Review: Shit

Shit

Dee & Cornelius

26 June 2015

Southbank Theatre, The Lawler

to 5 July

mtc.com.au

Shit is the shit. The fourth show of the 2015 MTC Neon Festival of Independent Theatre screams louder and stronger than the women it's about and inspires us to make our support for independent theatre as louder than possible.

Writer Patricia Cornelius says, "Really good independent theatre is radical. It is actually going to shock you. It is actually going to make you think differently." Shit is astonishing independent theatre. 

I don't understand why every theatre company in the country (and beyond) isn't competing to get the next Patricia Cornelius and Susie Dee play. From their days with the Melbourne Workers Theatre to their 2103 award-winning and independently-produced Savages, their consistent accolades somehow don't translate to commercial demand.

Shit is about three women who have been arrested and are locked up. Their crime isn't revealed until later – and shown remarkably with Marg Horwell's design – but the act isn't what the work's about.

Nicci Wilkes, Peta Brady, Sara Ward

Sam, Bobby and Billy are women whose stories are rarely told on our don't-upset-the-subscribers or our let's-talk-about-me stages. If we do see them, they are characters to laugh at; they are not "us" who go to the nice theatre. They are women who punch and fight. They are women who have never felt safe and joke about having a bed room door with a lock, wanting a bed with sheets and a doona cover, or remembering if someone ever hugged them as a child.

Their stories are confronting and raw, but not because of who they are. They confront who the audience are. The talk about being on public transport and knowing that all it takes to make someone get off is to yell at them. I would, and if I saw them at the train station, I'd get in the safe and crowded front carriage. This is theatre that lets us see ourselves through someone else's eyes; eyes we may never have thought of looking through.

Cornelius's writing leaves me shaking. Her dialogue sounds natural but it isn't like spoken language. She makes the profane poetic and lets language be so much more than words with assumed meaning. Her text has shape and rhythm and feels like it's beating to the heartbeats of her characters. It makes us listen to every "fuck" and "cunt" – and there are many – and really hear what they mean. And she only tells what needs to be told, leaving the subtext and the untold as the voice on stage that sneaks into your guts and doesn't let go.

This text is given life by Susie Dee's direction. Dee lets the actors be everything their character asks, while still working as one. She finds ways to make the shape of Cornelius's words become visible. She take us from violent gutter back to the stage and reminds us that we are watching theatre and, as such, are complicit in creating the world and the lives we see.

All of which is nothing without Peta Brady, Sarah Ward and Nicci Wilks as Sam, Billy and Bobby. Each embody the pain and anger that fuel these broken women while never letting the audience feel pity. They put up walls but the truth seeps out as they show us why we're laughing at the type of darkness and violence that can only be laughed at to save yourself from despair.

This Shit is why we go to theatre. This Shit is real. It's what can happen when a creative ensemble are given the resources to work together and not be concerned with pleasing or fitting criteria. It's astonishing theatre that needs to be presented as far as it can be seen. It's unmissable.

This was on AussieTheatre.com . 

Sometimes Hobart: Orlando interview

Dark Mofo
Orlando
The Rabble
darkmofo.net.au

12 June 2015

It was cold in Hobart last night. The sun’s out today but tonight promises to be colder, darker and weirder as the third Dark Mofo festival opens and this gorgeous city celebrates art that’s made for icy dark nights. A highlight of the theatre program is The Rabble’s Orlando, which opens tonight at the Theatre Royal and finishes on Sunday. I flew down to Hobart for the festival and spoke to members of The Rabble as they rehearsed in Melbourne.

Orlando. Mary Helen Sassman & Dana Miltins. Photo by Sarah Walker

This is the third production of Orlando. The first was at the 2012 Melbourne International Festival and it was part of the Brisbane Festival’s independent theatre program in 2014.

Emma Valente, co-founder, with Kate Davis, and director of The Rabble, says that festivals “provide such an important context for our work. During a festival audiences are more adventurous, they are more likely to see something that they may never chose otherwise and they are excited to see something different. They are also an important meeting place for artists, a place where you can talk with and see work from artists from all around the country and the world.”

With renowned performance artist Marina Abramović as part of Dark Mofo, The Rabble are ideally placed to welcome audiences who are eager to embrace original creative voices.

No one makes theatre like The Rabble. They leave some critics – like me – and audiences raving with love; while others have stormed out in fury.

The first time I saw them was Special at La Mama in Melbourne in 2011. I took a friend who said she’d see anything as long as it wasn’t contemporary dance. At the end of this show, she looked at me and said, “I wish it had been contemporary dance”.

The stage was mouldy green with a toilet-paper back curtain, a mound of earth and an exercise bike. Actor Mary Helen Sassman was eight months pregnant and wore a native American headdress and a pink stretchy dress, when she wasn’t naked. With 60+ actor Liz Jones, the work explored the sometimes hilarious and mostly painful and warped relationship of parental resentment. It was like watching a dream that you thought (and maybe wished) you’d forgotten.

No one makes theatre like The Rabble dare to make.

Orlando is based on a deep and layered understanding of Virgina Woolf’s 1928 novel about a young man who doesn’t grow old but becomes a woman and lives for three centuries. Woolf’s story is on the stage, but there’s very little of her text.

I think that the truth of any work is in its subtext: the words that are never spoken or written, the scenes that are never seen. Meaning is found in the white spaces between words on pages and the silence and empty space on a stage. It’s why we can read the same books and see the same shows and argue for hours over the truth about what creator was sharing.

A Rabble work is formed in that empty space. Their work lets us get lost in the white void where words disappear and meaning becomes clear.

