Musicians and actors
Robin Laurie
…so we had to think when you're doing - there's a long history of what's called agitprop: agitational propaganda; it's ways of coming - it's a bit like advertising really, it was early advertising. It's what Extinction Rebellion do really well now. Well, they come up with images, you know - that burning pram outside Parliament House was great. So we had to come up with images that people could see and because you're part of a demonstration, and it's moving along a street, you have to come up with performance images that tell a story very quickly - that people can see in passing and get something from. So there was a lot of talk about that…
Alexandra
Forms of protest can be as varied as your imagination allows. Suffragettes in England in the early part of the 20th century made puzzles and games, created banners, and wrote songs alongside their more violent actions. People involved in the protests against the Vietnam War also used creative means to express their opposition. I’ve had the chance to speak to two women who were, or rather are, folk singers, and performed at various protests - that’s Margret RoadKnight and Phyl Lobl - as well as two women who were involved in theatre groups and used street theatre as part of their protest, Kerry Dwyer and Robin Laurie. You’ll hear their stories later in the podcast, but I actually want to start by discussing two women who have passed away. One name that crops up quite often in the archival material, especially with regard to the group Save Our Sons, is Corinne Kerby, who was born in 1926 and died in 2003. She was a high-profile tv broadcaster with the ABC, as well as a poet. She was a member of Save Our Sons, and according to a 1991 master’s thesis by Pauline Armstrong, her television career suffered because of her high profile involvement with them. She was often a speaker at SOS events. Another name that frequently occurs in this context is Glen Tomasetti. By the time of the Vietnam War she already had a career as a folk singer, starting in the late 1950s. She was involved with Save Our Sons from pretty early on, and I have a whole episode about that group. Tomasetti used her music to make a point, and if you’ve listened to any other episodes then you’ve already heard some of perhaps her most famous song, The Ballad of Bill White, as the stings between sections in each episode. Along with the Ballad of Bill White, Tomasetti wrote one other song that’s specifically referencing the Vietnam War, and that’s “The Army’s Appeal to Mothers.” It is short and sharp and tells you exactly what Tomasetti thought of the situation.
My thanks to Sarah Tomasetti, Glen’s literary executor, for allowing me to use her mother’s work here. Because it’s a bit longer, I’ll leave The Ballad of Bill White to the end of the episode - it’s definitely worth the wait to hear it.
Tomasetti performed at numerous events aimed at raising awareness about the Vietnam War and national service. For example, in November or December 1965 - I’ve found two different dates - the Vietnam Day Committee organised a Songs of Peace and Love concert, put on at the Myer Music Bowl - one of Melbourne’s great outdoor venues. It’s estimated that 10,000 people attended, and according to a historian of this period, Malcolm J Turnbull, it was “the first major response of the folk scene” to the issues (https://www.warrenfahey.com.au/the-great-folk-revival5/), and included the federal Labor politician and outspoken anti-war leader, Dr Jim Cairns, as a speaker. As well as Glen Tomasetti, Phyl Vinnicombe - now Phyl Lobl - also performed, and you’ll hear from her in just a bit, as did Lynne St John, now Lynne Lumsden, and Tina Lawton. Tomasetti also apparently sang at much smaller events, such as a conference for anti-war activists held in Sydney in 1971.
Glen Tomasetti was also involved in organising concerts, such as the Port Phillip District Folk Music Festival, now the National Folk Festival, for which she was on the founding committee. Phyl Lobl remembers that
“And then you had the National Folk Festival in 1967, which is the first one with Glen and four other people were key to organising. And there were lots of concerts leading to that. And always in those concerts, there would be songs about the Vietnam War, anti conscription, and Aboriginal situations.”
Along with her own singing, Tomasetti was important to upcoming singers, like Margret RoadKnight, who remembers her like this:
“ it was really through the folk music scene that I stumbled upon these other ideas and didn't didn't mind the people proselytizing, you know, that sort of thing. No - didn't come through that came, in my sort of anti war, peace, peacenik stances were imbibed thanks to the folk music scene and people like Glen Tomasetti you know.”
