We’re almost ready to start day three with some great work from our international artists! At 2pm today we welcome our international guests from the National Theatre of Scotland with readings of Distracted by Morna Pearson and Dorm by Lynda Radley as part of our Destination: Scotland.
Later tonight we have:
7pm – Therese Raquin by Gary Abrahams (Destination: Australia)
9.30pm – One Scientific Mystery, or, Why did the aborigines eat Captain Cook? by Victoria Haralabidou (Destination: Australia)
11pm – The unspoken word is (Joe) by Zoey Dawson (MKA presents the Red Eye Special)
Head into the Malthouse for some profound rehearsed readings of great new work! Also, check out the latest interview with Vaness Bates, playwright of Every Second which is next playing on Saturday 25 February, 9pm. Special thanks to Australian Plays for their awesome Festival Diary!
Have you checked out our Living Cities Tours?
See the city of Melbourne with fresh eyes by downloading our Living Cities audio tours to your smartphone or ipod and immerse yourself in the culture and vibrancy of Melbourne’s funky hubs and sneaky laneways.
The UK’s Owen Calvert-Jones (of Arcola Theatre) and Peter Higgin (of Punchdrunk) have teamed up with the National Play Festival and the British Council Australia to bring to you an immersive and engrossing audio tour experience written by some exceptional Melbourne playwrights – direct to your smartphone! For more information and to download your city map and MP3 click here.
We had an awesome turn-out yesterday on the first day of our National Play Festival at the Malthouse! Audiences loved the performances last night from playwrights Nicki Bloom, Victoria Haralabidou and Gary Abrahams. The work was moving, challenging and hilarious!
On the schedule today, we have some readings from talented playwrights from Broome starting at 3pm. This is followed by the first showing of work from the rest of our Destination: Australia playwrights: Vanessa Bates and Tom Holloway.
And if you’re up for a late night – MKA Presents the Red Eye Special will be bringing to you Truckstop by Lachlan Philpott from 11pm.
So head on down to the Malthouse for some great company and great performances!
Victoria Haralabidou, playwright of One Scientific Mystery, or, Why did the aborigines eat Captain Cook? (next playing Friday 24 February, 9.30pm) is next to be featured on the Festival Diary brought to you by Australian Plays.
Our National Play Festival kicks off this afternoon! We have some great new plays on offer – so head on over to the Malthouse and check it out! Thanks to Australian Plays you can check out our Festival Diary which is jam-packed with all the latest goss and interviews about the plays we have on offer!
Have a look at the interview with Gary Abrahams, playwright of Therese Raquin as he discusses the rehearsal and writing process:
Follow this by seeing what Tobias Manderson-Galvin has to say about The Economist which is featured in MKA Presents: The Red Eye Special:
This week we speak with Tanya Gerstle, director of Therese Raquin who offers some generous advice to emerging artists and gives us a little bit of insight into a play that she would love to direct and where she would want to stage it!
You have created and directed a number of your own works and toured them all over the world (Australia, Amsterdam, England, Italy and the Netherlands). Tell us a bit about the creative process and the nature of touring around the world?
By their nature creative processes are different every time. The circumstances that I am working in, for example; creating new work or interpreting text, the number of performers etc and the context in which the work is produced; the cultural landscape, building it for touring etc. make each time I approach a development period new and dynamic. My process principally entails ‘imaginative excavation’. The ensemble of players approach the text of the narrative or the idea to be explored in layers where they uncover their character’s physical relationship to the text, the space and each other. Trust in my instinct and technical understanding allows me to curate, spontaneously respond to and shape the material that emerges. I see each project as a provocation inviting the solving of creative problems. Touring involves all of this, as well as an enormous amount of project management.
In 2002, you were awarded a ‘Teaching Excellence Award’, what lesson would you give to emerging actors, theatre-makers, and directors?
Follow your passion. Remember a vocation is a ‘calling’. Honour it. Dancing on the edge of failure is the most potent place to work from. It means you are taking risks. Make being in the unknown what you crave. Learn to sit comfortably with ambiguity. Realize that playing paradox is possible. Make work that moves you. It may take time to find its audience. There are two kinds of actors – dangerous and dead. Trust, trust and trust.
In three words, describe your first impressions of Therese Raquin?
Restrained. Explosive. Contemporary.
Tell us a bit about how you will approach this play in order to bring to life the dark and sinister nature of the play. Have you read the novel from which it is adapted?
