IMTAP (International Museum Theatre Asia Pacific)
5th Forum on Performance in Cultural Institutions
22nd April 2010 – Powerhouse Museum and Maritime Museum, Sydney
Stephanie Rose
IIMTALAP member, Sovereign Hill, formerly State Library Victoria
Keynote Address – Alana Valentine
• The premise of a play is based on the question what would happen if? To start planning for a museum piece you start with this question. Further, you can consider the most uncomfortable position a human being could be in and work backwards to construct a plan.
• When visiting exhibitions/collections a visitor needs to be able to create a Lifeline of Meaning – meaning that a visit can construct a context or narrative relevant to them. They need to be able to know what they are looking for and why they should keep looking at an exhibition.
• Museum theatre (and theatre in general) is powerful because it allows us to empathise with someone we could never understand before. Sometimes that person is ourselves. Further: theatre puts life experiences into a condensed version that can lead to new understandings.
• A piece of Museum theatre can provide people with an opportunity to connect with exhibits. Ie. After watching a plan they can then tour the exhibition and draw on points from the play: “this is the gun from X section of the play”.
• Alana wrote a play performed NSW called “The Prospectors” about the Eureka Stockade.
• Curators should be involved in the process of making a play from the outset – it will make the outcome so much richer and more durable.
Workshop 1: Outback Theatre for Young People
• This organisation is based in south-west NSW and offers an outreach program for local young people to be involved in theatre.
• They are based in Deniliquin and service surrounding areas, including Hay and Ivanhoe.
• OTFYP started in Hay – a town of 3000 people and 5 Museums. They are very proud of their Museums and they have been inspiration behind plays. Including a play about the girls of the Hay Institute (a brutal home for girls considered bad).
• They said that involving young people was a great way to get the community motivated to be involved.
• OTFYP continues to be a powerful medium for the young people of south-west NSW to engage with their heritage and participate in their community.
Panel Discussion: Meeting the needs of all involved, artist, audience and museum
Panellists: Nadya Tkachenko (Immigration Museum), Michelle Saunders (Scienceworks), Helen Whitty (Powerhouse Museum) and Kim Carpenter (Performer).
• Nadya and Michelle introduced the three different ways Museum Victoria use theatre across their museums:
o Melbourne Museum: Performances by teams under the direction of the museum
o Scienceworks: performers contracted to convey science concepts
o Immigration Museum: Public Programs use drama as an interpretive method within their Education Programs.
• Considerations when planning performances should include: learning of content, entertainment value/engagement, meeting specific audience needs, and venue and budget considerations.
• Panellists recommend using writing contracts when engaging external performers. These contracts should include: payment schedule, copyright agreement, timeline, performer obligations and public liability information. Contracts are useful not only to ensure a productive and positive relationship between museum and performer, but also to leave a ‘paper trail’ for future employees to know what has been agreed upon, or just understanding things that have been done in the past.
• Ideas to overcome obstacles:
o Give staff Street Theatre training
o Utilising the space and the spontaneous nature of a museum
o Integrate theatre planning write from the outset (at the very beginning of planning an exhibition or public program)
o Provide performers with lots of time to research and develop their ideas
• Powerhouse has used museum theatre to: increase schools audience, complete family offer for adult-style exhibition, theatrical settings for the visitor to be in the performances, and students using costumes and characters to interpret what they are seeing.
• Recommendation: if performing theatre in a museum context do not try to imitate a theatre (ie. Black box and sitting in rows). It is better to try an alternative set-up, such as chairs in a close circle.
• It is a good idea to document performances and keep an archive of what has been happening in Museums. This can be used for future ideas, but also to keep a cultural record of our work as museum theatre practitioners.
Workshop 2: Patrick Watt, National Sports Museum
• Considering all aspects of copyright is important (particularly where external providers are including). For example, owning the music or the theatrical premise might be important if you do not want to see the work somewhere else.
• Collaboration with a range of people is great, and keeping a paper trail of these collaborations are important so that organisations are not constantly re-inventing the wheel.
• Played attacker/protector game: Need uneven numbers (about 5), everyone chooses (in their head) someone to be attacking them and someone to be protecting them. They must keep their protector in between them and their attacker.
• Specactor = spectator + actor, Curactor = curator + actor
• Can use audience involvement as a way of conceiving theatre ideas, even if the audience is not actually being use for the theatre. Process drama can lead to museum theatre.
• Teaching drama (and the creative process in drama), excellent video: Dorothy Heathcote “Three Looms Waiting” available on Teacher Tube.
• Theatre director worth reading about: Augusto Boal (http://www.ptoweb.org/boal.html)
• Interesting Stats: Victoria and Albert Museum in England had an exhibition on corsetry. Research into audience engagement showed that for audiences that just viewed the exhibition: 12% left with an understanding of material presented. When they had theatrical interpreters: 96% left with an understanding of material presented.
Performance
At the National Maritime Museum we watched a performance called I, Bunyip. It is a piece in process that is complementing a Mythic Creatures exhibition. The performance explores Indigenous Australian mythical creatures, including: Yawk Yawks, Turongs and Nyols, using puppets and an Indigenous narrator. There was audience involvement and the puppets and puppetry was fantastic.
Workshop 3: Simon Dalton (Old Melbourne Goal – Crime and Justice Experience)
Simon presented a workshop about a program recently developed by OMG – C&JE, called I’ve killed my best mate. The program, mainly developed for legal studies students, was developed in collaboration with the Traffic Accident Commission. It is a student-led re-enactment of a real trial (sentencing hearing, the offender has already pleaded guilty) of an 18 year old boy who crashed his car while racing down Flemington Rd. Both his passengers died.
Each student (and in this case, us) takes on a role and has a script. The teacher is given background information and character descriptions to preselect roles, but they do not see the script until the day. The students then act out the trial. Simon’s session involved us participating in the program and then discussing it afterwards. At the end students discuss what sentence they think he should receive – as he is 18, he could go to either a Juvenile Retraining Centre or an adult prison.
It was a fantastic session. I really enjoyed having a go at the activity and it was extremely powerful at provoking questions and discussion.
Pecha Kucha in the Pub
At the end of the day (after a comedy debate and closing) we met in the Harlequin Inn for Pecha Kucha. Here seven people presented (until the limit of 20 slides, 20 second per slide). It was a great way to showcase ideas on different ways museum theatre could be used.
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