It’s difficult to describe the experience of seeing their work, so I asked Dana Miltins, who plays Orlando, to explain it.

“Oh my gosh I find this question really hard as well… I can’t fully answer it.

“To me, The Rabble have a unique way of distilling a novel that captures its spirit without telling the story as it reads, blow by blow. If you’ve read Orlando then I don’t believe you’ll feel ripped off by our version – the themes and ideas that exist within and behind the narrative are all there; but, the play exists on its own as well and is very much The Rabble’s Orlando.”

Orlando. Dana Miltins. Photo by Sarah Walker

The process of how it becomes The Rabble’s Orlando is as fascinating as the result.

Actor Sassman (who plays Orlando’s lovers, along with Angus Cerini) describes a Rabble rehearsal.

“A typical rehearsal starts with a 30-minute high intensity workout – usually circuit training but not always. I’m confused as to whether this is done as a bonding/unifying tool or to encourage competitiveness amongst the cast – either way we often find ourselves comparing abs and keeping a lunges tally. Once we’ve all broken a cool sweat we start to work. It’s always physical, very little discussion. Just on the floor and getting on with it. Emma and Kate work us hard. We love it.”

The work involves hours of improvisation and exploration of character and text, most of which never make it to the stage. The finished product is a distilled and clarified version of the results of this process.

Sassman talks about how they met through La Mama about nine years ago, although Valente and Davis met at Swinburn University earlier.

“Thank goodness! For Emma, Kate, Dana and I, our four-way working relationship was forged in blood, sweat, baby’s tears and breast milk (Mary Helen and Dana have performed while pregnant and Kate’s baby is due in July) as we made and toured shows on shoestring budgets – us with huge ideas and small CVs.

“I think we surprise each other, inspire each other and above all we truly trust each other to approach the making of the work with full integrity. Now with this Orlando we have Angus on board – fearless, eerily gifted and generous, he fits in just fine!”

The company are never afraid to share their admiration and trust for each other. At the end of the first Orlando season, I asked Miltins how she worked with director Valente to create her emotionally fearless and physically demanding performance. She simply said, “Emma’s a genius”.

Dana goes on to describe Kate as a genius. Davis and Valente work together to create each new work but while Emma directs (and lights), Kate designs. What’s most striking about her design is it’s use of colour and texture.

Orlando begins in a world that’s milk and semen white. With pebbles, fur, tulle, cotton and water, it’s a world that begs to be touched, felt and rolled naked around in.

Miltins says that Davis creates sets “we have to exist in, as opposed to on. There’s generally quite a lot to negotiate on her sets and I see them sometimes like an additional character. You have to interact with them and respond to them; they affect you and your performance. I love working in these environments and I think Kate’s a genius.

“I love most the element of danger that comes with it. To me, that element is what puts the sizzle in live theatre. Just the idea that anything could happen.

“The slipperiness, the way you have to lift you feet to clear the water when you walk, the way it changes your balance, and of course the cold. Her sets make you exist in the present because they demand attention and focus just to physically negotiate the terrain. And really that’s all any actor wants, to be truthful and present in the moment.”

There’s a pool of water on the Orlando stage. Dana is “praying, seriously praying” that the plans to heat it for this season come off.

This was on AussieTheatre.com.

And please read Josephine Giles's interview with soprano Allison Bell.

Review: North by Northwest

North by Northwest

Melbourne Theatre Company

4 June 2015

Playhouse, Arts Centre Melbourne

to 20 June

mtc.com.au

MTC North by Northwest. Photo by Jeff Busby

The MTC's much-anticipated North by Northwest will be a sold-out hit. This re-telling of Alfred Hitchcock's 1959 much-loved film is slick and fun and doesn't detract from its source material. While it skims the surface of what makes Hitchock's films so watchable, it's pretty cool to watch it skip, make ripples and get safely to the other side.

The film, about advertising man Roger O Thornhill being mistaken for a cold-war super-spy, was made for a 70 mm film telling with huge settings – from New York to Mount Rushmore – that declare it a work that belongs on a huge screen. Director Simon Phillips is the co-designer with Nick Schlieper and they have created a telling that belongs on a stage.

Along with the cast of 12, who seem like hundreds, and the rights to the film's music, the design has moments of theatrical mastery as many of the iconic big-screen scenes – including the crop duster and the climb over the stone faces – are made with the help of their own big screen. What makes them a joy is that there's no secret as to how the effects are created. With a wink to the early days of screen miniatures and models, the cinema effects are made live by the cast, but the live action of the characters is always kept as the focus.

The cast reach to the film portrayals, but bring enough of themselves to make them more than an impersonation. Matt Day's Cary-Grant-cum-Thornhill, Amber McMahon's Eva-Marie Saint-cum-femme-fatale-Eve and Deidre Rubenstein's Jesse-Royce-Landis-cum-Thornhill's-mother are especially wonderful.

What the stage hasn't re-created is Hitchcock's pace and suspense. His changing point of view techniques create too-scared-to-blink tension, when the audience are just ahead of the characters (know what's about to happen), and jump-in-your-seat fright, when they are with the character (find out what happens as the character does). His close ups and fast cuts trap his characters and give them no choice. The stage gives characters literal and figurative space to make choices, which gives the audience space to question the MacGuffin.

Hitchcock popularised the term MacGuffin as character motive that's never really explained or given its place in the narrative logic. This technique excels when the audience don't have time to think; when all that matters is "what happens next?".

A lot of this show's "what happens next?" comes from assumed familiarity with the film and wanting to know how they are going to make each scene, rather than from the tension of the plot.

