Is This Thing On?
Belvoir presents
Is This Thing On? By ZOË COOMBS MARR Co-Directors KIT BROOKMAN & ZOË COOMBS MARR Belvoir’s production of Is This Thing On? opened at Belvoir St Theatre on Saturday 4 October 2014. Set & Costume Designer RALPH MYERS Lighting Designer VERITY HAMPSON Composer & Sound Designer STEVE TOULMIN Stage Manager MEL DYER With Brianna MADELEINE BENSON Brianna GENEVIEVE GIUFFRE Brianna FIONA PRESS Brianna SUSAN PRIOR Brianna NAT RANDALL
PHOTOGRAPHY Brett Boardman DESIGN Alphabet Studio
Writer & Co-Director’s Note Zoë Coombs Marr I’m writing this in a cab on the way to rehearsals. The fact that these notes begin with a description of where they’re being written should be a fair indication to you that I am struggling to write them. I’ve spent the last couple of weeks shut in a room with five unbearably hilarious women, in hysterics, deciding important things like whether it’s funnier to say shazam then poo, or poo then kazaam, and my stomach is sore from laughing.
Comedy is volatile. It has the capacity for pure golden moments and bleak voids of existential despair. It attracts strange people – neurotic narcissists with drinking problems and enormous, fragile egos... I personally started doing stand-up when I was 15. Since we first met, comedy has been like a charismatic but occasionally abusive lover that I haven’t quite been able to turn away from. This show is about lots of things: growing up, friendship, family, loneliness. It’s also a lot about beer... (and nuts, strangely). But more than anything else, it is a love story. A love story between a comic and her audience. That’s you. We hope you enjoy it.
Co-Director’s Note Kit Brookman Stand-up comedy seems, to me, to be a lonely line of work. It’s just you, on your own, and a different set of faces in the audience each night. Your job is to make them laugh. You can succeed at this or you can fail. Within this, there are of course degrees of success and failure, but I think it’s still the closest a performer can get to a zero-sum game. Terrifying. And thrilling. Comedians compare the hit of getting a group of people to laugh to the hit of a drug. ‘Joke coke.’ Like any addiction, though, people can start to go to desperate lengths to get it, and the whole thing can go sour and turn someone’s life inside out. Maybe the idea of performing stand-up isn’t actually so far away from life in general. We’re all alone in the end, so why not laugh about it? Amid this cheerful desolation, Is This Thing On? offers the possibility that a moment of grace, however fleeting or not fully understood at the time, is never entirely out of reach.
Biographies ZOË COOMBS MARR Writer & Co-Director Zoë co-wrote, directed and performed in Oedipus Schmoedipus with post earlier this year at Belvoir. For her solo theatre/comedy work And That Was the Summer That Changed My Life Zoë was nominated for Best Newcomer at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, was awarded the Philip Parsons Young Playwright’s Award, and was commissioned to write a new work for Belvoir. Her solo works since then, Gone Off and Dave, have won a Sydney Music, Art and Culture (SMAC) Award for Best On Stage and received a Jhonsy nomination. Zoë has performed comedy extensively throughout Australia, UK and in New York. In 2006 she won the National Poetry Slam Championships under dubious circumstances. Zoë is a regular panel member on ABC2’s Dirty Laundry Live. KIT BROOKMAN Co-Director For Belvoir Kit has co-written Nora, wrote and directed Small and Tired, and was assistant director on Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Private Lives and Babyteeth. He was an associate playwright at Belvoir in 2012. Kit also wrote and directed Heaven (seasons at The Old 505 Theatre and La Mama) and his play night maybe (Stuck Pigs Squealing) premiered last year in Melbourne. His play Close was shortlisted for the 2010 Griffin Award and the 2011 Patrick White Playwright’s Award, and was presented at the 2013
National Play Festival in Perth. Small and Tired was also shortlisted for the 2012 Griffin Award. Kit was the winner of the 2012 Philip Parsons Young Playwright’s Award. In 2015 his play A Rabbit for Kim Jong-il will premiere at Griffin Theatre Company. MADELEINE BENSON Brianna Madeleine is passionate about the theatrical arts. For Belvoir she appeared in Matthew Whittet’s Old Man in 2012. She first appeared professionally on stage in Pinchgut Opera’s 2008 production of Charpentier’s David and Jonathan. Since then she has developed her love for acting at Australian Theatre for Young People, where she has engaged in multiple workshops as well as performing in Maxine Mellor’s Desiree Din and the Red Forest in 2010. Madeleine is currently studying drama and plans on pursuing the performing arts at a tertiary level. MEL DYER Stage Manager Mel is a 2007 graduate of NIDA’s production course. For Belvoir Mel has stage managed Cain and Abel, Angels in America Parts One and Two and Every Breath, and was assistant stage manager on Peter Pan (New York tour), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Private Lives, Death of a Salesman, As You Like It, Neighbourhood Watch, The Seagull, The Diary of a Madman, Measure for Measure, The Promise, the 2009 Australian tour of Page 8
