Hi Rupert

I wholly agree with your idea of what theatre can be. It almost always
isn't, but when it is, it's really worth the candle. Strangely, there's an
amazing attack on Barker in this month's Quadrant (an Australian right wing
magazine). So I've been writing something on him for next week's blog and
thinking about why I think he's such an important dramatist. He's not a bad
poet, either, and these things seem to me not unconnected.

There are pieces written like those you call for, but (certainly here)
they're very seldom done. What Barker calls the liberal humanist theatre
(the "theatre of conscience") is so in the ascendant that to think outside
its assumptions seems to be almost impossible and, as he says, it's had
devastating consequences on theatre's formal and innovative possibilities.
I chiefly admire him for his confrontational defence of artistic
imagination, and I think he's right in identifying it as a contemporary
heresy.

All the best

A


On 18/6/04 3:23 AM, "mallin1" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Yes Alison
>
> Howard Barker remains one of the key dramatists around. Great quote. Radio
> director Richard Wortley produced quite a lot of Barker's work on BBC Radio
> 3. Wortley was a BBC stalwart, who simply loved the diversity of the radio
> medium. He directed so many playwrights through a long career, always
> enthusiastic about new work. Indeed, among the many, he directed ten of Tom
> Mallin's plays in the 1970's (m' dad) and two of my own in the early 1990's.
> Was then that privatisation crept into the Beeb and Richard had to work as
> an 'outsider' in his own place of work. Actor Stephen
> Tomkinson had a part in my first play. Richard took me aside and said: "how
> much do you think he's earned this year - £250,000" (and that was before
> Tomkinson had made it through 'Brassed Off' and continuous TV work. Richard
> told me this to emphasize how poorly paid are the writers - to give me a bit
> of a kick (very much in the Barker mould).
>
> I seem to be talking of Richard Wortley in the past tense just because we've
> not been in touch for 10 years. Ironically, a close friend of his has moved
> to Lowestoft - and now we're back in touch. He's working on a radio play
> about the last years of Goya.
>
> In a way, what used to enthuse me about playwriting no longer does. I used
> to like notions of craft, of the definite framework from which to leap. I'd
> love to get back to writing for theatre but I'd want pieces five-ten minutes
> long, like a poem. Nobody seems to want to experiment in/with theatre. It's
> revivals, well made plays, hee-hee sketches, journalism (as you say), a self
> prclaimed righteousness (dullness) or forever self-referencing works. I
> don't know. For me, theatre should be a laboratory for crossing over all art
> forms - like breaking the borders as in reality - clinging to a train's
> undercarriage to survive - breaking out, down, away, across - breaking.
> 'Broken' is the present theme of a collaboration I'm involved in - and I'd
> kind of like to see 'broken' theatre.
>
> Best wishes, Rupert



Alison Croggon

Editor, Masthead: http://www.masthead.net.au
Home page: http://www.alisoncroggon.com
Blogs: http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com http://alisoncroggon.blogspot.com