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 ...
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.
__________________________________________________________________
Below is access to a PDF download of Daughters and Mothers for anyone who may be interested.
I do hope no-one's offended.
