What Melbourne Loved in 2018, part 3

It's time to hear from regulars Ash and Daniel L. And a first time visit from Jane Miller, who's been written about on SM from the very early days.

Ash Flanders
a festival of dangerous ideas dressed in stained pyjamas

Ash Flanders/Norman Bates. Selfie. 

Favourite moments in 2018
Getting to see Abigail's Party on the mainstage – the biggest stage MTC has – was my favourite night at the theatre this year. Stephen Nicolazzo took an older (although to me, it's canon) play now largely associated with community theatre and reminded me why it was still relevant. There's nothing more timeless than people trying to impress each other in order to feel more than what they are (but enough about the arts scene, LOLZ). Getting to hear lines I know off by heart was one kind of thrill, but hearing something new in them – as well as crafting detailed relationships between these seemingly broad characters – left me gobsmacked. That lady is anything but Nicolazy.

Other non-lazy ladies who blew my mind were POST with Ich Nibber Dibber. I don't envy the task of studying and transcribing your younger self, but the result was captivating. On a structural level the piece was a damn impressive feat of storytelling, but while it made me laugh (probably the most of any show this year), it also made me feel a lot of feeeeelings, none of which I'll share because I don't know you. I think like a lot of work I really dig it took something seemingly disposable – the offcuts of unstructured chats over ten years – and made something incredibly HIGH ART BUT ALSO CLOWNY from it.

I also got to witness an unforgettable moment at the end of the Malthouse season of Blackie Blackie Brown. Seconds before the show concluded, an audience member took a turn and was sick in the seating bank forcing the whole show to stop, because those are the sort of happy accidents that tended to happen with this show. I also cut my hand open with a machete in Sydney. We were determined to say goodbye to this beast properly, so Dalara Williams delivered her final monologue from the foyer. But the timing worked out so that midway through her monologue audiences began coming out of Melancholia... because. of course. Dalara's voice managed to silence the entire Malthouse foyer, and both audiences stood silently to witness it. The words Nakkiah had written – about a brighter Aboriginal future and the struggles still ahead – never felt more powerful than in that moment. I had the distinct feeling of being in a 'star-making' moment and I'm sure everyone else felt the same about me seeing as I'd set Dalara up for her monologue by playing a seven-year-old boy – a role I'd been gunning for since day one of rehearsal.

Looking forward to in 2019
Naturally I'm looking forward to working with a bunch of talented folks in The Temple at Malthouse (join usssssss....). I'm also a little thrilled we have Ellen Burstyn to gawk at when she acts her pants off in 33 Variations – which I assume is about the many TIGHT POLITE SMILES she has for homosexuals bothering her incessantly about The Exorcist. I'm also crossing my fingers for more plays from the GONE WRONG universe.

SM: Sure Blackie Blackie Brown was just the best, but then came PELICANette: the link should take you to the Google doc.


Daniel Lammin
Director

Engaged means presents!

Favourite moments in 2018
For me, it has to be The Bachelor S17 E5. I think I may have gotten the last ticket because I kept putting it off. The idea of staging an episode of a reality TV show sounded trite to me, and I had no desire to watch a bunch of self-satisfied artists put an episode on stage just for us to laugh knowingly at it and feel superior to it. But when I realised it was the work of Morgan Rose and Katrina Cornwell, I leapt at my computer and frantically booked. Morgan and Kat are maybe my favourite theatre makers in Melbourne. Their work is always so stirring and thrilling and presented with such generosity (especially their Riot Stage work), but The Bachelor surpassed my suddenly high expectations. It was beyond a clever concept, beyond parody. It was profound, hilarious, disturbing, moving, infuriating and epic. It treated its subject with such respect as it pulled its gender and racial politics apart, and in the process the gender and racial politics of our own world. This was theatre immediate and vital, insanely imaginative and rigorous in a way so little work is anymore. Morgan, Kat and their team presented a series of questions, provocations and conundrums, but you didn’t hear the questions, you felt them deeply, and Kat’s direction is some of the best I’ve seen in Melbourne in a long time. I left afterwards giddy at its audacity and generosity. Anyone else would have made it a joke, but they made it something bigger, deeper and grander than anyone on that show would ever have imagined their pursuit of Love could be.

