The Gl ass Menagerie
#theglassmenagerie
18 May – 5 Jun
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Season 2016
18 May – 5 Jun Merlyn Theatre
A compassionate and illuminating production that throws fresh light into corners of a play that can go unexplored or unnoticed. — Sydney Morning Herald
By / Tennessee Williams Direction / Eamon Flack Cast includes / Harry Greenwood, Luke Mullins, Pamela Rabe, Rose Riley Set Design / Michael Hankin Costume Design / Mel Page Lighting Design / Damien Cooper Head of Lighting / Christopher Page Composer & Sound Design / Stefan Gregory Deputy Sound Designer / Jeremy Silver Video Design Consultant / Sean Bacon Audio Visual Operator / Caitlin Porter Stage Manager / Isabella Kerdijk Assistant Stage Manager / Katie Hankin
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Season 2016
How to make something of the vividness, the madness, the lust and the pain which had characterised his adult life?
A note from the Director
In 1943, the man obsessively writing and rewriting numerous versions of this play (half-drafts, short plays, short stories, a film) was a restless 32-yearold with a few minor theatrical successes and a wobbly stint as a screenwriter at MGM behind him. He was somewhere between the half-formed kid he’d been—Tom Williams of St Louis, Missouri, son of Edwina and Cornelius, brother of Rose and Dakin—and the man he thought he wanted to be—the poet and dramatist Tennessee Williams. In other words he was very much Tom Wingfield, the narrator of his unfinished play, raging eloquently in the shadow of his youth yet still seeking the clear light of his fate. Like Tom Wingfield, Tom Williams was a poet and a homosexual and, like Tom Wingfield, he had slipped the knot of a particularly interesting family situation in St Louis, leaving his troubled sister in the sole care of his troubled mother.
Meanwhile, his elder sister Rose Williams was recovering from a lobotomy at the State Hospital in Farmington, Missouri. Except, of course, one doesn’t really recover from a lobotomy. Her fate, unlike her brother’s, had already been decided: the vividness, the madness, the lust and the pain which had characterised her adult life was to be kept in trim for the rest of her existence by institutional medical care. Unlike her brother, there seems no output from her long life. Except for this: the fate of Rose Williams is the organising principle of the play that came to be called The Glass Menagerie by the playwright now very much known as Tennessee Williams. Laura’s quietness in the play is loud with the absence of Rose’s voltage. In the legendary stakes young Tom Williams had set for himself when he left his sister to his mother and grandly took the name Tennessee, the
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But who would do for Tom Williams what Tom Williams was trying to do for Tom Wingfield? How to make something of the vividness, the madness, the lust and the pain which had characterised his adult life? Where was Tennessee Williams
when you needed him? Sure, Tom Williams had called himself Tennessee for four years already, but the fact remains that in 1943 Tennessee Williams was really just an outsized moniker for a restless 32-year-old obsessively writing and rewriting versions of this play…
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A note from director Eamon Flack on Tennessee Williams’ famous ‘memory play’
A note from the Director Season 2016
poetic force of Rose’s lobotomy is dreadfully perfect: once there were two Williams siblings, so close and so alike, both so full of impulse and oddity, both so original and forceful, but now only one of them could still speak for himself. When 1943 rang its terrible bell for Tom/Tom/Tennessee, his play acquired a new purpose: not only must he rescue himself from the clumsy oblivion of ordinary life, he must also rescue his sister. The play he managed to write wants everything for itself: truth and illusion, penury and theatrical grandeur, delicacy and brutality, eternal life and utter momentary fragility. The multiplicity of details and ideas and forms is immense. Williams looked back into the shoebox of his years in St Louis with his sister and mother (he lobotomised his real-life father and brother from the stage) and created a tiny theatre in the theatre, a small private stage for the large drama they performed for each other. Out of the small mire of their daily lives there emerged, from time to time, glimpses of an enormous vision at work. It was a compound of many visions.
