Cassowary Crossing

ACTORS ANONYMOUS
(Or spending 4 months with one hot little Mikado in suburbia)

(c) David Astle

Moby Dick is the first idea. An epic tale of desire and obsession, with a few songs to spice the trip. But no, the committee spikes the motion. The script, they say, is “too slow with too many set changes”. Besides, where do you find a whale in Melbourne? The other problem is the man-heavy cast. Girls are drawn to musicals like prawns to the light, but men? Adrian Ventura laughs. “Guys are a scarce resource.”

A boyish veteran of eleven musicals, Ventura is the current president of the Amateur Repertory Company, or ARC, a youth collective based in the northern grunge of Reservoir. At 25, he’s lived a dozen lives, from a crapshooter in Guys & Dolls to a beanstalk-climber for Sondheim’s Into The Woods.

All for nothing, money-wise. This is theatre for the love of it. The unpaid months devoted to a single week’s razzle-dazzle. Asking a dozen theatre-types for their stories [see box below] I found a common refrain: “Amateur theatre? It’s not amateur! It’s unpaid-professional.”

As ARC president, Ventura has $30,000 to allocate to a show, as soon as that show is identified. Half of that sum will go to theatre-hire and tech-gear. The rest awaits other essentials: costumes, props, script rights, tea-bags. Only band members, when they lob in the final week, will draw a wage.

Such is the ARC way, the model to mirror most of the other thousand-plus companies around Oz. “ARC is here,” explains Ventura, an IT help-desker by day, “to give young people a chance, putting them on stage and showing them what theatre is all about.”

Curious to see for ourselves, Sunday Life will shadow a show from scratch. Loitering in the wings, you too will spy on the drama-behind-the-drama, following the action from auditions to curtain call. Why do they do it? Who are the principal culprits? And if Moby Dick is out, what exactly is this season’s extravaganza?

The answer arrives as a geisha in fedora. If that’s mixing styles, then such is the flavour of Hot Mikado, a Cotton-Club makeover of Gilbert and Sullivan’s Japanese spoof, The Mikado. Adapted in 1995 by Broadway duo, Rob Bowman and David Bell, the show embraces nori rolls and zoot suits. It’s louche. It’s zany. It’s girl-guy balanced, and ARC is aweigh.

Hot Mikado also creates a welcome echo for the company. The original Mikado was ARC’s maiden musical back in 1996, under the presidency of Adrian’s older brother, Anthony.

Back then, with no production fund, the going was even dicier. “In the first year,” Anthony recalls, “we all put in $50 each to start things off. We were riding that zero-level. I remember when we finally got to perform the show, we were backstage, all bright eyes and whispering, amazed that we’d got it together.”

Now 33, Anthony is a physics teacher still hooked on footlights. For Hot Mikado he’s stepping back to let the next generation seize its moment. The only official roles he’ll fulfil this season are as quizmaster for the trivia fundraiser – and cadger of a few lapel-mikes from his school.

So the new production has a name. A timeline is drafted. Joe Bloggs, the director, is anointed. (An alias is needed for reasons to emerge.) Over February, ads are posted in the local papers, The Age and the online sites such as Theatre People and Arts Hub. A community hall, co-let by Alcoholics Anonymous will host auditions in late February for all aspiring Peep Bos and Nanki-Poos

Maybe it’s the heat. Or the looming Commonwealth Games, but you could swing a samurai sword around the Preston Creative Living Centre and barely nick Tanya Mamo – one of two choreographers. Where is everyone? Ruth Bishop, a 27-year-old pediatric nurse, comes along and sings the Serena Katz song from Fame, aiming for the Yum-Yum role.

“I thought I nailed it, as you do. But then I got the callback a week later for a part called Pitti Sing. And I thought, who?!” Put simply, Ruth had her sights set on the lead female – “a soppy soprano character” – and ended up as one-third of the three little maids. At 190cms, with Bjork lungs, that seemed to be stretching things. “I took it as a total rejection. But then I learnt the Pitti-Sing song, and I gave it to them. Aaah, yeah, I was loud.” And impressive. Ruth was in.

Mind you, by this stage, the director had already jumped ship. Underwhelmed by Week 1’s roll-up, he vanishes by Week 2. As president, Adrian has no choice but to appoint the deputy director as replacement, the cruisy James Cook, 20, who’s never directed a show in his life. “At first I thought it was telling people where to stand,” grins Cook, an ad-space seller for a calendar company, “but you forget there’s so much other stuff involved.” He’ll encounter the other stuff in time.

Week 2 is soul-restoring. Uni students and telemarketers appear from the woodwork, most in their early 20s, and all-exuberant. One by one, schticks are filmed on video, later assessed by the panel, and parts allotted. A comic-book retailer named Luciano Parissi, 25, wins the Pooh-Bah gig. A beauty therapist named Michelle Crupi, 20, aspires to either of the two available maids, ending up as Katisha, the Madam Lash with a pure alto voice.

“I can’t help it,” blushes Michelle. “I do have that sass when I sing. I’m not really a pretty singer. I’m a bit full-on. A bit tough.”

