Canberra Dramatics - A company for NEW plays.

Rachel McGrath-Kerr looks at a company which is always staging world premieres.

“The experience of seeing a play you have written yourself go from word on a page to a story on a stage is invariably remarkable. Sometimes it is quite a journey to get an actor to recognise the vision you had, and to see the vision realised is often cathartic, and I have loved this more than anything else.” Trevar Alan Chilver
Canberra Dramatics is one of the ACT’s newer performance groups, formed in late 2006. What makes them stand out is the emphasis upon support for local playwrights, and they are collectively willing to take risks with new works, new artists and new artisans.
Trevar Allan Chilver, one of the group’s founders, spoke of difficulties that can be found for playwrights in Canberra.
“I had been lucky in this regard, but only a small number of the scripts that I had written were suitable for the environment we had for producing [the plays] in, which was a local church called Parkway.”
In 2006 Canberra Dramatics staged their first production, Chilver’s Defrag, as part of the Canberra Festival of One Act Plays, a hotly-contested festival. Defrag won Best Original Script in the drama category and two of the performers were nominated for awards.
Other groups are following the example. Canberra Repertory has a notable duologue season that has produced some wonderful gems, and a look through the repertoire shown at The Street Theatre shows their continuing support, too.
In 2007 Canberra Dramatics produced an established play, The Recruiting Officer, intending originally to include one such established play in their season every year.
However, Chilver explains, comparing audience numbers, “This would probably not develop our audience base the way we need it to, so it will probably be the only established play we ever do.” The costumes for The Recruiting Officer were both well-designed and well-made, and three officers’ costumes were sold on Ebay, covering some of their expenses.
The group is not running out of plays and ideas for performances. No Island is a Man (2007) was a challenging play about mental illness. Armidale (2007) dealt with life in a group house. Clowns in Winter (reviewed in this issue) examines the lives and hopes of the homeless and disenfranchised.
The latter play was introduced by a member of the ACT Legislative Assembly, Ms Jacqui Burke who spoken briefly but eloquently of the homeless situation in Canberra.
In each of these plays, Canberra audiences have seen newer talent working with established actors, and there has been encouragement of younger people wanting to learn more about work on stage and backstage.
No-one could pretend that running a group with a specialised remit is easy in a city with an already-full table of community theatre. One of the big challenges is finding a range of actors to volunteer their time. As many other directors would note, while it is comparatively easy to find talented and able performers in their mid-teens and older, it is harder to find older actors in their 50s, 60s and above. Another challenge faced by Canberra Dramatics is the search for new directors for the company. With a full season, the demands can be considerable. Chilver continues:
“Our next production, Mrs Holt, is exciting because it is the first show Canberra Dramatics will have produced that will be directed by someone other than me.”