Review: The Bloody Chamber

The Bloody Chamber
Malthouse Theatre
6 August 2013
Merlyn Theatre
to 10 August
malthousetheatre.com.au

Alison Whyte's irresistible performance of The Bloody Chamber is reason enough to see it before it finishes on the weekend. It's like being tucked into bed and read a fairytale that lulls you into wanting to sleep with the lights on forever, but finally leaves you safe and comfortable in its blood-soaked darkness.

Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber is a re-telling of French Bluebeard story where a new young wife discovers the fate of her much older husband's former wives. It's from her 1979 collection of re-told fairy tales where women and girls don't end up as dead or eaten as they are in traditional tales, have and want sex, and are capable of being their own heroes.

Van Badham – who might be my favourite Tweep (@vanbadham) – has adapted this text from Carter's novella.  It's still told by the young wife (who's now an older woman) and glories in Carter's graphic and bloody imagery that's guided by an under current of sexuality and power that's belies any dull gender stereotypes.

Director Matthew Lutton creates a curious balance between telling and showing a story. The stage has a delightfully eerie atmosphere with three live harpists and a water-stained space where three huge black chambers hide secrets. And Anna Cordingley's design of black boxes, a bed and just enough red reveals little, but forces the audience to imagine the shining jewels, turning tide and bloody horrors. (However, I was sitting at the back and couldn't see all of the early revelations.)

But it's all about Whyte, whose telling (with some help by Shelly Lauman) evokes the story's ghosts in all of the stage's empty spaces. She may not be the innocent narrator imagined by some readers, but it's still like she strode out of the pages to make us really understand what she went through, rather than leave it to the unreliable imaginations of the readers.

This was on AussieTheatre.com

Review: Einstein on the Beach

Einstein on the Beach
Arts Centre Melbourne, Pomegranate Arts
31 July 2013
State Theatre, Arts Centre Melbourne
to 4 August

Since its first production in 1976, there have been endless reviews for Einstein on the Beach,  but if you’re looking for reviews to decide if you should go, all I can say is that if you have the means and opportunity to see Einstein on the Beach, you must.

I saw it in 1992 at the Melbourne Festival. I was 24. I’d been working in and studying theatre since I was a teenager and had already seen countless shows. This production changed how I saw theatre. Somewhere in the four-and-a-half hours (no breaks for me), my theatre brain gently re-arranged itself.

It’s the same production on in Melbourne this week and I was worried that I’d see it very differently after 21 more years of theatre and music, including a good chunk of work by 80′s, 90′s and 00′s Phillip Glass (composer) and Robert Wilson (director); I was scared I’d see the faults.

Again, I sat for four-and-a-half hours without a break (most people did the same) and felt my brain re-arranging.

Describing Einstein is dangerous. It’s a reflection on genius that sits on the knife edge between genius and madness – and it wasn’t created to be understood. There’s no story, plot or characters. The singers are treated like instruments and most recognisable sounds are numbers. There’s no dialogue, but poetry that is more words and sounds than meaning. Personality is stripped away from the performers and each are treated identically on the stage. The design is sparse and simple (although in 1976, it was  whizz bang). It’s repetitive and languid and there are times when change takes place so slowly that you only realise what’s happened after it’s happened.

But it’s precise and ordered and the wholeness of the picture, sound and movement is so complete that nothing less than perfect ever feels right again.

I see a lot of opera and theatre that have excellent stories, astonishing performers and gorgeous designs, and too many of them are clock-watching boring because they rely on the crutch of story, performer or design. It’s hard to dance, let alone fly with a crutch.

There is also a lot of theatre, opera, dance and music that claims to be like Einstein on the Beach; it’s not. The only way you can say you’ve seen something like Einstein on the Beach is by experiencing Einstein on the Beach. And this time, it really is going to be your last chance, or at least your last chance while Glass, Wilson and choreographer Lucinda Childs are still alive and able to re-create it.

This was on AussieTheatre.com

Photo by Belinda Strodder.

On Writing: Patrick Pittman

Prompter

Hydrapoesis

Arts House, Meat Market

9–18 August

artshouse.com.au

Patrick Pittman is a writer, editor and radio broadcaster who loves pushing magazines to feature more about development politics. Based in Perth, he was the editor of the interview magazine Dumbo Feather and is the Melbourne correspondent for Monocle magazine and Monocle 24 radio.

Prompter is his first play, which has its premiere season at the Arts House Meat Market from 9 to 18 August.

Taking place in a “surreal newsroom studio and merging theatre, dance, performance art and digital media, Prompter explores the ethics and conflicts of today’s media, journalism and digital culture.

In this series about writers and writing, Patrick talks  about what it was like to create his first work for theatre, learning from playwright Stephen Sewell and how all writers should know about The Paris Review.

What made you want to write this play?
I didn't know Sam when he first approached me to collaborate on Prompter, and I'd never written theatre (that anybody had read) before. He'd heard me on Perth radio, and seen me read some of my sad short stories at a Perth spoken word night I co-organised. I had (and have) this obsession with writing in left-behind post-colonial spaces, to look at the effects of conflict, and how our understanding of these worlds is mediated. Which is pretty much what he said he wanted to do a play about, and it was going to have a teleprompter. That was the brief, and we figured out the rest from there.

How long did it take you to write/re-write it? 
We've been working on this off and on for about four years. Now that Sam and I are on opposite sides of the country, we've only been getting together to work on it maybe two, three times a year. Every time we do, though, we have a tendency to kill off characters, or scenes, or plots. I think we finally got it to something we were happy to call finished just before it became a running joke amongst our friends.

