Today we hear from SM favourite Ash, and Eugyeene and Cathy.
Ash Flanders
Theatrical annoyance
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| Ash Flanders. Photo by Pia Johnson, defaced by FaceApp |
Favourite moments of 2019.
I've been in hiding most of the year due to an ongoing legal skirmish with Anthony Callea's people (those people have no sense of humour) but the first thing that jumped to mind was watching Ellen Burstyn go rogue in 33 Variations, directed by Gary Abrahams.
Ok, let me take you there. Ellen has just noticed her daughter's (Lisa McCune) skirt is unzipping itself onstage and calls her over – by her character name, obvs – and says something like, "Your skirt, darling," and then the Comedy Theatre is SILENT as she wrangles the zip back into place. Ellen knows we'll wait – and we do. Lisa's a total pro, casually moving her hair out of the way, waiting calmly as if this is something they've done a thousand times in rehearsal, something deliberately placed to suggest something about the mother-daughter relationship. But then Ellen, this Broadway ICON, struggles for a second to remember what she was meant to be talking about. So Lisa asks her a leading question, in character of course, and suddenly Ellen's back on track again. It was a very small thing – 15 seconds tops – and besides the sheer gay drama of it all (OMG, first she had to deal with Regan MacNeil and now THIS?!). I loved seeing the solidarity between the performers and the way both of these people were taking care of each other. Actors being kind to other actors is my new favourite thing; I'll have to try it sometime.
And in the opposite camp I of course loved watching the entirely solo Zahra Newman (certainly not helped by those clumsy stage managers dropping water bottles carelessly every night) skillfully create the nightmare we call home in DG's Wake In Fright. The performance was so considered and arch and nasty and perfect. Of course it's boring for me to like Declan's work – especially because everyone does and I'm a contrary piece of shit – but that guy really does make stuff I enjoy...for now.
But, all in all, this was a quiet year for me and theatre. I loved what I saw but I didn't see nearly enough. I loved doing The Temple with some of my all time favourite performers and my new favourite Irish theatre company, Pan Pan. I also had a blast teaching some performance writing skills to students back at my old uni – and watching them take their own work onto the stage almost melted my heart.
Oh, I also saw a stunning piece of live art where my niece married Christ out in Keysborough; I think the work was called Layla's Confirmation.
Looking forward to in 2020.
I feel like everyone I know is even busier next year and I'm thrilled about it. Stoked for the Malthouse season, especially Stephen Nicolazzo directing Loaded, my one true love Paul Capsis in Go To Hell and the verbatim show Is This A Room has me really excited. I'm also hoping to somehow see Anthem and The Rabble's Unwoman in 2020 (PLEASE LET THESE HAPPEN AGAIN*) as life got in the way this year. Side note: go listen to Emma Valente's story in Maeve Marsden's Queerstories podcast (not stage related, but damn it's good). Selfishly I'm really looking forward to presenting a bunch of new things that I've been spending this year writing.
SM: I too love Emma's Queerstory. Queerstories is one of my favourite car podcasts. But this is about Ash. I totally dug The Temple, especially when people in the audience had no idea what was going on and tried to find an easy story. But my moment with Ash was convincing him that he had enjoyed some theatre this year.
*Anthem is at Perth and Sydney festivals. Why The Rabble are not at every international festivsal is beyond my understanding.
Eugyeene Teh
Theatre maker and designer
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| Eugyeene Teh. Photo by Antoine Debrill |
Favourite moments of 2019.
The Rabble’s Unwoman: timely, meditative and important work that needs to be experienced by everyone. Emma Valente and Kate Davis’s confidently composed images were searing. Yumi Umiumare’s solo performance of suffering in part 3 was a hard watch, but visceral and sensational, and, though wordless, speaks volumes and for me, was the moment (albeit 45 minutes worth of a moment) of 2019.
Jo Lloyd’s Overture for busting the male-dominated lens that has established our stage culture, particularly in the world of dance. It blatantly mocks the male gaze and belittles their conventions in a lighthearted, unrestricted reframing and celebration of women’s bodies.
Zoey Dawson’s Australian Realness at Malthouse. Having worked on her deliciously surreal plays before, I was looking forward to this one and it still managed to surprise and unhinge me, and really made me think about perceptions of reality.
