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Sharing a dinner lady with Bill Bailey
English comedian Bill
Bailey, in Perth for the festival
and soon to appear on the small
screen. The first
time I saw his show I laughed so hard it
physically hurt for three days and I had
to cancel my imaginary yoga
class. In fact
the first time I saw Bill Bailey was in
1980 when we started going to the same
school. He had short hair then and Dr
Martin boots which were the height of
rebelliousness, especially within our lame
English public school which viewed French
as a bit too progressive and women as a
mysterious blot on the
landscape. Bill
Bailey has gone on to greater things:
award-winning comedian, film star, charity
worker and tortoise owner. He's even been
a guest on the Des O'Connor
show. He's had
his own successful television sketch
series and the ABC is finally getting
round to showing Black Books, his first
sitcom. Black
Books is a sitcom with a difference
starring two comics, Dylan Moran as book
store owner Bernard Black, a
wine-drinking, customer-hating grouch, and
Bill as Manny, a stressed-out office
worker who accidentally swallows The
Little Book of Calm which turns his life
around. "It's
quite unusual to have two comics as the
two lead characters," admitted Bill.
"People who write comedy and perform it
tend to steer away from sitcom and do
other things such as writing films. So
sitcom became a format which needed
reviving and reinventing." I caught
up with Bill just before he starts his
Australian tour with three performances at
the Playhouse Theatre. He had just arrived
from Bali where he had gone AWOL for some
days, much to the distress of his
promoters. Bringing
to Perth the inevitable Bali belly but
successfully avoiding the hazard of cheap
watches by "pointing and staring into a
middle distance", Bill admitted that after
we had parted school days company he had
gone on to college only to leave early to
play an owl. "I was
studying English and drama at London
University and I made a decision to leave
after about three weeks, but stuck it out
for a year," he said. " I got a job almost
immediately with a children's theatre
company in Wales and part of that involved
dressing up as an owl. As you do. It gave
me a great foundation though, as kids are
a tough gig." Bill's use
of music in his stand-up comedy has
frequently led to references to comedian
Tom Lehrer, but Bill denies that Tom was
ever an influence on his own
work. "When I
started out I wasn't aware of Tom Lehrer.
I knew the name and what he did, but I got
a couple of reviews where his name was
mentioned. He was actually very much of
his time, in the same way Peter Cook was,
so the more I hear his name associated
with what I do, the more I take it as a
great compliment." If
comparisons to other performers are taken
with such good humour, suggestions that
his bizarre and eclectic humour is
drug-inspired produces an instantly
defensive response. " I get
frustrated when people say 'you must have
taken loads of drugs to come up with these
ideas' and I say 'hang on, no I haven't,
and actually it's quite insulting as
you're undermining someone's ability to
create a world in their own
head.' "I've
known druggies and they're the most boring
people. They just witter on about the same
thing. Boring, boring, boring. To come up
with something you need to have an
imagination, a bit of clarity and a bit of
context." So, is
comedy the new rock 'n' roll? "Well, it
depends on what how you define rock 'n'
roll, in as much as many of today's groups
are so heavily corporatised," said
Bill "If you
see rock 'n' roll as trying to break new
ground and do something different, then
yes, comedy is." And
finally, well I just had to ask. wasn't
Mrs Barnes the sexiest dinner lady in the
world? "She was a
darling. I'd rub down those lunch trays
for her any day." Bill
Bailey closes at the Playhouse Theatre on
February 9, going on to tour the other
states. Black Book
goes to air on ABC TV from February
13. William
Yang, the observer William Yang says his
career is based on his ability to
listen. The 58-year-old actor turned
photographer turned performance artist
believes his work depends on his ability
to listen. "I have always trusted my instincts
about what is interesting," he said. "I'm
an observer. I watch and listen. I don't
talk." When he does talk, Yang is serious and
intense, chronologically describing his
gradual career changes, explaining that he
doesn't really understand how it all came
about. A Chinese Australian, William left his
home in North Queensland, dropped out of
his architecture studies and arrived in
Sydney in 1969 to pursue a career as an
actor and writer. In a big city where he had no past
history he found it easy to assume a new
identity. He came out as gay and he came out as
Chinese. His mother, like many migrants,
denied her Chinese heritage and brought up
her children as assimilated
Australians. He changed the spelling of his birth
name from Young to Yang, though he said he
never intended to change its
pronunciation. "Yang is pronounced Young by the
Chinese," he said. "I wanted to keep my
name and just spell it differently. But
some things just don't translate from one
culture to another. I was forever
explaining that it was pronounced Young
but in the end I sort of gave up. People
don't get it." Chasing a career as an actor in Sydney
was tough. "I didn't really have an acting