What was it like having Stephen Sewell as a writing consultant?
Stephen was brutal, honest, and encouraging. He could clearly tell I was an amateur at this theatre game, but never patronised, and got deep inside the world of the play with Sam and me. I was as thrilled by what he didn't like as what he did, and it was a rare privilege to get such a crash course in the art, spending day after day drawing elaborate plans together on the walls of Sam's studio.

As a journalist, what led you to play writing? 
I was approached to work on this; my long-held desire to write for the stage being something I'd pretty much kept to myself. But my shelves have always been stacked with theatre, from Beckett to Brecht, and Shepard to Sewell. You'd often find me, while trying to figure out in my earlier years what it meant to be a writer, poring over David Mamet's various treatise on the subject. I love the risk of the stage and, as I've learnt over the past four years, I love the capacity to throw out the rules of representation and narrative and instead focus on engaging with an audience on a completely different level. Theatre is the best!

How are journalism and play writing similar?
Well it's all storytelling, isn't it? I'm not a news journalist, I don't do much in the way of straight reporting. I wish I had those skills, but I figured out pretty early on that that's a different breed of person, and so I merely admire them from afar. My work outside of radio has been a fair bit slower: feature writing, long languid 20-page interviews and that kind of thing. But for me, in whatever I'm doing, I'm just trying to tell stories about how I think the world works. Sometimes that's flying to a developing country to write about its economic policies and interview a head of state. Sometimes it's writing about Australian food politics and speaking to farmers. Other times, it's sitting in a dark room with headphones on trying to rewrite lines of dialogue. That's been my past couple of weeks, and somehow it all fits together.

This work seems to be inspired by the explosion of social media. What’s something that you love about social media?
Instant connection to writers and creators and politicians and activists and heroes and villains. Foraging through the tangled webs of conversation, sometimes just watching them fly by, without participating, can be invigorating.

What’s something that you hate about social media?
Hating on social media seems like a waste of energy. I am deeply ambivalent towards the slacktivist tendencies it encourages in people, and don't have much time for protest by hashtag. But, it's had more profound social and political impact than we could have possibly imagined, so I don't think there's much point in harping on that. If the play has anything to say about social media, it's not that it's "good" or "bad", it's to look at how all of these different modes of communicating we have at our disposal shape a story and shape our selves.

What’s it like collaborating with your director and co-writer Sam Fox?
We didn't know each other at all when we started out, but we've developed remarkable collaborative rhythms over the years. Put the two of us in a room for even half a day and we'll be off building whole new worlds. We often passionately disagree (one of us likes to be more didactic than the other!), but from those arguments, some of the best stuff has come.

Who wins if you disagree?
I can't think of a single disagreement that wasn't somehow mediated to something that was the best of both points of view. Maybe that's my time chairing boards that makes me think that way. That said, Sam has probably changed the script entirely during rehearsals in some kind of final victory over my opinions.

Apart from this play, what other writing of yours are you most proud of?
It's not one a lot of people have read, but I think a piece I wrote for a friend's magazine, Stop, Drop and Roll, a few years back, “The Government Game”, would have to be a candidate. It's the only time I've written properly about my own family heritage, on an abandoned island off of Newfoundland. One day, I'll write a lot more about this, but I felt it was important to at least start to tell the sad story of its resettlement.

What playwright do you read when you need inspiration?
You probably won't pick much of it up in this play, but I think I'd have to say Sam Shepard. Somewhere in the vast space between Buried Child and The Tooth of Crime, you'll find me curled up and cosy.

Any hints to over come writer’s block?
Refuse to accept that it exists, for a start. Don't bother with internet blocking software; if your mind is wandering and you want to read Buzzfeed lists, just do it. The energy will come when it comes. But in the end, try to write every day. And when deadline looms, strap on that great pair of headphones you spent too much money on and fill your ears with either Max Richter (if you want sad and mournful and beautiful undertones) or Fuck Buttons (if you just want to write more efficiently than you've ever written before). Also, stop trying to write in Word. And, when trying to figure out how to make things work, just go read any one of The Paris Review's marvellously craft-focussed interviews on writing from over the years, and figure out how somebody better than you does it. I particularly recommend Joan Didion's, but Gay Talese's advice on when to wear a tracksuit is also worthwhile.

Do you ever hand write or is everything on screen?
I was born with the kind of hand tremor that makes everybody think I'm all nerves, all the time. As a result, my handwriting is illegible even to me. I write on screen, almost exclusively using the beautiful minimalist Mac writing app Ulysses, which removes all of the dreck and the clutter from the process and lets you focus on words, words, and words. I've found the Fountain format incredibly liberating for script work – it's let me stay in my plain text editors and not have to go anywhere near the Word and Final Draft beasts.

How does it feel when you’re sitting in a theatre audience watching your play?
I'll tell you in August!

Who do you go to for feedback about your writing?
My wife, Josephine Rowe, is a phenomenally talented fiction writer. She knows more instinctively about how to write than I will learn in this life time, and I happen to believe I'm okay at it. She makes me a better writer every day.

Do you think actors and directors should be able to change something you’ve written? (Is the playwright always right?) 
Yes. The best part of this work has been developing it in collaboration with not only Sam but also the actors. We built this work together, and just as I'm happy for a magazine editor to make changes to my work, I'm happy for anything that makes something better. If you make it worse, though – run.

What’s your advice on taking criticism?
Well, many years back, in the street press era of my glittering career, I used to review theatre. One time, I had to review a show when I was the only audience member, and they knew I was the critic. They stopped at the intermission and asked me if I'd like them to go on. After that, I just couldn’t review another thing – except movies, because they’re all far away and magical. Once in Perth, it is rumoured in rock and roll lore, a band looked into taking out a hit on me.