I read the novel long ago, but I remember being powerfully affected by a BBC dramatization of it in the 1980’s. Gary’s adaptation of the narrative is spare, intense and raw. All we will have time to do is create a sense of the era and embody some of the action allowing the turning points of the narrative to speak for themselves. Therese is trapped within impossible circumstances where she has choice and yet no choice. Guilt that rots the soul has become her living hell. We will only find out in the performing of the tale where the emotional energy lies. The dark and sinister aspects of the story are implicit. The challenge will be to pose alternate possibilities of love and forgiveness.
If you could direct a play anywhere (real or imagined), where would it be and why?
This question is too enormous to contemplate right now, but I will take it on and try to find an answer. Until I do, I will keep dreaming of creating an adaptation of Brecht’s Caucasian Chalk Circle in the Tibetan refugee camp on the border of Nepal that I visited in 2011. Why? Because the story will transform itself and cut deeply into the lives of the players and those experiencing it.
Van Badham is a playwriting, social commentating, dramaturging, cabaret-ing extraordinaire. She’ll be undertaking dramaturgy on Every Second and Therese Raquin at our National Play Festival this year. In this week’s Director/Dramaturg Profile we chat with Van about the great interpretive nature of theatre, glean excellent first-hand advice for this year’s playwrights, not to mention discovering what Van would do to ensure a safe emergency landing!
Passenger: Van Badham
You were a showcased playwright at last year’s festival, what advice would you give to this year’s stable of playwrights?
The best recommendation I can make is to avoid all temptations. Rewrites will be necessary; make them. Be a miser with your time. And resist – resist, with everything you’ve got – wanting to discuss or explain the play. Ask questions, sure – but every minute you spend talking about your play is a minute you’re not spending watching, listening, analysing how the play actually works. Dramaturgy is a process of translation of literary language into dramatic action; don’t fail at performance by contextualising the work as a written or verbal account of yourself. This is advice to myself I give in dark and regretful hours. Ignore my pain at your peril.
What’s the major difference between the two plays you are performing dramaturgy on?
One is an adaptation of one of the great novels of early European realism that attempts to narrate the broader failings of the capitalist system through the limited agency of a contained group of characters. The other is a bourgeois black comic nightmare about having children. Both are great fun.
As the Artistic Associate (Writing) at the Malthouse Theatre (where the play festival is being held this year), tell us a bit about what we can look forward to at the Malthouse in 2012?
We’re running a season of twelve productions in our mainstage season. There’s everything from a glamorous country-singing activist (“Sorry Seems to Be the Hardest Word”), Greek adaptations (“On the Misconception of Oedipus”), our very first family show (Windmill’s “Pinocchio”), amazing contemporary dance (“Briwyant”) and blistering, post-structural black comedy (“Pompeii LA”). Excitingly, we’re also launching the first season of Helium, with an additional five productions in the Tower, hand-picked from the very best of independent Australian theatre. So, really, you should all
subscribe. You don’t want to miss a thing.
Your plays have been staged all over the world (Australia, the UK, the USA, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Slovenia, and Iceland) – have there been any surprises or differences in the way the plays have been received in these varying countries?
Oh, of course. One would certainly hope that every single production of every play is going to be significantly different to any other – that’s one of the great appeals of the theatre, that it’s so interpretative. Some of my favourite memories, though, include the eight-hour-long short play anthology that I viewed in a language I do not actually speak and the German production of my play ‘Kitchen’, set in a kitchen, that was performed on a set of giant glass flowers. In the words of the great Frank Moorhouse: “Those kids really know how to organise.”
And finally, if you had to direct an aeroplane pilot through an emergency landing, what would you say or do?
Ha. I think it says a lot about my own dramaturgical methodology that I’d be saying: “Come on, lady – step outside of yourself for a second. You know how to land this plane. Breathe in. Now, you talk me through step-by-step what you have to do.”
This week we interrogate Susie Dee, our lovely director of One Scientific Mystery, or, Why did the aborigines eat Captain Cook? and Every Second. We talk to Susie about the rehearsal room process, making snow and the road less travelled!
Passenger: Susie Dee
You have worked extensively as a performer and director across Australia and the globe. Tell us the differences in the rehearsal space for the actor and the director.
The rehearsal space for the actor and director is predominantly the same – to explore, find our way, build relationships with our fellow workers and bring the work to life – making it as exciting and as fresh as we possibly can. The director’s eye will look for variety, clarity and simplicity; the actor will listen, be willing, open and responsive.
What were your first thoughts upon reading Every Second?
That Vanessa has a great wit and that she knows this terrain very well.
