My Place
by Christine Anketell
Patch Theatre. South Australia
Directed by: Christine Anketell
Design: Kathryn Sproul
Music: Stuart Day
Production Manager: Richard Meyman
Cast: Joanna Cooper, Gwenda Helsham, Karen Inwood

There’s no place like home, as Dorothy once said to her red shoes. And as it is the International Year of Shelter for The Homeless, the Patch Theatre Company have used it as the occasion for their Come Out 87 contribution, My Place.

Perhaps one reason why the International Year of Shelter is not well known is that, vital though it is to the human and other species, it is rather too abstract for people to grasp. Indeed, the science of ethology has really only quite recently alerted us to the fact that the need for territory is as basic to behaviour and well-being as the need for food.

Patch has bravely taken on a project that is conceptually quite difficult and, despite the seriousness of the issue, one lacking popular approval. The truth is that most adults take their shelter for granted and so it is hardly surprising if the audiences for My Place, children between ages four and six, are a bit bemused by it all.

My Place is about Toni, a little tacker living in a caravan park with her mother and baby brother. She wants a proper house as she says, like other kids in her class. But life gets even more complicated when she learns that the caravan park is having to move to make way for extensions to the adjacent national park. It is then up to Mavis, a rather dotty middle-aged neighbour, to help Toni understand how people and animals, even ants and bees, need a bit of space of their own.

Patch’s Artistic Director, Christine Anketell, has written a gentle little script which the company has been road-testing with a local Montessori kindergarten and while the storyline does not seem to cohere fully for young audiences, they clearly find some of its detail compelling and entertaining. Although, for instance, one wonders whether they derive more pleasure from Toni’s Stamp-on-the-Ants song than Mavis’s earnest attempt to argue the case for ants’ rights. These are not so much quibbles with the play as reflections on how much freight a theatre piece can usefully carry, particularly for young audiences. The careful discussions about single mums, caravan parks and ecological niches tend at times to clutter the play and undermine the theatrical directness of the presentation.

Kathryn Sproul’s delightful set consists of ten panels of sculptured fabric trees and animals, some of which the children in the audience attach before the narrative begins. The emus, kookaburras and cockies look splendid in the wattles and bottlebrushes and the witty use of red gloves for the kangaroo’s paw plant is particularly appealing. The songs, by Stuart Day, assiduously learned at school and kindergarten by the visiting audiences, also give the production freshness and charm.

The actor, at times, are overanxious to please and perhaps underestimated the audience’s response to theatrical performance. But overall, Karen Inwood as Toni gave a convincing focus with able assistance from Joanna Cooper, as her mother Shirley, and Gwenda Helsham as the occasionally overbearing Mavis.

My Place does not really succeed in getting difficult notions across but is performed with warmth and generosity appreciated by young audiences. Patch sold out their Come Out season in three days and filled thirty additional shows without difficulty. The pre-school and junior primary group obviously can’t get enough live theatre and Christine Anketell and her company have certainly given a lot of small poppies some homely thoughts to take away.

“My Place”, Lowdown, Vol.9, No.3, May, 1987, p.38.