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There was a vision of munificence— a largeness of temperament, a beneficence, a sense of latter-day glory on earth—a very American vision, wonderful until it swells to the psychotic proportions of
American megalomania, which it very often does. There was a vision of capitalism, at once effervescent and obtuse, characterised by roughness and sameness and mass-ness (mass-ness was such a theme last century; now, when the world is twice and three times as large, we seem to have forgotten it). There was a vision of human optimism, a weave of delusion and good faith. There was the lost glory of his mother’s 19th century Southern childhood, dropping its plum-line deep into the age-old schadenfreude of knowing for sure that one has lived through a golden age which no longer exists. There was a vision of noncompliance, a knowing refusal to accede to the claims of reality, neither domestic reality nor the reality of war and history. There was a Whitmanesque vision of poetry in the midst of squalor. There was a vision of love: both impossible and inescapable, ruined and pure, secret and undeniable. There was an unarticulated vision for something else, something different — perhaps not so much a vision as a queerness in the lens that altered all the other visions and had its own peculiar primacy…. Such a wonderful, deranged concoction of visions for such a small family. Williams put them all in the play and bound them in the tyrannical details of daily life—a dozen genies in one
A note from the Director
Tom Wingfield’s fate in the play is unknown because Tom Williams’ own fate wasn’t sealed until the play opened. When it did, in Chicago in 1944, the play became its own denouement: its greatness was recognised almost instantly, and both Toms entered the spheres of their own destiny. Tom Wingfield became trapped forever inside the infernal machine of the play, bound by his intimate, intractable acquaintance with vision and peculiarity. And Tom Williams finally filled out his oversized new name. The full-blown life of Tennessee Williams was now in motion—but that’s a whole other story….
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As for Rose Williams, she never lived outside of a medical facility again. Tennessee paid for her care. When he died, she inherited his estate. She outlived her brother by
thirteen years. In some secret way his greatest plays were all about Rose. This particular production is an attempt to do for this play what Tennessee Williams tried to do for his sister: to revive a peculiarity in the midst of crushing sameness; to come to know and hopefully never forget what it is to have a care for a queer, fragile, beautiful thing; to look past the obvious for the truth. Tennessee Williams is foolhardy—by which I mean heroic—to propose such an undertaking. The rough vitality of our society doesn’t care. It obliterates indiscriminately. What do we do about the gentle, the odd, the peculiar, the monstrous, the marvellous, the broken? But what are we without them?
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tight bottle. But still, he wanted more for his play (for his sister?) so he added a projection screen, titles, a narrator, a love story… He made a great contemporary tragedy in a little room. He wrote it like a dream, like a film, like a memory, like a wound, and he gave it a perfect dramatic arc. All this—the detail, the originality, the experimentation, the rawness— unfolds with dizzying exactitude on the page: forceful and gorgeous and a little bit euphoric. But the sad silence at its centre is perhaps the most eloquent thing about it.
Season 2016
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Autobiography and Faithfulness
Many writers—and for that matter all kinds of artists—plunder their own lives for material. If the artist is the filter through which we experience another perspective on the world, then the personal will always sit somewhere within this or beside it; buried or floating on the surface. We can become distracted by the desire to know what is true and what is fiction. When working from real life the advice often given is to tell the truth (really the truth), however painful, embarrassing, exposing and accidently hilarious. Alternatively, the artful disguising of the truth can create valuable friction between reality and invention. At the very beginning of The Glass Menagerie, Tom the ‘narrator of the play and also a character in it’ (and avatar for the playwright Tennessee Williams) tells the audience about a trick that is sometimes played on them. Tom/ Tennessee says: ‘I am the opposite of a stage magician. He gives you illusion that has the appearance of truth, I give you truth in the pleasant disguise of illusion.’
If O’Neill had had his way Long Day’s Journey into Night would not have even been published until 20 years after his death and, according to his wishes, never performed. His great autobiographical work was written at the end of his career and he felt so ashamed (guilty? mean? untruthful?) about the portrayal (betrayal?) of his family, he could not let it be seen in his lifetime. Williams’ great autobiographical play, The Glass Menagerie, written at the very beginning of his career, was his first big success and the work that made him. He
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The Glass Menagerie is one of the two great American autobiographical plays, the other being Eugene O’Neill’s Long
Day’s Journey into Night. O’Neill transformed theatre in the early 20th century and writers such as Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller emerged in his wake to write some of the great plays in the English language. Long Day’s Journey into Night is the story of O’Neill’s own family, written in 1941 (before The Glass Menagerie) but not performed until 1956, two years after O’Neill’s death and well over a decade after The Glass Menagerie had ‘lifted lyricism to its highest level in our theatre’s history… [finding] perhaps for the first time an eloquence and amplitude of feeling.’ ¹
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Autobiography and Faithfulness: an editorial by Luke Mullins from Belvoir’s 2014 season
Autobiography and Faithfulness Season 2016
writes about a different type of family—one headed by a woman of incredible strength and delusion, relying on the income of her son who is forced to deny every desire he has in life in order to deal with their common problem: a daughter and sister who has no tenable future. In order to escape this trap, Tom must act without pity. In Long Day’s Journey into Night, O’Neill uses the real names of his family members, but changes his own to Edmund. In The Glass Menagerie, Williams changes everyone else’s but keeps his own. Having played Edmund for Sydney Theatre Company in 2010, I am fascinated by the prospect of now playing Tom and the differences between these two acts of autobiography. There is an adage that to get away with brutal autobiography, it is necessary to be hardest on yourself. In his play O’Neill gives himself the name of a brother who died as an infant. Williams uses his real name, Tom, not the ‘Tennessee’ he adopts as a persona for the rest of his writing life. When are they hiding and when are they telling the truth?