As there are so many surprises on stage, this is its own tension and its own story – as long as MacGuffin's friend doesn't tap you on the shoulder and ask "Why are we telling this story?" or "Is this excellence, Mr Brandis?".

As such, it's easy to compare it to the Olivier Award–winning re-telling of Hitchcock's The 39 Steps (2008 MTC) and to Kneehigh Theatre's production of the 1945 film Brief Encounter (2013 MIAF), which both reflected the mannered UK societies when they were made. Steps was spoof and Encounter was homage, but North by Northwest tries to be both, which leaves it tonally confusing and, at times, a bit lost when in-jokes overcome the pace of the story.

None of which is going to make it any less popular. It's a show that's found the road between the crushing-cliff wall of safety and the sharp-edged plummet of originality.

....

This was on AussieTheatre.com.

Review: Ned

NED
Groaning Dam Productions and Capital Venues & Events
22 May 2015
Ulumbarra Theatre, Bendigo
to 31 May
nedmusical.com.au

Ned. Photo by Marty Williams

Ned (A New Australian Musical) opened on Friday night at the new Ulumbarra Theatre in Bendigo. The choice of opening show was inspired: a musical about a story that infuses Australian identity and culture. The choice to open with an untried new work was a risk. It hasn’t paid off. Ned tries so hard to be a “hit musical” that it’s never allowed to find its voice or tell its own authentic story.


However, being in the new theatre is worth the easy trip to Bendigo (about two hours from Melbourne).

It’s a re-development of the Sandhurst Gaol that opened in the 1860s and was only closed in 2006. Ulumbarra’s a Dja Dja Wurrung word meaning “meeting place” and the theatre reclaims the grim building and the surrounding space with light and warmth. The entry hall is lined with the unchanged cells. The thick concrete doors are open, but it’s not easy to step inside one; it feels too like being buried alive. It’s nicer to stay in the plush and new with its easy-to-see exits. It’s creepy but so welcoming and positive that there must be lots of confused ghosts wandering around with us.

Away from the cells, the 1000-seat theatre and has donor plaques on seats and a “new theatre” smell that evokes anticipation. With a huge stage, comfortable seats, great sight lines and good leg room, this is a regional space that will be hosting the world’s best companies and shows.

A new telling of Australia’s world famous bushranger and prisoner is perfect to open this new space.

Kelly’s story is one that continues to shape contemporary Australian culture. It’s a big white story about a young man who unwittingly claimed his space as a hero, even if the facts don’t hold firm. His armour (that’s also currently in Bendigo) is an iconic image, his dictated Jerilderie Letter means we know what he thought and how he spoke, and his plaster death mask haunts like no photo can. This story has been explored and re-told countless times; his was the first story told in Australian film, Sidney Nolan’s series of Kelly paintings are recognised by people who don’t see visual art. The material is endless and the opportunity to explore this legend from today’s point of view is unmissable.

Which all leave this new work empty and insipid.

Photo by Marty Williams

When Ned opens with Kelly about to be hanged and a projected image of his death mask, there was hope that it was going to be a story that stripped away the myth and looked at the man whose plaster face closed his eyes on the world. The hope begins to drain as the ensemble sing “How did you die?”.

The cast and ensemble are the highlight of the show. Many of the young cast are recent VCA Music Theatre graduates and there are exceptional voices and heartfelt performances that never let the material overwhelm them.

But Ned doesn’t work as a musical, a story, or an exploration of Kelly or the society that created and continues to re-tell the Kelly story.

It sounds like a “musical”, especially as the Les Miserables references abound. The songs are singable, but are missing thematic connection to character and connection of music structure to story structure. And, apart from the nod to Irish music, there’s little musical reflection of 1800s Australia. As it was being presented in its 1880s context – with an historical accuracy that’s as clean as the men’s moleskins that still have the leather labels on their bums – I was listening for hints of bush music or the memories of the first European Australian songs, which were ballads about bushrangers.

None of this might matter if the songs did what songs in musicals do. At the most basic level, songs move action forward or tell something unknown. At their best, songs reveal the soul and heart of the characters. This is what makes music theatre so astonishing. The ridiculous notion that people burst into song makes sense because they are singing what they can’t say, sharing their secrets like a soliloquy. The songs in Ned say what we know, stop the action and the rhyming-dictionary lyrics have no sense of the rhythm and poetry that make lyrics soar.

Again, I keep thinking of Australian bush ballads. It’s a template begging to be used.

And the songs may be better than the book. Facts aren’t story. Making goodies and badies isn’t story. Story is watching someone fight for, and sometimes fail, on the way to reach the goal that will change their life. It’s understanding why people make the wrong choices. It’s dilemma and tension that only breaks when impossible choices are made. Story is taking what we know and telling it in a way that makes us re-think our knowledge and opinions.

It was Ned’s shooting of the police officer that killed the story for me. This is the end of Act One turning point – the moment that should propel the story to its inevitable conclusion and make the audience clamour to get back to their seats. It just happened. I have no idea why he was shot. A writer makes story out of plot. That copper could have been about to kill Ned’s brother. Ned could have tried everything to stop him and been forced to shoot. On stage, Ned holds the man he shot and puts him out of his pain, but this heroic moment means nothing if his choice to shoot wasn’t an impossible one. It’s a story-changing scene that should be filled with the type of tension that has the audience hoping against hope that the copper will walk away this time and that Ned won’t end up choking and swinging in Melbourne Gaol.