Emma Hall’s World Problems: a beautifully crafted and gentle reflection on who we are among a generational existential crisis.
Anchuli Felicia King’s The Golden Shield at MTC: a rare piece of writing presented by a mainstage company that doesn’t portray China and its people as a force to be feared, but ingeniously flips the frame to reveal real, multi-dimensional Chinese people and their reckoning with a couple of American jerks. It is a play that decolonizes through subtexts. For me, it isn’t just a clever, fast-paced legal thriller. It is all about communicating and understanding a cultural language – something this country gravely lacks
Balit Liwurruk: Strong Girl at St Martins: a powerful and emotional declaration by 12 young Indigenous women on what it is to be a "strong girl".
Finucane and Smith’s The Rapture, Part II: an impassioned cry for help on behalf of our dying planet, and a genuine and urgent beckoning for real action, delivered by the iconic Moira Finucane, who just returned from watching the ice melt in Antartica.
The Very Good Looking Initiative’s Batmania at Melbourne Fringe: a very weird and hallucinatory show that really fucked with conventional theatrical form and offered an exciting glimpse into the future of theatre.
Jean Tong and Lou Wall’s Oh No! Satan Stole my Pineal Gland, from another company that is changing the idea of theatre. Apart from an extremely enjoyable night of ridiculousness, it’s also the winner of the "best title" award.
Andi Snelling’s Happy-Go-Wrong was an incredibly moving and beautiful celebration of life!
Looking forward to in 2020.
Susie Dee and Patricia Cornelius’s Do Not Go Gentle... I missed the original season and always wished I didn’t.
Kim Ho’s The Great Australian Play, because Kim Ho and a horse. And what it means to be "Australian" and "Great".
Ra Chapman’s K-Box, obvs.
I was very fortunate to hear Stephen Armstrong (creative director of Asia TOPA) speak, in a small room at Tokyo Festival, very clearly about why Australia needs to connect with its Asian neighbours and why it is so important re-balance its cultural identity away from a dominant white identity. Therefore, all things Asia TOPA, particularly Double Delicious, Sipat Lawin’s Are You Ready to Take the Law into Your Own Hands?, post and Hong Kong Repertory Theatre’s Oedipus Schmoedipus, Akira Kasai’s Pollen Revolution and Mallika Sarabhai’s SVA Kranti: The Revolution Within.
SM: I remember the first show I saw that Eugeeyne designed; he takes every bit of subtext and theme and creates a physical world that lets you understand so much in a glance, while always bringing his own remarkable and distinct aesthetic. He's been doing amazing things away from Melbourne this year, so my best moments are easily talking to him before and after shows.
Cathy Hunt
Director, dramaturg
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| Cathy Hunt |
Favourite moments of 2019.
Counting and Cracking, Belvoir at Sydney Town Hall, Sydney Festival: the epic scale of the storytelling knocked my socks off; the way each strand was woven in and the whole festival experience of it. This is a Sydney I recognise, where almost everybody has a strong tie to someplace else, with Coogee Beach and people who don’t understand their own family’s whole story yet because all they have known is this place. The moment before the end of Act 2 when one character was about to get on a refugee boat bound for Australia, and the whole audience was taut, you could feel extreme anxiety on his behalf, knowing what might happen. Beautiful and big and somehow still simple.
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. I queued with my friend Shannon one Sunday morning in January for free tickets to final dress rehearsals, we were numbers 500 and 501 in the snaking queue. Melbourne provided and it did not disappoint. I particularly loved the immersiveness of the staging, Paula Arundell as Hermione and Gillian Cosgriff, who was supreme in an unnamed role. But I say no more…
Barbara and The Camp Dogs, Malthouse and Belvoir directed by Leticia Cáceres written by Ursula Yovich and Alana Valentine. Truly stunning, raw, roughly beautiful and incredibly brave production that broke through defences and spoke straight to the heart about how simultaneously destructive and creative we can be as human beings. Powerful piece claiming the space to get angry and not shying away from the underlying reasons that keep producing that anger, underlining First Nations sovereignty while cranking out superb tunes and putting the audience on saggy couches like in any run down pub. Loved this!!