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Tom (and perhaps Tennessee) has trouble telling the truth in The Glass Menagerie. His mother gives him several opportunities to explain where he goes at night and what he does, and he can’t. He uses the excuse, the lie, of an
escape to the ‘movies’. Tom and Tennessee’s desperate need for love, companionship and sex is unnameable, both to the people it is pulling him away from and on the American stage at the time the play was written. So it is hidden, coded and deniable. For me, as an artist examining the intersection of truth and fiction at the time of writing this, it is undeniable. To tell the truth about this, to not allow the deniability of who Tom and Tennessee are is very, very important. The Glass Menagerie is a classic queer text, as are all of Tennessee Williams’ plays, and this is essential to contemporary productions of his plays especially when set in their original time and location, as our production is. To not deliver this to our audience would be a betrayal; an act which autobiographical writers are often accused of. ‘Here is make-believe so real it tears your heart out.’ ² Does telling the truth, even when presented in the pleasant disguise of illusion, necessitate a betrayal? In autobiography—although you may be exposed, even humiliated— it is perhaps worse to escape unscathed, to be left out of the story, to be deemed not relevant to the forging of the myth. Was Tennessee Williams faithful to his family in telling their and
Autobiography and Faithfulness #theglassmenagerie
his story? How can we be faithful to all of them in telling it again this year? Should we be? Is simply setting it in its original time and place being faithful to the play and the playwright? Who has the right to decide what is faithful to reality and what is fiction in an artists work? Or is faithfulness about a commitment to something bigger than that— something to do with truth. That which is really happening for the writer, for us on stage, and— most importantly—for the audience. When Tom talks about the stage magician at the start of the play—the person who gives you illusion that has the appearance of truth—he is talking about a lie: something that looks and sounds like reality but is not actually happening. It is not the truth. Let’s not be magicians; such tricks are a temporary escape and will only sustain you for the time it takes to see them disappear. Like Tennessee let us seek real magic, like the magic of falling in love that is being pushed so hard upon his sister but utterly denied to him. 1
Arthur Miller, ‘Tennessee Williams’ legacy: “an eloquence of amplitude and feeling.”’ TV Guide, 3 March 1984
² Burton Rascoe reviewing the original 1944 production of The Glass Menagerie in The Pittsburgh Press, 8 Apr 1945
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Cast & Creative Bios Season 2016 ——> pg 8
Tennessee Williams Writer
Eamon Flack Director
Harry Greenwood Jim O’Connor
Thomas Lanier ‘Tennessee’ Williams III was born in Columbus, Mississippi, in 1911, the second child of a harddrinking travelling shoe salesman and an archetypal southern belle. He started writing as a teenager and studied journalism and arts at various universities. At the same time, he wrote poetry, essays, stories and plays—especially when he was hauled out of school by his father to work at a shoe factory. When his first play, Battle of Angels, was panned at its 1940 Boston premiere, Tennessee Williams was devastated, feeling that the audience was unwilling to take on the play’s sexual and religious themes. Boston City Council members called for the play to be censored and it ran for less than two weeks. Then, during the winter of 1944–45, his ‘memory play’ The Glass Menagerie premiered in Chicago where it garnered good reviews. When it transferred to New York, it became an instant and enormous hit during its long Broadway run – winning the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award for best play of the season. It was the beginning of a decade-and-a-half in which Williams would establish himself as one of America’s truly great writers. He followed The Glass Menagerie with A Streetcar Named Desire (1947, Pulitzer Prize for Drama, New York Drama Critics’ Circle Best Play), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955, Pulitzer Prize for Drama), Orpheus Descending (1957, a rewrite of Battle of Angels) and Sweet Bird of Youth (1959), among others. Williams continued to be a prolific author of plays, screenplays, short stories and two novels until his death in 1983, aged 71.
