Review: Hotel de Haven

Hotel De Haven
RAG Theatre
5 April 2019
101 Engagement Hub, St Kilda Drop in
to 6 April
Facebook page

 Photo by Nicolette Forte

Photo by Nicolette Forte

I just found an awesome pair of retro white cat-eye sunnies in my bag. It took me a minute to remember why I have them.

Sometime in the middle of the comedy festival, I traded a balloon flower for them at an op shop at RAG Theatre's Hotel De Haven.

RAG Theatre are supported by the City of Port Phillip. The ensemble is formed by people who experience barriers to participating in the arts, including people who live with mental illness. They create original work based on their diverse experiences.

The result is authentic storytelling from the hearts of its makers, and theatre experiences that welcome all audiences. Hotel De Haven is their new work presented at the 101 Engagement Hub in St Kilda, a place where everyone is treated with kindness and respect. Maybe some of our professional theatre companies could learn a thing or two from RAG about respecting and welcoming all voices.

Arriving at the "hotel", guests are quickly tested and let into the communal space. There are no chairs, but there is a gorilla with a clip board and a sherif on a hobby horse welcoming everyone. This is an interactive immersive experience. In an imagined near-future, nature has had enough and is taking over. There's no electricity and, with no banks, money is useless. Trade and bartering is the only way to get stuff and the only new things have to be made by hand.

Hotel De Haven is also a place where the community can safely meet and share their knowledge. As new comers, we learn the history of how survivors only have what they could fit in a suitcase. And as we meet, listen and trade our way around the hotel's many spaces, we learn how their skills and experience are more useful than their saved stuff.

With director Scott Gooding and artistic associate Trudy Radburn, the performance was created in workshops. As well as writing the overall story together, each performer (Carla Mitterlehner, David Carlisle, Rhonda Purczeld, Di Pattison, Sarah Berry, David Baker, Raphael Kaleb, Vicki Coates, Zufa Nezirovic and support artists Marjetka McMahon-Krizanic and Nicolette Forte) developed a character and an experience for a small group or one-on-one encounter. These include an op shop, survival classes, meditation advice, story telling and a knitting circle.

RAG make theatre where we have conversations with performers and get to know the rest of the audience. It's a place where the theatre rituals are about breaking down barriers and all shows are created knowing that everyone has a story to tell.

 Photo by David De Roach

 Photo by Nicolette Forte

 Photo by David De Roach

 Photo by David De Roach

 Photo by David De Roach

How to Fringe 2017: Carla Mitterlehner

Carla Mitterlehner
Actor, musician, designer
RAG Theatre

No Offence
Trigger warning - contains moments of joy
28–30 September
Alex Theatre

Carla Mitterlehner

The Melbourne Fringe in three words.
Art, Create, Experience

A favourite Melbourne Fringe memory.
Performing at a variety of venues

Your as an independent artists being part of the Melbourne Fringe.
It's an exciting experience: the culture of theatre making, the whole process and the end result.

What makes the Melbourne Fringe unique.
It showcases new, fresh, thought-provoking, dynamic and vibrant Art.

Your advice for choosing what to see in the Melbourne Fringe.
Word of mouth reviews, online reviews, visit the Fringe Hub and check out the guide.

Five shows/events that will not/did not miss at the 2017 Melbourne Fringe.
Fanaticus by Rawcus
The program launch party
The Vagina Monologues
Crimson Tide
PO PO MO CO: Recreation & Leisure

What Melbourne loved in 2012, part 3

Today's theatre folk are Sean Bryan, Scott Gooding and Daniel Lammin.

Sean Bryan
general manager Present Tense

SEAN: After returning home from working on and developing musicals in the US at the start of the year, I was thrilled to see so much happening in the way of musical theatre development around the country, from the big ones (Officer and a Gentleman and Moonshadow) to the work of up and comers, such as Emily Mercurio and Josh Mulcahy's One More Year. It goes without saying that it was a thrill to be part of that with Margaret Fulton: Queen Of The Dessert too. I think the development industry for musical theatre took some big steps forward this year, and I hope it continues to do so next year.

SM: Being at the opening night of Margaret Fulton and seeing how much Margaret Fulton and her family loved the show was a sparklie highlight for me. Sean was side stage working the desk and didn't stop grinning for the entire show!

Scott Gooding
theatre whore

SCOTT: This year has seen me travel the world and come across some very unexpected theatrical experiences. But the highlights have been (in order of appearance):

Ending up backstage at the Elephant Pageant in Thailand with 1000 performers and 20 elephants. Really had to be aware of backstage etiquette and OHS on that one!

On the production of monsters: Rob Reid, Clare Watson and MTC getting it right. Great script, amazeballs set, tight acting. Oh, and the older people across the audience from us sighing audibly or falling asleep. Always a sign that I'm gonna like the show.

Going to Edinburgh Fringe festival for the first time. The city stops for the performing arts.
'Twas like being a a pig in a particularly piggy heaven.

I, Animal. The Border Project with the Melbourne Zoo. An interactive, travelling unique theatrical experience. Takes all the good elements of choose-your-own narrative theatre and places it in the setting of the zoo. Uplifting, meaningful, morose and buoyant all at the same time.

Also wish to second Sarah Walker's photography. Beautiful and funny and glorious.

SM: I'm going to bend the rules a bit and go back to December 2011 for my favourite Scott moment. RAG Theatre's The Classic Tale of Faust.  RAG Theatre creates opportunities for people who experience barriers to arts participation.  Just being in the 70s timewarp of  Latvian House in St Kilda and being served vodka and Latvian snacks was pretty neat, but the moment was the seeing just how much this show and the process of making it meant to the people in it. When something is created with love and the people performing love what they are doing, it's nearly impossible to not enjoy sharing the experience with them.

