Caravan (2017) Program by Malthouse Theatre

CARAVAN 5 - 22 OCT

5 - 22 OCT MALTHOUSE FORECOURT

Presented in association with Melbourne Festival.

CARAVAN IS BITTER AND HILARIOUS, TENDER AND TOXIC: A DARKLY COMIC LOOK AT LIFE ON THE MARGINS AND THE UNIVERSAL NEED FOR LOVE.

WRITTEN BY / Angus Cerini Patricia Cornelius Wayne Macauley Melissa Reeves CREATORS & PERFORMERS / Susie Dee, Nicci Wilks ORIGINAL CONCEPT / Nicci Wilks SET & COSTUME DESIGN / Marg Horwell LIGHTING DESIGN / Andy Turner SOUND DESIGN / Ian Moorhead

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STAGE MANAGER / Claire Shepherd Malthouse Theatre and Melbourne Festival present Caravan.

Â© TIMGREY

A NOTE FROM SUSIE DEE & NICCI WILKS

SUSIE DEE & NICCI WILKS: EAT, LAUGH, SHOUT For forty years, Judy and Donna have lived together in their caravan in a relationship both tender and toxic. Caravan takes a good hard look at what binds a mother and daughter together.

With the help of a portable air conditioner we eventually did four showings to small, invited audiences. Since then we have returned many times to the table in the kitchen in Brunswick to eat, laugh, shout and redraft some more.

We are excited to be presenting this production in conjunction with Malthouse Theatre and Melbourne Festival. After working for nearly ten years together on various styles of work, from theatre to circus to site specific, this is our first time performing together onstage.

We are now excited to open up the van and share the fun and chaos within.

It all started with dinner around a table in a small kitchen in Brunswick.

To register as an organ donor: register.donatelife.gov.au

We invited four writers to come on board, each drawing the name of an organ from a hat — the body, death and organ donation were our initial themes. And so it began… dinners spent chewing the fat, laughing, shouting, eating, reading, editing, laughing, arguing, refining, laughing, eating and more editing.

Thank you: Circus Oz The Horwell Family Keira Lyons Thistle St Trattoria Declan Greene Caravan also received support from Screen Australia’s Gender Matters program for a Multiplatform version, so look out online for more adventures of Judy and Donna.

In December 2015, in forty degree heat, we hired a caravan and parked it in a car park in Collingwood. For ten days we sweated it out, combining the four scripts from the writers to create the first draft of what would become Caravan.

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It’s been an absolute delight and pleasure to work with this extraordinary team of writers and designers. We appreciate their passion and dedication to the work.

CAST & CREATIVE BIOS

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Angus Cerini WRITER

Patricia Cornelius WRITER

Wayne Macauley WRITER

Angus Cerini is a playwright, performer and theatre maker. His works have toured nationally and internationally. These include the Patrick White Playwrights’ Award winning Wretch and Green Room Award winning Detest (this thousand years I shall not weep). His production of Save for Crying at La Mama received multiple Green Room Awards including Best Independent Production and Best New Writing for the Australian Stage. Resplendence, as part of Melbourne Theatre Company’s NEON Festival, received the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award (Louis Esson Prize). His Griffin Play Award winning play The Bleeding Tree premiered with Griffin Theatre Company, winning the Sydney Theatre Award for Best New Australian Work, the NSW Premier’s Literary Award and multiple Helpmann Awards including Best Play. The play went on to win an AWGIE Award alongside the David Williamson Prize and enjoyed a return season with Sydney Theatre Company.

Patricia Cornelius is a founding member of Melbourne Workers’ Theatre. She is a multi-award winning playwright, screenwriter and novelist. Her most recent play, Big Heart was presented at Theatre Works this year. Her play, SHIT, was part of the 2017 Sydney Festival and Darwin Festival following its 2015 Melbourne premiere as part of MTC’s NEON Season and its 2016 remount at fortyfivedownstairs. Over her career Patricia has written over thirty plays and they include: Savages, Do Not Go Gentle, The Gap (What goes down in Vegas), The Call, Love, Fever, Boy Overboard, Slut and Who’s Afraid of the Working Class? (co-written with Andrew Bovell, Patricia Cornelius, Christos Tsiolkas and Irine Vela). Patricia co-wrote the feature film adaptation of Blessed, based on the play Who’s Afraid of the Working Class? She is currently developing a feature film with director Catriona McKenzie. Patricia wrote the novel My Sister Jill (Random House) and many of her plays are published by Currency Press and Playlab.