But, as I would be advised to remind myself when the reviews come in for Prompter, when I was negative, even when I was brutal, it was only because I saw potential and knew the people involved could do better. That band went on to be one of my favourites. There are critics out there who are just mean, sure, but you can ignore them. The ones you shouldn't ignore are the ones who have something to say; a good writer is always learning how to be better. That's a project that's never finished.

This was on AussieTheatre.com.

On Writing: Fleur Kilpatrick

The Container Festival

MUST

Monash University, Clayton

2–20 August

Braves: 8 August at 8.00pm, 15 August at 6.00 pm, 16 August at 6.00 pm

monashstudentassociation.com

Facebook page 

Fleur Kilpatrick was 17 when she was the co-winner of the State Theatre Company of South Australia’s Young Playwrights Award. She’s since completed a theatre degree at Monash University in Melbourne, studied directing at VCA and competed a Masters of Performance Writing at VCA. She’s worked as an assistant director for Bell Shakespeare and Red Stitch; is artistic director of independent company Quiet Little Fox and her most recently performed play, Insomnia Cat Came to Stay, was nominated for best theatre at the 2013 Perth Fringe, won audience and critical support at its Adelaide and Melbourne seasons, and is part of the 2013 Brisbane Arts Festival program in September.


She’s written her newest work, Braves, specifically for The Container Festival at Monash University in August. It’s a cabaret-style piece that was motivated by her hatred of homophobia and inequality and one of its biggest challenges was creating a piece that would suit the intimacy of a being performed in a shipping container.

She talks about how finding the right collaborators is vital for theatre writers; how playwrights should read plays, newspapers and children’s books; and how the only way to over come writer’s block is to keep writing.

What made you want to write Braves?
Braves took up residence in my head a long time ago. I used to have conversations with my beloved grandmother in which she would tell me how “there are such a lot of gays in the world today” and I point out that there were just as many in her youth but they were all in unhappy marriages. Braves is the story of one such marriage. My grandmother is not around to see it but, in a way, it is a loving jab at her and a not-so-loving punch in the face of homophobia. I believe that the effects of such bigotry are more far reaching than many would have us believe. Bullying damages not only the bullied. By not standing up to homophobia, even the straightest of us are doing ourselves a disservice and allowing our community to be shaped by intolerance and fear. That’s what made me write it. Then I threw in songs, the occasional laugh and a dig at some of the worst lyrics in the history of musical theatre.

How long did it take you to write it/how many drafts? 
I tend to think of myself as quite a slow writer and usually take months to approach anything like a first draft, but I actually wrote the majority of this in a two-week binge. It is still being drafted and, as a new work, I will be looking at this initial season at The Container Festival as a development rather than a finished product.

Did you write it specifically for The Container Festival?
I did. I am so proud of MUST for curating this season and, as alumni, I was delighted to be given the chance to create something new for them. That said, I’m certain this will go on to have a life outside of the festival, but it felt like a wonderful chance for me to try something quite different.

Why are festivals like this so important?
I love festivals of all shapes and sizes. For artists, there is something so invigorating about getting to create and perform work alongside your fellow creatives but festivals like The Container Festival are sometimes even more exciting than the big city ones. For us, it is a chance to do something different and make a truly intimate piece of theatre/cabaret – something to fit into a shipping container. I make my living off of my art but I love working without the pressure of having to make money. It is so rare to just be able to take some risks and I think it brings out the best us all. The Container Festival has not even begun and already there is a sense of breathless, manic creativity in the air at Monash.  I am returning to MUST for the first time since 2008 because I want in on that!

As you’re a writer, performer and director, is Braves a piece you’d like to hand over to an actor or is it something just for you to perform?
Ha! I do have a habit of writing things for myself then handing them on to other actors!

This piece may well end up going the same way of Insomnia Cat Came To Stay, which began with me multitasking as writer/director/actor before I handed it over to director Danny Delahunty and actor Joanne Sutton (along with an incredible design and animation team). I’ve no doubt its next stage of development will see Braves with a new director and a couple of the incredible actors from Quite Little Fox have already put bids on the role of Molly, but it has been really special to get to work in this in a paired back way. I am actually incredibly excited to perform the role. I write best when I really understand the voice I am writing for and I think this was the reason this piece wrote itself with such ease; it has been a long time since I have written for myself but I haven’t forgotten my voice. I am also more ruthless with my own writing than any director I have yet encountered. Plus actor Fleur is very understanding when writer Fleur cuts whole pages so I think it has been invaluable for this process.

What’s it like working with Roderick Cairns on this piece?
Working with Roderick is just a joy. Like all my favourite collaborators, he is extremely multitalented (in addition to his outstanding musicianship, he is a WAAPA-trained actor) which makes him the perfect collaborator for a new work.  He has a lot of input into all elements of the production and I really appreciate this. This is my second collaboration with Roderick Cairns and he brings such a unique sound to the work and plenty of opinions, which I love.

Can you remember when you knew you wanted to be a writer?
I was the co-winner of the South Australian State Theatre Company’s Young Playwrights Award when I was 17. Part of the prize was having our scripts workshopped and given a rehearsing reading by the company. My script was embarrassing but the process absolutely blew my mind. This was my first introduction of the collaborative nature of writing for theatre and I just fell in love. All those individual minds working to bring a single, unified artwork to the stage! I was smitten. I initially trained at VCA as a director, but I think from that moment on I always knew that writing and directing would be of equal importance to me.