Eamon is Belvoir’s Artistic Director. He trained as an actor at Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts (WAAPA) and has since worked as a director, actor, writer and dramaturg all over the country. The Glass Menagerie is the second production he’s directed for Belvoir to tour to Malthouse Theatre; his first was The End in 2011. For Belvoir, Eamon has also directed Ivanov, Angels in America Parts One and Two, The Blind Giant is Dancing, The Great Fire, Babyteeth, As You Like It, Mother Courage and Her Children, and Once in Royal David’s City. He co-adapted Ruby Langford Ginibi’s memoir Don’t Take Your Love to Town with Leah Purcell, and co-devised Beautiful One Day with artists from ILBIJERRI, version 1.0 and Palm Island. His dramaturgy credits for Belvoir include Neighbourhood Watch, The Wild Duck, Brothers Wreck, and The Book of Everything. His adaptations include Chekhov’s Ivanov, Gorky’s Summerfolk and Sophocles’ Antigone. Ivanov won four 2015 Sydney Theatre Awards, including Best Mainstage Production and Best Direction. Eamon’s productions of The Glass Menagerie and Angels in America both won Best Play at the Helpmann Awards. Coming up in 2016, Eamon will be directing Twelfth Night at Belvoir.
Harry graduated from the National Institute of Dramatic Art in 2012. For Malthouse Theatre, he has performed in Love and Information (w/Sydney Theatre Company [STC]). Other theatre credits include Once in Royal David’s City (Belvoir) and Fury (STC). While at NIDA, Harry performed in Caligula, Punk Rock, Flutter Kick, Rookery Nook, Idiot, Richard III, The American Clock and Too Young for Ghosts. Harry’s film credits include Kokoda, 8, and Mel Gibson’s Hacksaw Ridge. His short film credits include Pacific, The Water Diary, The Gift, The Unlikely Maestro and Steve the Chameleon. For TV, he has appeared in Old School and Gallipoli.
Cast & Creative Bios #theglassmenagerie
Luke Mullins Tom Wingfield
Pamela Rabe Amanda Wingfield
Rose Riley Laura Wingfield
Luke has previously appeared for Malthouse Theatre in Night on Bald Mountain, and Autobiography of Red. His other theatre credits include Small and Tired, Angels in America Parts One and Two, Death of a Salesman and The Power of Yes (Belvoir); Thom Pain (based on nothing) (B Sharp/Arts Radar); Waiting for Godot, Little Mercy, The War of the Roses, Gallipoli (STC); Long Day’s Journey into Night (STC/ Artists Repertory, Portland); The Duel (STC/ThinIce); The Eisteddfod, 4xBeckett, Agoraphobe, Lally Katz and the Terrible Mysteries of the Volcano (Stuck Pigs Squealing); Cloud Nine, The History Boys, Oedipus (MTC); I Heart John McEnroe, The Man with the September Face (Uninvited Guests); and Irony is Not Enough: Essay on My Life as Catherine Deneuve (Fragment 31). Luke has also appeared on TV and in film projects such as Holding the Man, and the BBC series New Blood. In 2013, Luke directed Kit Brookman’s night maybe for Stuck Pigs Squealing in Melbourne. He received a Green Room Award for The Season at Sarsaparilla, a Sydney Theatre Award and the Helpmann Award for Best Male Actor in a Supporting Role in a Play for Waiting for Godot, and the George Fairfax Memorial Award for Excellence in Theatre Practice. Most recently, Luke co-wrote and performed in Lake Disappointment (Carriageworks), and he will follow The Glass Menagerie with Back at the Dojo at Belvoir. Luke is a graduate of the Victorian College of the Arts (VCA).
Pamela makes her long-anticipated return to Malthouse Theatre since directing Porn.Cake in 2011 and staring in Woman-Bomb in 2005. For Belvoir, her credits include The Glass Menagerie, The Little Cherry Orchard, A Room of One’s Own, Gertrude Stein and a Companion, and Cho Cho San. Her other acting credits include over 40 productions for MTC, most recently The Cherry Orchard, Hamlet, His Girl Friday, Boston Marriage and God of Carnage. For STC, she has appeared in over 20 productions, most recently Les Liaison Dangereuses; and as a founding member of STC’s Actors Company, her credits include The War of the Roses, The Season at Sarsaparilla, The Lost Echo and Mother Courage and Her Children. Pamela’s directing credits include Solomon & Marion, Elling (MTC); In the Next Room, or The Vibrator Play, Elling, Serpent’s Teeth: Citizens (STC); and Jumpy (MTC/ STC). She is currently appearing on television as Joan Ferguson in Wentworth. Pamela has won eight Melbourne Green Room Awards, a 2012 Helpmann Award for Best Female Actor in a Musical for Grey Gardens, a Mo Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical for The Wizard of Oz, a Sydney Critics’ Circle Award for A Room of One’s Own, an AFI Best Actress Award for the feature film The Well and most recently an AACTA Award for Best Lead Actress in a Television Drama for Wentworth.
