Ben Apfelbaum

JOAN DIDION’S ‘THE WHITE ALBUM’@ THE ROSLYN PACKER THEATRE

It seems to be the brief of the Sydney Festival to stage experimental and challenging theatre pieces. This production is no exception.

Written in 1979 as an essay, director Lars Jan pursued Joan Didion for a number of years, to gain her permission to recreate her essay as a theatrical performance but she initially resisted.

Lars Jan then contacted Didion through her nephew, acclaimed film director Griffin Dunne and with Dunne’s help Jan received Didion’s endorsement to proceed, provided her essay is performed in full. 

Didion was a reporter who wrote in a style called THE NEW JOURNALISM. She, like fellow authors  Truman Capote, Norman Mailer, Tom Wolfe and others injected their personalities, subjective views, sometimes using fictional conventions, whilst maintaining they were accurately reporting the facts that they had objectively observed. Many other journalists attacked new journalists because of its paradoxical mix of  subjectivity and objectivity.

Didion’s ‘White Album’ covers her experiences in 1968, sometimes called the ‘Summer of Love and in a time full of hope shot through with a utopian fervour 

However, in that year, Didion had suffered a nervous breakdown and the medications she took flattened out her emotions and left her with an inability to be touched by the events that she was witnessing.Jan injects the theatricality of the piece whereby the words are acted out by a troupe of performers in what appears to be a multi window paned classroom.

Jan’s real life partner Mia Barron does a brilliant job as the narrator channeling Didion’s morose and fractured observations. These include being present at a Jim Morrison and the Doors recording session, witnessing a San Francisco tech sit- in protesting the lack of ethnic diversity in their and other tertiary institutions, the trial of police who murdered black activist Huey Newton, her involvement with the Black Panthers movement whose principal wordsmith was the writer Eldridge Cleaver, her diagnosis that she was possibly suffering from the early stages of multiple sclerosis, and her involvement with one of Charles Manson’s girlfriends. Many felt that the Sharon Tate murders by Manson and his followers killed the hopes of the ‘Summer Of Love’.For Didion however it ended three years later when she moved from its California epicentre in 1971.

My problem with this piece was that because it was delivered mimicking Didion’s morose and emotionally dead monotone that it became difficult to care about what she was saying. If Didion was unaffected with what she was witnessing, so was I. As one member of the audience put it in a question and answer discussion that followed the performance, and who had read Didion’s essay, it sounded like the whingeing of a privileged upper middle class sad woman. There was muffled applause at this observation. 

In fact, nearly half the audience left  at 9pm before the Q and A session. The Q and A session was an ill conceived attempt at breaking down the fourth wall as questions from the audience were not amplified and were lost in the muffled acoustics of the Roslyn Packer Theatre. Furthermore the concept of baby boomers asking questions of twenty somethings about the 1960’s were mainly answered with a shrug of the shoulders.

The direction by Lars Jan had Mia Barron almost motionless on different parts of the stage and in and on the set as the Didion essay passed through her lips. 

The major choreographic piece by Stephanie Zaletel which preceded the narration consisted of the troupe putting on invisible headphones and stepping back and forth in response to questions which required the answer yes or no. 

The sound and music by Jonathon Snipes mainly consisted of mood music which matched the dour proceedings on stage. However, there were two beautifully performed songs, one penned by the Doors, the other by Jimmy Webb, had me yearning to hear more exuberant music that was produced in 1968.

Unfortunately JOAN DIDION’S ‘THE WHITE ALBUM’ bleached out humour, nuance and emotional impact. The show, part of this year’s Sydney Festival, played the Roslyn Packer Theatre between the 8th and 12th January, 2020

 

 

 

 

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.