AUTOGEDDON

Since the motorcar was invented approximately seventeen million people have been killed by it. Green areas continue to be pulled up to make room for roads, continuous daily traffic jams are ripping open the irreparable hole in the ozone layer, children are suffering from higher rates of cancer (directly related to increases in exhaust pollution) and motorcars are rolling off production lines like there is no tomorrow (excuse the pun).

Daft, drug taking, whale saving, long haired, good for nothing, cycling layabouts (of which I am one) have, for decades, been trying to entice drivers out of their cars and onto their bikes. They have tried to tell them about the massive unnecessary destruction they are taking part in but that doesn’t work. They have also tried to tell them about the feeling of fitness and well-being and the ease with which one can remain slim from regular cycling but that doesn’t work either. No sirree bob, it seems that no words of logic are loud enough to penetrate the thickness of a car window and the volume of a car stereo. Anyway if I haven’t lost you already I’d better tell you about the play!

Anti car bias aside, it is a very good and imaginative performance. The performance is based on the poem 'Autogeddon' by Heathcote Williams which is a witty and cynical look at the death, destruction, disease and pollution that accompanies mankind's obsession with the automobile. The play is not so much a 'play' in the traditional sense of the word, more an assemblage of acts. There is no plot as such. The actors are trying to bring to life the images in the poem, which, in a nutshell is about what this automobile obsessed planet would look like to a totally naive and objective viewer.

Although the subject of the play is a very serious one there is plenty of humour throughout. It is done on a small budget and relies on energy, imagination, and the strength of the performances rather than a lot of expensive gimmickry. What few props they have are used in an imaginative way and it is easy for the viewer to forget that they are sitting in a cold church hall (so cold, in fact, that even the Abominable Snowman would have had to put on an extra jumper!). By the time this article comes out the performance will have moved outdoors from the church hall to the Newtown festival.

I spoke to director Lindzee Smith -

TU - What inspired you to do a play about car culture?
My inspiration was from the playwright, Heathcote Williams, because I had done a play of his called AC/DC which I think is one of the greatest plays ever written and another one called ‘The Local Stigmatic’. I rang him and said that I would like to do ‘The Local Stigmatic’ again and he said “forget it, go ahead and do ‘Autogeddon’ - that’s all I’m interested in at the moment.” I asked him what it was and when he told me I was fascinated.

TU - Tell me a bit about the cast.
Robert Cooney (the designer and one of the actors) has worked with me over eighteen years, Trevor Campton I found at the Coffee Lounge and after talking with him realised that he was useful and brought him in. The piece was so alluring for some people that they actually came to me and said “Can I work with you?”. They weren’t knocking the door down or anything but there were five or six people! I don’t really cast people, I’m much more interested in personalities.

TU - Where did the funding for this play come from?
It came from the Australia Council for the Arts. I have, up til now, made my way throughout the theatrical wilderness without money from any funding bodies, a few thousand here - a few thousand there maybe, but mostly it’s been the gate. So this was actually the first grant I’ve received and it was a great relief as we were able to put the show together properly and I was able to employ up to fourteen people for two and a half months and pay them a decent salary. Originally it was going to be much more money because there was another group involved in Canberra called Splinters, but for reasons of ego this partnership broke down and we were left with much less money and therefore the concept had to be reeled in from what it had originally been. The split was 70/30 in their favour. Getting public space has also been a problem. The church hall is about the only place left, because they’ve taken away the community hall, it used to be a thriving local market like Notting Hill Gate in London where people congregated. But of course this is the way that those who assuredly know best separate us from each other. The Hub, where we’re moving the play to, is this beautiful old theatre from the vaudeville era and they’re turning it into yet another cinema complex like the Dendy. Yet there are so many artists around here who have nowhere to work. If you do get a bit of cash you’ve got to go to established places and pay two and a half to four thousand dollars a week rent.

TU - So, you reckon the venues are there but not being made accessible to the public?
Yes, they’re being sold to private developers. You ring up the council and try to find out about it and it’s just a constant fob off - “ Oh, you have to wait for the meeting in so-and-so” and then you ring up in that month and it’s “put on the agenda” for some other date. You can’t get information. The establishment divide things into ‘fringe’ and ‘mainstream’. If you’re independent of the oligopoly that runs the whole operation they want to push you out. That’s why I left the country. Trying to get critics to come and see independent work is difficult too, there is this assumption that the critic is greater than the artist. There was a recent forum with major critics from this area and they were saying that if they wrote bad things about big companies like the Sydney Theatre Company they would get their wrists slapped because the Sydney Theatre Company invest so much money in advertising, but any company which doesn’t invest in terms of advertising they can pull to pieces.

TU - Since I saw the play it has come to the end of it’s first run. You said the second run will be slightly different, in what way will it have changed?
We’re moving outside for a start which will make it more of a spectacle. Also I plan to add ‘Voices that are dying to be heard above the traffic’ which is not Heathcote’s work but statements, facts, and figures from various people - William Burroughs, W.H.Auden, Stanley Kubrick and others about the automobile and it’s effect on our culture. The performance is constantly changing to reflect the changes in Sydney as we head towards the Olympic Games. Freeways are being gouged out of places like Moore Park because the authorities are so anxious to get this infrastructure in place for when we are inundated with people for two weeks in September 2000. That land belongs to the people not the Government. It is an aim of mine that people watching the performance will spill over on to the road, that maybe, for at least half an hour people can actually relax in King St. at that main intersection and not just have to strain to hear the performance over a whirligig of cars honking their horns and fighting with each other over who’s going to go through first.

Autogeddon can be seen for free at the Newtown festival from Oct 2 - Oct 8.
For more information call (02) 9557 1466

David Cotter