Submitted by ACT Contributing Editor, Adele Chynoweth

It’s Festival time again in the ACT, apparently. You’ll have to excuse the gilt or more aptly “guilt” framing of performance in this neck of the woods. Sadly, Chief Minister Jon Stanhope cannot seem to understand performance apart from its function of bread and circuses for the masses.

We’ve just had the National Multicultural Festival, which is a pseudonym for a satays-precariously-poised-on-paper-plates-in-Civic’s-City-Walk. It seems that local government support for theatre is more easily justified if it’s in your face, on the streets and saccharine for the mob – just like public art, only embodied. So a month later, the ACT Government is keen to rekindle the fashionable flame even though this festival agenda is unclear.

Thankfully Stanhope’s addiction to public spectacle does not deter Canberra Youth Theatre’s participation.

Canberra Youth Theatre and Little Dove Theatre Art have teamed up to present Battlefield opening on the 11th March in C-Block Theatre, Gorman House, Ainslie. Battlefield is a Butoh-inspired performance that explores the cross-generational desire to reach for perfection through conformity.

Butoh, like Theatre of the Absurd was originally located on the cusp of modernism and its postmodern successor. While the post-war 1940s seemed, for some, to facilitate a seemingly stable formula comprised of marriage, breeding and suburban settling, for others, the destruction of the Second World War prompted a crisis in language. How could rhetoric be trusted when it had been used as fascist rhetoric? What good was science when it no longer healed but split an atom for the purposes of devastation?

It is no surprise that butoh was pioneered in Japan, post- atomic annihilation. Butoh founder Tatsumi Hijikata created an aesthetic that epitomised the crisis of Japanese identity amidst American occupation. It is ironic, then, that a performance movement which paved the way for postmodernism relied on Western classical music for its soundtrack. So wherefore Pat-kitsch-Benatar as inspiration for Canberra Youth Theatre’s new show? Love is a Battlefield has hitherto been cast, at the turn of this century, as a warning for audiences of the satirical cabaret of Mark Trevorrow’s Bob Downe. While 80s retro-action may be the new black, Benatar ‘s music is definitely beige.

Love may be a battlefield but youth theatre, more importantly, is a launch pad. Far be it for the work of the young to be grounded in convention or cultural prescription. Battlefield will not only provide an opportunity for Canberra audiences to experience a physical art form. It will also enable us to witness the evolution of butoh from 1940s Japan to contemporary Australian youth culture.

Where: C Block Theatre, Gorman House Arts Centre, Braddon
When: Thurs 11th – Sat 13th March @ 8pm, Sun 14th March @ 6pm
Tickets: Adults $15, Concession $10, Family $40 (2+2)
Bookings: Call CYT on (02) 6248 5057