Letters to the Editor - May 2016

ARDUOUS PATH Dear Editor, Susan Sheridan's review of Marianne Van Velzen's retelling of the extraordinary life of Ernestine Hill, Call of the Outback (April 2016), while very positive overall, drew attention to the absence of any substantial quotes from Hill and the book's failure to reproduce any of Hill's vast archive of wonderful photographs. Sadly, and unknown to your reviewer, this was a situation forced upon the author and her publisher. I began mentoring Marianne on this project exactly ten years ago. Over that time, both she and I have done everything possible to gain the cooperation of Hill's literary executor, who has in her possession important papers and who of course is the only person who can give the permission necessary for a publisher to reproduce Hill's words and images. We failed in that. Along this arduous path, Marianne became aware that previous attempts at biography, most notably by Bill Tuckey and Meghan Morris, had encountered the same difficulty. Marianne has proven wondrously dogged. More than that, she is a creative writer and has exerted her freedom to evoke Hill in a way that perhaps a more scholarly work may not have done. As Susan Sheridan concluded, Call of the Outback 'should begin to bring her [Hill] back into Australia's historical imagination'. But even getting this far has been a very onerous battle. Richard Walsh, Consultant Publisher, Allen & Unwin STARS AND SOAPS Dear Editor, I have great respect for the critical faculties of Michael Morley – a former lecturer and tutor of mine at Flinders University – but on the occasion of his Adelaide Festival reviews of The James Plays and Go Down, Moses (Arts Update), I fear his usual acumen deserted him. It's fair to say that the latter, by Italian auteur Romeo Castellucci, polarised Adelaide audiences with its use of associative, dreamlike logic, but to not even afford a single star for its spectacular mise en scènes alone is perverse. Castellucci, a former painter, both invites audiences to conceive of their own interpretations of his work and posits the failure – and, perhaps, the impossibility – of meaning in unspeakably dark times (and his penchant for punishingly loud soundtracks, while questionable, is well known). I felt a strange, urgent affinity with those figures Morley derided as looking like they had emerged from the Planet of the Apes films, and my companion was physically shaking as we exited the auditorium. Truly pretentious theatre fatally leaves its audience detached; we were anything but. As for The James Plays, which Morley lauded as 'imaginative and engaging', I couldn't wait for them to end – eight hours of blandly expository soap opera centred around a preposterous seven-metre sword. Had Morley left his description of 'formulaic history lessons interleaved with high-profile moments of personal drama' without qualification, he would have been onto something. Ben Brooker, Unley, SA MICHAEL MORLEY REPLIES: I'm glad Ben Brookner found qualities in Go Down Moses which entirely escaped me – with one exception. I too left the 'auditorium' (theatre, surely?) physically shaking: in my case, with barely suppressed anger, along with my response to the 'punishingly loud soundtrack'. I am aware of Castellucci's visual arts background: but compared with theatre practitioners with a similar background (think Hockney, Wilson, or Lepage), all I can say is that while they offer scenography, where the performer also occupies an important space, what he offers is closer to scenic alphabet soup. I suspect we may never agree on a single aspect of the performance: maybe it's just a case of one man's Moses being another's matzah balls. And, in defense of that possibly immoderate reaction, I would cite Michael Frayn, who has noted that, 'When you don't like something in the theatre, you just wish they would all drop dead.' HOBART BAROQUE Dear Editor, In 'Bread and circuses', Leo Schofield's conversation with Michael Shmith (Stage Door, April 2016), it is stated (apparently in Shmith's words) that the Hobart Baroque festival ceased because 'its funding was abruptly cancelled by the new state Liberal government'. While the loss of the festival reflects no credit on the Tasmanian government, the myth that its funding was 'cancelled' is simply untrue. It is on the public record that the state government funded the first two festivals to the extent of $200,000 (2013) and $400,000 (2014). For the 2015 festival, Schofield asked the state government for $800,000; he was offered $300,000, plus $100,000 of Commonwealth money, but he apparently regarded this maintenance of funding as inadequate and therefore removed the Baroque festival to Brisbane. Tony Marshall, Taroona, Tasmania HARSH COMMENTS Dear Editor, Wow, there are some harsh comments in the Comments section following the Peter Porter Poetry Prize (ABR website). I wonder how those making them would feel if their own poems were up there and others, disappointed at not having been shortlisted, let loose on their work. I particularly enjoyed 'Lament for "Cape" Kennedy' by Campbell Thomson. Well done, and congratulations to all. Susan Bennett (online comment)

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