By Dave Riley
Earlier this year, I set up New World Order Theatre in Brisbane. There was no manifesto to mark its birth, nor raving reviews to greet its first production. It happened, like so many things, because it seemed like a good idea at the time.
The aim of the project was to establish a troupe of amateur actors who could perform political play scripts anywhere they were called upon to do so. The primary function of this type of theatre — agitprop theatre — is agitation and propaganda.
As fashions in theatre go, a commitment to using theatre for instructional purposes is supposedly passé. We are told nowadays that theatre should be an intimate artistic experience, rather than a vehicle for a particular message. But theatrical laws governing dramatic content are a modern perversion.
We wanted to give "process" the boot, and stick to the task of making a political point. It didn't matter to us whether our theatre was rough or amateurish; our criterion was whether it worked.
After five productions in five months, NWOT has learned more than it bargained for. Each performance has been a separate challenge that has forced us to review what we were on about. Our skills have been fostered by the experience.
NWOT is in a constant state of flux as we reach out for the means to do what we set out to do. How we employ the voice, how we move and the scripts we create are not ruled by any particular style we have settled on. All we are certain of is that humour in the form of comedy and satire is our essential language.
In the meantime, we are building up a repertoire which adjusts to the needs of the political moment. Nothing we perform is ever complete or finished; the particulars differ from performance to performance and from locale to locale.
When we circulate our scripts, as we do on the internet, we're offering other people the opportunity to start where we left off.
Because most of us in NWOT are political activists — members of Resistance and the Democratic Socialist Party — our major conflict is between the demands of political organising and performing this theatre. We haven't always been able to fuse the two tasks, because at times it is difficult to wear two hats. Until our company grows, we won't have the reserve to understudy this other role.
We therefore run weekly workshops at the Brisbane Resistance Centre, which are open to anyone who would like to attend. We're looking for commitment, rather than experience.
We have started to do improvisation, exploring the use of masks and experimenting with recording for community radio.
NWOT workshops tend to be highly charged politically; performers can't divorce themselves from the politics of any script they perform. It becomes their statement, as much as it is anyone else's in the group.
It is in the nature of this sort of theatre that all who are involved are forced to take responsibility for the material they present. While we decide how we'll perform, we also decide what we'll say through a process of discussion and debate.
This is a theatre of political ideas that is generated by the same dynamic that produces Green Left Weekly. While similar groups exist overseas — particularly in India — I am unaware of any that have evolved in Australia. If there are, I'd appreciate hearing from them.
NWOT is also unusual because it has no professional ambitions and harkens back to a time when amateur theatre groups were a common feature of all Australian capital cities.
Outside of schools and universities, theatre is a neglected form of expression by ordinary people. This is unfortunate, because the Workers' Theatre Movement, which blossomed in the 1920s, was an international phenomenon, one usually allied to local Communist parties.
NWOT is a conscious attempt to link to that tradition — a tradition that in some countries supported its own newspaper and hundreds of affiliated troupes. In 1930, for instance, there were 150 such troupes linked to the German Communist Party alone. In the same year, more than 60 similar groups were active throughout England, Wales and Scotland.
In Australia, ventures like this paved the way for the New Theatre Movement, which later established its home at Sydney's New Theatre and, for a time, in other state capitals.
The Workers' Theatre Movement did not die out because it spent itself or ran out of things to say or the means to say it.
The wave of collective experimentation ended because the Communist parties embraced a popular front strategy which meant that agitation for revolutionary social change was, in part, displaced by a slavish accommodation to the politics of mainstream social democratic parties. Their theatre moved in a liberal rather than a revolutionary direction as its politics were watered down.
While one troupe does not a movement make, the NWOT project has more resonance than any single one of its performances. It stands for a mode of expression and a political platform that at one stage were fused into a popular form by the collective effort of dedicated adherents.
Is it still relevant today? I think so. But it is up to New World Order Theatre to prove that it is the case.
If you want to be part of this exciting project or join our network, get in touch by phone on (07) 3266 4281 or e-mail at <dhell@ozemail.com.au>. Workshops are held every Saturday from 12.30pm at the Brisbane Resistance Centre, 29 Terrace Street, New Farm.