Writing aside, the first appearance of the Kelly gang in their armour was the moment everyone was waiting for. It should have silenced the room. We’re allowed to see the creation of one of Australia’s most recognisable images. It’s a time to slow down the action and let the audience see it through eyes that have never seen anything like this before. Instead, it’s quick and dull and the armours need some WD40.

Not far from the the theatre is the Bendigo Gallery and the Imaging Ned exhibition. The first thing in the exhibition is Ned Kelly’s armour.

THE armour. The icon. It’s disconcertingly moving to see it with its rust and bullet holes, and I wasn’t the only person who touched its glass case because the urge to touch it is so strong. Maybe comparing that feeling to “WD40 the costume” isn’t fair, but the appearance of that armour on stage should have felt something like that, but big enough to fill a 1000-seat theatre.

The first room at the exhibition is about popular culture with films, books, playing cards, post cards, sheet music and chocolate boxes that told their version of the story. Each reflected the values of the time and the people that re-told it how they wanted to hear it. Ned made me feel like we are still a society that believes a story told on chocolate box lids.

Next is a room with some of the Nolan, and Tucker, series. I heard the Ned designer was influenced by the Nolan paintings. How could you not be! I don’t know what he saw, but it wasn’t the colours, shapes, space or composition of Nolan. I looked at the wallpaper design that Nolan used for the Kelly home, the connection to horses (without Ned‘s “mounting from behind” joke), the exaggerated black of the armour, the occasional glimpse of a human inside the armour, the connection of human to natural space, the colours of gum tree bark, the creation of myth with the square of black; they are astonishing – and if any of it is referenced on the brown and balanced Ned set, I couldn’t see it.

There are also Kelly images by Chinese, queer, female and Indigenous artists; those voices that are so missing from the great white Kelly narrative.

Everything in this exhibition questions the Kelly narrative and how it’s changed by the communities and people that re-tell it it. It made me feel and made me want to know more and question what I thought I knew. It made me read the Jerilderie Letter on the train home. It did what Ned didn’t.

We forget what we see in shows, we forget details and story and design – but we don’t forget how they made us feel.

Ned is a by-the-discarded-book show that fails to question or place this story anywhere in today’s Australia and it left me feeling nothing.


This was on AussieTheatre.com.

#FreeForArtists

Moira Finucane and Jackie Smith and everyone who works and has worked with them are bloody marvellous people and remarkable artists.

As the last week has been a kick in to guts to the independent artists and companies that make us want to see, make and be art, F&S want to give something back to the community.

I want George Brandis to be my date for the Glory Box La Revolucion.

I want him to sit in room full of people who know how to think, who know how important it is to always question and confront what we know is wrong, and who know how to celebrate difference.

I want to see his face when Moira blows smoke into it.

I want him to tell me why it isn't the most "excellent" night of his life.

#BeMyTheatreDateGeorge.

Moira posted this on Facebook today:


ARTISTS. GLORY BOX IS ‪#‎FREEFORARTISTS‬.

Because of a profound lack of support and good visionary leadership. Because of a consistent denial of human rights. Because of a lack of generosity and humanity. We here at Finucane & Smith are going to do some positive role modelling. ALL ARTISTS are invited to our coming season of Glory Box la Revolucion FOR FREE. And if you have been an independant artist for more than 10 years, we'll give you a little charm ( god knows you need one). There are limited tickets per night, and after they are gone, we'll make $25 tickets available for everyone who's missed out. If you are paid for your art, then pay us. If you have friends that earn money bring them. This season isn't funded. But let's share a generous joyful moment. ‪#‎FREEFORARISTS‬. Because we think artists are ace. And necessary. So PM us, comment below, email us at info@moirafinucane.com. Grab a ticket share the joy.

We'll also be raising money for the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre during the season for the exact same reason.

Share the joy. Spread the word.

Glory Box La Revolucion
20 August to 13 September 2015
The Melba Spiegeltent
email info@moirafinucane.com for artust tix tickets or buy some here.

Mini review: Lifeboat

Lifeboat
The Amanda & Jess Fan Club
17 May 2015
ClubVoltaire
Facebook event

Amanda Good & Jess Leadbeatter

Amanda Goode and Jess Leadbeatter know that there must have been far more fascinating stories happening on board Titanic than Rose and Jack, so are saving audiences from that dreariness with their new cabaret Lifeboat.

Combining cabaret, sketch, character and double act, Lifeboat is what else was happening on that movie version of the ship, as five character duos, who were never at the Captain's table, come across that necklace.

Created and written by Goode and Leadbeatter, with Luke Hutton (composer and band) and Emily Goode (director), they made the perfect choice to try it out to a small supportive audience over a couple of weeks. This lets them see and feel what really works in the show and gives them time to experiment without risk. If more independent shows started like this instead of diving straight into a full season, there'd be fewer drownings.

Lifeboat needs some development, outside eye advice and financial support, but its original take, genuine and fresh performances, and delightfully outrageous characters have put it well on the way to being seen and loved at future Fringe, Cabaret and/or Comedy festivals.

I'm looking forward to seeing what comes next.

Review: One suitcase: four stories

One suitcase: four stories
Barking Spider
14 May 2015
Northcote Town Hall
to 17 May
northcotetownhall.com.au

Linda Catalano. Photo by Sarah Walker

Linda Catalano's family live in and around Northcote and share family meals that are still based on the recipes many of them brought in their hearts from Italy. They brought them at a time when only way to come to the other side of the world was on a three-month sea journey and at time when Australia encouraged and welcomed the arrival of boats of people who wanted to start a new life.