Rose graduated from WAAPA in 2013. She has performed in The Glass Menagerie for Belvoir and Flood for Black Swan State Theatre Company. While at WAAPA, Rose’s roles included Ophelia in Hamlet and Mammy O’Dougal in The Cripple of Inishmaan. She also toured to Dublin with the Smock Gallery Theatre/WAAPA production of The Swell Party. Rose’s feature film roles include Truth and the upcoming The Death and Life of Otto Bloom. Last year, she starred in the television miniseries The Secret City. Her short films include Problem Play, Meat, Profile, and All That Matters.
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Season 2016
In autobiography— although you may be exposed, even humiliated— it is perhaps worse to escape unscathed, to be left out of the story, to be deemed not relevant to the forging of the myth.
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Cast & Creative Bios Season 2016 ——> pg 12
Sean Bacon Video Design Consultant
Damien Cooper Lighting Designer
Stefan Gregory Composer & Sound Designer
Sean studied video and visual arts, graduating with Honours in 1998. He has previously worked with Belvoir on Beautiful One Day (Belvoir/ILBIJERRI/version 1.0), Buried City (Belvoir/Urban Theatre Projects/Sydney Festival) and Measure for Measure, for which he won (with Ralph Myers) a Sydney Theatre Award for Stage Design. Sean has been a company artist for version 1.0 since 2005, and his work with them includes The Vehicle Failed to Stop, The Major Minor Party, seven kilometres north-east (including Sarajevo tour), The Table of Knowledge, The Bougainville Photoplay Project, This Kind of Ruckus, and deeply offensive and utterly untrue. Other theatre work includes Reflections of Gallipoli (Australian Chamber Orchestra), The Maids (STC, including New York tour), Pygmalion (STC), and Return of Ulysses (English National Opera/Young Vic). For dance, his work includes Nobody Nevermind (Experience Harmaat/ Venice Biennial 2001). Other works include a solo show Collective (Cast Gallery, Hobart), a group show Brilliant Refraction (Cube 37, Melbourne), collaborative performance installation Sleeplessness (Performance Space 2003). In 2005, he was awarded a threemonth residency at the Australia Council’s Green Street Studios in New York.
Damien has worked internationally across theatre, opera and dance. At Malthouse Theatre, his work has been seen on stage for Stories I Want to Tell You in Person (w/Belvoir). His designs for Belvoir include The Great Fire, Elektra/Orestes, Blue Wizard, Radiance, Coranderrk, Miss Julie, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Peter Pan, Private Lives, Conversation Piece, Strange Interlude, The Seagull, Keating!, and Exit the King (including the Broadway production with Geoffrey Rush and Susan Sarandon). Other theatre credits include Suddenly Last Summer, Cyrano de Bergerac, The Effect, Children of the Sun, The Long Way Home, Storm Boy, The Splinter, Under Milk Wood, Pygmalion, Bloodland (STC); Macbeth (Bell Shakespeare); Doctor Zhivago (GFO); and Shane Warne the Musical (Token Productions). For opera, Damien’s designs include Der Ring des Nibelungen, Aida, Cosi, Alcina, The Magic Flute, Death in Venice (Opera Australia); Peter Grimes (Opera Australia/Canadian Opera Company/ Houston Grand Opera); A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Chicago Lyric Opera/ Houston Grand Opera/Canadian Opera Company); and Chorus! (Houston Grand Opera). His designs for dance include The Narrative of Nothing, Romeo and Juliet, Swan Lake, Firebird, The Silver Rose (Australian Ballet); The Director’s Cut, Grand, Some Rooms, Shades of Gray, Ellipse, Air and Other Invisible Forces, Body of Work, Mythologia (Sydney Dance Company); Tivoli (Australian Ballet/ Sydney Dance Company); Of Earth and Sky, Mathinna (Bangarra Dance Theatre); and Multiverse, Be Your Self, Birdbrain (Australian Dance Theatre). Damien has won three Sydney Theatre Awards and three Green Room Awards.