As a final note on Tomasetti, she also took a leaf from some British agitators for women’s suffrage by refusing to pay some of her tax: one sixth, in fact, of her income tax, a proportion that she believed was roughly what the Commonwealth would spend on war and preparation for war. Now, she was someone who could do so because her income was from concerts and royalties and so on, rather than a fortnightly wage. I think she also knew that this would get her in trouble and therefore also the opportunity to state her case in public. And in November 1967 that’s what happened, when she appeared in front of the District Court. In an article in The Age in February 1968, she mentioned that her bank had been ordered to pay the $40 from her account, or face a $100 fine (14 Feb 1968, p13).
Phyl Lobl was born in 1937, and was already active in the peace scene by the time the Vietnam War started in 1965, when she was 28 years old. She recalls an early experience as follows:
“Then another big thing I took part in, or seemed big to me, was a walk with the peace movement - because there was an active peace movement. And it was left wing, of course, and it was a walk from Frankston to the city and they did it every year. You'd get the train to Frankston and you'd walk back halfway, then you'd get off the train because it was nighttime by then, you'd come back the next day, and get on the train again and get to the city and then there'd be a big concert and kind of barbecue kinda thing at night. And it was two days of walking and singing and all of that. So there was that: so there was Myer Music Bowl, moratorium, the National Folk Festival, walk from Frankston to the city. And there were numerous small fundraisers and talks by activists and people were very keyed up, especially conscription.”
I’ve also found reference to Phyl singing at at least one event organised by the Youth Campaign Against Conscription, in 1966. Phil has given me permission to include one of her songs here, called Seasons of War.
Born in 1943, Margret RoadKnight played at, in her words, pretty much any event she was asked to, including the May 1970 Moratorium when she was 27. This is what Margret had to say about that experience:
Margret RoadKnight
“You look back and think, should have stamped my foot occasionally and said production values should be up a bit higher than that. I look at the classic photo of me on the back of a truck in Bourke Street, I think - and the whole of Bourke Street is locked down with half a million...
Alexandra
That's the first moratorium I think?
Margret RoadKnight
Yeah the moratorium, yeah. And I mean, there's a few photos of that, and one of them you can see Jim Cairns behind me on the truck. But if you look closely, you know, there's one microphone. I've got an acoustic, we didn't do plug-in guitars back then. And I have an acoustic guitar and one microphone. And well, for start, you need a minimum of two, outdoors with you know, rather large gathering on the back of a truck. However, that seems to work. That was part of the tapestry that obviously did the trick.”
Other performers were also involved at the moratorium and other events, including Wendy Saddington. I can’t find much information about her, except that she apparently told a teen music magazine called Go-Set that the Vietnam War “stinks” (Dig” Australian Rock and Pop Music), and that she performed on the 10th of May 1970 along with Glen Tomasetti and many others (20 April 1970, SOS newsletter, Alvie Booth, University of Melbourne Archives).
As established performers, Phyl and Margret were both expressly invited to sing at various events. Robin Laurie and Kerry Dwyer had a different experience, by taking part in street theatre during various protest marches, and particularly the moratorium.
Robin Laurie
“…so we had to think when you're doing - there's a long history of what's called agitprop: agitational propaganda; it's ways of coming - it's a bit like advertising really, it was early advertising. It's what Extinction Rebellion do really well now. Well, they come up with images, you know - that burning pram outside Parliament House was great. So we had to come up with images that people could see and because you're part of a demonstration, and it's moving along a street, you have to come up with performance images that tell a story very quickly - that people can see in passing and get something from. So there was a lot of talk about that…
“But our street theatre was, we wore the black pajamas and conical hats that the peasants were wearing, and also that some of the NLF wore too, and that was sort of - those - that was a part of our, the images we used. We wrote songs, and we made like versions of tableaux; there was a Russian director called Meyerhold, who in the 20s, round about the time of the Russian Revolution, had come up with this idea about biomechanics that involved very detailed set of images and tableaux and structures. And so we used some of his ideas. And we were familiar with the history of, I guess, cultural shifts, and shifts that have happened in times of great social transformation. Like, you know, modernist art round about the First World War and the changes in cinema in the 30s, Fritz Lang, and Bertolt Brecht and people like that, all of those sorts of things. So - and the surrealists, that interest in the unconscious and the irrational, so we understood some of the history that then informed at an intuitive level, I think, some of what we created to perform in the street. But there's - a remarkable thing, I mean, it must be like what big bands feel, you know: we would perform - there was a city square on the corner of Collins, and Swanston Street. And we performed there a few times. And sometimes there was sort of 10,000 people squashed around that little area. And the energy that as performers you got from the crowd was amazing and incredibly exciting, really. So we wanted to support the liberation struggle, the Vietnamese, and we wanted to do it with the skills that we had, which were creative skills, visual skills.”
