1990

Murray Bramwell talks with playwright Michael Doneman about  his new work for the Magpie Company – Mango Season, which opens at the Odeon Theatre next week.

Michael Doneman describes himself as a recidivist Queenslander. After ten years working in theatre in Sydney he returned to his Brisbane base firstly to teach and then more recently, to establish Contact, a theatre for young people.

Over the past year Doneman, in cahoots with Darwin’s Corrugated Iron Company, the Two to Five Youth Theatre in Newcastle and South Australia’s Magpie Theatre Company, has been working on what the funding people call a Creative Development Project.

“It was a hands-across-the States mix and match,” he explains, “The Creative Development Project is not there to make product, it is there as a laboratory. We met for two weeks and our first brief was to find ways in which professionals and young people could work together, logistically as well as artistically. Secondly we wanted to involve young Aboriginal people and, as far as possible, Aboriginal artists.”

Using as their subject the rain forest the companies generated a variety of activities. Michael Doneman’s Contact company took a group of young Aboriginal people from Brisbane to a community in the Far North in the recent school holidays.They have returned to use their experiences in workshops with the company.

Doneman’s  belief in, and commitment to, working in theatre has not exactly been unwavering. When he left Sydney with his wife Ludmila, a co-founder of Contact, he was feeling fed-up. “I hated theatre,”  Doneman admits, “I thought it was full of ponces, fakes and spivs. I kept on looking around and seeing in front of my eyes what Brecht had always said, that it was the bourgeoisie patting itself on the back- I still think a lot of the theatre in this country is like that and for that reason, is useless.”

It was working as drama teacher in Queensland which restored his enthusiasm. “I began to see ways in which this drama stuff could be useful- and useful is one of my buzzwords. It’s not to say that you can’t do  seven and a half hour Robert Wilson operas- they have usefulness too. It’s just a matter of taste. I define usefulness in more down-to-earth terms.”

After success in the classroom Michael and Ludmila Doneman, took up a contract to rebuild the youth theatre program at Brisbane’s Le Boite Company which then led to the founding of the separate, more ambitious, Contact operation. He is justly proud of their work in cross-cultural theatre.

“We are able to do long term developmental work rather than just getting up single shows like Bran Nue Dae and No Sugar. It’s fabulous to have them but it is also good to be doing something more interventionist – working with young people and actually seeing them applying these art activities in their lives.”

Michael Doneman has written extensively for youth theatre and has three collections of short plays for primary schools to his credit. His latest work, Mango Season, was commissioned by Magpie’s Angela Chaplin during the last Come Out festival in Adelaide.

Mango Season was another spin-off from the rain forest project. “I’d done a lot of reading,as I try to do on works like this, but I was quite overtaken by the sheer amount of data. When we are talking about conservation issues, by nature we are talking about a web of issues that are all connected – questions about women’s rights, race, class and so on. It mushrooms.”

“That was the first difficulty- and it still is- how do you reduce without being reductionist ? How do you get something of such complexity to a form that is not only palatable but effective. I think it is a moot point whether theatre of this kind can change anything. I am cynical about the social benefit of simply putting plays in front of people and expecting them to change their lives. I think that’s been a problem for me with a lot of theatre in education I’ve seen over the years.”

“So you try to make the work dramatically as good as possible with the hope that images will linger and somehow infect the audience with an idea. It is a matter of paring down not only a welter of data, but of theatrical images, so they make sense and are amusing as well.”

“That was another ingredient. Angela and I wanted Mango Season to be a comedy, a non-naturalistic comedy. It takes place in a city train station and there is a bit of science fiction about it. It is set about two minutes into the future where events are recognisable but slightly askew.”

Doneman had submitted a title six months before he began work on it  and now it has double meaning in the play.

“The mango season is the hot time of the year in Queensland but it is also used when people go a bit loopy. People just shrug and say -“Oh, it’s the mango season.”

“In the play it is never mentioned specifically, but maybe because of the greenhouse effect or the ozone layer depletion, things are getting hotter and the summers are getting longer. The concrete in one of the platforms has cracked and a mango seed has taken root. Four characters come upon this and react in different ways. They can be seen as analogies or metaphors for different human reactions to the issues involved- from the romantic hippie response to a more academic approach to a unionist reaction and so on. Then there is a surprise ending.”

Doneman wonders how the play will go with the target audience – upper primary students- but he’s prepared to take his chances. “Angela and I both believe that it’s better to pitch what you doing too high rather than too low. Besides with their familiarity with TV it’s possible the kids will cotton on to the kind of method that we use. It’s very clipped and very fast.”

Doneman is keen on the idea of comedy as a force for change- “Unlike tragedy which always worked to set a proper regard for the established order, comedy always has a loose end, a nagging question. It is inherently seditious.”

And a final question for  National Arts Week- what does Michael Doneman think theatre should be striving for at the present time ? The response is unhesitating. “My only real vision for change has almost entirely to do with people grasping, if not Aboriginality itself, then those notions from Aboriginal culture we can have access to. So then we can really begin inventing a culture of our own instead of making do with one we have borrowed.

“I also agree with the idea that the theatre should dissect the society- that it should be a scalpel and a poultice and that it can actively deal with a society’s needs. That is certainly what has led me directly to working with young people.

“Preparing for The Mango Season” The Advertiser, October 13, 1990, p.14