Ben Apfelbaum

CELEBRITY THEATRESPORTS @ ENMORE THEATRE

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An operatic moment from the Bank sketch.
The winning team enjoying their moment.
The winning team enjoying their moment. Production photography by Stephen Reinhardt.

Judging Celebrity Theatresports held at the Enmore Theatre last Saturday night is like trying to critique a box of Smarties. We were assaulted by a barrage of colour and humour to suit all tastes.

Improvised theatre is just that, made up on the spot but it is a competition and therefore subject to a few rules. At this performance there were 23 performers split into six teams.

A team has 3 minutes to complete their skit and it must include the subject or theme that is spontaneously  provided by either the host or a member of the audience.

The adjudicators Professor Larissa Behrendt, Pastor Ray Minniecon and Anne Wilson scored each team out of a possible five points based on technique which means a clever line is offered to the next team member and how inventively she or she accepts it. Next, teams are judged on narrative; that is if it is a rattling good yarn and finally on entertainment, meaning its comedic value.

The topics were as diverse as a divorce under water, an opera sung in a bank about a withdrawal issue and a sketch where three team members in unison, in one voice, that is all three saying exactly  the same thing to prompts from the fourth member.

Deborah Cheetham, our premiere indigenous opera singer sang beautifully and with wit in the bank number. Other highlights included Jay Laga’aia slyly incorporating playschool references and Olympic diver Matthew Mitcham cartwheeling and ‘pole vaulting’ across the stage for his team.

It was extraordinary how many children were in the audience. Cheetham, when interviewed by co-host Jon Williams, (the other co-host was Jane Simmons), discussed the benefits of improvisation  in self esteem and confidence boosting  in shy or introverted children. Proceeds from the evening went to the newly founded Indigenous Theatresports Youth Fund aimed to providing freer Theatresports shows and training to indigenous kids across the state. The entire cast and crew donated their time to this hugely entertaining evening.

A sponsor for the evening Clem’s Chickens nominated its ‘moment’ of the evening which was a sketch where the performers had to entertain us whilst reciting their lines in alphabetical order; that is each performer had to perform a line starting with the next letter in the alphabet from the previous line. This skit involved their recital at a zebra crossing. David Callan, who happened to be wearing a striped sleeve sweater, was the zebra crossing and lay prone across the stage, spontaneously all twenty three team members jumped up and walked on top of  him striking funny poses. Clem’s Chicken moment required the initial sketch to be repeated in slow motion which made the scene even funnier.

Coming in third place was the team of Matthew Mitchum, Amanda Buckley, Steve Lynch, and Dr Jioji Ravulo. Second place was taken by Jay Laga’aia, Bridie Connell, David Callan and Deborah Cheetham. The winners, despite being one team member short, were Dean Haglund, John Knowles and Jim Fishwick. The performers were ably assisted by Gep Blake who had to be very agile on the keyboard to keep up with the twists and turns of the improvisations.

The night was a great success with the Enmore Theatre being packed to capacity., I found the inventiveness of the performers and the way in which they plunged unhesitatingly ad fluently into their improvisations, remarkable.

Humour is a matter of taste and the night tickled  my palate. I laughed a lot.

Published by Ben Apfelbaum

My photography began when my father handed me the proverbial brownie box camera as a child. As cameras developed I went through Fujica and Olympus range finders graduating to my first single lens reflex camera, the Minolta SRT101, the latter being the greatest facilitator to my growth as a photographer. Digital photography has only added to this. I was a regular contributor to Camera Craft magazine (Australian Camera ) for over three years. During Australia’s Bicentennial year (1988) I made it a personal project to document the celebrations. This culminated in the creation of a book of my photos which was published in 1989. The book was called CELEBRATING AUSTRALIA and came with an accompanying calendar. My works have appeared in a number of publications including the coffee book entitled MY AUSTRALIA (1989), publisher Robertsbridge Severn. This book had a preface by the then Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke. I was a co-photographer on a book entitled SYDNEY- DISCOVER THE CITY with text written by Robert Treborland. Major Mitchell Press was the publisher. Also for two years I was the photographer for calendars celebrating Sydney’s multicultural communities. The two calendars were entitled MULTICULTURAL SYDNEY. My work appeared in a group exhibition held at Sydney’s Town Hall pertaining to the diversity of life in South America to raise money for orphanages there. I have over one hundred photos stored in the New South Wales State Library archive. I had a solo exhibition held in 2007 entitled Ben’s Lens at the Sydney Jewish Museum which celebrated the vibrancy of the Sydney Jewish community. Some of these photos are on the Museum’s permanent display. I have exhibited internationally firstly at the Spruill Gallery in Atlanta Georgia, united states, and in an exhibition entitled Kosher and Co at the Jewish Museum in Berlin. Currently I am a regular contributor to J-Wire and this esteemed publication.