Looking forward to in 2019
Obviously anything that Kat and Morgan do, which is also linked to the work of another artist I love. We finally get to see a staging of Fleur Kilpatrick’s Whale thanks to MAPA with Kat directing, and it just sounds so incredibly audacious! I’m also very excited for Fleur’s production of Slaughterhouse Five coming back, a co-pro with Monash Uni Student Theatre (MUST) and Theatre Works. The original production was incredible, and the work Fleur created with the students was often extraordinary. I can’t wait to see it again!

SM: I love Daniel's ongoing exploration of men and violence and where we go so wrong to create societies where violence develops: Sneakyville at fortyfivedownstairs (written by Christopher Bryant) started with Charles Manson, but was so much more.

But my favourite show of his this year was After Hero by the Monash Centre for Theatre and Performance at Malthouse. He works with emerging actors (students makes it sound like they aren't ready; they are) to create performances that come from places that mean something to the performers. This creates a passion on the stage that is so easy to connect to.

And it's very exciting that he's going to be continuing to work with students in his new position as producer at Monash Centre for Theatre and Performance.

I also use a film review he wrote when I teach film criticism. It's an example of personal subjective writing and it ALWAYS gets students talking and thinking about how to be more personal in their own writing.

Jane Miller
Playwright
15 Minutes from Anywhere

Jane Miller

Favourite moments in 2018
I didn’t see as much theatre in 2018 as I would like to have. Highlights for me were Blasted at Malthouse. It’s obviously not an easy text but Sarah Kane’s writing is stunning, confronting and visceral. Everything about Anne-Louise Sarks’s production was pitched perfectly. Blasted forced me to appreciate the privilege inherent in my own discomfort.

Something completely different was Puffs at The Alexander Theatre. I’ve only read three Harry Potter novels  – SM: What!? – so I probably didn’t get as much from the humour as true aficionados, but it was fun, clever and the performances were excellent.

The evocative and intelligent Fallen by She Said Theatre at fortyfivedownstairs made me acutely aware of the powder keg of frustration underneath an incredibly repressed façade. I love She Said Theatre’s work.

Perhaps my favourite show of the year was Morgan Rose and Katrina Cornwell’s The Bachelor S17 E5. By using the transcript of an episode of The Bachelor, they made a show that was both hilarious and disturbing. Their production choices and beautiful cast revealed the darker subtext at the underbelly of reality television. It was brilliant and I’d love to see it have another run.

Looking forward to in 2019
Solaris at he Malthouse and Arbus and West at the MTC. I will be keeping my eyes open for the exciting things coming up a Red Stitch, Darebin, fortyfivedownstairs, Theatre Works and from my favourite independent artists.

My creative partner-in-crime Beng Oh has a return of his excellent production of Mike Bartlett’s play Cock coming to fortyfivedownstairs for Midsumma, which is very exciting.

Perhaps the thing I’m most looking forward to is seeing the amazing team at La Mama continue to thrive and renew despite the heartbreak they experienced during 2018. Their determination and support of artists is a wonderful thing to experience any year.

SM: Jane has been one of my favourite local writers since she stood out in Short and Sweets many years ago. Her plays grasp how characters have to make choices and that those choices should be impossible. Her characters are us; we know these people and she always ensures that we remember them because we're making those impossible choices with them. Her Just A Boy Standing in Front of a Girl  at La Mama in October surprised me at every turn. It began by ensuring that the audience had to think about gender and perspective from the moment we sat in our gender-specific seats, and continued to question what decisions in the story were based on gender. Great stuff.

What Melbourne loved in 2016, part 7

Today we here from Penny Harpham from She Said Theatre, Morgan Rose – whose show F.  runs until 11 December – and Kerith Manderson-Galvin – whose show 186,000 runs until 17 December.

Morgan Rose
playwright

Morgan Rose

MR's favourite moments in Melbourne theatre in 2016: This is easy. Conviction (Zoey Dawson and Declan Greene and, holy shit, Ruby Hughes). All the way. Made me feel every feeling there is: fear, joy, disgust, anger, jealousy, confusion, awe ... and more. It made some people uncomfortable because she writes about herself (which we all do, but she doesn't try to keep it a secret); isn't that just a really hilarious thing for people to be upset about? I say keep doing it until their heads bust open.

Incomparably different, but equally as moving was Nic Green's Trilogy at Artshouse. I wept, and I'm not a weeper. I don't know what I was feeling, I'd never felt it before, it doesn't have a name, but it was uncontainable. Seeing a bunch of women, naked, beautiful, unphotoshopped, dancing, and proud in their skin was like seeing the truth for the first time ever. Hmmmm...maybe that new unnamable feeling was just the absence of shame.