How are you and the actors dealing with the Russian dialogue inOne Scientific Mystery, or, Why did the aborigines eat Captain Cook?
If we have a Russian actor- no problems -if not -we might attempt to ‘catch a couple of phrases. It’s most fortunate to have the writer in the room who is Russian though!
You were the recipient of an Australia Council Residency in the Cite des Art in Paris. Tell us a bit about studying overseas.
I was blessed to have a chance to hang out in Paris for 3 months last year. I was in Paris to observe different spaces/collectives in Paris and its surrounds. I also had an attachment to Theatre Du Soleil based at the Cartoucherie on the outskirts of Paris. I spent many long days and nights at the Cartoucherie observing the company (approx. 80 people each day – actors, creatives, mechs, admin, interns etc) set up and rehearse the ‘making of a film’ of their latest theatre show – Les Naufrages Du Fol Espoir. It was an extraordinary experience. The company share many of the tasks at hand- actors, when not acting are cooking, shifting rostra, doing laundry etc. I spent hours in the communal kitchen, chopping vegetables, washing dishes, cleaning, painting rostra, and making..snow! It was a most humbling and stimulating environment.
Do you prefer the big city or the road less travelled? Why?
the road less travelled always – you never know what’s around the bend.
So, we’ve chatted with all of our showcased playwrights at this year’s festival. Now, in our first week of getting to know our directors and dramaturgs, we talk to Geordie Brookman, director of The Sun and the Other Stars about the arts scene in Adelaide and what it’s like working with his wife!
Passenger: Geordie Brookman
The Sun and the Other Stars involves an atypically large cast of fourteen and moves across a vast expanse of time and space – what do you think will be some of the challenges you face in directing this play?
The Sun and the Other Stars provides challenges for a director on a number of levels. In the context of the Play Festival my central concern is to make sure that Nicki’s intricate plotting and structure is communicated clearly and that the connections between characters across space and time resonate. Nicki’s dialogue also has a wonderful, highly individual structure and rhythm to it, it’ll be my job to make sure that all the actors are in sync with this rhythm.
What do you think will draw audiences to The Sun and the Other Stars?
I think it’s epic plot, highly complex characters and the pure ambition of the piece will provide an incredibly strong pull for any audience.
You and Nicki are Co-Artistic Directors of NowYesNow in Adelaide. Tell us a bit about the theatre scene there – what are the trends and highlights for potential visitors?
Adelaide has a wonderful arts scene. It’s a great place to make work as an independent artist. One of the obvious highlights is Festival season in February/March of each year when the entire city gets taken over by the Adelaide Festival, Fringe, WOMAD and Writers Week. Like the great festival cities of the northern hemisphere (i.e. Edinburgh, Avignon etc) Adelaide is contained enough to be utterly consumed by its Festivals. Outside of festival time a lot of the most exciting work is in the independent sector where there is an increasing amount of multi disciplinary work being made.
You’ve run a major state theatre company as well as independent theatres. Which do you prefer and what are the differences in each?
I’ve worked for major companies, I haven’t run one yet. I find working in both sectors enriching. The resource that major theatre companies give you access to do allow you to extend your craft in some ways but working with very little money on a small scale forces you to be really inventive, often with wonderful results. Personally I love being able to cross over between both sectors.
You and Nicki are married. Tell us a bit about what the creative process might entail?
Nicki and I have worked together a lot, initially on her first play Tender in 2007. We love it. I think it works because we both respect the other person’s role and skill set and value each others opinions. Nicki is always the first person I look to for feedback on my work even when she’s not involved and vice versa. Running nowyesnow together is a natural extension of that.
There has always been a connection between family and art making for me. My brother Torben has produced a lot of my work and I’ll be directing a piece written by my other brother Kit later in the year. I’ve worked with both of my parents too, my mum Verity is a playwright and my dad Rob is a producer. The creative process is no different though, I value all my collaborators very highly whether I’m related to them or not!
In the final week of our playwright profile series, we talk to Gary Abrahams, playwright of Therese Raquin, about missing childhoods and fistfuls of Xanax! Plus, if you’re heading to Melbourne for the first time, Gary shares with us his must-sees in the world’s most liveable city!
Passenger: Gary Abrahams
Gary, your play is an adaptation of Zola’s 19th Century novel of the same name, what drew you to this story and what do you think it has to say for our society today?