and the 2008 tour of Keating!. Mel has also appeared on stage for Belvoir in As You Like It, Neighbourhood Watch, The Seagull and Keating!. Her other credits include stage manager for Lawn, Edgar, Remember Me, Legless (Splintergroup/Festpeilhaus, Austria); Roadkill (Splintergroup/ Performing Lines); Underground (Dance North/Performing Lines) and Night Café (Dance North), and assistant stage manager for Assembly (Chunky Move). Mel has also worked with Sydney Festival and The Australian Ballet. GENEVIEVE GIUFFRE Brianna Genevieve most recently performed in The Good Person of Szechuan (Malthouse Theatre). Her other recent credits include Hello there, we’ve been waiting for you (Next Wave); Summertime in the Garden of Eden (Sisters Grimm/Griffin Theatre Company); Salome (Little Ones/Helium); The Sovereign Wife (Sisters Grimm/ NEON); Psycho Beach Party (Little Ones/ Tamarama Rock Surfers/Theatre Works); and Sex Violence Blood Gore (MKA). Genevieve recently won a Green Room Award for her performance in Psycho Beach Party. Is This Thing On? marks Genevieve’s debut at Belvoir. VERITY HAMPSON Lighting Designer Verity is a NIDA graduate with over 10 years’ experience as a lighting and projection designer. For Belvoir Verity has designed Small and Tired, The Business, That Face and The Gates of Egypt. She has designed for over 70 theatre productions working with some of Australia’s most talented directors and choreographers. For television Verity has been a lighting director for the ABC’s Live at the Basement and
The Roast. She was awarded the Mike Walsh Fellowship in 2012 which took her to Broadway to work with projection designers 59 Productions. Verity was the winner of the 2013 Sydney Theatre Award for Best Mainstage Lighting Design for her work on Machinal at Sydney Theatre Company. RALPH MYERS Set & Costume Designer Ralph is Belvoir’s Artistic Director. For Belvoir he has directed Peter Pan, directed and designed Private Lives, and designed The Government Inspector, Coranderrk, Hamlet, Stories I Want to Tell You in Person, Death of a Salesman, Summer of the Seventeenth Doll, The Seagull, The Wild Duck, Measure for Measure, Toy Symphony, Parramatta Girls, Ray’s Tempest, The Spook, The Fever, Conversations with the Dead and The Cosmonaut’s Last Message to the Woman He Once Loved in the Former Soviet Union. Ralph has designed for many other companies including Sydney Theatre Company, Melbourne Theatre Company, Bell Shakespeare, Griffin Theatre Company, Hothouse Theatre Company, Legs On the Wall, Ballet de l’Opera de Lyon, English National Opera, Opera Australia, New Zealand Opera and Chunky Move. FIONA PRESS Brianna Since they let her out of acting school more than 30 years ago, Fiona has played with most of the major theatre companies across the country in a wide variety of roles. Some of her standout favourites include The Department Store (Old Fitzroy); Navigating Flinders, Neighbourhood Watch (Ensemble); The Woman Who Cooked Her Husband (Canberra’s Street Theatre); Romeo & Juliet
(Bell Shakespeare); Capricornia (Belvoir); Third World Blues, Two Weeks with the Queen (Sydney Theatre Company); Wild Honey (State Theatre Company of South Australia); A Fortunate Life (Melbourne Theatre Company); and Men Should Weep (Q Theatre). She has appeared as all the usual suspects in all the usual television series, appeared in lots of small film roles in big films, and big roles in small films. For her biggest roles in her biggest films, she won an AFI Best Supporting Actress Award for Waiting (1991), and enjoyed playing opposite John Malkovich in Disgrace (2009). Fiona has been a proud member of Actors Equity since 1983. SUSAN PRIOR Brianna Susan is a graduate of NIDA. Her theatre credits include Small and Tired (Belvoir); Riflemind, King Lear, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Love For Love, The Jungle, A Violent Act, Our Town (Sydney Theatre Company); King Lear (Bell Shakespeare); Venus and Adonis (Bell Shakespeare/Malthouse Theatre). Susan has also appeared in productions with Griffin Theatre Company, Malthouse Theatre, Wrestling School (UK), Black Swan State Theatre Company, Brink Productions, Tamarama Rock Surfers, Burning House Company, Naked Theatre, Sport for Jove and Ensemble. Susan’s feature film credits include The Rover, Careless Love, Not Suitable for Children, Animal Kingdom, A Cold Summer, Suburban Mayhem, Idiot Box, Heaven’s Burning, A Wreck A Tangle and View from Greenhaven Drive. Susan’s TV credits include Love Child 2, Puberty Blues, Rake, All Saints and Home and Away. She has received AACTA, Critics’ Circle and Helpmann Award nominations. In 2013 Susan won a Sydney Theatre Award for her role in Belvoir’s Small and Tired.
NAT RANDALL Brianna Nat graduated with a Bachelor of Creative Arts from the University of Wollongong in 2008, receiving the Merrigong Theatre Company Award. She is an artist working across theatre, live art, performance and video. As a solo artist and a core member of performance collectives Team MESS and Hissy Fit, she makes work that experiments with new art forms and interdisciplinary practices. Her work to date includes Episode (Performance Space); This Is It (Performance Space/Arts House/Perth Institute of Contemporary Art); BINGO Unit (Next Wave Festival/Performance Space/Country Arts South Australia); Some Film Museums I Have Known (Old Fitzroy Theatre); Cheer Up Kid (PACT); and DOLL FACE (Duckie, UK). In December 2013 Nat presented her first solo exhibition at Canberra Contemporary Art Space. STEVE TOULMIN Composer & Sound Designer Steve’s composition and design credits include 20 Questions, The Baulkham Hills African Ladies Troupe, The Seed, Scorched (Belvoir); Little Mercy, Edward Gant’s Amazing Feats of Loneliness (Sydney Theatre Company); Twelfth Night (Bell Shakespeare); Beached, A Hoax (Griffin Theatre Company); Great Falls, Liberty Equality Fraternity, Circle Mirror Transformation (Ensemble); That Face (Queensland Theatre Company); Tender Napalm, Julius Caesar and Hamlet (La Boite Theatre Company). He is music director for Ricki-Lee and has written and produced for her current album.
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