Oh! I also say Mammalian Diving Reflex's All the Sex I Ever Had at the Sydney Festival last January; it was probably in my top-three shows ever. A group of seniors sat at a table on stage and told us their entire sex lives, year by year starting at birth. It made me want to never write a play again because people talking unscripted about real things is so much better than anything any playwright could dream up.

What MR is looking forward to in Melbourne theatre in 2017: Revolt. She Said. Revolt Again. at Malthouse. Stephen Nicolazzo's direction of The Moors at Red Stitch.  She Said's Fallen (although we will all have to travel to NSW see it).

SM: I saw F. on Wednesday night (the last show of the Poppyseed Festival). Morgan wrote it in conjunction with a cast of amazing young people. It's a chance to get into teenagers heads and see the world from their points of view. Some parts of being a young adult today still scare me, but overall this work made me remember that young adults are pretty good at navigating and negotiating the world they live in and it left me feeing positive about a future that's going to be shaped by these people. It finishes on December 11.

Kerith Mandseron-Galvin
playwright

Kerith Manderson-Glavin. Photo by Cam Matheson "who captures me in photos the way I see myself"

KMG's favourite moments in Melbourne theatre in 2016: Church at Melbourne Fringe. All of it, but, particularly, crying with absolute joy and for one small moment freedom while singing “Natural Woman” with the Divine Femme Choir. That night I felt community and hope.

Luke Devine’s Work Bitch at Hot Hot Hot. It should be put on again and everything Luke has written should be published and put in your letter boxes. It’s nice to get mail from time to time.

DJ Donna Quixote, aka me, djing at Blue Room’s Silent Disco at Perth Fringe. Watching everyone change their silent discos away from my channel and the few that remained dance in a frenzy.

James Chance, oh my goodness, James Chance. I mean he was really, very good. Feeling like I understood music or it understood me.

The time Loretta Miller of Jazz Party removed an item of clothing at a gig and it was pure theatre. Also her costume change at the Rock and Roll Graveyard single launch.

Casey Jenkin's Programmed to Reproduce at FOLA was hard and necessary and sad and so smart and meticulous and beautiful.

Titanic was a great movie when it came out and I saw it twice but Dopplegangster's Titanic was better. Wow. World class. First class. I hope so much it happens again and again.

Gob Squad’s War and Peace or being on stage in it and so supported in a position that would usually have me running off stage, or more likely sitting quietly and disappearing. I felt safe and happy.

And finally.

Your Ever Illusory Hosts *Jimay Falcon & Sh'Gazey A Game Show Extravaganza. I smiled all night long and the corners of my mouth are turning up again when I think about how much I loved that night.

What KMG is looking forward to in Melbourne theatre in 2017: I actually haven’t thought about it one bit. So that’s something.

SM: I so wish I'd been at War and Peace the night Kerith was on stage (Chris was). She's just finished her Masters at VCA and her new show 186,000 opens this week and runs until 17 December. I haven't seen it yet and am trying to find a free night.

And another terrific photo that captures the person how she really looks; it's lovely to know that Kerith sees herself how the world sees her.

15 December

I saw 186,000 last night. It's gentle and loving and shares young queer voices that are too often ignored on our stages and in our lives. The verbatim text is on screen and recorded, and the four people on the stage share their own stories. The structure comes from the staging and the movement; it's almost hypnotic. And the queer western femme dream design is gorgeous.

Penny Harpham
co-founder and co-Artistic Director, She Said Theatre

Penny Harpham. Photo by Lachlan Woods

PH's favourite moment in Melbourne theatre in 2016: For me it would be in Influx's new work, Animal, presented at Theatre Works, created and performed by Kate Sherman and Nicci Wilks and directed by Susie Dee. There is a moment towards the end of Animal where he two female performers climb and crawl all over the set, which is made entirely of stacks and stacks of solid industrial containers, and it seems to transform in front of you as the containers at the very back of the stage reveal themselves to be not solid, but full of water. One of the performers drags the other into the container and violently drowns her. The lights shift so that as her body goes limp the lights blur and darken and though we know we are watching a performance, the performer is now floating lifelessly in anonymity at the back of the stage.

