Maslow's Hierarchy of Nerds: Skills in Time, Got Dem Big City Dreams

It's Term One in Australian schools. Staff are coming to grips with their new classes, kids are seeing how far they can push their new teachers. Groundskeepers are missing the quiet days of summer, the peace and silence replaced with fresh graffiti and volumes of litter. At lunchtime, some students rush to the oval for a game of touch, some students go to the music rooms to kill time talking about Bring Me The Horizon with Ashton guitars in their laps, and others are asking their teacher if he or she will unlock the Drama Room. The attraction to these three sites is roughly tripled if it's raining.

The number of fat lips and corked thighs coming back from the oval indicate that mucking around on the oval is risky fun. No one is playing for sheep stations, but the stakes are possibly high, as an extreme example, if the Year 11 student Jordan Rankin hurt his ankle goofing around on the Palm Beach Currumbin High School oval after his debut game for the Gold Coast Titans in 2008, he would of ended, delayed or seriously endangered a significant career in the NRL. Long hours spent working night shift at McDonalds or lobbying parents have paid for the music kid's Ashtons and Corts, and tickets to music festivals are often more expensive than Korean guitars. By comparison, riffing in the Drama Rooms is very safe, cheap fun - there is a wide disparity between the low stakes and high energy. And make no mistake, the energy is at an incredibly strong level - kids in the drama room talk too loudly, gesture too wildly. They speak at an incredibly rapid rate - like their words are rushing out before their internal censor, possibly their most finely attuned instrument in high school, has time to cut them for fear of embarrassment. They needn't be worried. There is a 'what-happens-in-Vegas' dynamic at play here - their peers in the room aren't likely to be critical of someone doing something strange, as they are experiencing the same giddy euphoria, the contact high transmitted through hammy stage combat.

Skills in Time, the trio of Greg Larsen, Henry Stone and Sam Campbell, stayed in the Drama rooms after the bell rang, and never came out.

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="566" caption="Skills in Time, Got Dem Big City Dreams"][/caption]

Got Dem Big City Dreams is a play developed by Skills in Time with the comic Damien Power for Brisbane audiences as a part of both Brisbane Comedy Festival and the Melbourne International Comedy Festival. The guest position of Power is handled well - the trio know that the patter they have developed as a crew has been well earned, and as such Power takes on a multiplicity of supporting characters, not necessarily the straight man but giving a platform for Stone, Campbell and Larsen's characters to play off. Across the characters in their YouTube back catalogue, each of the SiT players draws characterisation from primarily the same locations - Jaydos and Benny Legun are archetypically the same aggressive beta-male, Kevin Brown and Thomas Gentlemen have the same over-earnestness at different levels of confidence. Campbell's characterisations are significantly more fragile. Big City Dreams extends and amplifies these established traits - playing 'themselves', Stone is the loud overcompensator, Larsen the pseudointellectual and Campbell the nice kid in survival mode (think a human Aqua Teen Hunger Force).

The troupe's influences are easy to spot. When Power sustains a note for too long, when Stone licks his bloody lips and stares down the audience, and when Campbell gives repeated delicate kisses to other cast members, long shadows of Messrs Warehiem and Heidecker are cast across the stage. This should in no way suggest that Tim and Eric have freehold title on non-sequiturs, taking advantage of discomfort or just being silly - Wareheim and Heidecker have their own comedy forebears to thank (although it's undeniable that Skills in Time owe the Californian duo a certain debt[ref]As do a number of comics and advertisers - in a recent interview Heidecker notes the multiple examples of commercials that crib their style: http://www.avclub.com/articles/tim-heidecker-and-eric-wareheim,70064/[/ref][ref]It is worth noting the similarities between Skills in Time's focus on father/son relationships and Tim and Eric's Awesome Show! - by the end of the programs five year run Tim and Eric had recruited several actors, including Michael Gross and Patrick Duffy to help analyse mediated fatherhood.[/ref]). What is more interesting to this writer are the moments when Skills in Time move away from stylistically familiar comedy and into uniquely new locations. For this writer the 'Drama room aesthetic' looms the largest - it doesn't get the biggest laughs, of course, but the overarching look and feel of the production gives what could be disparate sketches a consistency and tone this writer hasn't seen before. Tim and Eric used the platform of public access tv to explore ideas about entertainment and creativity, Skills in Time choose the platform of adolescent theatre, of Tournament of Minds and Spacejump, to explore the most uncomfortable sites of growing up and finding applications for a surplus of teenage energy.