What playwrights do you read for inspiration? 
Who ever I can get my hands on. Here in Australia we have such outstanding writers and I learn so much from them on every read. Daniel Keene, Raimondo Cortese and Patricia Cornelius each take up a fair bit of my bookshelf. I love what comes out of the Royal Court Theatre in England and have a fairly decent collection of American plays, but I think our own writers are world class. They are pushing the art form to its limits and exploring with true subtly and insight our ever-changing national identity.

Apart from plays, what else do you love reading?
I have a particular love of children’s books. Those authors know how to capture the imagination in an opening line and hold the most hyperactive of audiences spellbound. They feed the reader’s imagination and create imagery so powerful that years later, we still know what it felt like to climb into a wardrobe, have snow crunch beneath our feet and coats give way to the branches of trees. We know the way to Neverland: “Second star to the right and straight on ‘til morning”. These stories stay with us.

Any hints to overcome writer’s block?
Just keep writing. Fill page after page with terrible writing and eventually you will break through and find the gold again. But I would also add that playwrights have a unique advantage: we work in a collaborative art form. I am so blessed to have a strong, supportive company around me and, when I get stuck, it is often their input that helps me find a new path forwards. Find your collaborators. Find the people who will read your work to you and, for the price of a cup of tea, will help you untangle the mess you have made for yourself.

Do you ever hand write or is everything on screen?
All my first drafts are handwritten. There is something so tactile and private and immediate about sitting down with just a pen and an empty page. It unlocks a part of my brain that a screen and a keyboard seldom can.

How does it feel when you’re sitting in a theatre audience watching your play?
I love it. In theatre we need to relinquish our words. They become something greater than us. It never stops being nerve wrecking but I write plays to seen by an audience and there is nothing like hearing your words hold an audience spellbound.

And how does it feel when you’re performing your own work to an audience?
Oh gosh. I try to forget just how sick performing Insomnia Cat made me and this will be the first time I have performed since then, so I’ll get back to you on that one. But I do think Insomnia Cat was quite a different thing because it was about my own battle with insomnia and what a failure I felt like for not being able to do something as simple and fundamental as sleep, so hopefully Braves will be a very different experience! I am playing a character instead of myself and I have always loved performing cabaret as it is just so immediate and intimate. Plus I love that I have Roderick Cairns up there with me so I’m actually incredibly excited.

Who do you go to for feedback about your writing?
I am so fortunate in this regard. This part of the process is so vital. New writing is a fragile thing and I am so lucky to have a group around me who encourage when encouragement is needed and butcher when butchery is called for. Frequently I am writing with a cast and crew in mind and so the actors and creatives can have a say from the very start of the play’s life. I am drawn to actors who have a bit of a dramaturge brain and their generosity and insight never ceases to amaze and humble me.

Do you think actors and directors should be able to change something you’ve written? (Is the playwright always right?)
The playwright isn’t always right and the director and actors will definitely discover new things in the room. I am quite irreverent with my words and am almost always eager to change things if they seem to not be working on the floor, but I don’t believe they should make major alternations to the words without involving the playwright.

What advice can you give to emerging playwrights?
Find your people. Revel in collaboration. See and read as much theatre as possible. Plays are written for the stage and you need to understand your medium. Never underestimate the value of a good story and always remember that you are writing words for an audience. A script is to be spoken aloud and it needs to evolve and grow beyond the page. You must give it room to grow.

What do you suggest emerging playwrights read?
The newspaper. Look for where your own downfalls are (say structure or character or dialogue) and seek out playwrights that do these things exceptionally well.

Do you read your reviews?
I don’t seek them out but I read them when people send them to me. Even with my most devastating reviews, I usually end up agreeing with a reviewer eventually. I try hard not to give reviewers opinions more weight than those of any other audience members but it can be hard and I’ll admit to being able to recite Cameron Woodhead’s  (The Age) most damning review almost word for word. Sometimes a good memory is a curse.

What’s your advice on taking criticism? 
There is an art to taking criticism and there is also an art to giving it. Find the people that know how to critique a play in a way that starts a conversation rather than ends it. As brutal as it may be, criticism should make you want to race back to your desk and keep working. If it is crushing your love of the story then perhaps you are valuing the wrong opinions. Criticism is so important for our growth as artists, but it can hurt a lot. What makes us good at our jobs is that we really, really want to be good at our jobs so it will always be hard but when all else fails, go and watch Tim Minchin’s ‘Song For Phil Doust’ and swear along with him. Then have a cup of tea and go write your next play.

Can you tell readers how easy it is to get to Monash University for The Container Festival?
By car, it is the easiest thing in the world! Just jump on the Monash Freeway and go see some art. Public transport has not been kind to Clayton but this festival will be worth the travel. Container after container packed with theatre, cabaret, music, dance, visual art, games, burlesque, poetry, puppetry, exhibitions and more. The festival runs from 2 to 20 August, so come and get some art in you!

Headshot by Sarah Walker

This was on AussieTheatre.com.

The Container Festival

The Container Festival

MUST

Monash University, Clayton

2–20 August

monashstudentassociation.com

Facebook page

Just when it looks like there might be a week without an arts festival in Melbourne, along comes the inaugural Container Festival presented by MUST, the Monash University Student Theatre association.

From August 2 to 20, a performance hub of shipping containers is being set up at Monash University in Clayton. The containers are performance venues and the MUST theatre is being transformed into a lounge bar.

With over 200 diverse performances and exhibitions including music, dance, theatre, visual art, games, burlesque, poetry and puppetry, the festival is designed to showcase and encourage student and graduate talent, while engaging the university and local community in an interactive and welcoming way.

MUST Artistic Director, Yvonne Virsik says, “It will ignite cultural engagement and expression, foster innovation and provide brilliant and affordable entertainment.”

