SMH Home
Home   >   Entertainment   >   Arts   >   Article  

Hunting down some hometown acclaim

January 17 2003

Most of Stalker's rave reviews have come from overseas, but that's changing now, writes Lenny Ann Low.

In the words of its co-artistic director, Stalker Theatre Company is a "multi-headed beast". It began simply enough, formed by David Clarkson in New Zealand in 1985, with an initial philosophy regarding a "belief in the body".

"It was the body as a performance vehicle," he said. "Theatre that was a physical and visual representation, very image-based and mostly site-specific."

Although Stalker has become a multi-stranded production company, with three separate arms producing work for overseas and local touring, it retains its physical roots. The Marrickville-based company produces works by artistic co-directors Clarkson, 42, and Rachael Swain, 34, as well as projects of The Marrugeku Company. Clarkson tends to create street theatre and smaller-scale work while Swain, who joined in 1988 as a performer and co-deviser, oversees larger works.

Since 1989, one year after re-forming in Australia, Stalker has created nine major performances and repeatedly tours to Europe, South America and Asia. Past productions have included Mimi, Crying Baby and Blood Vessel, and the company appeared at the Sydney Olympic Games' closing and opening ceremonies and the Commonwealth Games in Manchester. Its productions are fusions of acrobatics, music, dance, stilt-walking and circus along with themes and concepts inspired by indigenous and non-indigenous story-telling.

Yet, despite frequently performing in Australia and New Zealand, critical and audience acclaim has stemmed mostly from overseas.

"I just did a tour to Europe this year with the new piece I directed up, Four Riders," said Clarkson. "It was always a bit shocking, the enthusiasm and response to the work. All these directors coming up to chat and comparing the show to previous works and asking about what we'll be doing in the future. It's not that it doesn't happen in Australia but, from our perspective, there's a lot more recognition and enthusiasm over there."

Clarkson puts this down to the copious small-to-medium and large festivals overseas. In Australia, Stalker's large-scale works are seen only "sporadically" at major festivals.

"There has been great support from the Perth Festival, Sydney Festival and a lot from Robyn Archer," said Clarkson. "But if you look over the last 12 years, relative to how often we have performed in Europe, South America and Asia, there's a huge discrepancy."

Nowadays, with a new production, Incognita, premiering next Monday as part of the Sydney Festival, Swain feels that Stalker is closer to being seen as a major force in Australia theatre.

"In some senses, it is still the tip of the iceberg that's seen here," she said. "Perhaps it's different for the two branches of the company, as David's street-theatre work tours more overseas and my large-scale outdoor productions are getting quite a big exposure in Australia."

Yet, for Swain, her experience overseas has shown how essential touring Stalker's works is for Australia's cultural identity. "It's incredible how frequently when you're in Europe, you get the response that the only thing people know about Australian culture is Crocodile Dundee and Neighbours. It sounds like a cliche but it's so true. The last four productions I've directed have been very much exploring Australian issues, cultural identity, history and contemporary performance forms that I feel have a vernacular that is more foreign overseas. To tour these quite complex works, that are multi-layered and often have paradoxical scenarios in them, feels really important for us."

Stalker was named after an allegorical science-fiction movie by the Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky, the story of a man who allows people's secret desires to come true.

"At the beginning the company was all about that," says Clarkson. "The guide who transports the audience to a zone where their most secret desire can be realised or manifested. Now, Rachael's work is going towards the real, a direct representation, but in the past we worked with subconscious themes relating to spirituality, kind of semi-dreamscapes. Over the past few years, issues of colonisation have started to appear in the work."

Incognita features five characters in an outback setting and begins with the aftermath of a bushfire. Featuring dance, live music, acrobatics, song and text, it explores a barren landscape inhabited by figures struggling to deal with issues of isolation, occupation and displacement.

"I had the feeling people often think about reconciliation as a black issue and an issue with a lot of repercussions for indigenous Australia," said Swain, who co-directed the piece in collaboration with the Belgian choreographer Koen Augustijnen of Les Ballets C de la B. "But people often miss the point. The fact that this government can't say sorry, the fact that this country has forgotten so much of its history. That really means that it's living and carrying on with a lot of fear in its heart."




Also in Entertainment

Green Stones roll out a rare freebie

Britney spears 'stalker' fan

Croon king of rock is ready to make the crowds go mild

Faking it

How to buy denim

Girl interrupted

How sweet he is

From odious to ode for us

Master photographer Moore dead at 75

Long-lost voices of women sung back into history

Spare us, Nigella, we're all in the soup

Leonardo reinvented ... we're not just a pretty face

Is the novel dead?

For the cause of a natural life

Our very rum rebellion

A life richer for poorer

The artist & her offspring

Irresistible tendencies


The Church, Parallel Universe

The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature

Bodyline Autopsy; The Best Australian Sports Writing 2002

The Apprentice Lover

Sons of Fortune

Bel Canto

Goddess of Mercy; Anything the Landlord Touches; Rivers