What if your conscience said one thing and the law said another?

For Brisbane Festival 2009, The Actors’ Gang presents its new production The Trial of the Catonsville Nine fresh from its premier season in Los Angeles in February this year. On the play’s opening night, Gore Vidal took to the stage, denouncing today’s wars before the curtain rose.

This acclaimed script written by poet priest Daniel Berrigan brings to life the dramatic 1968 trial of two Catholic priests and seven fellow Catholic activists who committed an act of civil disobedience, burning hundreds of draft files they had seized with homemade napalm, to protest the War in Vietnam.  The subsequent trial and publicity galvanized the anti-war movement.  While condemned as criminals in a court of law, they were hailed as patriots in the streets.

The Actors’ Gang has become one of Los Angeles’ most enduring and venerated theatre ensembles.  Founded in 1981 by a group of renegade artists including Tim Robbins, who returned in 2001 as its Artistic Director, the Gang’s mission is to create bold, thought-provoking and original theatre that remains accessible to a wide audience.

I entered the Brisbane Powerhouse full of anticipation as to what lay ahead of me for The Trial of the Catonsville Nine.  A giant American flag is draped over this white sheet, reminds me of what would lay over a body, and a courtroom scene is laid bare in front of us.

The production started with a symbolic dance of the nine burning the drafts and then we meet the characters.  It is very interesting for me because before the preview night, I had a chat with someone who stayed with one of the Catonsville Nine and was witness to the politics surrounding America by then.

Having only one main scene, the courtroom, and the nine actors (plus one judge) representing not only their characters but also the characters of other people in the courtroom the production could have easily swayed to attention spans waning but this hasn’t been the case perhaps 80% of the time for me.  I have been taken to places beyond the courtroom and a mirror held up in front of me as to what the characters went through.

At the end, the gem was in how I reacted to this film on a moral level, it has made me ask questions about what I would have done if I was in one of their shoes.  And then the big elephant in this room is the question of religion – as much as I sympathise with these characters, religion cannot influence the trials and while the judge in the play admitted to be in their wavelenght, she still had to act on behalf of the justice system.

It’s a complicated issue and hence, the type of show that I like.

Giants Among Us, an interactive multimedia installation that you would have seen throughout the Brisbane CBD in the last few days of Brisbane Festival, is a wonderful piece of native digital work that has the ability to connect those between generations. It also reminds us of our childhoods.

‘The child shall have the right to freedom of expression’
Article 13, United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child

Towering 10 metres high on the side of a building, a child peers from his vast perch. As he gazes out at passers by, he plays, paces, and asks the question; do you notice me now?

Projected live by multidisciplinary artist Thom Browning, this public light and sound installation takes Brisbane’s most inaccessible surfaces and transforms them into a multi-story playground, illuminated by epic images of our city’s smallest citizens.

As I sat there listening to what the 11 children were talking about on how they want Brisbane to be, I was reminded of my own childhood – of what my aspirations, inspirations are when I lived in Brisbane for a short while as a child before my family made the move to quieter Toowoomba.

What can we take away? I think that in future developments of the city, (ie Creative Industries and the City), it is very easy for us to think from a ‘grown-up’ adult perspective.  Let us think about the generations younger than us and yes, I do feel a bit old saying this seeing as I am in my early 20’s still but you are never too old or too young to think about the little ones.