It’s a bit like a mini Fringe festival, but there are no participation fees for the artists, it’s in one place and tickets are very affordable.

There are lots of FREE events, but the bargain is a $50 Festival Pass that gives you entry to every festival event. Day passes are only $15 or tickets for individual shows range from $2 to $8.

With offerings including one-on-one story telling, an espionage caper game called Dead Drop, 10-minute dance parties, Vietnamese folk takes, a Bingo Bonanza (with “genuine $2-shop quality prizes), performances from the Monash Jazz Orchestra and an intriguing piece called Belgian Roulette where you have to choose between two chocolate brownies (one of which is filled with chili), the Container Festival promises a unique experience for every visitor.

Theatre highlights include a workshop production of Robert Reid’s new work Bacchae Rising and new works by Fleur Kilpatrick and Tom Molyneux.

The festival launches with an opening party on Friday 2 August from 6 pm. Entry is FREE and there will be plenty of chances to meet the artists and have a sneak peak at the performances.

Monash arts graduates and MUST members continue to make an impact on the Melbourne (and Australian) independent and professional arts scene and there’s likely to be a former MUST member in most local companies from writers to performers to general managers.

Playwrights like Declan Greene and Amelia Roper had their first full-length works performed at Monash; local companies Attic Erratic, Quiet Little Fox and A Modern Deception met at Monash; and creators like Sarah Collins, Daniel Lammin, Mark Wilson, Celeste Cody, Tom Pitts, Sarah Walker, Danny Delahunty and Kaitlyn Claire all began their careers in MUST productions.

Events and festivals like this are vital to develop and encourage emerging artists and to give more experienced artists an opportunity to experiment and give new work its first outing.

The Container Festival is a terrific opportunity to see and engage with the next generation of Melbourne artists and performers.

And remember that Clayton campus is only a 20-minute drive from the city and there's parking or  public transport will drop you at the door.

Glitter photo by Sarah Walker.

This was on AussieTheatre.com.

It's a Last Tuesday Tuesday!

Pimp my play: Don's Party
The Last Tuesday Society
30 July 2103 ONLY
Malthouse theatre
malthousetheatre.com.au
Facebook page

Melbourne's Last Tuesday Society are everything that is wonderful and insane about independent theatre in our town.

It's weird, but this month, they are in a grown up theatre, at the Beckett at the Malthouse, for the next in their Pimp My Play series.

How do you pimp a play?

1. Take a play.
2. Divide up the scenes amongst the collaborating artists.
3. Put all the pieces back together in order.
4. Present theatrical equivalent of Frankenstein to horrified/delighted audience.

And the play is Don's Party.

Don's freaking Party! The play David Williamson wrote in 1971 when he wasn't boring. The play about an election night in 1969 where there was a tiny chance that Labor would win. The play with 70s decor and moustaches before they became retro chic. The play that became a film at a time where nuding up was compulsory and gender politics meant voting like your husband and getting back into the kitchen to put some kabana and Coon on a toothpick and poking it into half a pineapple.

Hosted by Richard Higgins and with performers including Bron Battern, Telia Nevile, Matt Kelly and glorious folk from from The Sister's Grimm, post, The Suitcase Royale and I'm trying to kiss you, it may be the best production of a David Williamson play ever.

And if I were David Williamson, I'd hire a private jet to ensure that I didn't miss it.

Buy your tickets HERE. I've bought mine. There may be some at the door, but is it worth the risk?

Review: Between the Cracks

MELBOURNE CABARET FESTIVAL
Between the Cracks
Yana Alana
6 July 2013
45downstairs
to 7 July

How could Between the Cracks slip through my review cracks?! Perhaps because I adored it so much that words are irrelevant. Or because its story is so important that it needs more than a dull quotable about hilarious, positive and sexy politics or how gorgeous the performer is.

Yana Alana started grabbing attention at the 2007 Melbourne Fringe when her outraged feminist poetry and show Bite Me won Best Cabaret and went on to snare some Green Room Awards, rave reviews and sold out shows.

Between the Cracks, which has the best song ever written about anal sex, was first seen at the Midsumma festival and this Cabaret Festival season quickly sold out.  

Yana has dumped her backing band of Pirana's and taken her over-sexed self-involvement to a level that ensures that no one, not even her creator Sarah Ward, can share the attention. Even if the magnificent voice and I-dare-you-to-not-want-to-fuck-me body belong to Sarah, Yana's determined to take every bit of credit and adoring love from her audience.

Naked, except for colbalt blue body paint and a spectacular bedazzling of gems, Yana insists on unblinking attention. Her sexuality is all about her and there's never a question that she'd ever doubt her sexual power.

Yana's nakedness isn't about approval or a statement about body size that doesn't conform to an impossible Barbie shape; it's all about Yana and, for all her negativity, Yana's all about positive sexuality. Even grumpy people can and should have plenty of great sex.

Director Anni Davey, who also directed Maude Davey's My Life in the Nude, gives Yana plenty of space, while ensuring she doesn't lose the love of her adoring fans by keeping the pain behind Yana's anger in reach. Not that she ever lets anyone feel sorry for Yana, because Yana would never allow such condescension.

Yana's fans are so on her side that there's little she can say that isn't supported and cheered. There's little chance of her getting the Bolt, Sanderland and Jones supporters that troll any woman who speaks her mind along to her show, but if you're a woman who's ever wasted too much of her day worried about your body or a judging gaze, or given in and silenced your opinion because you've been accused of playing the gender card or put in the ugly ranting feminist box, Yana will remind you that it's all bullshit and that every woman should believe in a world where they can walk around naked, blue and bedazzled.

