On his BBC training:
It was pretty much what I used to do when I was training as a teacher at the ABC later. Introduction to Television – you met the cameras, you met camera angles, you met the syntax of television – the crossing the lines and the not doing this and the doing that. A bit about inlay and overlay. Field trips to, one of the things we did was to a Colour Laboratory which I was fascinated by, long before colour but they were working on it.
GS Obviously design.
AB I presume so. I can’t remember that but yes they would have brought in every department. It was a very good, I’ve got my notes for it, I found them the other day. Introduction to every facet and at the end of the thing, broken up into groups of two people each, we did an exercise of some 10 minutes duration and I was coupled with a lovely guy called William, no something Alwyn, who was the son of the composer William Alwyn who had done a lot of movie stuff. I can’t think of his name, he was a nice guy and we did this thing together. He was pretty expert, he was a Floor Manager and he called shots with no hesitation. I had to look at pictures, I knew nothing, nothing, it was really very embarrassing I didn’t do well..
I know what I’m not good at and that’s ‘naturalism’.. I directed eight operas for the ABC.. music is essential to me in any theatrical activity. And that sort of thing didn’t come into the ‘naturalistic school’ so I was much better off with The Play’s the Thing it’s just on the brink of being strange. Happy as Larry which is totally strange, Skin of our Teeth which I did in Canberra was totally strange and those were the areas I was good at...
GS If we could explore why you were good at these stylised fantasy pieces, what was it about them do you think that you were able to apply yourself to?
AB Oh I think because I had a certain sense of the ridiculous and I couldn’t take seriously quite a lot of whatever. Also I had no talent for it, the straight dramas. I mean I had two disasters. I can quote one it was The Father by Strinberg which I did at University and another was Hedda Gabler by Ibsen which I did in Canberra. Both died with their leg in the air, just not me. I admire them both as plays and I understood them and I knew why they should work but I do not have that particular ability. And this is why television was a joy when I eventually moved to it because there was opera... I did my own Lola on television in Melbourne. I did four Shakespeares which were wide enough in taste to bring to them what you felt, it didn’t have to be a straightforward thing. I did Skin of our Teeth again. I’d done it in Canberra on stage, I did it on television and that was a bit of a rocket in its day. Skin of our Teeth, television? People were doing J.M. Barrie and little plays with one set but my taste ran to that and it still does. The slightly fantastic, the comic so that I know that I have a better sense of humour than I have a sense of drama and the essence of music. I find it so easy to direct with music.
He had a nervous breakdown and depression for six months.
I had realised at the age of 25 that I was homosexual. I hadn’t realised it and didn’t know that I was but you know you go with ladies and you take them out and you do this and you do that but somehow they’d go off with other people. Not that you didn’t want them to, I mean it’s just one of those things. I raised this with the Psychiatrist and a fair indication of this that he wasn’t a very good Psychiatrist is the said ‘oh never mind you’re only 25, this will pass’. Anyway all that aside I think I couldn’t face it for several reasons. I mean the fairly obvious one is the social scene and of course the bloody religion and just couldn’t cope with it, didn’t know what to do. Anyway continued to practice at the Church...
In 1962 he said I had been at that stage in a relationship for five years and he’d gone to England and broken it off after a year of devoted letters saying ‘why aren’t you here, do come, do come’. And I eventually sold my house which I’d bought with the profits of Lola, took a year’s leave from the ABC and booked a ship and got the ‘dear John’ letter. You know ‘terribly sorry, don’t want to continue with all this and don’t want to live with you’ etc etc.
GS What was your view of society’s attitude to homosexuality at that time?
AB Oh I thought it was totally right. I thought it was all evil and nasty. Nice people didn’t do it.
GS This was society’s attitude? AB It was also mine.
GS It was your attitude?
AB Yeah.
GS So we’re talking about a major internal battle here?
AB Oh yeah, hideous.
GS How long did that battle continue would you say?
