The action raced from musical soundscapes to didactic melodramas. From animalistic lycra to a japanese tale of love and ogres. Whilst Tiananmen Square rubbed shoulders with a local paper mill, Murray Bramwell was getting to know the nature of the beast itself.

Now that Come Out has gone back inside for another two year period of planning and preparation, it is a good time to take stock. This has been the ninth festival and with its theme, Designing Our Future. Come Out has some designing to do for its own future. For nearly twenty years Adelaide has hosted a youth festival which has few like it and even fewer to rival it.

The offerings are extensive. Again this year there were more than fifty items in the main program alone. Come Out is said to reach more than half a million young South Australians during its frenetic fortnight, an extraordinary achievement in any language.

Those of us who write about Come Out are all too aware of the scale of the festival and that we run the risk of being like the three blind people standing round the elephant – one hanging on to its tail, another the trunk, the third clutching one of its ears – each confidently pronouncing on the nature of the beast. Without stretching the metaphor any further, suffice to say that Come Out spans all art forms, is created in schools and\ communities, performed by adults and children and involves watching and doing. For some observers the perspective is the main program, for others the work in classrooms and local parks.

Some value the product in the festival, others enthuse about the process.
Come Out Director, Michael F1tzGerald , has said that he wanted a program that had an “edge” to it. Of the performance work, in particular, he wanted productions which were provocative, stimulating and theatrically worthwhile.

In the main, that is what he got. The substantial theatre and dance programs included some of the strongest shows Come Out has seen for a while. The international work, Bekkanko-Oni( The Funny-Faced Ogre) from the Japanese company Theatre Erumu. proved to be a skilful blend of traditional Noh and Kyogen styles presented with crisp and vivid narrative technique. The unlikely courtship of Yuki, the blind girl by Bekkanko the ogre is a story familiar to Western audiences as Beauty and the Beast, or at least a variant of the girl-meets- monster, girl-marries-monster theme. Technically fluent and aesthetically elegant Bekkanko-Oni was a fine example of accessible Asian theatre for primary audiences.

The presence of the Melbourne company, Handspan, is likely to enhance any festival – even if their newest work, The Reading Boy, by John Romeril with Peter J. Wilson, did not live up to expectations. It is an endearing theme – the reading boy is permanently glued to his compendious book EWUE (enquire within upon everything) until one day it is taken by accident to the a paper recycling plant. His dream journey to rescue his book is presented with the fantastic illusionism, imaginative props and stage movement that are Handspan’s hallmark. Romeril’s quirky test is a bit heavy on the self-ironies at times and Hugh Wayland is too eager to please in the lead but; for all that, the stage effects had my eyes out on stalks and Boris Conley’s music was a buzz.

Also in the visual department, Stretch Mk 1, led by Benni Seidel combine, as they say – “mime, puppets, acrobatics, mask, comedy, dance and lycra.” The surreal sight gags, driven by Alistair Bell’s electric guitar animated young audiences evidently delighted by sheer abstraction. The State Theatre Company’s contribution, its first (I think) since Barry Dickins’ Beautland, was an interesting choice. Frank Wedekind’s Spring Awakening, startling in its time and striking even now, deals candidly with adolescence, sexual repression and adults’ fear and distrust of their children. It is a strange mix of vivacity and foreboding, dealing as it does with the death of the young, and its inclusion in Come Out was a bold decision.

Unfortunately, despite a memorable performance by Alex Hulse as Moritz, the production, directed by Cath McKinnon and designed by Kathryn Sproul failed to capture the celebratory element in the text – precisely the link needed for young audiences. As a consequence Spring Awakening may well have been a leaden and cryptic experience for many who saw it.

Magpie’s White Paper Flowers, on the other hand, was a much more accessible instance of TIE writing. Playwright Mary Hickson takes the events leading to the massacre in Tianenmen Square as her setting for a story of a group of young students engaged in the democracy struggle in China. Director Angela Chaplin, with c h o r e o g r a p h e r Xiao-Xiong Zhang created an engaging theatre piece with vigorous performances b y Claire Jones, Richard Margetson and Paul Flannagan among others. The political and social transformation in China is dealt with in over-simplistic terms, however. The players sing of “5,000 years of yearning” as if the current crisis and the feudal past are all of a piece. The play equates the achievements of Mao with the excesses of the Gang of Four and unwittingly presents Western style democracy in entirely uncritical terms. In such a successful work it is particularly disappointing to find such a reductionist historical reading.

The Over to Youth program is an important facet of Come Out theatre and one that deserves continuing encouragement. The two productions I saw varied greatly. Adelaide High School’s Classic Catches, a set of excerpts focusing on the women in Greek tragedy, produced a number of memorable performances – among them Samantha Braniff as lphigenia, Dawn Carson as Hecuba and Jinji Garland’s Antigone. Director Brian Bugden used the spacious stage area at Theatre 62 to good effect creating the sort of simple stylishness that we associate with the English Shakespeare Company’s Histories, perhaps. The anti-war theme grew from the performances rather than as impositions on the production, allowing the young actors’ work to have impact even when technically uneven.

By contract, the Wilderness School production, Ring the Bell Softly devised by Roger Masters was cumbersome and restrictive to the players. The idea, to pay tribute to a selection of remarkable South Australian women ranging from Kate Cocks to Mark McKillop to Margaret Preston, is terrific. But the production ran for two rambling hours weighed down with specious feminist moralising. The players were called upon to dance, sing and perform in a stage setting and theatrical structure that all but annihilated any freshness and vitality they might have had. My point is not to discredit student work but rather to suggest that productions in the Over to Youth category should aim to liberate and highlight the energy of young performers not constrain them in an overambitious and ill-considered vehicle such as this.

