Parramatta Girls
In his director's notes for the Parramatta Girls program, Wesley Enoch writes, inter alia, "The truth is always tricky to tie down. There are so many truths." And he goes on to observe that South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission actually worked out four definitions of truth: individual truth, community truth, forensic truth and official truth - all of which are self-explanatory. All of these often conflicting truths are on display in Alana Valentine's latest play.
Via interviews by the playwright with real live Parramatta girls and from their written testimony (to the Senate Committee which reported in 2004, "without doubt this inquiry has generated the largest volume of highly personal, emotive and significant evidence of any Senate inquiry") Parramatta Girls tells the stories of a handful of the thousands of kids who were, at one time or another, incarcerated in the "Girls Training School" in Sydney's west. The result is a different kind of theatre - theatre vérité, perhaps - and one which is gaining traction in an Australia whose artists (at least) are concerned with exploring aspects of the recent past which, in the words of English feminist historian Sheila Robotham, have been "hidden from history".
"Cinema vérité" - meaning "cinema of truth" or "cinema of the real" - has been exhaustively debunked and deconstructed since its coining in the 1960s. It's no longer cool to believe that depictions of "truth" or "reality" are either of those things, nevertheless it remains true that the intention of cinema vérité - and theatre vérité - is to go beyond both the documentary and fiction conventions. It's not docudrama, however, and actually shares some of the tenets of Dogme 95, in particular, a heightened dramatic naturalism, highly scripted and directed.
At any rate, the point of trying to define the genre is that on opening night, a comment overheard was: "It isn't a very well constructed play." And this is both true and not the point. It could be argued - and will be here - that theatre vérité is not about a conventionally put together play - with acts written to a template and all loose ends tied neatly. Life and lives aren't neat and cannot be made to fit into orthodox straitjackets. And the glorious thing about the Girls is that their raison d’etre - having escaped and survived the grim home for wayward girls - is to resist neat endings and societal straitjackets with all their might.
[page]And boy, are they mighty. As portrayed in all their kaleidoscopic variety, these girls are monuments to humour, resilience and that peculiarly amazing fortitude that women seem to have. The stories are heart-rending, inspiring and often hard to believe: these were girls incarcerated not because they were criminals but because crimes had been committed against them. (Neglect, abuse and many who were deemed to be "at risk" - no crime yet, but there probably will be.)
The actors have a particular set of problems and responsibilities in this play: they are playing amalgams of real people - some of whom were sitting in the opening night audience - and the pressure to do it right as well as deliver the dramatic and comedic goods is a unique one. They also have to own their roles as well as setting aside their acting egos, to some degree, and it’s a tribute to Jeanette Cronin, Leah Purcell, Valerie Bader, Genevieve Hegney, Roxanne McDonald, Carole Skinner and Annie Byron that they do it so well.
In their very different ways each brings an extraordinary gift to the table of Parramatta Girls and the ensuing feast is wonderful. While it doesn't have the sophistication of Honour Bound nor the showbiz razzledazzle of Sapphires, it shares with both the revelations, rich content and first rate creative and performance values that make the collective hearts and mind of an audience go singing into the night.
Parramatta Girls, Belvoir St Theatre to April 22; ph: (02) 9699 3444 or www.belvoir.com.au<.i>