It is both a masterstroke of stage craft, but also a visceral attack on the senses. It made me think of all the women who had been killed by their partners this year. It made me think of Eddie Maguire saying on national radio that AFL journalist Caroline Wilson should "drown herself".  It made me realise how powerful and strong and vulnerable and brave women are and how we are forced to shrink in this world in order to survive under this suffocating, relentless, Trump-filled patriarchy. It made me realise how a moment of live performance can leave me reeling and angry and charged and aware of the macro and micro and it made me want to make work that did for other people.

What PH is looking forward to in Melbourne theatre in 2017: 
I'm very excited about the Yirramboi First Nations Arts Festival, 5-14 May. Jacob Boehme is one of the country's most exciting and versatile performance makers and I'm so excited to see the program he has curated take over the city in May. Also, Revolt. She Said. Revolt Again at Malthouse sees an almost all female team explore (or perhaps attack?) language and violence against women with a cultural diverse cast and some of my favourite creatives including Emma Valente and Marg Horwell.

SM: I love that She Said Theatre is getting lots of mentions this year. My favourite moment was seeing how HART had developed and changed since its first season. What a show!

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What Melbourne loved in 2016, part 4

Today's moments are from three men whose theatre voices are bold, challenging and totally their own: Daniel Lammin, Stephen Nicolazzo and David Finnigan. We're going to see a lot more of their work of in the years to come

Daniel Lammin
director, writer, obsessive collector

Daniel Lammin's 30th birthday present-to-self selfie

DL's favourite moments in Melbourne theatre in 2016: No piece of theatre this year hit me with as much force as Picnic at Hanging Rock. The book is my favourite Australian book and the film is my favourite Australian film, both having had an enormous impact on me growing up. I also love the work that Matt Lutton, Tom Wright, Zoë Atkinson and Paul Jackson have done together in the past, so consequently my expectations were enormous. The result though exceeded my expectations beyond my wildest dreams. The production captured the concerns of Lindsay’s story, the sexual repression of young women and the Australian landscape’s rejection of us as an invading force, and crafted it into an impressive work of art in its own right, pulsing from Matt’s rigorous direction, Zoë and Paul’s remarkable design, the cast’s tremendous performances and Tom’s diabolical, awe-inspiring text.

It also understood the most misunderstood aspect of the story, that at its heart it is a work of horror, one that crawls under your skin and festers there for the rest of your life.

Watching Picnic was one of the most exhilarating experiences I've ever had in the theatre, both because of what was happening on the stage and what was happening in the audience, a mass of people battered and thrown by the uncompromising force of what they were seeing, jumping and screaming and gasping in unison. The teenager sitting next to me literally jumped out of his chair at a moment of sublime theatrical horror, and sat on the edge of his seat for the rest of the night. It was a perfectly executed theatrical event, one that shows tremendous respect for its source material but with the imagination and rigour to be a great work of art on its own. It left me breathless, exhilarated, disturbed, in awe and in tears, and like the book and film before it, left an enormous and life-changing impact on me and my work as a theatre maker. I confidently rank it as one of the best pieces of theatre I’ve ever seen.

What DL is looking forward to in Melbourne theatre in 2017: Unsurprisingly, I’m incredibly excited to see how the same team approach The Elephant Man. It’s a beautiful story but a theatrically complicated one, and if they apply the same rigour to this one that they applied to Picnic, it could be something really special. I also can’t wait to catch CULL during the Comedy Festival (I missed it during the Fringe and regretted it enormously), and to see what She Said Theatre does next – their work is just getting better and better, and continues to be some of the most important being made.

SM: Daniel wrote and directed Awakening for MUST (performed at Trades Hall). It was an adaption of Spring Awakening by Frank Wedekind (not the musical also based on it) and was one of the most moving and gut-punching pieces of theatre I saw this year. Another MUST show that nowhere near enough people saw. I really hope that someone gives this show another season because it's heartbreaking to think that it won't be seen again – with the same cast please.

Brilliant update: Awakenings has been picked up by the super-wonderful fortyfivedownstairs, so put 10–21 May in your diary now. Book here.

And while you're there, look at the at what else is coming there next year. What a season!

Stephen Nicolazzo
director,  Little Ones Theatre; likes Madonna 

Stephen Nicolazzo

SN's favourite moments in Melbourne theatre in 2016: Hands down, my favourite moments in Melbourne theatre in 2016 were: Cain and Abel (The Rabble ), Gonzo (St Martin’s/Malthouse) and Terror Australis (Leah Shelton at Melbourne Fringe). These works were brave, beautiful, and furious. They were focussed on the craft of visual story telling and the presentation of complex political perspectives in cheeky, adventurous and moving ways.