Maybe it's this kind of queer eye for the straight girl that's going to help change attitudes that create the need for more and more work like this.

I saw Between the Cracks on its last Saturday night and it was so sold out that reviews were meaningless, but you there are four more chances to see Sarah and Yana in Finucane and Smith's dead-set-wonder Glory Box Paradise. Her next and last performances are 1–4 August. I feel sorry for anyone who misses it.

Photo by Peter Leslie

Review: White Rabbit, Red Rabbit

White Rabbit, Red Rabbit
Malthouse Theatre
26 July 2013
Beckett Theatre, Malthouse
to 31 July
malthousetheatre.com.au

In fairness to every actor who will perform White Rabbit, Red Rabbit and to every one who will be in an audience of a production, this is spoiler free. But, even still, please only keep reading if you've seen it, performed it or are Nassim Soleimanpour.

Wait, if you're thinking of seeing it, the answer is HELL YES.

When Nassim Soleimanpour was 29, he was living in Iran and didn't have a passport. He wrote White Rabbit, Red Rabbit to feel a sense of freedom.

It's not an especially well-written piece, but it has the audience in its paws from the first moment. A lone actor performs, but they don't see the script until they walk onto the stage, pick it up and start reading.

So you can see why there's an obligation to not write anything about it. Too much of the experience is about the actor discovering each new word at the same time as the audience. For those who saw An Oak Tree in 2008, this has a similar conceit, but the Tree had the writer on stage with the performer.

Like Tree, the actor can't do Rabbit again. And the more it gets performed, the more likely that actors have seen it or know something about it, which will leave them out of the running. Since 2009, it's been translated into many languages and performed all over the world. There's always an empty seat in the front row for Soleimanpour. And he has seen it.

But Rabbit's not about getting distracted by the writer's personal story and the history of the work; it's about discovering the text and story with the actor – and the audience are a vital part of this discovery. How often does an audience know as much as the performer and are as important to the writer as the performer is?

Having audience members who have seen it before will also impact a performance. Not that this will stop people from seeing it again. I'd have happily gone each night to see Rodney Afif, Alison Bell, Alan Brough, Shareena Clanton, Daniela Farinacci, Ming-Zhu Hii, Bert LaBonté, John Leary, Caroline Lee, Brian Lipson, Catherine McClements, Genevieve Morris, Brian Nankervis and Sam Pang perform.

But even if I do go again, it will never compare to the moment-by-moment discovery of the first time.

I saw Alan Brough. I was 82, my purple hat was a red hat and someone had a carrot.

And this is Nassim Soleimanpour's email: nassim.sn@gmail.com.

This was on AussieTheatre.com.

Support abundance

abundance: a fundraising party for independent theatre

Theatre Works, The Rabble, Little Ones Theatre, Daniel Schlusser Ensemble

27 July 2013

Theatre Works

You can support some of the best (and my favourite) indie companies and be part of what promises to be the BEST NIGHT THIS CITY HAS SEEN?

It's a big call, but tomorrow night is abundance, a fundraising shindig to help fund Theatre Works's projects for the second half of 2013.

The Rabble (Orlando, Story of O) and the Daniel Schlusser Ensemble (Menagerie, A Dolls House) are creating NEW works, and the camptacular Psycho Beach Party is heading to the Brisbane Festival.

The super gorgeous Nicola Gunn (Hello my name is) is the MC, Kate Davis (who designs all The Rabble shows) is transforming the venue and guest performers include Ally Fowler and Tottie Goldsmith (Chantoozies – yes I said CHANTOOZIES!).

The goal is to raise $20,000.

Ways to help:

• buy a ticket ($50/$35)
• donate extra (or if you can't make it)
• bid on the silent auction items.

All of which you can do HERE.

Review: Sunday in the Park with George

Sunday in the Park with George
Victorian Opera
20 July 2013
The Playhouse, Arts Centre Melbourne
to 27 July
victorianopera.com.au

Victorian Opera's Sunday in the Park with George is exquisite, and it's heartbreaking that it can only run for a week as so many people will miss this emotionally-perfect production of Stephen Sondheim's most personal work.

Sondheim wrote Sunday in the Park with George after his Merrily We Roll Along (1981) was booed by critics and closed after 16 Broadway performances. Urban legend says that he was ready to quit music theatre to write mystery novels, but writer and director James Lapine persuaded him to return and they were both inspired by a painting by George Seurat, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte (1884).

The resulting work by Sondheim and Lapine (who directed the first production) is a passionate and deeply personal exploration about being an artist and the sacrifices that accompany the choice to make art. It won Tonys for its design and the 1985 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, and the London production won Oliviers, including Best Actor in a Musical for Australia's Philip Quast.

The first act is set in 1884, as George sketches in the park and develops his new style of painting (pointillism or neo-impressionism, that creates its images and colours from the human eye merging its dots of colour). The fictional story is about the people in the painting, including George's mother and his lover, who are both rejected by George in favour of his art. The second act is in the 1980s in America where George's great grandchild, also George, is trying to create and fund his digital work in a world of snobby art critics, and planning to show his interpretation of Seruat's work in Paris on the island depicted in the famous painting.

Alexander Lewis (who studied at WAPPA and is currently in his second year of the Lindemann Young Artist Development Program at The Metropolitan Opera in New York) is outstanding as the Georges. Musically, it's like Sondheim wrote for him and emotionally he grasps the conceit of a man who gives up love for art, without ever losing the empathy of his audience. Christina O'Neil (who was also at WAPPA and a new Red Stitch ensemble member in 2013) is his counterpoint as lover Dot (and his grandmother in Act 2). She, too, sings the music like it's hers, but it's the heart and understanding that she brings to Dot that is so engaging.