Kerry Dwyer
“there were people who, whose number came up and they didn't want to go and they, you know, like conscientious objectors were - like John Zarb, for example, who was a student, he was, he was in prison. So when we did our street theatre for the big moratorium march in 1970 we had a whole set - we had a scene, a little scene, that - scenario that we would do this kind of weaving in amongst the crowd in our costumes that - and then stop and then do a, a Free Zarb image with him imprisoned, you know, back - front and behind with people making a cage you know, so things like that. … So we, we would snake through the crowd, and then we would stop and create a space. So the people around us could stop on the march and watch this scenario, like the Free Zarb one, for example. And then - another one was the flying wedge, which was about, you know, the way that the police would attack us. So we'd have this triangular shape, and we sort of moved through the crowd toward - you know….
Alexandra
And at the time, did you get a good response, or - ?
Kerry Dwyer
Yeah. Oh, well, there were some people just walking on but we did basically get a good result. We also had a guy, a big tall guy who had a big bass drum and he was sort of "Boom!", you know? So we had a thing, but we - we did, we spread out through the long, through the length of the march. So we didn't, we didn't always hear that, that beat. But that was sort of - that galvanised us at the top, we were up at the top of Spring Street.
Alexandra
Was the 1970 moratorium kind of one of your really big moments of street theatre? Had you been doing stuff before that as well?
Kerry Dwyer
We had but not to the same extent; that was the big one because we, the La Mama group, which was - which became this I don't know which was first, I think we already were the Australian Performing Group. We joined up with Tribe, which was a more, more - even more alternative group. And we did, we trained in the park opposite where we lived in Carlton Street, in acrobatics - we were very fit, you know, we'd trained up for it. And we created these images. And we, as a group, you know, there was quite a big group of us, and we created a whole stack of images. And yeah, I don't know, what else - how to describe it. It was - that was the biggest one. Yeah.
Alexandra
And had you been invited to do that? Or did you hear about the moratorium and say, we need to perform?
Kerry Dwyer
Oh we must have heard about it. We had connections, we had connections to people in that - on the left, and we must have heard about it. In fact, we would have heard about it. Yeah. And we decided to do it. It was our initiative, we weren't asked to do it. We decided we would do it. Yeah.
I asked Robin and Kerry about the people who were involved with them in their dramatics. Here’s Robin:
Alexandra
You talk about the group that you were in, and and acting with: what sort of people were in that group, how many people might be in one of those?
Robin Laurie
At La Mama there could have been anything up to 20? 20, 25. Anything from 10 to 20, really. And then once we moved to the Pram Factory around the corner, a similar number really, but the Pram Factory itself, there was about 50 people involved in that. But not all of them would have gone on all the demos or been in the street theatre. But because of it was a very open - anybody could come along really - at the Pram Factory, there were these things called supper shows that happened and anybody could come along and do things. And so when we were rehearsing, to do street theatre, we might rehearse in a park. And I don't know how word got around then because we didn't have mobile phones. But someone'd ring someone up and tell someone and someone'd meet someone in the street and someone'd have a cup of tea with someone. And people would just turn up. So there was you know, sometimes there was a mix of people there too. But yeah, would have been anything from 10 to 20, possibly up to 30, but mainly in that 10 to 20 range. So quite striking. And you know, we needed to make our own costumes and things, find stuff in op shops or make things, so they were costumed, and there was makeup and things like that.