Stefan’s composition and sound designs for Malthouse Theatre include The Government Inspector, The Wild Duck (w/Belvoir), Thyestes (w/Belvoir/THE HAYLOFT PROJECT/Sydney Festival), and Baal (w/STC). For Belvoir, his credits include Mother Courage and Her Children, Elektra/Orestes, A Christmas Carol, Hamlet, Forget Me Not (w/Liverpool Everyman/ Playhouse Theatres), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Peter Pan, Private Lives, Medea, Death of a Salesman, Old Man, Strange Interlude, As You Like It, The Seagull, Measure for Measure, and That Face. His other work includes Engel in Amerika (Theatre Basel); Medea (Toneelgroep Amsterdam); Rocco und Seine Brüder (Münchner Kammerspiel); The Cherry Orchard (Melbourne Theatre Company [MTC]); King Lear, The Present, Suddenly Last Summer, Face to Face, Money Shots, Dance Better at Parties, The War of the Roses (STC); King Lear, Hamlet, Othello (Bell Shakespeare); Puncture, Symphony (Sydney Festival/Legs on the Wall); L’Chaim! (Sydney Dance Company); and There Is Definitely a Prince Involved (Australian Ballet). Stefan was a band member of Faker until 2008 and was awarded a Sidney Myer Creative Fellowship in 2014.
Cast & Creative Bios #theglassmenagerie
Michael Hankin Set Designer
Isabella Kerdijk Stage Manager
Katie graduated from the National Institute of Dramatic Art in 2012 with a Bachelor of Dramatic Art (Production). As stage manager, Katie’s credits include Midsummer Madness (Bell Shakespeare) and Rough Draft: Wake in Fright (STC). As assistant stage manager, her credits include Persona (Belvoir); King Lear, Endgame, Mojo (STC); and Romeo and Juliet, The Tempest, The Winter’s Tale, Phèdre (Bell Shakespeare). Katie was also dresser on Cyrano de Bergerac (STC) and the national tour of The Secret River (STC/Sydney Festival).
Michael is a NIDA-trained set and costume designer for theatre and film. His credits for Malthouse Theatre include 247 Days (w/Chunky Move) and Ugly Mugs (w/Griffin Theatre). His other credits include The Great Fire, Jasper Jones, Ivanov, A Christmas Carol, Angels in America, The Dark Room (Belvoir); Jumpy (MTC/ STC); The Aspirations of Daise Morrow (Brink Productions, Adelaide); Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (Theatre Royal); Of Mice and Men (Sport for Jove); As You Like It (Bell Shakespeare); Truckstop (Q Theatre/Seymour Centre); Songs for the Fallen (Sydney Festival/ New York Music Theatre Festival/ Arts Centre Melbourne/Brisbane Festival/TRS); Rust and Bone, The Ugly One (Griffin); Obscura (Force Majeure/Carriageworks); Fool for Love (Company B/Savage Productions); Miracle City (Hayes Theatre); The Boat People (TRS/ The Hayloft project); Judith (TRS); The Lighthouse, In The Penal Colony, Through the Gates (Sydney Chamber Opera); Liberty Equality Fraternity, Great Falls (Ensemble Theatre); Deathtrap, Miss Julie, The Paris Letter, Macbeth (Darlinghurst Theatre); and Suddenly Last Summer, Women of Troy (Cell Block Theatre). His short films include Reason to Smile, Julian and The Amber Amulet (both winners of the Crystal Bear, Berlin International Film Festival). Michael has received Sydney Theatre Awards for Best Independent Stage Design for Of Mice and Men in 2015 and Truckstop in 2012. Michael is one of the Mike Walsh Fellows for 2016 and is currently Associate Lecturer of Design at NIDA.
Isabella graduated from the production course at NIDA in 2008. She has worked as stage manager and assistant stage manager on many shows including Stories I Want to Tell You in Person (w/ Belvoir) and Ugly Mugs (w/Griffin) for Malthouse Theatre; Jasper Jones, Mother Courage and Her Children, Kill The Messenger, The Glass Menagerie, 20 Questions, Thyestes (European tour) for Belvoir; Replay, No More Shall We Part, This Years’ Ashes (Griffin); Rainman, The Ruby Sunrise (Ensemble Theatre); Empire (Spiegelworld); Cranked Up (Circus Oz); The Mousetrap (Australia/NZ tour); and Bubble (Legs on the Wall). As production coordinator, Isabella’s credits include Carmen (Opera Australia on Sydney Harbour). She has worked as production manager/ stage manager for Puppetry of the Penis (A-List Entertainment). Isabella has also worked on various festivals including The Garden of Unearthly Delights at Adelaide Festival, Sydney Festival and the Woodford Folk Festival.