And they are supported by an ensemble who are each memorable, none lesser than Nancye Hayes, as George's mother, and an Act 2 art critic, whose Act 1 song to George is a masterclass in how to perform Sondheim (warning: bring a tissue).

Conductor Phoebe Briggs understands how Sondheim applied pointillism to music and ensures that the musicians and voices never let one outshine the other. While director Stuart Maunder (whose direction of Sondheim's A Little Night Music for Opera Australia left me cold) ensures that the story is led by the powerful emotions that created it.

But even for nothing else, see it for Anna Cordingley's design. The most famous productions of George won awards for design. Victoria Opera doesn't have a Broadway budget, but Cordingley has created something that's as creative and original as Seruat and Sondheim. The costumes are made with material that's digitally printed with Seraut's colour palettes. This makes them look like they walked out of a new version of the painting and visually unite the two acts in ways that past designs haven't. Her detail is intricate and, even from the circle, it's easy to see that every hat is a finished work of art and her parasols are as beautiful as the music that sings about them. Meanwhile the set uses all of Seraut's known works and her cascade of falling colours is such a simple idea, but genius in how it supports the story and George's art.

After the success of Nixon in China, Victorian Opera are continuing to put Opera Australia to shame with a production that deserves to run for months, if only to show everyone who sees expensive opera and commercial music theatre why reviewers like me complain when they miss the mark.

It finishes on Saturday and its nearly sold out. So book now. And full time students and under 30s can get $30 tickets.

This review is on AussieTheatre.com.

On Writing: Patricia Cornelius

Savages

fortyfivedownstairs

16 August – 8 September

fortyfivedownstairs

fortyfivedownstairs.com

Patricia Cornelius is a playwright, novelist, film writer, writing teacher and dramaturge, a founding member of Melbourne Workers Theatre, and a mentor to many emerging playwrights.

Her many awards include the 2012 Patrick White Fellowship, the 2011 Victorian and NSW Premier’s literary awards, the 2003 Wal Cherry Award and 10 Australian Writers Guild Awgies.

Her next play is Savages, is at fortyfivedownstairs from 16 August to 8 September. 

Directed by her long-time collaborator Susie Dee, it explores masculinity, misogyny and the dark side of mateship. Here she talks about the inequity of male and female characters, writing for actors and reminds writers to see lots of theatre and read lots of plays.

What made you want to write this play?
I have written a number of plays that take on the issue of gender. Most of them have concentrated on young women but there have been so many dire incidents with groups of men in teams and on tours and on trips in the news that I wanted to take them on. I wanted to make sense of these men individually and in a pack. Many of the real incidents in the news have made an indelible bruise on our national psyche. They were powerful and called out to be explored.

How long did it take you to write it?
I’ve lost sight of how long. It takes such a long time now to get a work on that the process of workshopping and rewrites and tinkering go on for it seems an age.

Savages is a story about men written and directed by woman; do you expect anyone to comment on this?
I do expect some reaction but I can’t be bothered with it really. Men’s business is solely the domain of male artists? Why should it be? I think that male and female artists should look at both genders in their work. Part of the problem with too many plays is that female characters are poorly represented and all playwrights need to address this inequity.

You’ve worked a lot with director Susie Dee? Tell us something about working with her?
Who wins if you disagree?
Susie Dee is a fine director and she’s also a friend. The friendship means we’ve had the luxury of talking about theatre for decades. We argue of course but we agree about the essential elements that make great theatre. We both love actors and she is great at enabling them to take the material into terrific and powerful and funny territory. She likes text and can make it sing. She’s unafraid of going deep and will try everything to make a scene work. Neither of us is sentimental which means we like to cut to the chase.

Can you remember when you knew you wanted to be a writer?
I resisted being a writer for a long time. I tried to be a good actor and never got over feeling too afraid. I always wanted to make good theatre and it took me awhile to be satisfied with the plays I wrote. Now I don’t think about it anymore. It’s like I paid my dues. Wrote some early and inspired gems, wrote some stodgy numbers, experimented as much as I could, wrote mostly what I wanted to write and always wanted to say something, something strong enough to feel like a punch in the guts.

How many plays have you written? How many have been produced?
Is there an unproduced one that you’d love to see on stage?I’ve written about 30 plays. There is only one work, an opera titled Cunning written in collaboration with the wonderful composer Irine Vela, which has never been produced. It’s a huge work and it’s got something grand about it. It’s about resistance and what one does to survive: perfect operatic material.

Tell us a story about being part of the Melbourne Workers Theatre?
Performing in the first play State of Defence by Andrew Bovell on the back of a semi-trailer on a building site that was to become the Melbourne Tennis Centre, a hundred or so rowdy building workers looking on and me thinking, shit, they’re going to eat us alive.

What other writing do you do? 
I write prose and film scripts. I’m working with Decade films on a project called Dust. And I’m working up to write my second novel, an adaptation of my play Love.

What playwright do you read when you need inspiration?
I read a lot of plays. I read Australian playwrights as much as possible. I don’t read them so much for inspiration but I do often come away inspired. I read them because I want to know what they are writing about and how they are writing them. You learn heaps about your craft.

Apart from plays, what else do you love reading?
I read fiction.

Any hints to overcome writer’s block?
Walk. Long walks on your own.

What was the title of your first play?
Witch.

Do you ever hand write or is everything on screen?

I do both. I write notes in a writing book and use them to elaborate on the computer. Sometimes I take off then because the next step becomes suddenly clear.

