow you to follow the action you can’t follow with your eyes.

  While the boisterous audience take their seats behind you in the minutes before a performan­ce of The Real and Imagined History of the Elephant Man begins, you are listening to pre-show notes that are being broadcast into your ears from the green room on the building’s third floor. There, a bespectacled 26-year-old named Will McRostie sits before a computer, a live video feed of the stage, and some audio equipment that allows him to speak into the ears of theatregoers who have registered for audio description services this evening.

  “The play makes extensive use of smoke and haze effects,” says McRostie’s voice. “Nozzles emitting smoke are hidden in the walls of the set, sometimes leaking heavy mist that tracks along the ground, and sometimes blasting plumes of light smoke that billows to fill the space. Two powerful fans set into the floor of the space are sometimes activated to catch this smoke and propel it toward the ceiling. On occasion, the smoke is so heavy it becomes difficult to see the performers.”

  Difficulty in seeing the performers is the entire­ purpose of audio description, a niche and little-known service that is sometimes — but not often — available for people with low vision who attend theatres and cinemas. Because of its exclusivity and the resources required to produce­ the service, it is usually available only in Australia’s capital cities, and only for the bigges­t productions on the annual theatre and cinema calendars.

  To date, audio description has largely been provided in an ad hoc manner by volunteers and, as a result, the quality of the service exper­ienced by blind patrons can vary wildly. McRostie is at the forefront of a movement to professionalise it, however, which is why he founded an arts start-up named Description Victoria in March this year.

  To read the full story, visit The Australian. Above photo credit: David Geraghty.

  No Comments / Feature Journalism, Published Writing / Andrew McMillen

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• April 27, 2012

  The Australian story: ‘Jay & Silent Bob: Comic duo gets serious, for laughs’, April 2012

  A story for The Australian’s arts sections, which ran on April 12 2012. The full story appears below.

  Comic duo gets serious, for laughs
  by Andrew McMillen

  The first time cinemagoers laid their eyes on Jason Mewes and Kevin Smith was in Clerks, a 1994 feature film that depicted a day in the working lives of two frustrated store clerks stuck in dead-end jobs.

  

  Mewes and Smith played the bit-part characters of Jay and Silent Bob, respectively [pictured above; Smith on the left]. Their introduction occurs seven minutes into the film, when Mewes — a tall, wiry youngster — takes up his regular post outside a convenience store (where Smith, then 24, worked as a clerk during the day). Jay drains a beercan, spits out its contents, then announces, “I need some tits and ass, yeah!” He does a little dance, then adds, “I feel good today, Silent Bob!” before expressing in detail his desire to copulate “with anything that moves”.

  All the while, his stocky, mute friend in a trenchcoat puffs on a cigarette, barely acknowledging the string of explicit and provocative statements that Jay directs at passers-by. It remains a compelling introduction to two of modern American cinema’s most enduring — and unlikely — comedic characters.

  Written, directed, produced and edited by Smith, Clerks never appeared on more than 50 screens at one time during its theatre run in the US. Rated R for “extensive use of extremely explicit sex-related dialogue”, the film seemed doomed to a niche audience at best. Yet word-of-mouth marketing prevailed and it grossed more than $US3 million for distributor Miramax Films.

  Not bad for a project made on a shoestring budget.

  Clerks became a cult favourite that led to a string of popular comedies directed by Smith: Mallrats in 1995, Chasing Amy in 1997, Dogma in 1999 and Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back in 2001. The two characters last appeared on screen together in 2006’s Clerks II.

  This month Mewes and Smith will tour a live show in Australia for the first time, under the name Jay and Silent Bob Get Old.

  Mewes, now 37, casts his mind back to his late teens, when Smith — four years older — began working on Clerks. “Back then, it was just me and him,” Mewes says. “We’d wake up and work our nine-to-five jobs at the convenience store and the video store. He told me he was writing a script and was going to go to film school. It wasn’t that I doubted him; it was like, ‘Oh cool, you’re going to school.’ I didn’t think anything about it. I was just like, ‘I’m going to go to work tomorrow, you have fun.’ ”

  Smith’s hard work evidently paid off, and he brought his new friend along for the ride: one that took the wealthy writer-director to the heights of owning a home in the Hollywood Hills with his wife and daughter, and Mewes to the depths of addiction to heroin and, later, the painkiller OxyContin.