Just as tough is the presidential job of making the rejection calls during March. One girl, let’s call her Heidi, gets the knock-back despite her golden tonsils. “Basically she recreated exactly what songs were on the Hot Mikado CD,” says Adrian. Yet when it came to shifting the stresses, or adding her own touches: she floundered. A gifted mimic, the girl couldn’t follow direction. A second girl, ironically a parking officer, can’t keep time during the dance audition. She has to go.

Rehearsals begin in April. As ex-alcoholics sit in a circle sharing their struggle, the room next-door explodes with song. “Joy reigns everywhere”, goes the chorus, the kapow hymn to conclude Act I. The harmonies are heavenly. The power and the optimism. To walk off the street into a well of sound is to understand the lure of musicals. How can 20 people and a plug-in piano generate such rapture?

Andrew Jameson, a tenor in the mix, has an ensemble part. Some may see this minor role as a comedown, given the virtual-reality expert was once the fiddler on the roof for ARC in 2004, but the 30-year-old is cool. “I make galaxies in the daytime – 3-D movies to help kids understand space. I have enough on my plate right now.”

A former president, Andrew is also the scapegoat for ARC’s nearest stuff-up. Rehearsing as Tevye – aka the fiddler on the roof – the guy decided to play volleyball two days before showtime. “I rolled my ankle really badly. I remember lying on the court, flat on my back, and calling the choreographer for advice.” If not for the covert bandage and shots of morphine, the season was due to be cancelled. Naturally the show went on.

Twice a week, two hours per session, rehearsals gain momentum. Chunks of script are tackled piecemeal. Tanya and Aminee Majid, ruddy in tracky-dacks, slo-mo a Charleston and the cast mirrors every jiggle. Malcolm Fawcett, an ex-army drummer, waves his baton, and the sopranos respond. Now and then you glimpse what the show may become. A gag-line from Ko Ko triggers a laugh. A dulcet song from Yum Yum – a sigh. Yet imagining the whole is impossible. The cast feel likewise. Hence a thing called Bonding Camp, on a mid-May weekend.

Camp is a schoolie compound in the foothills of the Dandenongs. The retreat costs a couple of grand to hire. A ping-pong table monopolises the rec room. An obstacle course, with cargo net and flying fox, lies in the bush beyond the cabins. But Hot Mikado confronts other obstacles. The biggest is cohesion: how to weave all these scat-singing maids and Chicago shoguns into one seamless thing. Or citing James the director: “We need to find the silliness but not lose the storyline.”

There’s also a spot of tension. Okay, a few spots. Cook devises a dance sequence for Ko Ko and Katisha – a comic interplay between the show’s ninny and man-eater respectively. If he’s a director, seems the murmur from the choreo-ranks, then he should direct, not choreograph…

Meantime Laura Riati, a Jerry Hall lookalike in the chorus, wants to skip the matinee when it comes around as she’s busy that particular Saturday. “You’re what?!” thinks Adrian, but he’s too nice to undo the decision. Tanya, one half of the mutinous choreo-ranks, swots as Lauren’s eventual fill-in. Not that she’s too riled. For the last few weeks she’s been dating Brad – the shorter Brad – from the chorus.

“The energy’s good,” says James Cook, after the first run-through at Camp Mikado. Forty of us, including tech-crew in all-black, are holed up in a shack, testing the show for pace and feel. Gaffer tape on the carpet denotes the stage. “So now I want the energy to be a lot bigger. Energy and volume are related,” says James. “The whole vibe thing is really what we need. It’s all about the atmosphere.”

Brian Dixon “owns” the shack with his tenor torch-song as Pish Tush to open Act II. “Art and nature,” he sings, “cannot be denied.” At 23, Brian has been hostage to music for most of his life, learning clarinet as a kid, and later sax. But musical theatre is his drug. “I measure windows by day, and sell blinds. It’s a flexible job, which suits the theatre way of life.” He grins, failing to resist his mantra: “I’m a blind man by day and then I see at night time.”

That night, the ping-pong table stowed, the company stages a No-Talent Quest. A boy called James, the speakeasy barman, woos the judges by knotting a jelly snake with his tongue. South Park recitals and spoon-playing enrich the bill. Three months into the slog, the cast shares an ease, a humour, a telepathy. I lose count of the shoulder massages that Gentleman A administers to Maid B, or vice versa. The room’s feel is affectionate, mischievous. What’s the collective name for theatre lovers – a cult, a gang, a swoon?

Yet play the scene forward five years – and what will these gifted gadabouts be doing? Is amateur theatre a springboard to the real thing, or its own reward? Responses vary. Beautician Michelle says she won’t complain if she ever does a paid theatre job. In truth it’s a dream, something “you enter the world imagining” but waxing legs keeps her feet on the ground.

Nurse Ruth: “I’m an adult. I’m realistic. I do it because I love it, and because I can’t see myself not doing it. It’s part of who I am.” She speaks for the whole ensemble. To a maid, the girls are here to “be in the moment” or “feel the buzz onstage”. To a gent, the boys are drawn by “the high you get” or “beating the butterflies”. And maybe to meet the girls.