AB Well that was ’48. Finished University, went to Canberra for two years. Went to London and in ’55 in London, decided that something had better be done about it and so I moved into action as it were but it took me that long.
He outed Brian James and Alexander Hay as gay.
I don’t like giving actors intonations you know of saying ‘play it this way’. I’ve seen Directors do that and actors hate it. I didn’t, ever to my knowledge, to that I hope I didn’t. But I could suggest emotive for a line that would draw them into doing the line the way I thought it should be done and perhaps getting a laugh that they would not have got or making an effect that they would not have made or touching it in a way that they would not have touched it. And that ability to, the anonymity is one of the things I loved about directing. If there was any trace of your hand, it was somehow a bad thing...
I certainly think every actor is a different mechanism and a different spirit, every actor is a different person and consequently if you’ve got thirty close friends, you don’t speak the same way to each of the thirty and you don’t have the same subjects in common. You, without affectation, you adapt to whatever is the demands of the immediate situation. And consequently with actors, the anonymity is very important to me. I don’t think you should see the director’s hand working but I think what you should see and this is how I would judge a piece of direction to be good or bad, is how a uniformity in the cast, not that they’re like each other but they each have the penetration of that particular character that they are playing in equal amounts, so that you don’t say ‘oh what a pity X wasn’t so good’ or ‘wasn’t madam marvellous above the rest’. ..
it’s been said and I agree totally that 90 percent of good direction is correct casting. There was, let me take myself back to the television days. There was a pool of actors, some of them you knew personally, most of them you knew from their performances and you riffles through Spotlight or Showcast or whatever it’s called and you’d sort of refresh your memory on people when you’re casting something. I always used to envisage what, say it’s a known actor, what would that known actor make of this particular part and sometimes you’d say, they’ve never done that sort of part, that could be very interesting to see what they yield. Or alternatively they’ve always done that very well, let me therefore use them, it could be either one. As far as the new talent went, I taught at NIDA for many, many years and that was very interesting because they’d already been through a sort of crucible by the time they met me, but you could sense who was going to be receptive, who was going to be a bit showy, who was going to be a bit internal you know, you’d sense that sort of thing...
I loved using people who were new because the television casting when I first went into it was very much the ‘known’ people. People were playing safe because there were so many imponderables in the new medium everybody, including the directors I’m sure, wanted to make it as good as possible. You didn’t take any risks, so you cast ‘known’ actors....
I remember once talking to one of the Melbourne directors about drama and I said ‘who’s in the July play’ and they said ‘oh the Melbourne 11’ and I thought ‘oh yes, I know exactly what you mean’ So one liked to break that nexus but to do it with some confidence that the person you’re going to pop in at the deep end is going to deliver and that was always a wee bit of a risk. I don’t think, touch wood, that I ever actually made a tremendous boo boo in casting...
Being in television right at the inception, I watched it avidly, it was very important to see what everyone was doing. Especially watched overseas programmes which were a source of great, what’s the word, I don’t know, but watching the local ones you could say ‘oh there will be mistakes, I’ll forgive those because I’m watching friend’s productions ........... (unclear)’. But the English ones you expected perfection and you sometimes got it and sometimes didn’t but what you didn’t get usually was sloppy or childish or not understood. Usually they were very well understood and rendered well.
GS What about American productions?
AB Didn’t see an awful lot.
On Hugh Hunt
Hugh was your English, pink cheeked gentleman who got the job to come out here but then really didn’t like Australia and we were all larrikins and ruffians and he missed desperately the velvet touch of the West End or not that he was mainly West End, he was mainly University theatres and Bristol and Old Vic I think he associated with. He got embarrassed at Australian energy almost. We offended him somehow and I’m sure his good lady wife whom I never met or perhaps just met, missed England like mad... Hugh didn’t arrive into a land of top actors. If you were top actors you’d already gone to England and become a top actor in England. You know the Peter Finches and people like that and he was confronted with this bevy of very talented actors but mostly of an extrovert nature and I would say a ‘roughish’ quality and I don’t mean that in a derogatory way but raw energy which is something that Australian actors seem good at.