Wayne Macauley is an acclaimed short fiction writer, novelist and playwright. His short fiction has been widely published and his collection, Other Stories, was shortlisted for a 2011 Queensland Premier’s Literary Award. He has also written five novels, Blueprints for a Barbed-Wire Canoe, Caravan Story, The Cook, Demons and most recently, Some Tests (Text Publishing, 2017). His novels have been variously shortlisted for the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award (twice), the Western Australian Premier’s Book Award and the Melbourne Prize Best Writing Award. The Age has called him ‘a compelling voice in contemporary Australian literature’. Wayne has also worked extensively in the theatre over many years. Highlights include: Tower of Light (Melbourne Festival 1999), The Republic of Trees (Castlemaine Festival 2013, winner of the George Fairfax New Theatre Award) and, most recently, Les Messagers (The Messengers), which is currently touring France.

CAST & CREATIVE BIOS

Melissa Reeves is a Melbourne playwright. Her most recent play The Zen of Table Tennis won the Griffin Award in 2017. Other plays include Happy Ending, which premiered at the Melbourne Theatre Company, and was short-listed for three Premier’s Awards, Furious Mattress, The Spook, awarded the 2005 Louis Esson prize for drama in the Victorian Premiers awards, and two AWGIE Awards for best new play, and Sweetown, awarded the Jill Blewitt memorial playwrights award in 1993, In Cahoots, Storming Heaven, Great Day, Road Movie and Salt Creek Murders. She has co-written a number of plays including Magpie, (with Richard Frankland) and Who’s Afraid of the Working Class? and Fever (both with Andrew Bovell, Patricia Cornelius, Christos Tsiolkas and Irine Vela). The former won Best Play in the Queensland Literary Awards, two AWGIEs for best new play, and the Jill Blewitt Playwright’s Award in 1999. Melissa also cowrote the screenplay for the film Blessed, based on Who’s Afraid of the Working Class?

Susie Dee

Nicci Wilks

CREATOR & PERFORMER

Susie has worked extensively in the theatre as a performer, devisor and director in Australia and overseas for the past thirty years. She has been the Artistic Director of three theatre companies: Melbourne Workers Theatre (MWT), Union House Theatre (UHT) and Institute Of Complex Entertainment (ICE). ICE’s projects went on to win various awards and received many accolades for their groundbreaking site-specific work. In 2011, Susie was the recipient of the Australia Council residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris. Susie has directed works for MTC, Malthouse Theatre, Hothouse Theatre and many independent theatre companies and has performed in numerous productions over many years, including theatre, cabaret and circus. She has developed a strong working relationship over the past ten years with her fellow Caravan performer Nicci Wilks, and has directed and/or performed in the works of the four Caravan writers: Angus Cerini, Patricia Cornelius, Wayne Macauley and Melissa Reeves. She has been nominated for and won numerous awards, including most recently a Helpmann Best Director nomination for SHIT. Animal, which she directed and co-devised, garnered four Green Room Awards in 2016, including Best Director.

Nicci has been working in the performing arts for over 30 years performing at festivals and theatres around the world, from the Pitjantjatjara lands to 42nd Street. She has created many new works of various art forms as a performer, creator/devisor and director with numerous companies and independent artists throughout Australia. Companies she has worked with include: Circus Oz, Melbourne Theatre Company, Malthouse Theatre, KAGE, Melbourne Workers Theatre, CIRCA, Hothouse Theatre, The Flying Fruit Fly Circus, The Nanjing Acrobatic Troupe, Dislocate, Legs On The Wall and Dee & Cornelius. She also works as a Clown Doctor for The Humour Foundation. She is a performer in the multi award winning show SHIT by Patricia Cornelius, Assistant Director and performer for the Green Room Award winning show Taxi by Dee & Cornelius and co-creator and performer of the highly acclaimed show The Long Pigs. Most recently she was a co-creator and performer for the Green Room Award winning show ANIMAL. Nicci has had a close working relationship with Susie for many years now, creating and devising many new works.