For the lions share of the production, Power is dressed in the unofficial after-hours uniform of the boarding student - t-shirt and trackpants. The (multiple) dick jokes are straight out of the Year Nine playbook - one in particular has its origins in the student's pencilcase. The lid of a cheap filing box is a waiter's tray, nikko bleeds through the paper of what is supposed to be a printed flyer. The set pieces could have been nicked from the school library - an overhead projection screen and cheap seat[ref]This writer's high school library had exactly the same make of chair.[/ref] stay on stage for the show's duration. High school drama teachers go to great lengths to lock the props and costume cupboard; This is not because the contents are valuable, they are in fact close to worthless, garnered from thrift stores or donations, their fellow teachers often bring in the toys their kids no longer play with and the uniforms their spouse no longer wears[ref]Police uniforms are especially prized[/ref]. Things 'go missing' from the prop room for a variety of reasons, but one of the strongest is that kids at a stage of identity development can feel the communicative power of objects and clothes - when Henry Stone proudly scabbards a plastic knife in his belt, we can see the a sad lonely kid communicating a vague but empty threat. The worst thing is, it's really funny.[ref]When this writer first read that Chris Lilley was working on a show called Angry Boys, there was a rush of excitement - while Lilley's twins got some successful moments, Got Dem Big City Dreams' focus on the confused actions of boys striving to establish identity is a lot closer to what this was expecting than the product that eventually reached the screen.[/ref]To crudely paraphrase Chekhov, if a two dollar plastic knife appears in the first act, cheap fake blood needs to be used in the following one: joke-store props are better at communicating a thwarted desire to perform than the objects they are trying to signify.

The show, punctuated by short video vignettes[ref]It has to be said that this is really the boys' strongest platform.[/ref], is essentially one act - for the most part the show is a reworking of the well worn City Mouse/Country Mouse trope. Skills in Time reference some of the many productions to make use of Aesop's format, the appropriation of the Perfect Strangers titles is especially clever. When the narrative is close to running it's course the troupe choose to end the show with another popular narrative technique, a talent show. When a sitcom or drama resorts to a talent show episode, it often contributes nothing to the overall development of characters, but allows the show's producers to tap a second (or third, or fourth) talent of their cast. - shining example is the Brady children's performance as "The Silver Platters" in the 1976 season episode 'Amateur Night' of The Brady Bunch[ref]It also serves as a second source of revenue, the song 'It's a Sunshine Day' from the same episode was released as a commercial single.[/ref] Skills in Time use the device to opposite effect - the performances by the shows 'entrants' are exercises in anti-comedy. When the talent show trope happens on-stage in the Drama classroom it signals schism - when a teacher is presented with a in group work as the result of performance brainstorming the implication is the group couldn't come to a consensus for a narrative, the members having strong attachments to disparate characters and action, the talent show a convenient narrative for each member to play out their individual ideas. The teacher's guiding syllabus has strong things to say about collaboration, problem solving and compromise, and subsequently this is often reflected in the group's mark. Unfortunately this dynamic is also at play in Got Dem Big City Dreams - when this writer caught Campbell's Mums vs Dads in a previous performance, it was a show stopper. While it's great that Melbourne audiences will get the chance to see this brief musical moment for the first time, it's easy to think that new 'verses' could have been written for this performance, familiar audiences would appreciate the fresh content, and nothing would be taken away from the overall show.

After the developmental psychologist Abraham Maslow published his Hierarchy of Needs in his text A Theory of Human Motivation in 1943 he explained his methodology, preferring to study individuals he saw as exceptional, writing that "the study of crippled, stunted, immature, and unhealthy specimens can yield only a cripple psychology and a cripple philosophy". While this statement has been contentious for over fifty years, what is clear is that a study of unmet needs makes popular fodder for comedy[ref]Even at Maslow's Physiological level - all Sylvester and Wile E. Coyote wanted to do was eat.[/ref].Skills in Time have untold reserves of energy to generate new content - collaborations with other performers like Damien Power will see their unique style continue to develop.

Skills in Time
Got Dem Big City Dreams

Brisbane Powerhouse
March 6-11

Melbourne Comedy Festival
March 28 - April 8

 

The Company of Men: The Black Lung Theatre's I Feel Awful

As a part of the Studio Season for 2011 I Feel Awful is a completely new text commissioned by the Queensland Theatre Company at the behest of outgoing director Michael Gow; as they say: No Good Deed Goes Unpunished.