In One suitcase: four stories, Linda welcomes everyone at the back door of the Northcote Town Hall in her red apron and tells stories of her beloved Nonno and Nonna, who were were only apart when her grandfather came to Australia to earn enough money to bring his wife and baby (Linda's mother) to Melbourne, and the stories of her aunts, her zias, who at different times arrived at Port Melbourne with a small suitcase and the hope of love.

Their stories are grand and romantic, full of hand-written letters, disappointment, unexpected happiness and the secret of a perfect sugo, or sauce. Linda's still working on perfecting her own sugo and romantic story.

Linda's audience are now family and friends who sit around shared tables, where the antipasto is waiting and the stories begin.

As part of the Darebin Homemade Food and Wine Festival, our first lesson is that passata is not the sauce, it's just the tomatoes that are locally grown, minced by hand and boiled in bottles in backyards.

Barking Spider let us find the stories and the love in the mundane and familiar, and the family kitchen is like home, even if you didn't grow up in an Italian family in Melbourne's north. It's full of black and white framed wedding photos and treasures and standards that have been in Linda's families' kitchens from the the 1950s to now. And her family are such a part of her kitchen that they become the likes of a block of mozarella, a wilting cucumber, a pastry crimper and an espresso maker.

Naturally, each table helps to make fresh pasta – by hand; no pasta makers or Thermomixes – like Nonna used in every lasagne she made, with no bechamel sauce, the pasta layered so there are no gaps and an egg drizzled in a zig-zag pattern.

And, naturally, it could never be as good as the real thing, so trays of lasagne have already been made for us. There was even made a vegetarian version that I'm going to try myself; just don't tell the zias that I used passata from the shop and dried lasagne sheets.

As the night finishes with ricotta cannoli – they are from the south of Italy where the northern custard variation is never seen – we celebrate a suburb, a city and a country that still welcomes and shares custard, ricotta and every filling, and remember that the stories that really matter are the ones that are so close to us that we sometimes forget that they made us who we are.

Oedipus Shmoedipus diary

Oedipus Shmoedipus
post
9 May 2015
Arts House, North Melbourne Town Hall
to 10 May
melbourne.vic.gov.au

Saturday's ensemble. Photo by James Brown.

Friday night

On Saturday afternoon, five of Melbourne's favourite arts writers and critics are volunteer perfomers in post's Oedipus Shmoedipus at Arts House Melbourne. Each show needs 25 volunteers. All we know is that we'll be doing something about death. It was performed at Belvoir last year, so some people know what they are in for. I haven't read anything about it and am going in blind. But I trust post and if I can't put up my hand to be a part of an independent feminist theatre show, then what good am I as an arts writer!

Joining me will be Richard Watts from Arts Hub and RRR, Cameron Woodhead from The Age, Rohan Shearn from Australian Arts Review and Tim Byrne from Time Out.

Saturday

12.35 am. I wish I were already asleep. Not looking forward to morning alarm but looking forward to whatever we're going to be doing. As long as I don't have to dance, I think I'll be fine. I haven't read any reviews and really don't know what to expect.

8.25. Shit, time to leave but I am awake! 

9.13 We're here. And our special guest surprise from Adelaide is Jane Howard from The Guardian.

 (clockwise) Tim, Myron, Cameron, Rohan, Jane, Me, Richard

4.04 pm You know that nightmare where you're backstage about to go on and you have no idea what you have to do? That's pretty much what performing in Oedipus Schmoedipus was like.

Except it was brilliant and I know that I'm not the only one who would love to do it again tonight.

Each performance uses 26 new volunteers as the chorus to an opus about great white plays about death. We're backstage and can only guess what it's all really about. But I get to see it tonight and understand it as more than nervous fear about my shoe breaking or my skirt being tucked into my knickers.

Our volunteers were a mix of performers and non-performers, but experience didn't seem to make the process any less nerve twitching. After a warm up, everyone was given a number and told to look at a screen above the stage that, we're promised, will tell us what to say and what to do. 

We ran though our parts in the show once, but that's it. 

During lunch, we all knew that few of us could remember much.

The first part of the show is post's Zoe Coombs Marr and Mish Grigor killing each other, many times. Sitting in numbered chairs backstage, all we could hear was the reactions of the audience as we watched the backstage crew getting buckets and mops ready to clean up what must have been litres of blood. 

The first time on stage was as a group, which made it safe and relatively easy, but I really am looking forward to seeing it tonight because two hours later and I'm not sure what we actually did.

Minutes later I had my first solo entrance and this was so like that dream. I really had NO IDEA what I had to do. 

I was fine. The screen told me what to say and then told me to leave. 

I wish I had a screen in real life.

From then on, it was so much fun. The very lovely stage managers told when we had to be ready and the screen told us what to do. It was a bit like karaoke, but more Shakespearean and with dance moves.

Oh yes, there was dancing, including a huge group number where we followed a video of Mish in a pink body suit. 

There was also a surprise for us all – something we weren't expecting – and that moment may have been the most genuine and gloriously wonderful one of the night. As there are still two shows to go, I don't want to give it away.

The last two shows are sold out, but I never believe that sold out means sold out. It's an amazing process and if watching Oedipus Schmoedipus is anywhere near as wonderful as being in it, then it's worth turning up and hoping for no-shows.

Zoe Coombs Marr & Mish Grigor. Photo by Ellis Parrinder

9.57 pm

Wow. WOW! It's impossible to know how powerful this show is from being on the stage.

