The 1989 Come Out festival has ended and yet again this remarkable event has focused activities in all areas of youth arts. The more than fifty events involving .hundreds of performers and audiences of many thousands are only part of a chain reaction of activities generated in schools and communities in the metropolitan area and throughout the state.

In fifteen years Come Out has expanded and consolidated such that it is almost taken for granted locally. It is worth saying that the festival is pretty near unique, rivalled only by youth performing festivals in Lyon and Vancouver. It received significant and committed sponsorship and a level of co-operation from Government, and the Education Department in particular, which is unheard of elsewhere.

Director Michael Fitzgerald, ably assisted by Administrator Louise Withers, is a veteran of the recent ASSITEJ Conference held here in 1987. ASSITEJ is a Gallic acronym for a major jamboree of youth arts people held somewhere on the planet every four years. The Adelaide gathering gingered up some fundamental debate which still reverberates for this year and Fitzgerald’s next festival in 1991. The basic tussle is invariably ·between notions of process and product and that can create battlelines between educators on one hand, and arts professionals on the other. Of course, this is what you could call a false dichotomy but it nevertheless represents a difference of perspective that can cause real friction .

Looking over the theatre programme from the arts industry this time there are fewer productions, reflecting a sizable cut in funding compared to 1985 and 1987. Fitzgerald welcomes what he has called a leaner programme insisting that it gives opportunities to be more selective and specific. Particularly he wanted projects which were of high standard and which were in line with his theme of the New Dreaming – an optimistic focus on the future which sought to highlight Aboriginal art forms and values in the programme.

With fewer works greater significance fell on the choices made and as a consequence some age groups were better served than others. Junior primary littlies fared especially well with imaginative, well-judged works such as Queensland’s Kite company with Whose Beach is it Anyway? the good-natured mask narrative from soloist Russell Cheek and Gus Worby’s inventive Flinders Uni Drama Centre production Greenthumb – all of which gave young audiences a chance to experience lively, intelligent theatre.

Of the more high profile productions for teen audiences, Space Demons, directed by Ariette Taylor with Christine Anketel, was adapted by Richard Tulloch from Adelaide writer, Gillian Rubinstein’s celebrated novel. While not lending itself particularly well to stage adaptation:, Ariette Taylor and designer Eamon D’ Arcy produced a hyperactive kind of staged TV which, although popular with audiences, tended often to substitute action for reflection.

In Magpie’s Couple of Kids, on the other hand, writer Julianne O’Brien tackled the difficult subject of teenage love with mixed success. She and director, Angela Chaplin recreated a vigorous account of Tristan and Isolte but were less assured with the contemporary storyline. Unley Youth produced a show for young women directed by Catherine Langman and based on text and songs prepared by Anne-Marie Mykyta, Pat Rix and Kate O’Brien. Entitled Patterns it examined, earnestly but with excellent production values, the relationship between mothers and daughters. Anne-Marie Mykyta’s In the Grand Hotel, performed by the Multicultural Youth Theatre at the Parks, drew sincere, if uneven performances from young actors presenting a timely reminder of the dire problems of the young homeless.

The question of young amateur performances, particularly high school productions, needs further consideration. One high school group was mauled by a review in one of the dailies in what can only be called gratuitous terms. It shouldn’t be difficult to identify when it is appropriate to focus on process and when on product, and young performers should be benefiting from the experience of creative participation, not worrying about whether someone in a local paper is going to give them an elephant stamp or not. ‘

On the other hand, no-one seemed to notice that the professional Canberra group Jigsaw’s Self-Winding was a woeful travesty of Russell Hoban’s The Mouse and his Child or that the Brompton Cirkidz’s Louie’s Problem ran circus rings around them. Written by Gavin Strawhan and directed by Charles Parkinson, the Brompton. show in the Amphitheatre was, like the ADT project, Nigel Fozdyke: This is Your Life, one of the genuine treats of the festival. The creative mix of musicians and actorsand very young; teenage and older professional theatre workers was a delightful one and exemplified the spirit and energy that the Come Out Festival, despite the inevitable glitches and grizzles, still continues to celebrate.

“Staging the Dreams” The Adelaide Review, No.63, May, 1989, p.24.