  In a 10-part series published on his blog in 2006, entitled Me and My Shadow, Smith described at length the roller-coaster ride of Mewes’s addiction and his numerous attempts at rehabiliation. Using his flair as a writer and eye for detail, Smith wrote of Mewes’s “first taste of heroin courtesy of a girl whose name he doesn’t remember, on a jungle gym in a park lit by the Canadian moon”. Later republished in the 2007 book My Boring-Ass Life, Smith’s tale remains moving, even for those with little interest in his films.

  Mewes has never read Me and My Shadow in full. “I’ve read sections of it,” he says. “It sort of upsets me a bit to read it. I’ve never been able to sit through and read it from beginning to end.” The Australian tour, Get Old, born from a successful podcast of the same name, has its roots in Mewes’s addictions, too.

  Six years sober, he relapsed in 2009 on painkillers after a dental procedure. “When people go into surgery, you try not to take pain medicine if you’ve (been) addicted to pain medicine (in the past),” he says. “But if you are going to take it, you should talk to some people; a sponsor, friends, and you have to see them every day, (to) be accountable for what’s going on. I didn’t have any of that going on at the time. There was no one I had to be accountable to.”

  When Mewes told Smith of his desire to record a regular podcast before a live audience, his friend encouraged him to speak about his experiences with addiction. According to Smith, “it’s much easier to fight a dragon if everyone can see it, and it’ll remind you about where you don’t want to be ever again.” The live shows became a kind of therapy for the actor.

  “Talking about everything has been very helpful for me,” Mewes says. An unexpected outcome eventuated, too: group therapy. “I’ve had people come up to me after shows and be like, ‘Hey man, I’m six months sober today and it’s seriously because of you because when I was sick and I was getting off the painkillers, I wanted to go use but then I’d listen to three of your podcasts in a row and it would inspire me not to go get high again.’ That’s very flattering and awesome. It’s just a bonus to what I thought (the podcast) would be about.”

  Jay and Silent Bob Get Old has no real structure: it’s just two friends who happen to be famous speaking about whatever comes to mind. The show was first hosted at a 45-seat venue in Los Angeles, which sold out five weeks in a row. On upgrading to the 230-seat Jon Lovitz Comedy Club in Universal City, the pair continued to fill the venue each week. They booked bigger shows in capital cities across the US, and their Australian tour — consisting of theatres that hold 1000 to 2000 people — has mostly sold out.

  “That we can get 2000 people who want to come listen to me and Kevin sit down and talk and tell some of our stories is pretty amazing,” Mewes says, laughing.

  When asked whether he’s concerned about sharing too much, Mewes replies: “No, not really. Not when I hear stuff like (former addicts thanking me).

  “Sometimes I think I over-share about me and my wife, and my wife might be at the show and afterwards she’ll get a little embarrassed or upset with me.”

  This is unsurprising, given that both men discuss the topic of sex — both in the past and with their wives — frequently during the stage show. “That’s about it. There hasn’t really been any backlash.”

  Despite the gravity of discussing Mewes’s former demons, there’s much more light than shade at play in Get Old. After all, most people are there to laugh with their film idols rather than mull over life lessons.

  “My goal is to entertain everybody,” Mewes says. “I hope they have a really good time. And of course people are paying money. I want them to be like, ‘Oh man, we went out last night, and we saw Jay and Bob. I’m glad I did that on my Friday night, instead of going out to the bar or to the movies.”‘

  Jay and Silent Bob Get Old is in Adelaide on April 18 and 28; Brisbane, April 19; Sydney, April 20 and 23; Melbourne, April 26.

  No Comments / Feature Journalism, Published Writing / Andrew McMillen

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• September 4, 2011

  Qweekend story: ‘I went to the drive-in and this is what I saw’, September 2011

  A story for Qweekend; my first contribution to their weekly ‘what I saw’ series of observational short stories.

  Click the below images for a closer look, or read the article text underneath. Photography by David Kelly.