On Australian Theatre at the time prior to the Trust:
there was no classical theatre. There was no question of doing period plays or indeed contemporary oddities, all of which would be very important. But for those, you would have to turn to people like the Independent Theatre in Sydney and the Melbourne Theatre Company when it was still the Union Theatre Repertory Company and you would get a short run of 4 or 6 weeks or something quite important. It was wonderful to be able to see them but you didn’t go to the commercial theatres for those.
On the ABC
The trouble is the transience of the television as you know, it’s sort of there tonight and gone tomorrow, not even film. Film can be ................ (unclear) and seen again and again. Lola remains because it’s on record and because people remember seeing it. The television , most people don’t remember it... Soon after I joined the ABC I was having a drink one day and the end of the day and in the pub was a small black and white television, as they were, with Kindergarten Playtime it being about 5 or 5.30 p.m. and the lady sitting near to it called the barman over and said ‘could you change the television for us’. And the guy said ‘yes, which channel would you like’. She said ‘oh it doesn’t matter 7 or 9’. In other words, so long as it’s not the ABC and you had to fight that a bit. But luckily the people in the biz that I liked and got on with were of course, being serious performers, given to watching the ABC. Also they knew that they would do drama on the ABC whereas they wouldn’t do drama on the commercials yet. It so happened they did of course later. So there was certain sympathy and I grew to love a whole lot of new people whom I’d admired from afar for so long.
On early plays
GS What was your awareness of what kind of drama ABC was expected to present at this stage in television?
AB No briefing, no special dispensations about that, it was a case of good plays or plays that leant themselves to television. There was of course in the early days before I joined the ABC, the simple one act, one set, small cast play and that was fine, it was the way directors were running.
GS And how much was Australian content expected to play a part.
AB Oh it hadn’t arisen as a concept then.
GS So good plays basically meant imported plays.
AB Well it meant good plays of any sort... It was never raised as a policy at that time although of course we all kept looking for the Australian play that might be a good idea.
GS Did you have any idea of audience response.
AB Yes, we got ratings, I think they were always tiny, nobody much watched the ABC but a certain audience like the ABC radio audience were a bit specialised and they would watch ABC and the plays were critted (sp?) in the daily papers, you know they were given status. ..
The instinct of course with television being such a documentary look was that people went for naturalistic plays and very wisely. They worked very well. There’s a joke somewhere in an English paper of a mother calling I think her son or her husband I forget which, saying ‘come on in Henry, it’s Ibsen’. That would be right, they would have done a lot of Ibsen, one set small cast.
GS How often could you choose what plays you produced?
AB Most of the time I must say. They had certain plays on which they had rights but it was more inclined that you would say ‘I’ve got a date in September that I must do a play’. I’d find one and suggest it and they would secure the rights in advance. One or twice I was fed ‘thou shalt’ and wasn’t wildly happy about it and usually when they sort of shot me a play like that, it wasn’t a play I was interested in.
GS Could we explore the notion of the ABC as an elite audience further.
AB Well just that it did plays for one thing which for a long time the commercials didn’t. It imported a lot of BBC programmes. It did opera. It was an audience that was not happy or not totally happy with what the commercials were offering. There were quite distinct demographics for each of the channels and 2 was always slightly more affluent, quite a lot more affluent. For instance, we did our News at 7 p.m. and all the other did theirs at 6 p.m. Why? Because you come home at have your ‘tea’ at 6. You might conceivably come home and have ‘dinner’ at 8 and so our News went at 7. I mean this is just a characteristic of it. That is not to be snobbish but somebody needed to do something for that audience who would have been your theatre audience, your opera audience, your symphony concert audience, all of which were catered for by the ABC. Also popular stuff of course. We did variety and we did kid’s shows but it was all geared to a much more conservative taste.
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