personality and being Chinese didn't help
-- there weren't many roles for me," he
said. William joined the Performance
Syndicate, one of Australia's most
influential groups of actors, writers and
directors of experimental theatre, but
found he couldn't pay the rent with his
writing. Always one to carry a camera around, he
starting shooting photos at parties. The
parties were glamorous, showy and camp (a
more popular word than gay in the '70s)
and William said he became infatuated with
the exciting world surrounding Linda
Jackson and Jenny Kee and their famous
fashion business, Flamingo Park. His photos led to regular work
producing actors' portfolios and this paid
the rent. Then he became a social
photographer for Mode magazine, developing
his ability to capture a specific and
totally natural moment in time. "I am completely self-taught," William
said. "Even today my style is not all that
technical." His glamorous lifestyle, mixing with
the rich and famous as a social
photographer, palled in the mid '80s and
he began to look at ways of extending his
photography. "I started with slide projection," he
said. "I didn't really know what I was
doing but it just seemed a natural
progression to describe the slides in
words -- an extension of a living room
slide show." Despite the adage that a picture is
worth a thousand words, he said he liked
the idea of art being explained. "I've always liked going around with
guides at art galleries," he said "It
gives you an entree into the picture and
puts it in a context. To really experience
art you have to be able to 'enter' into
it." His first shows were not financially
successful but met with great
interest. It was the huge success of his show
Sadness for the 1993 National Festival of
Australian Theatre that brought William
Yang recognition as a social historian and
as a storyteller. "I could concentrate all my energies on
my own projects then and give up freelance
photography," William said. "Suddenly in
the '90s I became productive." Much of his work has been
autobiographical. Now William says he has
run out of family stories and so relishes
the opportunity to pursue the theme of
reconciliation, set by the Adelaide
festival. His performance Shadows is a journey
through dispossession and reconciliation
for two peoples, the Aborigines and the
Germans. The German angle was suggested by
Adelaide Festival's artistic director
because of the number of Germans who
settled there after the two world
wars. "Adelaide was a sort of bourgeois
microcosm for the rest of Australia,"
William said. "It was a gentleman's club
of colonialist attitudes that has created
the racism of today." It was hard to find people who would
talk about their war experiences. "It's a generational thing, they were
ashamed and besides it's not something you
talk about." Working with the Aborigines was totally
different. "With the Germans I knew the story and
had to find a way to illustrate it,"
William said. "In the Aboriginal community
it was a different thing altogether. This
story evolved from my visit. It is a
better story because of the way it just
happened." Shadows is underscored by original
music by Colin Offord and William's
monologues will accompany hundreds of
slides from seven projectors. Shadows is showing at PICA on
Wednesday, February 13 and Friday,
February 15, at 8pm, Saturday, February
16, at 5pm and 9pm and Thursday, February
14 and Sunday, February 17 at 6pm. US
troupe sets a
challenge The sets may be simple, but
a concentrated effort is needed
to follow the complex pieces
presented by US company Theater
Simple. It is an apt motto for the creators of
Theater Simple, Andrew Litzky and Llysa
Holland, partners, in life and in theatre,
for whom theatre is a singular passion.
Perhaps "simple" is a bit of misnomer for
their style of theatre. Though simple in
sets and props, it is as challenging and
thought-provoking as it is
entertaining. "We have high expectations of our
audience," said Andrew. Regular tourers around Canada and
Australia, it is the first time the
company has visited Perth, and audiences
have an opportunity to experience two
radically different productions, back to
back. Strindberg in Paris is, as the title
suggests, a journey into the twisted,
tortured mind of Swedish playwright August
Strindberg, who went to Paris believing he
could conquer the world from the cultural
city. Adapted from Strindberg's own writings
in his Occult Diary and from Inferno
(Strindberg's account of his nervous
breakdown) three performers become the one
voice of Strindberg, reflecting the many
faces of this poet, playwright, scientist
photographer and woman-hater. Charles Leggett, arguably the closest
in looks to Strindberg, Andrew and Llysa
each don the Strindberg moustache and
goatee as they collectively journey
through the genius's "brain-frying" period
in Paris when he produced his first great
play, Miss Julie. It is a piece of non-naturalistic
theatre that requires the audience to
mentally "surf". "It is like listening to
music, watching a dance or experiencing a
dream as this man descends into madness,"
Andrew said. "We don't glorify him, or ridicule or
defend him," said Llysa who firmly
believes that inside the misogynist was a
"marshmallow centre". In direct contrast, the performance
piece 52 Pick Up is an exercise in
improvisation. Each of 52 cards has the
title of a scene written on it. In order,
the play has a beginning, middle and end
in the making and breaking of a
