More Drama at STHS (Paul Feldman)

Somewhere amongst the sheafs of fading papers generated by his proposal for a National Theatre, LF Giblin mentions attending two amazingly good productions by secondary school students.

In a similar way, the audience of Brian Hodge's 1966 STHS production of The One Day of the Year were stunned by how good it was.

Seymour's play is powerful because it deals with the dominant realities of mid-twentieth century Australia . The Sixties was the last decade that Australians died in large numbers in an overseas war, and the last decade that parents came from a generation fifty years older than their children.

The play was so well-cast it was almost eerie. David Wilson as the blue-collar father seemed to draw on the anger inside himself, and once in character, spoke the lines as though they were his own. The actors playing his wife and his army mate were in different ways extraordinarily effective. Within minutes you had forgotten they were adolescent boys because they had taken on the reality of the people they were portraying. Their speech, movement and gestures conveyed whole life histories. By contrast, Garry Saunders who played the rebellious uni student was in real life almost absurdly self-controlled, and seemed awkward and ill-at-ease in the part. But given his role in the play, this tension actually worked to his advantage.

When I think about it, the play - and this production in particular - exemplified the benefits of drama identified by Giblin
(whose understanding of the social value of dramatic catharsis drew on a rare depth of experience and tested rationalism).

It's still one of the best things I've seen, anywhere.

The following year Hodge produced Reedy River, an Australian musical based on the shearers' strike of 1891. This lacked the character conflict and perceptiveness of Seymour's play, but was instead a rousing call to class consciousness, with lots of boisterous songs to the crashing and jingling of the lagerphone.

Like Tom Thumb, it was remarkable for bringing together a collection of students who would otherwise have had little to do with each other. These included:

* the pop star prefect, Geoff Fleming
* the even more talented Geoff McGill
* a real female
* the musicians Eric Kennedy and Jim Wilson
* the playground entertainer Paul Meller
* the clean-cut Christian Chris Appleby
* the science nerds Sugden, Gabriel, Cimbleris and Wright who did the technical production and produced a record
* Comrade Meng
* and on force majeur piano, Tillers

The strenuously painful McGill later went into ALP politics, via the Clerks Union. In a 1979 speech to a rally of 3000 revolting public servants in Canberra, McGill recited selected lyrics from The Ballad of 1891
to rousing effect. 'The squatter' was of course, that hated fascist free-marketeer, John Malcolm Fraser

Hodge and Ellis were creative, hard-working teachers. Both were moderately left-wing in their sympathies: Hodge I would guess was a compassionate Labor supporter; Ellis was a broad-minded Christian Socialist, cynical about party politics. Both showed dutiful respect for the hierarchy of command, but were privately quick to criticise it.

Hodge went on to be History Master at Sydney High School and eventually retired to Hill End. Ellis went to All Saints College Bathurst, where he had a hard time as House Master. I think he would up as Headmaster at a succession of Anglican Schools. I can't help thinking that was a waste of an excellent teacher.