  

  I went to the drive-in and this is what I saw

  Thirty-eight kilometres south-east of Brisbane lies a large, lumpy car park just off the Pacific Motorway. It’s an unremarkable piece of land but for the two enormous white billboards at either end. At half-past five on a Saturday afternoon, a dozen vehicles are queued at the entrance. Relaxed female staff stride out to the central booth and begin letting traffic through.

  Two different sessions screen simultaneously at the Yatala Twin Drive-In Theatre – hence the name – and since seeing one costs adults $13 each and two costs $16, it seems wasteful not to commit to the double. “What movie are you watching, darlin’?” the attendant asks. My partner and I opt for the pair showing in field two: fantasy-action film Thor and medieval-themed comedy Your Highness.

  The parallels between regular cinemas and the Twin begin with “seating”. As with an indoor theatre, central real estate is snapped up first, while late entrants are relegated to the wings and neck-craning front rows. In the middle of the property, a single-storey building serves the dual purposes of business HQ and food outlet. The decor borrows heavily from the ’50s-era American diner aesthetic, right down to the life-size Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe statues in the foyer – “Please don’t touch”, reads a sign on Elvis’s guitar. A formidable wall of sweets makes young eyes water. Attendants serve dagwood dogs, Chiko Rolls, hot chips and popcorn, while an elderly manager potters behind the scenes.

  All four films screening tonight are new(ish) releases. Those parked in field one will be privy to Rio and Fast & Furious 5. This ensures that visiting the Yatala Twin isn’t a novelty excursion into yesteryear but an independent alternative to watching films at a megaplex.

  Beyond a row of tall trees at the foot of the property, the queue of brake lights on Stapylton-Jacobs Well Road extends into the fading dusk. Most headlights are dimmed once inside the theatre, as drivers heed a sign that reads: “Definitely no lights”. Seated at a table outside the diner, eyeballing the procession of slow-moving vehicles, we’re glad we got here early.

  It’s chilly in Yatala tonight. Slippers and ugg boots are common; children, especially, are revelling in the chance to publicly parade their brightly-coloured pyjamas. The painful shriek of low-bodied sports cars scraping their undersides on the bumpy terrain occasionally interrupts a PA soundtrack comprised solely of golden-oldies.

  We gaze up at the giant white billboard and attempt to estimate its height. Twenty-five metres? Thirty? (We learn on the theatre’s website later that it’s actually 13.4m.) As we walk back uphill, the diner’s painfully bright fluorescent lights destroy what limited night-sight the human eye can muster. It’s a complaint echoed by a pair of teenage girls, with whom we nearly collide. “We can’t see a bloody thing!” they say, startled.

  Dean and Jess, a couple of Yatala regulars, are lounging on a mattress in the back of their station wagon. How does tonight compare to previous outings? “It’s cold,” Dean says. “That’s about it!” We all laugh. His mother once worked for the defunct Richlands Twin Drive-In Theatre. After getting his driver’s licence, Dean and his mates often spent weekend nights within these very grounds. “We like coming here. It’s peaceful. You get to lie back,” he says, gesturing at the mattress.

  A strange feeling descends in the calm before Thor. It’s the realisation that we’re sitting in a dark carpark with hundreds of others, listening to a live Elvis album recorded in the 1950s. Parents tell their children to stay within sight. Some have brought fold-up chairs; others make use of ute trays. Blankets are a prerequisite. Many simply sit in warm little bubbles, radios tuned to the relevant frequency. Everyone respects their neighbours’ space. There’s something incredibly romantic about the manner in which this experience brings people together, far more so than an average trip to the cinema. Who knows how many children have been conceived here?

  Beside each parking space is a steel pole lit by tiny, candle-like orange bulbs. The poles hold two chunky, steel-encased speakers designed to be hung inside car windows. The units are hefty. They give off the impression that the hardware hasn’t been upgraded since the theatre was opened, in October 1974, with one screen. (It became the Yatala Twin in 2000.)

  The speakers buzz with distortion whenever things explode in Thor (which is often), or when starlet Zooey Deschanel breaks into song in Your Highness. Those who possess adequate stereos and generosity toward their fellow man blast the radio at windscreen-rattling volume.

  During the interval, the queue for the ladies’ is dozens-deep. Happily, the guys’ queue is non-existent. Most of those parked in field two leave after Thor. Some cars creep forward a few rows.