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Katie Hankin Assistant Stage Manager
Cast & Creative Bios Season 2016
Mel Page Costume Designer
Caitlin Porter Audio Visual Operator
Mel is a costume and set designer for theatre and film, and is a graduate of VCA. For Malthouse Theatre, Mel has designed costumes for The Government Inspector (w/ Belvoir), Pompeii L.A., Depth of Field (w/Chunky Move), and Baal (w/STC). For Belvoir, Mel has designed costumes for Jasper Jones, Ivanov, Seventeen, The Dog/The Cat, Elektra/Orestes, Kill the Messenger, A Christmas Carol, Nora, Once in Royal David’s City, Hamlet, Angels in America, Strange Interlude, As You Like It and The Promise; and has designed set and costumes for Small and Tired, Medea, and Old Man. Other costume credits include Engel in Amerika (Theater Basel); The Suicide, The Only Child, Spring Awakening (B Sharp/ The Hayloft Project); Macbeth, Les Liaisons Dangereuses, Pygmalion (STC); Complexity of Belonging (Chunky Move/MTC/Melbourne Festival); Vs. Macbeth (STC/The Border Project); and The Nest (The Hayloft Project). She has also designed both set and costumes for Puncture (Legs on the Wall); Venus in Fur (Darlinghurst Theatre); night maybe (Theatre Works); and The Apocalypse Bear Trilogy (Stuck Pigs Squealing/MTC).
Caitlin is Belvoir’s Senior Technician. Her recent sound operating/ programming credits for Belvoir include Death of a Salesman (including Theatre Royal and Geelong tours), Private Lives, Strange Interlude, Neighbourhood Watch, The Wild Duck (including Oslo, Vienna and Perth tours), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Miss Julie and The Government Inspector. A graduate of NIDA’s production course, Caitlin’s other sound design credits include Fool for Love (B Sharp/ Savage Productions); Romeo and Juliet (Bell Shakespeare); Hamlet (Sport for Jove); The Ugly One, The Brothers Size, Orestes 2.0 (Griffin); Titus Andronicus, Three Sisters, Julius Caesar (Cry Havoc); That Face, Orphans (Red Stitch); KIJE (Old Fitzroy); As Bees in Honey Drown (Darlinghurst Theatre); and Growing Up (National Youth Theatre Company).
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About Malthouse Theatre Season 2016
At Malthouse Theatre, our vision is to captivate audiences with theatre that pushes boundaries. We collaborate with local and international artists, to create theatre that puts provocative, entertaining and authentic human experiences onstage. We champion artistic and cultural diversity; we advocate for alternate points of view.
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Each year we employ 300 passionate and dedicated people, not just the artists on the stage, but professionals including set builders, costume makers, writers, producers, designers and directors.
We have 35 permanent members of staff to help realise and deliver these theatrical experiences. The theatre we produce explores Melbourne and Australia, personally, socially and politically, and sparks complex conversations about our place in the world. We believe theatre can be – and should be – an agent of change. Welcome to Malthouse Theatre. Yours sincerely, Matthew Lutton / Artistic Director & co-CEO Sarah Neal / Executive Producer & co-CEO
Our Partners
Venue Partner
Education Partner
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Government Partners
Major Partner
Accommodation Partner
Corporate Partners
Media Partner
Industry Partner
Trusts and Foundations
Our supporters URANIA—MUSE OF THE STARS—$25,000+ Michele Levine, Mary-Ruth & Peter McLennan, Craig Reeves, Maureen Wheeler AO & Tony Wheeler AO CLIO—MUSE OF HISTORY—$10,000+ Annamila Fund, John & Lorraine Bates, Debbie Dadon, Janine Tai, The Vera Moore Foundation THALIA—MUSE OF COMEDY—$5,000+ Marc Besen AC & Eva Besen AO, Colin Golvan SC, Richard Leonard & Gerlinde Scholz, Mary Vallentine AO, Anonymous (2) MELPOMENE—MUSE OF TRAGEDY—$2,500+ David Bardas, Sian Fairbank, D.L. & G.S. Gjergja, Rosemary Forbes & Ian Hocking, Val Johnstone, Sue Kirkham, James Penlidis & Fiona McGauchie, Elisabeth & John Schiller, Jenny Schwarz, Leonard Vary & Matt Collins QC, Jason Waple, Jon Webster, Anonymous (1)
TERPSICHORE—MUSE OF DANCE—$500+ Michael Arnold, Ingrid Ashford, Rowland Ball, Sandra Beanham, David & Rhonda Black, Jennifer Bourke, Right Lane Consulting, Ros Casey, Marisa Cesario, Mark & Jo Davey, Taleen Gaidzkar, Brian Goddard, Leonie Hollingworth, Brad Hooper, Irene Irvine, Irene Kearsey, Richard & Angela Kirsner, Ian McRae,
Production Photos / Brett Boardman
Kersti Nogeste, Linda Notley, Robert Peters, Katherine Sampson, Lisl Singer, John Thomas, Pinky Watson, Phil & Heather Wilson, Henry Winters, Anonymous (4) ERATO—MUSE OF LOVE—$250+ Simon Abrahams, Graham & Anita Anderson, John & Alexandra Busselmaier, Siu Chan, Chris Clough, Jason Craig, Carolyn Floyd, Orla & Rachel, Joanne Griffiths, Peggy Hayton, Ann Kemeny & Graham Johnson, David & Mira Kolieb, Robyn Lansdowne, Sally Lindsay, Kim Lowndes, Ian Manning & Alice De Jonge, John Millard, Paul Natoli, Tony Oliver, Wendy Poulton, Gerard Powell, Gavin Roach, Michael & Jenny Rozen, Robert Sessions & Christina Fitzgerald, Jill Sewell, Toby Sullivan, Jan Watson, Joanne Whyte, Henry Winters, Roger Woock & Fiona Clyne, Barbara Yuncken Volunteers Malthouse Theatre would like to acknowledge the generous and ongoing support of our dedicated volunteers.