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Melissa Reeves WRITER

CAST & CREATIVE BIOS

Marg Horwell SET & COSTUME DESIGNER

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Marg is a multi-award winning designer and the Designer In Residence at Malthouse Theatre. Marg has won seven Green Room Awards and two Sydney Theatre Awards for her work and was nominated for a Helpmann Award for Marlin (MTC and Arena Theatre). Credits include: The Real and Imagined History of the Elephant Man, Revolt. She said. Revolt again., The Homosexuals or Faggots, Edward II, I Am A Miracle, The Good Person of Szechuan, The Histrionic, Tame (Malthouse Theatre). Birdland, Peddling, Constellations, Cock, Music, The Dream Life Of Butterflies, The Water Carriers, Circle Mirror Transformation, I Call My Brothers (MTC). Eight Gigabytes of Hardcore Pornography (Griffin), The School For Wives (Bell Shakespere). Nora (Belvoir). Lilith The Jungle Girl, La Traviata, Summertime in the Garden of Eden (Sisters Grimm). SHIT, Savages, Big Heart (Dee & Cornelius). Chapters From The Pandemic, Save For Crying, Wretch, Resplendence (Angus Cerini Doubletap).

Andy Turner LIGHTING DESIGNER

Ian Moorhead SOUND DESIGNER

Andy Turner is a Melbournebased lighting designer and production manager. He trained at RADA, and has worked extensively in the UK. He is currently the Tech Coordinator at fortyfivedownstairs. Recent lighting designs include Animal (Theatreworks), L’amante anglaise (fortyfivedownstairs), EGG (MTC), Peddling (MTC) Birdland (MTC), Waking Up Dead (fortyfivedownstairs), Resplendence (Angus Cerini doubletap for MTC’s NEON season), and The Long Pigs (Insite Arts). In 2013, Andy received a Green Room Award for Lighting Design (Independent Theatre) in recognition of this work on Savages (fortyfivedownstairs), and is also last year’s Green Room Award winner (Independent Theatre) for his work on Animal (Influx/ Theatreworks).

Ian is a Melbourn-based artist specialising in music composition and sound design for theatre, dance, film and radio. He has performed around Australia and internationally, including New York, London, Edinburgh, Dublin, Wellington, Calgary and Vancouver. He has worked with numerous companies, including Malthouse Theatre, Melbourne Theatre Company, New Working Group, Back to Back Theatre, Red Stitch Actors Theatre, Dee & Cornelius, State Theatre Company South Australia, Barking Gecko, Leigh Warren and Dancers, Patch Theatre Company, Restless Dance Theatre, Vitalstatistix, Arts Centre Melbourne, the Australian Festival for Young People, Underbelly Arts Festival, FOLA, Big West Festival, Museum Victoria, the Australian Museum and ABC Radio. He was nominated for a Green Room Award in 2015 (Sound and Composition – Theatre) for his design for Jurassica (Red Stitch Actors Theatre). He co-directed the dance film Blowfish, which was highly commended at the Dendy Awards, Sydney Film Festival and nominated Best Dance Film at the Australian Dance Awards and the Reel Dance Awards. He has also produced two original solo albums, Before Winter Sets In and Pendulum.

CAST & CREATIVE BIOS

Claire Shepherd STAGE MANAGER

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Claire studied stage management and technical theatre at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama in London. Since moving to Australia she has worked on a range of theatre, music and corporate projects including as company and stage manager for the national tours of Menopause The Musical, Cosi and Café Rebetika. Theatre credits include Whiteley’s Incredible Blue, Savages, True Love Travels on a Gravel Road, Mein Kampf, Tears Before Bedtime, Coloured Aliens and Big Heart. Caravan is Claire’s third collaboration with Susie Dee.

SCENE & HEARD

When the caravan was being modified by our workshop department we found a well-loved deck of cards hidden in the wall.

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