  Fifteen minutes into Your Highness, the yellow glow of the RACQ logo glides by. Three cars over, 32 year-old Alisha and her partner Frank are stranded. They had intended to relocate and watch Fast & Furious 5, only to find that their engine wouldn’t turn over. Theatre staff have a battery pack on hand to assist but it hasn’t helped. Frank’s son, Ryan, is in the back of their white wagon. “We come here every three or four months, just for something different,” says Alisha. “Ryan likes coming. In summertime, it’s awesome.” She butts out her cigarette on the bitumen. “There needs to be more of them,” she adds. “We come all the way from Ipswich. There’s one there, but it just shows old movies.”

  As soon as the credits start roll, brake lights pierce the darkness. Our neighbours shoot off a few minutes before the film’s end. They leave in such a hurry that they fail to put their rubbish in a nearby bin. It’s the sole instance of unbecoming behaviour witnessed during nearly six hours spent parked before the giant, white billboard in field two. Our engine starts with the assistance of crossed fingers.

  3 Comments / Feature Journalism, Published Writing / Andrew McMillen

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• March 8, 2009

  Dan Deacon Live: Improvisation and Acceptance

  

  I saw a remarkable show this weekend.

  Melbourne’s Mistletone Records held a label showcase called Summer Tones across Australian venues. 

  The Brisbane show at The Zoo comprised Mistletone artists The Ruby Suns, Lawrence Arabia, High Places, Beaches and Dan Deacon [pictured right].

  Deacon’s headlining performance was remarkable because he got the audience to do ridiculous things.

  At one point, hundreds formed a human spiral by running around The Zoo’s central staircase.

  Then there was a mass hands-behind-back dance-off.

  Then there was a human tunnel that went downstairs and spanned the backstage area.

  Each of these ridiculous, hilarious activities were performed under the guise of acceptance.

  In 2005’s Blink, Malcolm Gladwell discusses the structure of spontaneity that characterises successful improvisational comedy groups.

  One of the most important of the rules that make improv possible, for example, is the idea of agreement, the notion that a very simple way to create a story – or humor – is to have characters accept everything that happens to them.

  […] As  Keith Johnstone, one of the founders of improv theater, writes: “[…] In life, most of us are highly skilled at suppressing action. All the improvisational teacher has to do is reverse this skill and he creates very ‘gifted’ improvisers. Bad improvisers black action, often with a high degree of skill. Good improvisers develop action.” (p 114-115)

  Audience acceptance – the willingness to accept the performer’s wild, physical suggestions – is the difference between the average, static, one-way musical performance, and a memorable show that you’ll tell all your friends about.

  Part orator, part evangelist, part electronic composer: the manner in which Deacon successfully fuses music and theatre is brilliant. As a performer, he is entirely convincing: how else would you get 200 people to chase each other around a staircase?

  In a Rave Magazine interview, Deacon states his preference for booking smaller venues. This is presumably because acceptance and social proof – wherein people rely on the actions of others in unfamiliar social contexts – become more difficult to influence as the size of the crowd increases.

  “It’s a rare occasion [when Deacon’s crowd-pumping antics don’t work], but it depends on the audience,” he continues. “The audience is there to have a good time and enjoy themselves. If not, their life sucks.” 
  (can’t find the article online – it’s on page 20 of Rave Magazine issue #880)

  

  Of course, Deacon’s highly interactive, personal approach to live performances can’t work for every artist or band.

  Nor should it. It wouldn’t be remarkable if everyone did it. Instead, it’d be boring.

  The same way that a purple cow only sticks out because the other cows aren’t purple.

  There’s an excellent Citypaper article here that further discusses Deacon’s live show and how its outlandish nature – which lends itself to being shared online through photo and video – attracts what writer Rjyan Kidwell terms ‘voyeurs’ . Excerpt:

  “As long as the crowds don’t become too rowdy or violent, I’m excited for my audience to grow,” he said. It sounds clear to me that Deacon has big ideas about what can happen when large groups of people get together in one room, but that he expects the audience to trust and commit completely to his leadership if something transcendent is to be achieved. [Citypaper]

  1 Comment / Writing / Andrew McMillen

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