Design / Hours After
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Cover Photo / Andrew Gough
EUTERPE—MUSE OF MUSIC—$1,000+ Frankie Airey & Stephen Solly, Chryssa Anagnostou & Jim Tsaltas, Daniel & Danielle Besen, John & Sally Bourne, Sally Browne, Beth Brown & Tom Bruce AM, Ingrid & Per Carlsen, Min Li Chong, Robin & Neil Collier, Roger Donazzan & Margaret Jackson AC, Rev Fr Michael Elligate, Michael Kingston, James Ostroburski, Rachel Petchesky, Rosemary & Roger Redston, Carol & Alan Schwartz AM, Thea & Hayden Snow, Maria Solà, Gina & Paul Stuart, Fiona Sweet & Paul Newcombe, Rosemary Walls, Jan Williams, Anonymous (1)
What’s up next Season 2016
A profound exploration to understand the ‘why’ of mass bloodshed.
The Events 21 Jun – 10 Jul
The Events / sees a diverse group of locals, all of whom come together to share a love of music, shattered through the violent act of one, alienated, gun-toting teenager. Consumed by thoughts of cultural purity, the lone gunman destroys this vicar’s community and incites an obsession for her to understand if he could have been stopped. Featuring a different Melbournebased community choir each performance, this Australian production of David Greig’s original play seeks to explain why events / that are unthinkable, are the hardest to put behind us.
—Sydney Morning Herald ——> pg 18
By / David Greig Direction / Clare Watson A co-production with Belvoir and State Theatre Company of South Australia.
Hungry for more?
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2
3
EDWARD II
WAR AND PEACE
BLAQUE SHOWGIRLS
Fiction and reality unfold in a collision of surveillance and live action.
Not everything is blaque and white in Australia’s Sin City.
29 JUL – 21 AUG
A perverse, sexy, and provocative portrait of a leader who mixes pleasure with business.
18 – 30 OCT
#theglassmenagerie
We hope you enjoy The Glass Menagerie and the harrowing fall of the Wingfield family into delusion. We think these other productions from Season 2016 will also stir your imagination and get your pulse racing. Why not see all three and save big when you book a Mini Malty, your three show pass to Season 2016?
11 NOV – 4 DEC
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Find out more at malthousetheatre.com.au
Season 2016
About Belvoir When the Nimrod Theatre building in Belvoir Street, Surry Hills, was threatened with redevelopment in 1984, more than 600 people – ardent theatre lovers together with arts, entertainment and media professionals – formed a syndicate to buy the building and save this unique performance space in innercity Sydney. Thirty years later, under Artistic Director Eamon Flack and Executive Director Brenna Hobson, Belvoir engages Australia’s most prominent and promising playwrights, directors, actors and designers to realise an annual season of work that is dynamic, challenging and visionary. As well as performing at home, Belvoir regularly takes to the road, touring both nationally and internationally. Belvoir’s position as one of Australia’s most innovative and acclaimed theatre companies has been determined by such landmark productions as The Glass Menagerie, Angels in America, The Wild Duck, The Diary of a Madman, The Blind Giant is Dancing, The Book of Everything, Cloudstreet, Keating!, Parramatta Girls, Exit the King, The Alchemist, Hamlet, Waiting for Godot, The Sapphires, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Stuff Happens and Medea.
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#theglassmenagerie
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Season 2016 scene & heard
Pamela Rabe met Tennessee Williams as a 19-year-old student when she was at acting school in Canada. She remembers Williams’ impeccable ‘Southern manners’ and draws on this unique experience to play the character of Amanda Wingfield.
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© Malthouse Theatre, the artists, designers, photographers, collaborators and contributors. All rights reserved, 2016.
#theglassmenagerie
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