There were other productions I am sorry to have missed – Patch Theatre’s Evensong for Antarctica for instance, as well as Corrugated Iron’s Nyiya Nyampuju (who had to withdraw from the program) and Unley Youth’s Sports Briefs. In the music section the word on Soundescape, the multi-media import from Melbourne’s Next Wave, was particularly good. Michael FitzGerald has expressed disappointment that despite considerable negotiation with music professionals in schools the newly instituted concert programs in the Norwood Town Hall were not well attended.

I went to hear Gaudeamus, the Canberra-based community music group led by Judith Clingan. While the Early Music segment was pleasingly presented – although I wonder about the kitsch renaissance costume – and The Seven Deadly Sins was energetic and musically inventive, Kakadu, a commissioned work, gathered together all that is cliched and worthy in its approach to Aboriginal and environmental issues. Politically and aesthetically this might have been innovative in 1955 but in Come Out for the nineties, frankly, it is old rope. Desert Magic from Dance North offered much more imaginative elements in movement, music and theme with strong designs from John Coburn and exciting choreography from Cheryl Stock and Natalie Weir.

The high point of the performance program, though, has to be the Tjapukai Dance Theatre from Cairns. Widely travelled overseas, this was their first
Australian season outside Queensland and I can only hope that it is the first of many. Their show is a delight, splendidly and hilariously performed while imbuing an inspirational sense of Nunga pride. Reminiscent of Bran Nue Dae in its creative mixture of styles, Tjapukai played ·to a rapturous group of youngsters who filled the Union Hall with their appreciation – if not their numbers.

Which brings us to the question of attendances at Come Out performances. Despite the quality of the program and the consolidation and rationalisation ofits organisation, this year’s festival has shown that Come Out is part of a fragile eco-system which includes, crucially, the schools in metropolitan Adelaide. The Premier’s unsmiling face appears in the front of the program commending the efforts of Come Out and declaring his pride and support. Unhappily, the wholesale reduction in teacher numbers in schools in SA has had a damaging effect on such enrichment projects as Come Out. Some schools flatly indicated that they would not be attending Come Out activities because teachers were simply not prepared to organise excursions. The reality of the increased classroom contact time for teachers these days is that the business of getting a yellow bus full of students off to a production is an organizational nightmare- there are no back-up replacement staff, quite apart from problems of teacher morale.

Michael FitzGerald has continued to peg his admission prices at very reasonable levels but even so in these difficult economic times the cost of tickets is still a likely contributing factor- certainly for families contemplating public performances. It is a hard fact that despite its gains and its reputation the organisers have some thinking to do about the objectives, relevance and public perceptions of Come Out. Similar problems beset all organisations at the moment but in a festival of this kind, shortcomings can be cruelly evident.

At the moment the diversity of Come Out counts against it – each sectional group being seen as the main audience. Parents and families think it’s only for schools, secondary students see it as being for primaries, as well as some schools apparently thinking it is not for them at all. It has been a fact of Come Out that it has served primary levels best. School organisation means that sole control teachers can adapt their programs to include excursions and so on. Also, frequently the Come Out offerings serve younger students best. Secondary audiences can be notoriously difficult to perform for – on the other hand, a triumph with a group of teenagers is a very great victory indeed. Whilst I don’t think Come Out should pander to fashion there is still more to be done to bridge to adolescent culture and concerns. It is not enough to point to Soundescape and say Come Out is getting with it.

A success story in the festival is the continuing growth and energy in Community Come Out. Co-ordinator Robyn Goldsworthy and her associates have been working for months with the nine area organizers on a number of state-wide ventures including the Artful Dodgers and Get the Show on the Road. It is one of the hidden achievements that local schools and communities conspire to create works which plug into school curriculum and link with general public audiences as well. Closer to the metropolitan area, the Community Come Out activities at Port Adelaide attracted local school involvement in a way that the main program did not.

Michael FitzGerald is characteristically generous about these achievements even while he sees that they affect the fortunes of other Come Out performances. He is quick to observe that the interaction between the various Come Out events needs more careful consideration to avoid fragmenting the audience. These are difficult judgements to make even with the increased stability in the infrastructure that FitzGerald and Diana Kidd, the Come Out Administrator have worked hard to establish. They have accomplished a great deal and while Carclew is doing what everybody keeps calling “navel gazing”, the new designs for Come Out can be made on a very secure administrative foundation.

The Come Out Committee have not renewed FitzGerald’s contract, retaining the option to appoint a new director when the dust settles. Michael FitzGerald is proud of his festival and so he should be. He would only need to wander among the exhibitions, catch an artful dodger at work or go to any number of schools and communities to see Come Out in action. In the main program he might go and see the excitement and cultural richness of Tjapukai Dance Theatre, or visit Cirkidz. Once again the Bowden Brompton Youth Circus captured the crazy, imaginative energy of Come Out at its best. Directed by Tim Maddock, written by Gavin Strawhan and designed by Tony Hannon, Sky, the Moon and Fungus, much like most of the festival itself, was more fun than a shoebox full of grasshoppers.

“Divining a Future” Lowdown, Vol.13, No.3, June, 1991, pp. 7-11.