Saturday, May 7, 2011

Belvoir Street Blues - an Australian Drama

I offer this account in a spirit of resigned bitterness ...

8 March 2011



The Belvoir Board


re lost script and unrefunded fee

Dear Board Members

I would like to give an account of my frustration with your script assessment process and suggest a change to this process.

In December 2009 I submitted a script (Daughters and Mothers) to your theatre along with a fifty dollar assessment fee.

18 February 2010 I received a receipt for the fee.

21 September 2010 I contacted Belvoir Street about the progress of my script through the assessment process and again

21 October 2010.

On this latter occasion I spoke again to Pearl Kermani who this time put me onto Eamon Flack’s answering machine.

23 November 2010 Eamon Flack returned my call and said my script had been lost. He offered to refund my fifty dollars and have the script assessed.

24 November 2010 as Eamon Flack had suggested I emailed a PDF version of Daughters and Mothers to him.

I have heard nothing more about the matter.

I suggest that if Belvoir Street Theatre is not really interested in assessing scripts they should make that clear on their web site (the information about the script assessment for a fee does now seem to have been taken down).

I feel the process I undertook in good faith and pursued patiently has afforded me humiliation.

I would like Eamon Flack to honour his offer.

Yours sincerely


(Ian MacNeill)





The Board did not respond.

Belvoir Street Theatre's Literary Manager did.

She offered to facilitate an assessment for me.

This is it ...

Daughters and Mothers - Feedback

I’m not certain what this play is about: the title suggests that it is an explorations of relationships between mothers and daughter; certain content suggests that it might be about land rights and ‘white’ Australian’s understandings of/dealings with Indigenous Australians; and at another level it is perhaps a social commentary of ‘middle class’ narrow-mindedness. This confusion as to what the true driving force is through the play is the first problem that needs tackling.

A symptom of this problem is perhaps the character of Tom – an enigmatic figure, with an even more enigmatic function within the play. It is not clear why he enters this family’s world, what he needs from them and how he changes them. At the moment his claim to need Midday in order to find his ‘roots’ reads as a lie (Why does he want to now this stuff NOW? Why does he need THIS particular woman? This woman doesn’t actually seem to know that much – she admits herself to be a fraud and the final ‘decision’ as to his heritage is made whimsically by the daughter) – does this mean he’s actually there to seduce Midday/Trilby/Michael, and if so, why? If he is telling the truth and his journey is genuinely about discovering his heritage then perhaps further research into these processes might be useful.

Either way, why does he need them? How does his presence deeply alter this family? At the moment he could be removed and it wouldn’t seriously effect any of the other characters journey’s.

Once the decision is made as to what the play is about, a structure can be formed around this. For example, scenes/dialogues that do not push/explore/challenge the central question of the play can be cut. Also scenes and act changes can be sculpted around these central ideas.

Another issue is the use of potentially offensive terms/notions: there are several occurrences in the play in which a foreign race is referred to in a negative sense; the word ‘dyke’ is used fairly frequently, always pejoratively; the female characters behaviour is often blamed upon ‘that time of the month’, ‘hormones’ or ‘the change’; also the long speech in which Midday puts on the voice of an Aboriginal woman could be seen as offensive.

If this is an attempt to comment upon a theme of shallowness/narrow-mindedness/lack-of-awareness from the central characters, and by extension, their social milieu – which I hope it is - it creates the problems of repelling an audience from the central characters and the world of the play, rather than allowing us to engage.

   It might be interesting to read The Goat or Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Edward Albee as examples of how a central question/idea permeates throughout a play and is utilised to structure dialogues, scenes and acts.  They are also both great examples of how to create characters who say/do appalling things whilst not jeopardising an audiences investment in the characters/play.

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Below is access to a PDF download of Daughters and Mothers for anyone who may be interested.


I do hope no-one's offended.





1 comment:

  1. Hi Ian
    That is appalling. Carole rang me yesterday - talk soon xxx
    In case you don't recognise my disguise, it's Susan Robbins here

    ReplyDelete