Come Out

The Come Out Festival started in 1974 because many professionals in the arts and education were peeved that the Adelaide Festival was taking no notice of young people in the performing arts. They set up in various parks in inner Adelaide and the momentum began. It was then decided that Come Out would utilise the Adelaide Festival’s administrative resources in the “off” year between Festivals and plan a full-scale programme of the kind that has been offered now for nearly ten years.

By 1987, Come Out has become a significant event, not just for Adelaide but for youth performing arts throughout Australia. The programme this year includes visits from the Dong Rang Theatre of South Korea and the Honolulu Theatre for Youth, as well as theatre companies from Victoria and the Riverland.

Local groups Magpie, Troupe and Patch will all be contributing; and Frankie, an opera written by David Holman with music by Alan John has been specially commissioned for the Festival.

As you may have noted, a new dimension for Come Out is apparent this year. It is the meeting of the ASSITEJ Congress which will be held during the Come Out season in the first half of April. ASSITEJ is an acronym for the Association Internationale du Theatre pour L’Enfance et La Jeunesse (or the International Association of Theatre for Children and Young People). It was founded in 1965 as an adjunct of the International Theatre Institute, and this, its 9th World Congress, is being held in the Festival Theatre and the Carclew Youth Performing Arts Centre in Adelaide.

Michael Fitzgerald

Michael Fitzgerald is the Director of the ASSITEJ Congress organisation, and since 1985 he has visited 24 cities in 16 countries setting up the conference and its programme of speakers. A recent innovation for the Congress is the adoption of a theme. For 1987 it ‘s “Staging the Future”. For Fitzgerald this means an “acknowledgement in theatre of the need to examine its relevance to its constituency. Are we making theatre which has little or nothing to do with the people we are hoping to offer it to?”

“I have a strong belief that in this time of political and cultural disaffection, disenchantment and insecurity, there is a great place for the arts to relate to young people. It can re-establish and confirm self-esteem and their relationship to themselves and to society.”

The three main topics for the conference acknowledge that theatre is becoming marginal in a culture where rock music, video and computer games are central pursuits. Speakers at ASSITEJ will be talking about the place of theatre in youth culture. Keynote presentations from Dr Jorg Richard of West Germany, American writer Mary Hall Surface, and Australians, Christine Westwood, former Education Officer from the Adelaide Festival Centre and more recently GM of Belvoir Street, and Angela Chaplin , from the Arena Company in Melbourne. They’ll all be tangling with questions of the relevance and value of theatre for youth.

Another topic concerns the role of theatre in multicultural society, and writer and director Richard Tulloch will examine some tenets on that subject. The third aspect resumes the discussion of theatre within pop culture, and designers Nigel Triffitt and Ken Wilby will discuss the business of creating performances for young audiences in the Age of Mass Media, to use the imposing upper case.

International Flavour

ASSITEJ will meet during the final week of Come Out. As Michael Fitzgerald remarked – “With Come Out on in Adelaide, it was too good a chance for the world not to come and see our product.” Twelve productions have been chosen from the programme for the delegates to see. These include the Dong Rang Company and the Honolulu Theatre of Youth. Fitzgerald emphasises that the ten Australian productions represent a cross-section of current work. “I was particularly concerned not to have a showcase of work, because showcases often don’t work. The work you put in them is often old and it may have lost its edge.” Of course, with many new works, no-one will know how they will be received until the Festival itself. For Fitzgerald that will only enhance the sense of freshness and spontaneity in Australian theatre, which he wants to generate for the 300 ASSITEJ delegates.

“We do hold our own and should do more on the international scene. We have a great deal to offer. Our work is well received and our Australian flavour and energy enjoys a high reputation. It makes jaded Europe sit up and pay attention.”

This is forthright talk from the courteous and diplomatic Michael Fitzgerald, but he frankly acknowledges the urgency of the issues the Congress will be discussing. In its twenty years of existence, ASSITEJ has become a conservative organisation with a power base in Europe, and with the possible exception of Sweden, most countries have been producing theatre which confirms the status quo and employs classical and traditional dramatic conventions. Fitzgerald believes that unless ASSITEJ sheds its Eurocentric and paternalistic tendencies, the organisation will not survive.

So the delegates from the Pacific region will constitute an influential lobby to widen the membership of the Congress, and perhaps challenge the totally European Executive membership. Delegations from China, Japan, South Korea, India, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore as well as New Zealand will undoubtedly form a strong alliance, and the issues raised and the theatrical forms prevalent in those countries are bound to open up and invigorate the debate on the nature and purpose of theatre for young people.

ASSITEJ risks splitting into geographical chapters which would be more culturally connected and financially rational. But as Fitzgerald observes, such a fragmentation would militate against one of the central aims of the Congress which is to foster world peace and maintain a global perspective.

That is all very good and high-sounding, but what level of discourse can be expected from the Congress? Will it be controversial, will it be a bunfight? Fitzgerald chooses his words carefully because he clearly has high hopes for discussion of real substance from the conference. He wants “good, open and frank-to- the-point-of-disagreement discussion,” and has planned for groups of 20 to consider issues with specially briefed group leaders.

Language barriers will be inevitable, with all proceedings translated into three languages. As Michael Fitzgerald concedes, “it slows down emotion and threads of argument”. The sheer range of delegates will also mean an unavoidable formality – with so many nationalities present, it will take time and trust for participants to declare and defend strong views.

Putting Australia on the World Map

The 1987 ASSITEJ Congress promises to be a watershed for the organisation. It is the first time it has been held in the southern hemisphere, and this is only the second conference outside Europe. Australia nominated at the 1984 Congress in Moscow and was successful against bids from Yugoslavia and Belgium. Candidates for 1990 look like being Sweden and Israel.

Adelaide, of course, is a lot of air miles from most places and that has posed problems for registration numbers. But as Michael Fitzgerald says, “they can’t embrace the world and then say we can’t come to your festivals and seminars because they ‘re too far away”.

But The Congress’ 300 registrations is more than respectable. About half the number are overseas delegates and the remainder from all parts of Australia. Though Fitzgerald admits that in true Aussie style most of the local registrations came in March rather than last November when they officially closed! While pleased with the spread of Australian registrations, Fitzgerald hinted at some disappointment that various funding bodies for the arts were not better represented.

Another criticism he raised was with sponsorship for this prestigious conference. Of the forty companies and organisations approached, only Advertiser Newspapers and K-mart came forward. Fitzgerald indicated concern that the business establishment seemed to have little interest in youth issues and rued the fact that the community in general was still inclined to consider Come Out and ASSITEJ as just kids’ stuff.

It now remains to be seen how the delegates will take up the challenges of the conference. Michael Fitzgerald emphasises that he wants ASSITEJ to be relaxed and informal, offering the best of Australian hospitality to provoke, stimulate and inform. While these are predictable sentiments of any conference organiser, Fitzgerald is adamant that not only is ASSITEJ important for putting Australia on the map, but Australia will also be important to ASSITEJ if the Congress is serious about shaking off some of its old world cobwebs.

Murray Bramwell

CentreStage Australia, April, 1987, pp.8-9.