So much of the volunteer performer process was developed to ensure that the vollies have a positive and fun time; which we did. What we're unaware of is just how these group performances are being made into something bigger and cohesive. The glorious clump of ghosts near the end is a reference to a discussion in the beginning, the lines we read are making a script that can't be see when you're in the middle of it.

And the results of the process are remarkable.

While it's a bit scary on that stage, from the audience side everyone looks like they know exactly what they are doing and that they know their part in the big picture. I heard people in the foyer after the show discussing how well rehearsed the group was; I know they wouldn't have believed me if I'd told them the truth.

Then there's Mish and Zoe's opening: it's confronting and shocking and very very bloody, but funny and somehow welcoming. They die and die and die and it's astonishing.

Sunday
3.32 pm

For volunteers who still want to dance at home. (And perhaps cry a bit.)

Oedipus Schmoedipus is an opus on the great white writers and their words about death (not grief or loss, just the "there rust and let me die" moments), but it's really about the voices that are missing from that opus.

Watching last night, the scene that was a total hoot to perform but pinched a nerve while watching was the costumed dance. The performers are dressed in costumes – named backstage as "tiny pants", "big pants", "Hedda", "skeleton", "cow" etc – from productions of classics. On stage, as everyone dances and spasms, the laughs make it clear that we can't see ourselves anywhere on that stage – it's just people in costumes, which don't especially fit, reflect or suit them, doing what they are being told to do.

For all the delightful, good looking and extremely talented volunteers, this is a work told by young women – women who once might have hoped to play Juliet's nurse, in their 30s – who know they're not the women in these writings (even though they are works that they still love). So they slashed and bled the great white pages to show the silence and demand a voice for those who still struggle to be heard. And they welcome strangers – most of whom don't look or act like actors – onto their stage to let the sounds of those missing voices reach as far as they can.

Anzac Day and Black Diggers

NGV, St Kilda Road

There are two performances of Black Diggers on Anzac Day. I hope that there isn't an empty seat in the house because these are stories that should be told on Anzac Day and need to become part of the greater Anzac story.

I saw it on Wednesday night. Walking back to cars, a friend and I stopped to look at the Anzac Day projections on the walls of the NGV. The size alone demands attention but it was pictures of graves and lists of names that made us watch. We talked about how neither of us have a (known) family connection to the First World War, or an ANZAC, and we talked about stories and who can or should tell them.

Then I remembered by great aunt. I can tell something of her story.

As a child in the 1970s and 80s, I didn't think twice about the old aunt who talked about "her boys", marched in the Anzac Day march and gave me a velvet uniform button that I kept because I thought it was pretty and have passed from jewellery box to jewellery box ever since. I remember we'd turn on the tv to watch her in the march because we might see her on telly, not because of why she was marching. I don't think anyone from our family went with her.

She never married or had children and was the definition of a grumpy and opinionated spinster aunt. She had an opinion about everything and everyone and was happy to share it loudly. She died slowly in her 90s and dementia stole her memories. I wish I'd listened more when I had the chance. I know there would have been many opinions in her memories that I didn't like, but I still wish I knew more.

She was a nurse, a lieutenant, in the Second World War. She was nearly 30 when she enlisted in 1941 and served in Egypt and Papua New Guinea. She would have seen things that she'd never have had the opportunity to see and things that no one should ever have to see. She would've had respect and freedom for the first time in her life and I suspect that there was sex and drinking and everything that was frowned upon and shocking when she returned to the straight jacket of life in conservative Adelaide.

No wonder she was always a bit angry.

Black Diggers

Queensland Theatre Company, Sydney Festival

22 April 2015

Playhouse, Arts Centre Melbourne

to 26 April

artscentremelbourne.com.au

Black Diggers. Photo by Jamie Williams

The National Gallery of Victoria is next to Arts Centre Melbourne. At night, the gallery's long grey brick walls share an Anzac story in a series of projections. It's beautiful and huge and well worth spending some time watching. Until Sunday, there's another Anzac story being shared in the Arts Centre. Black Diggers is beautiful, human and affecting theatre that tells some of the Anzac stories that must never be lost in the grey.

The projections include paintings of the First World War, photos of the war, mass graves and stone and poppy memorials to the lost – memorials that are a short walk from the NGV. One of most powerful is a photo of Anzac Cove: a small bay with a nice beach that's flanked by cliffs that'd leave you prepared to swim out rather than climb. It tells an all encompassing story that's so important in Australia that it has a public holiday to remember it (and a brilliant biscuit).

NGV, St Kilda Road

Black Diggers tells some of the stories that are lost in the encompassing hugeness of the Anzac story.
Developed by the Queensland Theatre Company and supported by the Sydney Festival, it's on a too-short tour around the country.

In 1914, Australia's population was less than five million (not much more than Melbourne's 100 years later). During the war, 416, 809 men enlisted; 1300 of those men (400 from Melbourne) were Indigenous. Many had family who could remember a time before the European invasion, they weren't citizens and it was difficult to enlist when you weren't at least "substantially European". But they were also young men who couldn't resist the adventure of a lifetime and the promise of being paid.

Told by nine men, young and Elders, this story starts in the early 1900s and moves through enlistment  the war, their return and their legacy. The stories are based on real people and experiences but have been fictionalised to tell the bigger story and connect to a truth that's greater than the personal.

The bunker design (Stephen Curtis) has with an eternal flame or campfire burning in a tin barrel and black walls covered with unreadable white graffiti. As those who have gone before tried to make their mark and tell their story, the men in Black Diggers use white ash to paint names, dates and places.

Directed by Wesley Enoch and written by Tom Wright, the stories don't judge or preach; they just tell. They tell us the heartbreaking and shameful and the uplifting and hopeful. And by sharing them with us, these stories become more than the stories of those black Diggers, they become our stories.