I read the novel a few years back while living in London. I think I just picked it up for next to nothing at a second hand bookshop and read it in a day or two. I remember being drawn into this dark and psychologically savage world full of selfishness and shadows and thinking that it would make a great play. And lo and behold (more or less immediately) I noticed that the National Theatre were putting on a production of Zola’s play (dramatized by Nicholas Wright) based on his own novel. I liked the production, but thought strongly that it felt very sparse and empty compared to my experience of reading the book. There were so many images and ideas that stayed with me from the book that seemed missing and I wondered if there were a way to flesh it out a bit more, make it somehow more savage and more intricately complex. A couple of years later I was chatting to director, Simon Phillips and I mentioned the work, and he confessed that he really liked it too but had been unable to find a (theatrical) version of it that satisfied him. A while later he suggested I have a crack at it and the MTC commissioned the work in 2011.
I spent a lot of time with both the novel and Zola’s own adaptation of the work while writing my own version of it. I was immensely attracted to all the characters and fascinated with the perverse way they lived their small little lives. Zola himself speaks very clearly about intending the novel as a psychological study of shame and guilt, and how he was fascinated in exploring how two very different energies (Laurent and Therese) might interact when brought together in the way the events in the story allow. I became very fascinated by the psychology of each character, of the pain and hope that fuels them, allowing them to behave in such terrifying and appalling ways. In a way I was drawn to the challenge of trying to create a very detailed, enthralling character-based drama peopled by characters who, in truth, are quite difficult to like. And there is a gothic sensibility and aesthetic to the work that I think is quite tricky to pull off on stage, and which I enjoyed trying to evoke. The world and life of the Raquin’s apartment is very much a character in the play, and I think the architecture of the space has an enormous impact on the characters behaviour.
On another level I’m a big fan of the “well made”’ play and enjoy the challenge of constructing a theatrical narrative that obeys these rules to an extent. Zola’s novel actually doesn’t have big chunks of dialogue to play with, so part of creating this work was about trying to find a language that could both serve the story’s setting (19th Century Paris) while still maintaining a modernity suitable for contemporary performance. I’m really excited about having the work read out loud by actors during the festival, to see if I’ve come anywhere close to achieving this!
I find it hard to guess what a contemporary audience might take away from a play that is so firmly rooted in its period. I think this play speaks very clearly about the nature of guilt and shame. About how guilt can kill a person, slowly rotting their soul the same way that death rots the flesh. On another level I think in the title character of Therese is a portrait of a person who is forced into a life not of their choosing, who must submit to the will of others and who is never allowed the chance to find their own voice. We can all relate to the terror of that circumstance. But the work is a tragedy, in its purest sense, because the very thing that may free Therese from these constraints is what ultimately destroys her. The work also deals strongly with the nature of deceit. I think we live in a society with these firmly held beliefs about truth and honesty and integrity. These ideals, if we are lucky and have relatively decent guardians growing up, are drilled into us from an early age. Yet if we are honest we live our lives navigating our way through hundreds of little deceits every day. Humans are by nature self serving. Everything we do, every choice we make, is driven by self serving impulses. We inevitably become very good liars because one of the ways to get what we want is to convince others to want what we want too. And we do this by learning how to convince others of our “absolute” truth. I know this a very cynical viewpoint, and I’m not entirely of this mindset, but I think this is the point of view Zola takes and the point of view I kept in mind while writing the play.
Therese Raquinis set in Paris, have you ever been there and what are your impressions of the city?
I have been to Paris twice. Once when I was living in Europe and once when I was at VCA to research another novel I was adapting also based in Paris. (James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room). I guess you could say I have a bit of a thing for the city. It’s horribly clichéd. Both times I went it was spring and I seemed to just spend 80% of my time walking around the streets and laneways. The rest of the time was spent drinking wine, smoking Gauloise and trying desperately to blend in. In truth I have a very limited and very westernized idea and experience of Paris. I stay in central Paris and I “ooh” and “ah” at the stupidly beautiful architecture and the gorgeous scenery. I visit the extraordinary art galleries, I try and order coffee in French, and I visit cafes and do the tourist thing. But I know very well that on the outskirts of the city and beyond is a very different story and a very different experience. Paris is home to a vast array of cultures, predominantly north and western African communities. Something that I find interesting is that Therese is usually portrayed as a Caucasian French girl. But it is clear in Zola’s novel that her mother is Algerian. France has a long history with Northern Africa and there is plenty of evidence of this in Paris, but I think the North African and Arab communities are growing very fast. Paris, like the rest of Europe, is changing rapidly and the culture is shifting. However, the sense of history is so strong that I think it will always maintain a certain identity.