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="960" caption="The Black Lung Theatre 2011, Sean Young"][/caption]

The five members of The Black Lung Theatre and Whaling Firm that have spent the last months developing I Feel Awful have some pretty strong feelings about theatre and theatre's communicative functions, and they want these feelings to be witnessed. In the Bille Brown studio, director and writer Thomas M Wright has found a forum to air his grievances about an industry he finds lacking (an industry that Gow, the QTC and ultimately The Black Lung themselves are ultimately immersed in). Soon after the coldest of cold opens, the young performers from Brisbane acting schools that join the production (called at times "the teens") demonstrate a gamut of rapid-fire dramatic skills, pre-empting the rollerskate tour of genres and intentions of theatre that Wright turns his critical eye to.

The 1992 film Stay Tuned, directed by Peter Hyams, featured the lazy Roy and under-appreciated Helen who are trapped by an undercover envoy from Hell. Their prison is an alternate "TV" reality - across the 90 or so minutes of the movie's duration the pair have to negotiate darkly satirical representations of popular shows (Fresh Prince of Darkness, Autopsies of the Rich and Famous). The overarching message is TV is dangerous - the Devil himself wants to welcome 'TV Junkies' into his fold in the most gruesome way possible.

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="580" caption="Stay Tuned (1992)"][/caption]

Reflecting on Stay Tuned it now seems foolhardy to stage a critique of screen-based media on the screen - luckily I Feel Awful is more than just disgruntled. However cheesy, where Stay Tuned has the jump on Wright is the the ease at which scenes can transition - at the point of critical action, or more likely when the already laboured gags have stretched themselves too thin, someone clicks a remote and the scenery change. Changing scenes in front of a live audience is obviously a more physical affair, and it's an effort the audience are forced to observe more than once.

The second challenge of live-action theatre as multimodal as Wright has developed is establishing an evenness of the component elements. I Feel Awful at times appears shaky but never topples, although at times this writer questioned the necessity of the application of dance.

Costuming is of obvious importance to I Feel Awful. Clothing is judged, employed at the level of metaphor, soiled and discarded. By this writer's count at least five outfits appear for each of the fourteen performers on stage. The Black Lung wear variations on a a traditional staid business theme. This seems to be a trope all of its own: the professional thieves in Reservoir Dogs, Joaquin Phoenix in his efforts to establish himself as a hip hop artist, the live performances of Nick Cave - far from the office, the business suit seems to be the outfit of choice for violent, desperate work.



At times the Whalers appear outside of business suits: two such moments feature Gareth Davies in a WWE dressing gown and Liam Barton wearing a Wu-Tang jersey. In contrast to the timeless business suits these items are anachronistic - the dressing gown is obviously sized for a child, and due to a market flooded with bootleg copies and Sacha Baron Cohen's Ali G, Wu Wear has substantially fallen out of popular favour. Anachronisms aside, combining World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc. with The Clan in Da Front results in a very effective analogy for The Black Lung - rambunctious, charismatic, physical and very, very male.

If this analogy rings true, it is in no small part due to Thomas M Wright, director of The Black Lung, who is very much a hybrid of Vince McMahon and RZA - confident, calculating and perpetually promoting as he performs. From start to finish, Aaron Orzech's performance makes the most hay out of the business of theatre - it's often him with the bullhorn, the clipboard or the academic reference. While those around him careen out of control, he remains the most engaging on stage for this writer by staying true to small action. It is almost impossible to assess the performances of the younger cast - if they appear over-earnest, is it by design? - but it has to be said that Finn Gilfedder is a comic standout and Charlie Schache imprints himself on the production powerfully. Overall the supporting cast acquit themselves well under complex circumstances - if they seem to lack cohesion this writer would be inclined to think that the script has left very little room for it - this is a group that has had to be divided to be conquered.

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="650" caption="Gareth Davies in I Feel Awful"][/caption]

While exceedingly engaging, there is a lingering concern for this writer - with so much focus on gender and sexual politics, it's hard to reconcile the fact that the narrative, which concerns itself with the ways the young women can be compromised on and off the stage, has been written, developed and presented by a group of men. Having Queensland's experience of theatre critiqued by a troupe from Melboure is also a bitter pill. Speaking to Marie-Christine Sourris at the Courier Mail[ref]http://www.couriermail.com.au/ipad/play-it-once-more-with-feeling/story-fn6ck8la-1226123457398[/ref] Wright has indicated a move toward more personal content, and this writer anticipates this as a strong direction.

I Feel Awful lives up to expectations: Sex and Death are foregrounded as promised, but in an abstract, synthesised form. While the 'burn-down-the-academy' attitude to creative production isn't entirely for everybody, what The Black Lung have created for QTC is genuinely surprising, very funny and intellectually astute.

I Feel Awful: Bille Brown Studio, South Brisbane. September 2-10.

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