You’re Safe Till 2024, by David Finnigan. ventured to Bunjil Place on a stormy night to see David freak out a small and select audience with his theatre science presentation of the "Great Acceleration", which has occurred since mid-last century, including a truly terrifying visual explanation using water bottles and a Coles "recyclable plastic" bag of how chickens have stacked it on since 1945.
Wake in Fright at Malthouse. Declan Greene and Zahra Newman's nightmare journey through an Australia that felt all too horribly recognisable. Stunning technically and with a virtuosic flexible performance by Zahra as the narrator desperate for a drink of water who keeps having booze chucked unwittingly down their throat. Incredible collaboration from all involved.
View from a Bridge at MTC directed stunningly, sparely by Iain Sinclair with the heart-rendingly genuine performance of Zoe Terakes as Catherine.
World Problems by Emma Hall at fortyfivedownstairs, especially the moment when the memories tumbled over into the future and things started going awry, the fantastical imaginings of that whilst the effort of putting together a trampoline was enacted. (The night I went we got to go to a sustainable food workshop after, with permaculturist Kat Lavers and I took home her mum’s lime pickle: big highlight)
The Other Place by Christopher Bryant at Theatre Works directed surprisingly by Jess Dick and performed with precision and energy by the ensemble of five women. This play took so many circular routes towards tracing, mapping and imagining the different destinies of Betty Burstall and Buzz Goodbody. The way it kept not explaining, never being able to explain but just making another pass at exploring one possibility as to why some of us go one way, step out of the room and others are able to flourish despite every adversity, moved me so much. As did the writing in its choice of the stories told and the multiple modes of representation, even just the attempt to forge a connection and the focus on these two particular women’s inner and outer lives. Design in the large space was innovative and entertaining but I can imagine another incarnation of the play in a smaller space, like the rebuilt La Mama…
Pomona at Red Stitch directed by Gary Abrahams: a strange, potent production in which the choice to range the cast around the side of the space to bear witness intensified the exploration of violence. Such a stellar cast and great to see Jessica Clarke, Julia Grace and Artemis Ioannides be differently brilliant on that stage.
Control by Keziah Warner directed so intelligently by Julian Meyrick at Red Stitch. Brilliant writing exploring the ways we shape and structure each other and are unavoidably shaped and structured by our situations. Each of three parts so different from each other but gorgeous interrelationships in each, particularly in the last part where Esta (Naomi Rukavina) and Isabelle (Christine O’Neill) inhabit and subvert the pupil/teacher and servant/master power dynamics.
Thigh Gap at La Mama written by Jamaica Zuanetti directed by Alice Darling. Afrenetic fever dream looking at unattainable body standards self-imposed and friend-policed, performed excellently by Veronica Thomas and Lauren Mass. It went beyond issues and became performatively extreme. The physical comedy around the sudden serendipity of drunkly discovering a baguette is a moment I won’t forget.
UnWoman by The Rabble at The Substation: a work so entirely dramaturgically complete, supremely satisfying and symbolically resonant as if carved out of the stones that Yumi Umimare birthed in the final part of the triptych. Also very funny on the way through, thanks to Dana Miltins and Mary Helen Sussman in the second part, waiting for their unnamed procedure ,and the strange soporific forest of the pregnant women in their round containment.
Looking forward to in 2020.
Red Stitch: A new production of Feather in the Web by the brilliant and hilarious Nick Coyle directed by Declan Greene. I saw it in Sydney when it opened and need to see this incarnation happening as part of Midsumma. Orlando by Sarah Ruhl directed by Stephen Nicolazzo. Anatomy of a Suicide by Alice Birch directed by the inimitable and wonderful Jenny Kemp,.
Asia TOPA: The Seen and Unseen – a collaboration by Melbourne based and Balinese theatre makers designed by Euygeene Teh lighting by Jenny Hector and dramaturgy by Adena Jacobs.
What Every Girl Should Know a new play by Monica Byrne set in 1914 in a Catholic reformatory, at Brunswick Mechanics in February. Produced by Between the Buildings, directed by me, designed by Eloise Kent and sound designed by Jess Keeffe.
SM: Cathy's measured and help back direction of Love/Chamberlain at Theatre Works got into the hearts of its creators, on and off the stage, and misjudged women it was written about. She removed the tabloid sensationalist lens and explored how and why women who dare step away from expectations are judged and hounded until they break.
