Waterfront conflict staged
Front
A Melbourne Workers' Theatre production
Written and directed by Peter Houghton
Theatre Works, Acland Street, St Kilda
June 14 to July 1
Tickets $20/$13
Bookings (03) 9534 3388
By Anne O'Casey
When writer/director Peter Houghton approached the Melbourne Workers' Theatre in 1998, he was looking to use the setting of the Australian waterfront to explore the dynamics between a traditional stronghold of unionism and an increasingly aggressive capitalism. The momentous clash between the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) and Patrick Stevedores was yet to erupt.
Houghton says, "From the beginning I wanted this to be a story about ordinary people, people who are flawed and complex. I wanted to see what happened to these people when the rug was pulled from under their feet, to see when people gave in and when people didn't."
When the dispute erupted he wanted to capture some of this drama on the stage. "Members of the MUA were sacked because they were members of a union. They were replaced with non-union labour. Perceptions became reality", he says. "The farmers' federation, Patrick Stevedores and our own federal government declared war on an Australian union."
Houghton's draft script was intensively workshopped with the cast for a week, after which MUA members and their partners were invited to a reading of the play.
Carmen Mascia, who plays the wife of one of the wharfies, told Green Left Weekly, "Everyone provided really useful feedback. The women were particularly pleased with the personal touch of the story and the way it shows the impact on families, especially where the husbands were not re-employed. The women on the waterfront were instrumental — not just in providing support and morale, but as a lobby group in their own right."
Mascia says tackling the play was an enormous prospect — physically, technically and in terms of the issue itself. "We were very aware of our responsibility to the people involved", she says. "This story was far more complicated than 'good guys/bad guys' and the challenge was to distil something from it all which was going to be entertaining for an audience."
Houghton says about the process, "It is impossible to tell a story without having an argument, especially if you are angry. But likewise, it is difficult to tell a story when you are guided by an argument.
"An argument is by its nature one-sided and a drama cannot be. A drama is a staged conflict, a collection of arguments, a clamorous democracy. To begin with, I set down a pile of barely fleshed out abstractions and foregone conclusions, piles of rhetoric and stern lectures. I bored myself. And so I set these aside and began to imagine."
And so while there were discussions with many people involved in the dispute, Front is being promoted, not as documentary theatre, but as "fiction wrapped around the bones of truth".
Certainly, given the enormous impact of the MUA dispute on all workers and the fine record of the Melbourne Workers' Theatre, Front deserves the support of everyone interested in important political issues addressed through quality political theatre.