The Disappearance of An Australian Auteur

To train as a teacher of Alexander’s Discovery, I first needed to end my dream of being an Australian film director. 

I was 19 at the time and my timing was perfect.

The Australian Film Renaissance was underway, with a new cabal of cinema auteurs about to invade Hollywood. My contemporaries were Bruce Beresford, Phil Noyce, Peter Weir, George Miller, Geoffrey Wright and Gillian Armstrong.

Give my firm belief that the great directors know how to elicit great performances, I’d decided to start my artistic training directing actors in the theatre. I’d already been a professional actor of theatre and television since I was 17 – I understood how vital directors are to actors.

At the time, a sure route for success was being accepted into N.I.D.A. - Sydney’s famous school of performing arts. This was the school where the guy who came and lectured you on how to produce a big production was the guy who ran all the big shows in Sydney. And the gal who came to explain how casting agents work was the most prominent casting agent in Australia.

N.I.D.A. was the inside path for young artists in a hurry. 

But N.I.D.A. was no pushover. 

900+ applicants from around Australia were vying for 23 spots in it’s 3-year Technical Production Course. I presented a model set and breakdown for Ray Lawyer’s classic Australian play “Summer of the Seventeenth Doll.” The Course Director later told me it was the best entry they got.

I was accepted, my plan was looking good…

Two months later, I left.

I left because of what my family liked to nickname “Jerry’s God trip”.

The quick story is that a voice appeared in my heart to declare that Alexander’s Discovery was all about fear and love; it was my job in this life to spread it’s fame as far and wide as best I could. 

(What?!)

I still rank Alexander’s Discovery on a par with those of Einstein and Darwin in it’s potential impact on humanity – even now, over a century after it first appeared in Melbourne in 1894. It saddens me that – for even some of my peers - I sound like a fanatic. To them I say: “You still don’t get it, do you?”

I gave up so much for this bloody Discovery!

Yes, Alexander’s Discovery is about fear and love – and how I came to see that and change the course of my life is where my story is headed next…