Training workshops, theatrical thoughts, snobbery

[Tabouli]

Unite.com.au has my tabouli account functioning again at last!

joanne:
>Also, I really like his south-end-up map.

Ah yes, the ol' "Up Over" map.  Used to use it in my workshops about Australian culture for new international students, together with a series of postcards which superimposes the countries which supply most tourists to Australia over a map of Australia drawn to the same scale.  Showing, of course, how very big Australia actually is (slightly bigger than the US-minus-Alaska, I believe), and also a lovely way to lead into the National Inferiority Complex...

Neil:
> I've just spent three days on a management course at The Industrial Society, which culminated in a final task in
>  which each group had to make up a performance piece to motivate an imaginary staff.

(Tabouli is still sniggering to herself... "I cain't get no Motivation"!!).  Who develops these ridiculous courses?  One of the main obstacles I have in promoting my cross-cultural workshops is the fact that a lot of staff refuse on principle to attend training because everything they've ever been to has been pointless and stupid.  I flatter myself that *my* training sessions are genuinely useful and interesting, but if you can't get the cynics to turn up in the first place...

Gwen (on my preferred stage direction for Snape's wand waving speech in the Movie list, i.e. pause silkily in the doorway, students fall silent, he walks slowly, deliberately to the front of the room, watches them coolly, *then* starts the speech):
> Oh, and Tabouli, yes. I agree that the ideal staging would have been a
little slower for his speech, a little less Boom!

Glad you agree - my taste for what he called "melodrama" was roundly scorned as unsubtle and lowbrow by my co-director (who was in fact Simon, of aforementioned Jimmy fame: I told you he got a bit much) when I co-directed an amateur college production of Durrenmatt's "The Visit" in 1995.  Simon thought it beneath him to beg the *27* halfhearted undergraduate cast members (wince) to turn up to rehearsals... in his view, they had made a commitment, and if they wouldn't honour it, it wasn't for him to chase after them like their mothers, they could just make fools of themselves or cancel the play.  Which of course meant *I* ended up chasing after them instead, because I wasn't having either of these options.  There was this wonderful, tense, dark scene where the mayor gives the troubled anti-hero Ill (that's ill... ach, Arial) a gun to protect himself, and Ill makes a bitter speech and then gives it back.  I instructed the actor to pace the stage grimly, and, at the end of the speech, to place the gun sharply on the desk in front of the mayor.

"... but I cannot spare you the task of the trial."  CLUNK (the audience jump)

Magnificent stuff, I thought.  A cutting theatrical climax after the pacing, brooding, sinister build-up.  Simon, of course, hated it.  "It's the sort of thing you *would* prefer," he told me condescendingly.  "You're a melodramatist."  (making it clear that melodrama was a deeply inferior and plebian artform pursued by those lacking the subtle tastes of the Top Drawer).  However, in characteristic Simon fashion, when I put up a fight for my version, he shrugged and withdrew his objection loftily: "Well if you insist on these heavy-handed Hollywood touches, far be it from me to dissuade you.  I have expressed my opinion."  One can but roll one's eyes.

Simon is the sort of Australian man who has never been to England, but claims to be English, as being English has far more Class and because he wants to distance himself from the unclean and mindless hoi polloi who populate Australia.  When he briefly lived in Brunswick, a traditionally working class suburb, I raised an inquiring eyebrow at his uncharacteristic selection of residence, and he said "Far North Parkville, thank you very much" (Parkville being the classy, distinguished suburb south of Brunswick where Melbourne University is located).

Yerk.  Any thoughts from the genuine Brits out there?

Tabouli.


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