Two weeks out, the butterflies hatch. ARC secretary, Meaghan Kominiarski, needs to fine-tune her Suzie Q – a cross-step with a toe-swivel. When not selling hot-water units, the 22-year-old is rehearsing tap in a plumbing showroom. Stuart Ford, alias Ko Ko the Executioner, recites his lines driving to an IT office. Nanki-Poo, aka Nick Kong, has survived an orthodontic procedure, his voice intact despite a jaw advancement. Andrew Jameson is banned from volleyball.

Costumes materialise. “I’m never working with satin again,” swears Sar Ruddenklau, 25, a Kiwi seamstress. “It’s slippery. It slips off the table. It tears. It frays. It runs.”

Sar herself ran from NZ this year, leaving behind a 35-year-old Singer sewing machine to try her hand at fashion designing down-under. “I love theatre. I grew up on a sheep farm, and every chance I got as a kid I did a little show on the concrete patio. When my stepmum wasn’t looking, my two older brothers would pick me up by my plaits and carry me off.”

She needs to shout the memory as Banyule Theatre is raucous with sound-checks. Tonight is the final dress rehearsal. Damien Calvert, the set designer, is combing the bamboo saloon in search of any flaws. A workaholic, Damien, 26, is overseeing three shows at a time, from Cabaret in Frankston to Rent in South Melbourne. In his spare time he works for the Australian Ballet – in systems admin. Though the stage and its lights are never far from his life.

Anthony Ventura, the company’s co-founder, relies on analogy to describe theatre’s appeal. “Our third show [in 1998] was Anything Goes – and the first time ever in a proper theatre. We’d spent weeks making the set – this mosaic of sheets depicting a ship. We painted each flat on a driveway, panel by panel. When we did bump-in [installing the show at the theatre] we needed the whole cast to put up the backdrop and brace it. Then as one we took a step back. It was incredible. We’d never seen the thing as a whole. Together we’d built a ship.”

An ARC no less. Propelled by obsession, just like the Pequod in Moby Dick. A seaworthy platform for newcomers to shine on. Such as 18-year-old identical twins Dace and Mara Kapsis, long-haul usherettes at Melbourne’s Lion King. “We’ve seen the show like a thousand million times,” they say in unison. “This is our chance to do some theatre for ourselves.”

Assuming the show gets that far. Dress rehearsals isolate the hitches – largely on the tech side. The band is too loud, or the performer mikes too low. Even Pitti Sing can’t compete with the horn. Meanwhile, wherever Yum Yum sits for her Sun And I aria, the spotlight isn’t. Umpteen hours are spent after-hours, with and without the cast, meshing the elements.

Finally, James Cook and his quest for the evasive vibe seems over: the last dummy run is brilliant. (“From this point,” he smiles, “I’ll get the blame or the flowers.”) Opening night plays to 200-strong crowd – a blend of mates, mums and perfect strangers. Who knows, maybe a talent scout as well, though the maids and gents are oblivious to the mundanity beyond the apron’s lips. They’re in the moment.

Ko Ko and Katisha – the chicken and the carnivore – dance the house down in the second week. But it’s not the director’s dance. In the end the choreographers won that minor tussle. As for Lauren, the girl to skip the matinee – she wrenches her ankle mid-show on Thursday, Night #4 in the run, and has to skip two shows (including the matinee) anyhow. Mind you, with grit, rest and pharmacology she returns for the finale, and flourishes.

Backstage, during that last night, dodging cables and UV lights, I find Pish Tush adding a little extra pancake to his jowls. He’s a minute from reappearing onstage, the adrenalin still alive in his blood. “It’s ironic,” says the blind man who sees by night. “We share the Preston Hall with AA but I find theatre the real addiction. It’s just as powerful. We could call ourselves TA – theatricals anonymous. It isn’t a job, it’s a fix. And I need a hit whenever I can get it.” He hears his cue. Swoosh, you can’t see him for stardust.

FOOTLIGHT FOLLIES – tales from amateur theatre

The Floating World, a John Romeril play, was due to be staged by Melbourne University in the late 80s. However a cleaners’ strike on campus saw the theatre being declared a health risk. A rival venue offered to stage the show but a giant ship’s funnel (the pivotal prop) was too big to remove from situ. Eventually the actors cleaned the theatre themselves – and the show went ahead, funnel and all.

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The Jughouse Theatre, attached to Macquarie University, hosted a kitchen-sink drama in the mid-80s. A crucial phone-call in Act II was spoilt by the phone’s earlier removal from the stage. The actor had no choice but to pick up a loose banana from the fruit bowl, and play out the conversation.

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During a run of Rent at Gasworks in Melbourne, a candle had to be lit to accompany the song “Light my candle”. One catch: the actor involved forgot the matches. The whole song continued in pallid stage light – and one useless candle.

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West Side Story is the modern Romeo and Juliet. But in this production, by a “nameless” company in Sydney’s northwest, the two lovers Tony and Maria despised each other. The hatred stemmed from something so trivial that few in the support cast can recall. “The situation underlines the best and worst of amateur theatre,” recalls the director, still in therapy. “People are so raw and vulnerable, which also means they lack any professional distance between themselves and what they’re doing.”

[Sunday Life, July 2006]