Alexandra
Both men and women involved?
Robin Laurie
Yes, yes, men and women and yeah, music, instruments. Chanting.
Alexandra
In your - in the APG, and in the group who were at the moratorium, were there lots of other women involved as well? Like, did it feel like there was kind of gender balance at that time?
Kerry Dwyer
Oh yes. Yeah, definitely. There was - I can't remember exactly who was in it. But I do remember - in fact, there might have even been more women than men. Because there were also, there were women on the out, on the sides who were sort of making the cost - we made, had these black pajamas that a couple of the women sewed for us who weren't necessarily in the you know, there was a group that - I would say overall, there were more women than men involved in it. But I can't really, you know, I can't say that for sure. Because I haven't got the numbers. I haven't got the names, but yeah, pretty, pretty sure that the women at least equal probably more, you know.
I’ve also found reference to a play called “Face of an Enemy”, written by Pauline Mitchell, which was produced by the New Theatre for May 9th of 1970. Mitchell was heavily involved in the Congress for International Cooperation and Disarmament and this was an anti-Vietnam play. (Executive Meeting minutes of Vietnam Moratorium Campaign, 20 April 1970, from Vietnam Moratorium Campaign; Vietnam in general 2012.0286 Unit 57, 2012.0286.0036 1, 2, 3, Melbourne University archives).
Finally, I asked all of these women why they thought their creative responses were important.
Margret RoadKnight
I mean, the the music part of it was rather necessary, you can't say vital, but obviously, it was the part of the tapestry of protest. …
I don't look back and say, Oh, we were young and foolish. No, no, we weren't that foolish. It's almost the done thing to look back and say, Oh, yeah, well, silly me when I was young. No: it was the exact opposite for me, I was branching out and discovering things and people and issues and what have you, because I never went to university, so I even blame the folk music scene for being my university, because really through the songs, and the scene was, well, that's how I got to study, study in quotes there politics and poetry and parody and, and history and geography and whatever, through the scene and the songs.
Alexandra
And I guess the question then is why - rather than just turning up and walking with everyone, why add the theatre element?
Kerry Dwyer
Why not? Because it created an image - because, you know, it creates something that will live in people's minds, it's an - it's an image, that's much, that's more potent, because it's more focused and more concentrated, and the message is very clear. And it's not just, you know, "Freedom, duh duh duh", and not just "Peace, freedom," all that sort of stuff. It's really, it's - it sort of draws the crowd in.”
Robyn Laurie
Sometimes it felt a bit like, you know, we were the - we weren't the serious part of things. We thought we were just as important and just as, you know, interesting and useful as anything else. But there were some people who were very - yeah, just had different ideas about how to connect with people, communicate - that sometimes we would be specifically invited in to do a five minute piece or something like that. So it's like, now when there's a demo, sometimes some - a singer might get up or a band might be asked to perform. So it was like that.
Alexandra
What do you think, or what were you adding, aside from the quote unquote, just entertainment aspect?
Robin Laurie
I think things operate at many different levels. I think words are one. But sometimes you can - there's something else going on, as well as the words, and you respond, you can see that or hear that, and you respond in a different way. And you might not have - you might not put all that together at the time. But I think sometimes images stay in your head, or stay in your heart or body or wherever that - an image resides. Sometimes an image can affect you in a way that - and it's different for different people, and it depends if you can find a really powerful image of some kind - but I think they can; and it's like music and dance and circus - I was a part of circus after that - there's a physical interaction between people at - a kineasthetic response. And it happens because all your senses are involved, I think. And so it's not just an intellectual response. I think that's what I'm trying to say. You need something that can give you courage to contemplate and confront things that are quite difficult in life I think. Life can be quite hard, in many ways. So I think - I think those things that operate at that sort of level can touch something deeper inside, maybe - or that's the hope. Doesn't happen that often. But it can, it can happen.”