All were born from Australia’s most courageous female artists: Emma Valente, Kate Davis, Clare Watson and the divine Leah Shelton, and all were a formally adventurous master class in contemporary theatre practice. Finally, each of these works had exquisite craft on display, which to me is an integral part of theatre making. They didn’t bend the rules simply to provoke. They bent them to explore craft and courage.

This is what I want in my theatre. My personal moment of 2016 was getting to tour Dangerous Liaisons for the last time. It has been two years since Dangerous opened at MTC Neon, and it has grown substantially since then, blossomed into a work that I am extremely proud of. It is so rare to develop a work after its initial presentation and in the case of this one, it has been such a unique gift to refine, reassess, and nuance. So very grateful to all of the festivals and presenters who took a risk on our huge mother fucker of a show and to the audiences across the country who have fallen in love with it.

What SN is looking forward to in Melbourne theatre in 2017: The Theatre Works 2017 season. CAN.NOT.WAIT.

SM: I'll see any theatre Stephen makes, but I missed the return of Dangerous Ls and I missed the Madonna night that he programmed for Melbourne Fringe – but I loved lying in bed and watching the pics and videos of it on Twitter.

If you want to support Little Ones Theatre's Midsumma show, donate here.

David Finnigan
playwright

Georgie McAusley and David Finnigan. Photo by Sarah Walker

DF's favourite moment in Melbourne theatre in 2016: This might not be the moment, but I found myself really, really sinking into Nat Randall's The Second Woman performance at Next Wave. I went along intending to stay for a few minutes, found myself there for an hour or two at least. It was weirdly satisfying, so many dimensions to it, but it was sitting afterwards with Jane Howard while she unpacked it for me, that was the real lightbulb moment. I dug that. Maybe that's the combination: good artwork, good analysis, good chats with good humans. That's all you need.

What DF is looking forward to in Melbourne theatre in 2017: I'm looking forward to the major companies retreating further out of touch, the existing funding structures coming apart at the seams and the whole system continuing its histrionic slow-motion collapse, so we can hurry up and see what weird alternatives emerge out of the edges.

SM: I loved seeing Kill Climate Deniers at the Melbourne Fringe, but my moment was reading the play. I was sitting in a cafe in Avalon on Sydney's north coast (which is exactly like the awesome web series Avalon Now, made by real estate site) eating a huge salad with purple cabbage, kale and every super food – while listening to a woman ask why they didn't have a quinoa salad (nuts weren't good enough protein for her) – then being recommended a chocolate cake that was pretty much melted dark chocolate and dates. It was like I was living in the world of Kill Climate Deniers; I WAS in the world of Kill Climate Deniers – and willingly being part of it.

(PS: I love being sent new scripts to read.)

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MELBOURNE FRINGE: Hart

HART
She Said Theatre
20 September 2015
Fringe Hub, Parlour Room
to 3 October
melbournefringe.com.au

HART is beautiful, heartbreaking and liberating storytelling.

With old checkerboard lino, faded damask wallpaper and a wooden table, the tiny stage in the Fringe hub Parlour Room looks like a farm kitchen from anytime in the last 200 years. A place where people yarn and gossip and share their stories.  It’s here that Ian Michael tells the stories – including his own – of four Noongar men from, what we call, south-west Western Australia.

From interviews with writers (Senna van Helten and Michael) and testimonies told to the Stolen Germinations’ Testimonies Foundation, the four stories are told in the first person. With Michael keeping the same persona, it’s not always clear who’s story is being told, and it’s this technique that makes it such an extraordinary telling.

Each is so personal – it’s easy to dismiss a generalisation, but much harder to ignore one person’s experience – but their similarities and the discussion of generational trauma and forgiveness make it a story about us and now.

HART opens with sound grabs from our politicians. While there are moments of relief and pride, too many cannot see the shame and ignorance in their statements. What do we have to do to get them to see work – “excellent” art – like this?

It continues with photos of people whose stories could also be told. The photos flash by so quickly that it’s impossible to really see them. This is frustrating but painfully cries out that there are so many stories that have already been lost.

Once told, stories cannot be lost and we have to keep telling them until everyone listens.



The was on AussieTheatre.com.