Posted on March 28, 2010 - by clare

Thoughts from Scott Rankin, March 2010

Here are some reflections from Scott Rankin, writer and co-director, during the recent March creative development (check out photos here).

Alice,
Sitting with the sons and daughters of sons and daughters of Albert…
Kevin Namatjira and Elton Wirri and Gloria Pannka,
A group of us… painting for hours.  Silence.
How lucky are we…
Even actors like Trevor and Derek and Wayne found a quiet, a kind of shut down/ shut out of the chatter.

It’s so interesting this different energy between a bunch of visual artists and a group of theatre artists.
These visual artists are kind of anti-theatre, still and quiet and drawing no attention, no drama,
Making no bid for centre stage, making no one look – all the stage essentials,
Energy flowing, through layered concentration into colour, onto paper,
These painting sessions become studies of the kind of beat of Albert’s life…
Informing the narrative, the feel, the characterization…
How to have this energy in a show, that still needs to shimmer with the drama of that Namatjira life.

Sitting a few days later with Lenie while she painted at the Ngurratjuta Centre,
She found a natural way to open up and talk, brush in hand, eyes down, focused on the picture,
Snippets of information, most of it on the record, some changing what was on the record,

And then there’s the play…
It’s hard to hold back the strong push to finish, complete, commit to paper, write it down, make it into a show…
It’s hard to let the piece just arrive with the same pace as these painting sessions.
It creates a healthy tension.
These are the last luxurious weeks before the time comes when the other creative departments “need to know”,
When the flexibility of the piece gets progressively tied down, with each decision costing money to change.

There was something pure about this trip to Alice and Ntaria…
Something fresh, to go with the swollen rivers and washed feel of everything, from recent uncharacteristic rain.
Something delightful in the simple building of understanding between groups of people, strangers but not strange.
Sitting and painting and sharing snippets of story from outside the text books…

And then, for the actors, there was the work on the floor.
The first tentative experiments from Wayne.
Derek’s strong input into language.
Trevor twisting and turning in his skin to find three characters in three lines.
Genevieve Lacey listening, listening, wondering… hardly taking a breath.

And all this activity in an old Lutheran hall… surrounded by memorabilia from hard mission yards from a past, now a mirage…
Missionaries derided by many for their contribution, as if…
Somehow, they themselves now need converting by the all knowing soy-chai-latte-sipping-beemer-driving-coast-hugging missionaries of mediocrity… purveyors of self-made-opinion, focus tested on a collective of voices in their own heads…
And so, in this way, in and out of silence, painting amongst the family snippets of useless angstful “playwrighting” like this drift in and out, to be discarded for ideas more timeless, romantic, less reactive and ugly, more in keeping with the soft stroke of brush on paper.
More and more steps towards things that can’t be known.