relationship. Throw the cards up and pick
them at random and you have, like life,
endless configurations to love's tale. Although each scene is scripted, the
random order in which they occur requires
swift improvisation to make the transition
to each moment and mood. Llysa and Andrew perform together,
claiming they rarely get the chance play
lovers on stage. Like gamblers they say
every card is a new piece of luck and
there's always the thirst to go for the
next card to see where that takes
them. Meanwhile Charles Leggett gets to play
"god", lighting each scene as quickly and
effectively as the cards dictate. Strindberg in Paris and 52 Pick Up are
playing in repertory at The Rechabites
Hall in William Street, Northbridge. Strindberg plays at 8pm till February
10 and at 10pm on February 12, 14 and
16. 52 Pick Up plays at 10pm on February 8,
9, 13 and 15 and 5pm on February 10. Festival
ballet in open air Holly Croft (centre) works
with her colleagues on the
intricacies of her choreography
for Breathless. The company has created a season of new
works under the title Breathless and based
on their own interpretation of the
theme. Four new ballets, including three world
premieres, are designed to take your
breath away or to leave you
breathless. Resident company dancers Holly Croft
and Matthew Thomson are taking their place
as choreographers beside Britain's David
Dawson and Australia's Natalie Weir. Leederville resident Holly danced with
Queensland Ballet and The Australian
Ballet before joining the tightly-knit
group of 18 dancers that make up WA Ballet
in 1999. She took her first steps into
choreography with the company's Step Ahead
workshops, first creating a solo piece for
herself and then for a cast of four. "I love working with my colleagues,"
said Holly of her premiere work for the
festival season. "I know how they like to work and I
know how much they like to be
challenged. "A lot of my work is very intricate and
detailed and although I let them have a go
at their own ideas I have very specific
moves in mind." Her dance piece is called I of the
Storm and is choreographed to the
high-energy and deeply rhythmic sounds of
Afro-Celt Sound System. Holly said: "The winds of change are
always blowing. Often we fight them. but
there is freedom in letting go, finding
peace in the turmoil, like the eye of the
storm." Holly's greatest challenge was
designing the costumes before a single
step had been rehearsed, working over the
phone with Melbourne-based designer Amanda
Silk. The costumes are trade-mark Silk
designs of flowing, stormy grey-green
silk. Amanda loves using silk and once
commented it was lucky her name wasn't
Amanda Cotton. While working on her own choreography,
Holly is also learning from acclaimed
international choreographers, dancing for
both Dawson and Weir. David Dawson has choreographed and
danced for the Birmingham Royal Ballet,
the English National Ballet and now
William Forsythe's Frankfurt Ballet. His
piece, called A Million Kisses to My Skin,
was originally created for the Dutch
National Ballet. Natalie Weir, recently returned from
creating dances for Houston Ballet,
American Ballet Theatre and The Australian
Ballet, is choreographing another new work
for WA Ballet called Beyond Tears. Dancer Matthew Thomson has created a
new piece called Yearn. The four ballets will play out before a
backdrop of city lights at the Quarry
Amphitheatre in City Beach from February
14 to 23. The performance starts at 8pm,
with the gates opening at 6.30pm for
picnickers. Bookings are through BOCS. Festival
views... The gypsy girl Carmen (Pauline
Malefane) is a large, sexy, insolent girl
with come-hither eyes that could melt the
hardest of hearts. The factory workers are a healthy blend
of voluptuous women and eager girls
flanked by casual, interested groups of
men. Broomhill Opera's version of Bizet's
Carmen is as far away as you can imagine
from the classic, formal grand operas.
It's casual, easy and straight to the
point. The South African cast of 40 frequently
breaks away from singing satirist Rory
Bremner's jaunty English translation,
finding more power in shouting in Xhosa.
And mixed into the hot, sweaty Spanish
rhythms come foot-stomping African
beats. Rarely will you have heard Carmen sung
with such earthiness, grittiness, warmth
and humour, but the production has such a
rough edge to it that the passions that
move a man to murder are somehow
dulled. Plastic Woman Asadawut Luangsuntorn, one of
Thailand's film idols, is almost as
beautiful and sleek as the woman he
describes. In his short solo show, Plastic Woman,
he is in turn physical, sexual,
aggressive, innocent and charming as he
recounts, in both Thai and English, the
simple moral tale of a perfect woman. Plastic Woman has been created by a
"naughty scientist". Perfectly formed and
devastatingly attractive, she turns the
heads of all men and earns the scorn of
all women. The men make love with her and shower
her with gifts, but she has no heart.
Without her love, the men turn on her and
destroy her. The story is simplistic, often
repetitive, and sometimes a confusion of
broken English, Thai and abstracted
movements It is not until the end, when the
surtitles reveal sickening details of
Thailand's sex industry and the part
Australians play in using and abusing
these beautiful women, that the true depth
of the piece is revealed. Back
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