Daniel Lammin
director

another photo by Sarah Walker

DANIEL: Returning to Melbourne after a year away*, I have been thrilled and inspired at how much its theatrical landscape has changed. There are a whole new generation of theatre makers and artists around, creating unusual, unexpected and exciting work. There were a few notable highlights, including Declan Greene’s Pompeii L.A., Sisters Grimm’s Summertime in the Garden of Eden, No Show’s Shotgun Wedding, the Short and Sweet Variety Gala and assistant directing on On the Misconception of Oedipus, but I have whittled down to: The Unspoken Word is "Joe". 

It was virtuoso. It was daring. I felt like I was watching the pillars of the theatre, of what I understood about the art form, crumble before my eyes. Joe was one of those works that truly interacted and reshaped form, character, narrative and audience relationship, and yet was still immensely entertaining and moving. The direction was simple and affecting, the performances (especially Nikki Shiels) were intricate and operatic, and Zoey Dawson’s script was some kind of crazy miracle. I walked out of the theatre in a state of shock and awe. How often can you say that?

*NIDA

SM: The final play of the Short and Sweet Theatre season was Enter Certain Outlaws written and directed by Daniel (and he performed in it for the gala performance). I can't forget the horrified silence of the audience when they realised that this cutsie sweet verse play about two little boys was about the two little boys who violently killed another little boy. I openly laughed when I saw it in the heats (laughter can be how we cope with the worst life has to offer), but knew that I'd have been beaten by members of the audience if I'd dared to laugh during the final's performance. It went on to win a couple prizes: best director, best play.

part 1
part 2
part 4
part 5
part 6
part 7
part 8

part 9

part 10
part 11

The Classic Tale of Faust

The Classic Tale of Faust
RAG Theatre and the City of Port Phillip
16 December
Latvian House, 3 Dickens St, St Kilda
to 17 December (1.30 and 7.30)
Facebook page

No more reviews for 2011, but you don't need a review to be convinced to see RAG Theatre's The Classic Tale of Faust.

RAG Theatre is supported by the City of Port Phillip and creates opportunities for people who experience barriers to arts participation. In other words, this is theatre created by folk who aren't stuffy theatre people – and they want to have fun.

So drop all arty pretentiousness and get ready to enjoy yourself. And you get to play in the too-wonderful Latvian House in St Kilda with its mosaics, hand-carved wooden chandeliers and brown 70s decor (it's cooler than the Lithuanian Club).

Here, you're greeted by the suave and serious members of the company (who accepted me even though I'd worn orange Crocs) and you're free to chat about art and writing and sophisticated cultural shit before the main show.

But there are troubles backstage and the actor playing Mephistopheles has sent a replacement who doesn't know his lines. Luckily, there's a cafe where we can wait, the cast and crew can be convinced to share their festive acts and the Lativan Women's Group have left fresh pirags and vodka.

With acts including a maths quiz (finally!), poetry and delightfully atrocious Christmas sketches, each performer hints at the Faustian theme of soul bearing by letting us see the bits of their selves that they want to share.

Director Scott Gooding helped the RAG cast create their Faust in workshops and each have developed characters that are true to their skills, confidence and personalities. Everyone's performance starts with their heart, hints at secrets and shows us just how redemptive a wicked sense of humour really is.

And just when you think you know what's going on, there's twists that surprise and remind us that there's more to everyone's stories than what we think we know.

There's only three shows left, so if you can't go tonight, there's 1.30 or 7.30 tomorrow.

Occupied

MELBOURNE FRINGE 2009
Occupied
RAG Theatre
(supported by the City of Port Phillip)
10 October 2009
Theatre Works

It's a strange feeling to see a stage that looks too much like how my brain feels, and love a show that made me laugh so honestly at my own life.

RAG Theatre’s Occupied is for everyone who has ever endured a day in an office.

Cheap desks, IKEA bins, old computers (with holographic smiley face stickers), coffee cups, attempts at recycling, folders, and chairs that spin create a design that makes the clutter look almost beautiful; if it wasn’t for the clutter.

Starting slowly and ritualistically, five ‘workers’ (Carla Mitterlehner, Marjetka McMahon, Jo Sloggett, Melissa Tauber and Fur Wale) remind us that our worship of money is what makes us enter offices – places that thrive on unnecessary chaos, but ultimately chip away at our souls though boredom.

Under the steady direction of Scott Gooding, Occupied was devised by the current RAG Theatre ensemble (RAG was formed in 1993) though workshops. The resulting series of vignettes about the ‘madness’ of offices, strip away the pretence of these environments and let us laugh at their absurdity.

“You don’t have to be mad to work here, but it helps.” There isn’t a workplace where this sign doesn’t appear – and everyone hates it because it’s true. The repetition of this cliché and the examples of the madness that the office life leads to were so familiar and so ridiculous at the same time. Who hasn’t moved the stuff on someone’s desk to bug them or tried to do yoga in their chair?

There’s little dialogue, because work conversations are all the same and don’t say much anyway. The official ones are filled with ‘buts’ that blame other people (with some of the best outrageous excuses ever), while the casual chats are filled with untruths and a touch of crudity.

Occupied’s honest and hilariously accurate depiction of boredom sent me back to every job where I stamped my fingernails, wore an envelope as a hat, looked around the room through a postal tube telescope, built a folder house for my desk toy (that was there to cheer me up), wondered what those bitches were talking about behind my back or just wanted to climb under my desk and cry.

RAG Theatre, you are my type of people – thank you for reminding me why I never want to work in an office again.

More 2009 Fringe reviews.
 
This review originally appeared on AussieTheatre.com