There are two performances of Black Diggers on Anzac Day, this Saturday. I hope that there isn't an empty seat.

This was on  AussieTheatre.com .

32nd Annual Green Room Awards

Last night the Green Room Association announced Melbourne's 2014 winners.

The worst thing about reading these lists is seeing all the shows I'd wish I'd seen, like Eugene Onegin and Patyegarang, but it's wonderful to see so many shows (I saw more than I reviewed) and artists that I love getting the trophies.

The Green Rooms are decided by volunteer panels who see as many shows as they can during the year, meet regularly and passionately fight it out just as regularly.

I've been on the GRIT (Green Room Independent Theatre) panel for the last two years and have seen  the obsessive knowledge and absolute love of theatre that all panel members have.

Ash Flanders, Special Victim

Cabaret

Production
Eurosmash: Die Roten Punkte

Artiste
Geraldine Quinn: All Out Of Pride and MDMA: Modern Day Maiden Aunt

Writing
Ash Flanders: Special Victim

Musical Direction
Jane Patterson: Ginger & Tonic’s Desperate & Dateless

Original Songs
Andrew Strano and Loclan Mackenzie-Spencer: Nailed It!

Outstanding Contribution to Cabaret
Ali McGregor: Ali McGregor’s Late-Nite Variety-Nite Night

Contemporary and Experimental Performance

Outstanding Work by an Emerging Artist
Fluvial: Matthias Schack-Arnott, Next Wave, Speak Percussion

Outstanding Contemporary Circus
A Simple Space: Gravity and Other Myths, Darebin Arts’ Speakeasy

Curatorial Contribution to Contemporary Performance
Going Nowhere: Arts House

Outstanding Contemporary and Experimental Performance
Reach Out Touch Faith: Sarah Rodigari in collaboration with Joshua Sofaer,
Going Nowhere, Arts House

Geoffrey Milne Memorial Award
Margaret Cameron

Complexity of Belonging. Photo by Jeff Busby

Dance

Shirley McKechnie Award for Choreography
Shaun Parker: Am I (Shaun Parker & Company)

Concept and Realisation
Lilian Steiner: Noise Quartet Meditation (Lilian Steiner)
and
James Batchelor: Island (James Batchelor)

Ensemble
Cast of Patyegarang: Bangarra Dance Theatre

Female Dancer
Lauren Langlois: Complexity of Belonging (Melbourne Theatre Company, Chunky Move)

Male Dancer
Waangenga Blanco: Patyegarang (Bangarra Dance Theatre)

Music, Sound Design and Performance
Alisdair Macindoe: Princess (Benjamin Hancock, Chunky Move)

Visual Design
Jack Hancock (Costume) and Bosco Shaw (Lighting): Princess (Benjamin Benjamin Hancock, Chunky Move Move)

My Lovers' Bones. Photo by Deryk McAlpin

Independent Theatre

Production
The Trouble With Harry: MKA, Darebin Arts’ Speakeasy, Melbourne Festival

Costume Design
Chloe Greaves: Body of work

Director
Alyson Campbell: The Trouble With Harry (MKA, Darebin Arts’ Speakeasy, Melbourne Festival)

Ensemble
Cast of I Heart John McEnroe: Clare Watson, Uninvited Guests, Theatre Works

Female Performer
Maria Mercedes: Master Class (Left Bauer Productions, fortyfivedownstairs)

Male Performer
Angus Cerini: Resplendence (Angus Cerini/Doubltap, Neon Festival of Independent Theatre)

Lighting Design
Lisa Mibus: My Lovers’ Bones (Brown Cab Productions, Footscray Community Arts Centre, Melbourne Festival)

Sound Design and Composition
Jesse Cox, Luke Mynott and Joff Bush: Wael Zuaiter: Unknown (Theatre Works, Next Wave)

Writing
Marcel Dorney: Prehistoric (Elbow Room, Darebin Arts’ Speakeasy, Melbourne Fringe)

The King & I. Photo by Oliver Toth

Music Theatre

Actor In A Leading Role
Hayden Tee: Les Misérables (Cameron Mackintosh)
and
Tom Parsons: Once (Barbara Broccoli, John N. Hart Jr, Patrick Milling Smith, Frederick Zollo, Brian Carmody, Michael G Wilson, Orin Wolf, John Frost, New York Theatre Workshop, Melbourne Theatre Company)

Actress In A Leading Role
Madeleine Jones: Once (Barbara Broccoli, John N Hart Jr, Patrick Milling Smith, Frederick Zollo, Brian Carmody, Michael G Wilson, Orin Wolf, John Frost, New York Theatre Workshop, Melbourne Theatre Company)

Actor In A Supporting Role
Adrian Li Donni: Pacific Overtures (Watch This, Auspicious Projects, Theatre Works)

Actress In A Supporting Role
Yong Ying Woo: The King And I (John Frost, Opera Australia)

Ensemble
The cast of Once (Barbara Broccoli, John N Hart Jr, Patrick Milling Smith, Frederick Zollo, Brian Carmody, Michael G Wilson, Orin Wolf, John Frost, New York Theatre Workshop, Melbourne Theatre Company)

Direction
John Tiffany: Once (Barbara Broccoli, John N Hart Jr, Patrick Milling Smith, Frederick Zollo, Brian Carmody, Michael G Wilson, Orin Wolf, John Frost, New York Theatre Workshop, Melbourne Theatre Company)