How does it feel when you’re sitting in a theatre audience watching one of your plays?
It’s the most torturous experience and one I keep repeating. It takes many sittings before I can truly look at the work and be relaxed about it. Actually I’m never relaxed about it. It is something similar to someone driving you in a fast racing car and they take corners so sharply you are pounded against the door and every now and then it seems the driver has lost control and the car spins or lifts up on two wheels or turns over but then it rights itself once again and drives on.

Do you have a writing routine?
I sit at my computer most days, but I think I have a very scatty routing. It’s not always about the discipline of sitting at your desk and writing for a particular number of hours, although that is finally what one needs to do to get the play actually written. Once I’m into a play, I find myself taking my characters everywhere with me. We spend quite a lot of time in bed. I’m constantly placing them in a situation or in a discussion or getting inside their mind, looking for the way I can make them speak.

Are you an early-morning or a late-night writer?
I’m an anytime of the day writer.

Who do you go to for feedback about your writing?
I ask a small number of fellow playwrights and their responses are always invaluable. I also have a couple of directors who I get to read my work. And then there are friends – some friends who have read my work since I began to write and who have nothing to do with the theatre but have great politics and understanding of how the world works.

What’s one of your favourite quotes about writing?
"When I am writing a play I am sometimes frustrated by how stupid I am, and wish I were some sort of philosopher historian playwright, who could make sense of it all, explain it all, like a Freud or a Marx or a mother or a father or a god. But I have realised there are advantages to stupidity. And even though I have not quite lost the desire to make sense of the world, I have become more cynical about it, and watchful of stories or characters or images that comfortably reduce the world, rather than acknowledge its complexity." Melissa Reeves (Melbourne playwright)

Do you think actors and directors should be able to change something you’ve written? (Is the playwright always right?)
I think a new play will always have room to change and actors and directors will find better solutions to problems in rehearsal and to not go with these would be madness. I think if the work is being changed in a fundamental way and has become more a blue print for another work then the director has no faith in the original and has another agenda. I think go find another play. Part of making a play live on stage is committing to it, remembering why you chose it in the first place.

What advice can you give to emerging playwrights?
Read plays. And, don’t get stuck with a play in endless workshops and readings. Get it on as soon as you can. Find people who want to put on plays, form a company, find a space, do it, then do the next one.

What do you love most about writing for the stage?
There are so many elements to consider when writing for the theatre, but writing for actors is a fabulous thing. Giving actors enough, to do, to say, to think about, to transform is what I love the best.

Do you read your reviews?
Yes, of course I read them. Theatre criticism is important and can and should be elucidating. I’ve learnt things from critics. I don’t pretend I haven’t felt hurt and misunderstood but mostly playwrights want to know what a critic thinks.

What’s your advice on taking criticism?
I think all you can do is take it on. If it’s negative don’t be disheartened. One thing to remember is word of mouth is more powerful.

You’ve won many awards, which one meant the most?
The Australian Writer’s Guild awards (Awgies) have meant the most to me. They are awards that have been selected by your peers and I’ve always felt especially proud to receive them.

As a creator, you have to hand your characters over to actors so that they can live. When has an actor made one of your characters into something more than you imagined?
It’s a symbiotic relationship between the playwright and actor. The writing has to give enough and the actor has to take it and make sense of it and fly with it. I’m constantly thrilled and amazed and surprised how an actor can take my words and own them and allow them to unleash emotions and ideas that I wasn’t conscious were hidden there.

This was on AussieTheatre.com.

Review: Ubu Roi

Ubu Roi
5 Pound Theatre
18 July 2013
The Owl and the Pussycat
to 27 July
owlandcat.com.au

Ubu Roi is a mess. A filthy, mud-spluttered, cover-me-with-plastic glorious mess.

Founded in late 2010, the 5Pound theatre ensemble are making their mark in Melbourne. Based at The Owl and the Pussycat in Richmond – once a single front workers cottage – they present plays that they love, which have so far ranged from The Blue Room to Pygmalion.

Director and Co-Artistic Director of 5 Pound, Jason Cavanagh, loves Absurdism.  He directed Ionesco's Rhinoceros last year and was thrilled to get into the 1896 script by Alfred Jarry that's said to be the inspiration of the mid-20th century style and had it's French audience rioting at its first performance.

Papa Ubu (let's call him Kevin) wants to be King. He's a greedy man whose childish behaviour destroys everything he tries to control in a world with snot and poo jokes that would put a poo-obsessed four-year-old to shame.

So Cavanagh fills the stage with reeking mud and with Mattea Davies's faded grotesque glory design, Tim Wotherspoon's dripping sound and Doug Montgomery's lighting the space is so viserally vile that I was glad I'd worn wellies. Mud is flung as underwear and excess body hair turn to brown and the front row pull their plastic covers over their to protect themselves from political shit fight that's played out before them.

Ubu Roi is a text that's read (or read about) more than it's performed, but seeing it is much more fun than reading it. Cavanagh grasps the wholeness of the story (it's very loosely based on the Scottish play), but the ending feels empty. And, while he lets his delightfully hilarious cast (Nicholas Dubberley, Amy Jones, Susannah Frith, Andi Snelling, Colin Craig and Antony Okill) revel in the mucky humour, there are times when they seem to be enjoying it a bit too much. The moments when they step away from charater and the ridiculous world to pull the plastic safety curtain across are perfect, but they need to decide if the world they are slipping and sliding in is real and dangerous or a playground for buffoonery.

As the mire gets stinkier by the day, Ubu Roi is going to fester until its grossness is squirmingly irresistible. So cover up and watch safely as 5Pound refuse to be safe and dull.

This was on AussieTheatre.com.

July review previews