I do think it really helped me to have some sense of Paris while writing this play. I knew exactly what the arcade looks like that the Raquin’s shop and apartment is in. I knew exactly where on the river the murder takes place. I had a good sense of the light, and smell and feel of the place, of the streets and the pathways the characters would journey to get to the apartment each Thursday. I could have imagined all these things to an extent, but having some personal knowledge of Paris definitely helped.
You moved here from South Africa to study at VCA, is there anything you miss about your hometown?
I was 19 years old when I moved here, in 1998. I have only been back twice since then. I absolutely have a sense of missing something, but it’s not really anything tangible, like some park or some road or tree or anything like that. I mean, of course I miss the house I grew up in, and the pets we had and family and friends. But rather what I miss feels larger and more abstract. Like my past and my childhood and the culture I was born into. Australia is similar in many ways, but also very, very different culturally. But it’s different in very subtle and hard to explain ways. I miss not having a definite familial or territorial connection to my past anymore. My family moved to Oz a couple of years after I did and sold our family home and most of everything, really. I miss not being able to visit my old house, or my old suburb. I miss not being able to dip back into that part of my life anymore. All that remains of that life are some very unreliable memories and photographs. I have friends from that time in my life who live all around the world now. But their families still live back in SA and so they get to go back once a year, or more. Our experiences of immigrating are quite different because of that.
I guess in a more concrete way I miss the light. The sky in Australia feels much wider and further away. The light is sharper, more piercing. The sun stings on really hot days in a way that will never feel familiar. The air smells different. In South Africa in the “veld” or country surrounding the city are these bushes called potato bushes. They don’t actually grow potatoes but at dusk they smell like baking potatoes and at certain times of the year that smell hangs in the air all around you. I miss that smell. And the sounds of birds I grew up with.
But in a way, you know, I don’t know if what I really miss is my hometown or just childhood itself.
You’re based in Melbourne where this year’s Festival is being held, what attractions would you recommend to someone on their first visit here?
It will be towards the end of summer, which I think is the best time to be here. The weather is steadier and less severe and there are dozens of little mini-festivals that happen around the city. I’d recommend a stroll through and picnic in the botanical gardens. We’ve had a lot of rain and the gardens are looking really luscious and alive.
I’d definitely check out ACME (Australian Centre for the Moving Image). It’s a really unique gallery and centre devoted to video art. They have a cool little viewing room with loads of TV’s and booths where you can just wander in and watch a whole variety of art videos and movies. And it’s free! The Galleries are good (both the National Gallery at Federation Square and The International one on St Kilda Road).
If you have a chance, visit these streets:
- Lygon Street ,Carlton
- Brunswick Road, Brunswick
- High Street, Northcote
- Brunswick Street, Fitzroy
- Smith Street and Gertrude Street, Collingwood
- Chapel Street, Windsor ( not the South Yarra End…that’s horrible)
- Balaclava St, East St Kilda
These streets are what Melbourne is about. Each area has a very different and distinct flavour and style. It’s fun to check out the people and try and figure out exactly how many varieties of “Hipster” populate Melbourne. I’d also recommend strolling along the esplanade that runs all the way from Port Melbourne to Brighton, taking you past Albert Park, South Melbourne and St Kilda. But not if you’re from Sydney and are simply going to harp on about how ugly Melbourne’s beaches are!
For drinking and fun there are so many great bars and cafes and nightspots. Curtain house on Swanston street is always a safe bet as it houses a variety of different establishments in the one building, including the great rooftop bar and cinema. Other places I like are Madame Brusells, 1000 pound bend, Ponyfish Island, Sister Bella’s….oh, look, just hang on to one of the Melbourne-based actors and they’ll show you a good time!
And finally, what three things would you nevertravel without?
I’m really literal with these things. My passport, my wallet and my iPhone. Oh, but if there is flying involved than also Xanax. I’d swap my iPhone for a fist full of Xanax.
Our festival launch went off without a hitch last night! It’s great to have seen you all there and thanks for making the evening such a smashing success! Our exciting new teaser trailer is now up and running! A very big thank you to PaperMoose Creative/Production for their awesome work! Check it out here and let us know what you think!
We’re jet-setting to Melbourne tonight for the launch of our National Play Festival 2012! Our full festival program and website will be released tonight! If you’re not in Melbourne, not to worry! We’ll have all the goss from the launch here on our blog tomorrow, including a few words from our Artistic Director, Chris Mead and a great teaser trailer to gear you up for NPF12! Tickets go on sale tonight! Stay tuned and check out nationalplayfestival.org.au for more info!
