Part One: An interview with Australian author, essayist & poet Kathryn Pentecost
Janice: Kathryn, we seem to have known each other for ages; yet I (until recently) knew so little of your varied accomplishments in theatre and particularly about the New Theatre.
Kathryn: Janice, it’s been a while since I was immersed in New Theatre. I spent over a decade there mostly in the 1980s during which time I designed sets, created scenic art and posters, wrote short skits, did stage management, and occasionally, acted.
More recently, I’ve been writing an essay about New Theatre for a non-fiction book I’m co-authoring with Liz Hall-Downs. The essay is called ‘Reds under the bed’ and it touches also on the history of the New, not just my time there. Of course, I have recently discovered your own family connections to New Theatre through your relative Norman Slater, who’d met the famous singer Paul Robeson, via his involvement with New Theatre, Sydney. For me, working at ‘the New’ in Newtown was a formative time of my creative life, and it certainly shaped the trajectory of my future.
Janice: Are you still engaged at any level in working in the theatre?
Kathryn: I'm not currently engaged in working in theatre, though I ran a local theatre troupe here in regional South Australia from 2015 to 2020. I wrote, produced, directed, and did the staging and costumes, also the publicity. It was a richly complex and exhausting experience.
In 2015, I restaged a piece written by John Rado and myself in the 1980s called A Conversation with Harold Pinter at the Soldiers Memorial Hall in Second Valley. Rado and I had been in several Pinter short sketches in the past and were quite obsessed by the way Pinter used language.
In 2016, I wrote a short play called Songs of the Sea and produced it for the SA History Festival in an event called 'Stone Ground' at Leonards Mill in Second Valley. The locals appreciated the historical content.
I played one of the characters too. My husband Geoff Bromilow played Colonel William Light.
Our troupe made it onto Channel 7 news in a segment produced by well-known media identity Ron Kandelaars.
In the same year, I wrote a screen version and produced Songs of the Sea on digital video, which can be found on YouTube on my Bohemian Palace of Art channel.
In 2017, I adapted Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland for two separate shows for Festival Fleurieu - a children's version at Leonards Mill (A Mad Tea Party), and an adult version at Wirrina Cove Resort (Alice's Grand Ball). Our troupe also appeared at the festival's opening event.
I also produced several other events including two bushfire fundraiser variety shows! You could say five years was long enough because the most challenging aspect of theatre is the human interaction in terms of getting people to rehearsals and so on.
Janice: Kathryn, There's so much to cover of your varied talents. I'd like to continue this on my next blog. I really appreciate you allowing me to begin a dialogue with you. Best wishes to you and all of our readers for 2024.
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