Betty Pounder Award for Choreography
Jerome Robbins and Susan Kikuchi: The King And I  (John Frost, Opera Australia)

Musical Direction
Martin Lowe and Kellie Dickerson: Once (Barbara Broccoli, John N Hart Jr, Patrick Milling Smith, Frederick Zollo, Brian Carmody, Michael G Wilson, Orin Wolf, John Frost, New York Theatre Workshop, Melbourne Theatre Company

Sound Design
Clive Goodwin: Once (Barbara Broccoli, John N Hart Jr, Patrick Milling Smith, Frederick Zollo, Brian Carmody, Michael G Wilson, Orin Wolf, John Frost, New York Theatre Workshop, Melbourne Theatre Company)

Costume and Set Design
Roger Kirk (Costume) and Brian Thomson (Set): The King And I  (John Frost, Opera Australia)

Lighting Design
Natasha Katz: Once (Barbara Broccoli, John N Hart Jr, Patrick Milling Smith, Frederick Zollo, Brian Carmody, Michael G Wilson, Orin Wolf, John Frost, New York Theatre Workshop, Melbourne Theatre Company)

Production
Once (Barbara Broccoli, John N Hart Jr, Patrick Milling Smith, Frederick Zollo, Brian Carmody, Michael G Wilson, Orin Wolf, John Frost, New York Theatre Workshop, Melbourne Theatre Company)

The Riders. Photo by Jeff Busby

Opera

Direction
Kasper Holten: Eugene Onegin (Opera Australia)

Production
Eugene Onegin: Opera Australia

Conductor
Guillaume Tourniaire: Eugene Onegin (Opera Australia)

Female Lead
Nicole Car: Tatyana in Eugene Onegin (Opera Australia)

Female In A Supporting Role
Dominica Matthews: Madame Larina in Eugene Onegin (Opera Australia)

Male Lead
Barry Ryan: Scully in The Riders ((Victorian Opera, Malthouse Theatre)

Male In A Supporting Role
Daniel Sumegi: Sparafucile in Rigoletto (Opera Australia)

Design
Mia Stensgaard (Set), Katrina Lindsay (Costume), Wolfgang Goebbel (Lighting): Eugene Onegin (Opera Australia)

New Australian Opera
The Riders (Victorian Opera, Malthouse Theatre)

Night on Bald Mountain. Photo by Pia Johnson

Theatre Companies

Writing/Adaptation for the Australian Stage
Roslyn Oades and Collaborators: Hello, Goodbye & Happy Birthday (Malthouse Theatre, Melbourne Festival)

Female Actor
Melita Jurisic: Miriam Sword in Night On Bald Mountain (Malthouse Theatre)

Male Actor
Andre de Vanny: Ray in Glory Dazed (Red Stitch Actors Theatre)

Ensemble
The Cast of Henry V (Bell Shakespeare)

Lighting Design
Paul Jackson: Body of work

Audio Visual Design and Animation
Matthew Gingold (Audio Visual Design) and Matt Greenwood (Animation):
Calpurnia Descending (Sisters Grimm, Malthouse Theatre, Sydney Theatre Company)

Set and Costume Design
Dale Ferguson: Night On Bald Mountain  (Malthouse Theatre)

Sound Design and Composition
Pete Goodwin (The Sweats): Yellow Moon (Melbourne Theatre Company)

Direction
Kirsten Von Bibra: Grounded (Red Stitch Actors Theatre)

Production
Henry V: (Bell Shakespeare)

Special Awards

Outstanding Contribution to Choreographic Development
Next Move: Chunky Move

Technical Achievement Award
Maruska Blyszczak

Lifetime Achievement Award
Nance Grant

Green Room Awards announced tonight

The 32nd Annual Green Room Association announces the 2014 award winners at a ceremony at the Comedy Theatre tonight.

Recognising outstanding achievements in Melbourne theatre, 60 awards decided by panels of peers will be awarded for Cabaret, Contemporary and Experimental Performance, Dance, Independent Theatre, Music Theatre, Opera and Theatre Companies.

The award winners will be published on AussieTheatre at 10.31 pm (Melbourne time) tonight.

Tickets are still available for the 7.00 pm ceremony and can be bought at the door (but make sure you're early.)

MICF 2015 Award Nominations

I know how many brilliant shows I've seen this festival and only one of them is up for an award. Knowing how flipping amazing that one is, I hate myself for missing the rest.

I also have Festival Flu and am too full of green to leave the house; so, please see an extra show for me and Tweet about it. There are four nights left. Go hard.

2015 Melbourne Comedy Festival Barry Award Nominations

Luisa Omielan: What Would Beyonce Do?!
This is the only nominated show I've seen. It's hilarious and harrowing and has been selling out.

John Kearns: Shtick

Steen Raskopoulos: Character Assasin

Lawrence Mooney: Surely Not

Sam Simmons: Spaghetti For Breakfast

Damien Power: I Can't Believed I Cared

Best Newcomer Award Nominations 

Heidi O'Loughlin

Corey White: The Cane Toad Effect

Juan Vesuvius: Calypso Nights

Sam Campbell: Cambo's On Top

Heidi O'Loughlin: A Woman Talking

Golden Gibbo Nominees (best indie production)

Clara Cupcakes

Watson: Who's Afraid of the Dark

Ben Russell: The Tokyo Hotel

Laura Davis: Ghost Machine
I saw her at the Melbourne Fringe last year and absolutely loved her. Really regretting missing her new show.

David Quirk: Thrasher

Clara Cupcakes: The Merchant of Whimsy

Jon Bennett: It's Rabbit Night!!!