Ich Nibber Dibber (2018) Program by Malthouse Theatre

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SEASON 2018

5 – 23 SEP BECKETT THEATRE

GREAT FUN, RAW, SHARPLY OBSERVANT AND INCISIVE, IN THAT SINGULAR POST WAY – REALTIME

WRITTEN, DIRECTED & PERFORMED BY / post (Zoë Coombs Marr, Natalie Rose & Mish Grigor)

LIGHTING DESIGN / Fausto Brusamolino

DRAMATURGY / Anne-Louise Sarks

PRODUCER, INTIMATE SPECTACLE / Harley Stumm

SET & COSTUME DESIGN / Michael Hankin

PRODUCTION MANAGER / Liam Kennedy

Malthouse Theatre, Intimate Spectacle, and post present Ich Nibber Dibber. Commissioned and produced by Campbelltown Arts Centre with Intimate Spectacle, with support from the Australia Council for the Arts, Create NSW, Bundanon Trust, Playwriting Australia and Sydney Festival. Key image by Document Photography.

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SOUND DESIGN & COMPOSITION / James Brown

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ACTUALLY, WE LEARNT PRETTY EARLY ON THAT JUST BEING THREE WOMEN ONSTAGE IS INHERENTLY POLITICAL. SEASON 2018

A NOTE FROM POST

Without giving too much away, what are audiences about to get themselves into?

What are the ingredients that make up your typical theatre making process?

An hour with three friends who know each other too well, having those conversations too cringeworthy for public consumption… for over a decade. You’ll see us grow up from clueless twenty year olds, barely faking our way into adulthood, to the still clueless craggy grown ups you see today.

An idea, an impossible idea, lots of YouTube, a few fags and a break. Some books, more books, a lot of highlighters, a small fight. Too much time, big ambition, failure. Magic tricks, junk food, lycra, curtains, Olympic opening ceremonies, pop music, gender theory, and a creepy obsession with the audience.

What is your favourite moment during your decade-long history of working together?

Who is the funniest between you? A very political question! We did a show once where we ranked each other on everything. As it turns out, that can get a bit heated—so we’d better leave people to make their own decisions. (Although let the record show that at this point in the discussion Nat’s just said ‘NAT! It’s me! It’s Nat, put Nat’, so there you go. Nat.)

Too many to count! Mish’s vote went for a record-breaking McDonalds effort by Zoë, Nat’s went for a time Mish lost her voice, Zoë remembered a pie factory altercation, and then we all remembered we once watched Nat give birth to a live human being. That probably takes the cake.

Why use comedy to engage with issues of gender, identity and politics?

What does Ich Nibber Dibber mean? Technically, it doesn’t mean anything. It’s a nonsense phrase, the end point of in-joke banter that’s gone on so long nobody can remember where it started, and it’s taken on multiple different meanings, a bit like this show. But symbolically? Well…

Why not? Actually, we learnt pretty early on that just being three women onstage is inherently political. Even if we tried to avoid it, our work would still be politicised. So for us it’s not a question of why, but how could we possibly not?

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ICH NIBBER DIBBER: Q&A WITH NAT, MISH & ZOË

CAST & CREATIVE BIOS

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Mish Grigor WRITER, DIRECTOR & PERFORMER

Natalie Rose WRITER, DIRECTOR & PERFORMER

Zoë Coombs Marr WRITER, DIRECTOR & PERFORMER

Mish Grigor is an artist who works with performance across a variety of contexts. She was recently the Australia Council’s EMPAC New York artist-in-residence, and in 2017 she co-directed Second Hand Emotions at VitalStatistix with SJ Norman and Sarah Rodigari. She has toured The Talk to Battersea Arts Centre (London), Buzzcut (Glasgow), Forest Fringe (Edinburgh), Darwin Festival and Metro Arts/Brisbane Festival, as well as having a return season in Melbourne through Darebin Speakeasy. Other projects include WE ARE MOUNTAIN for Unconformity Festival with Zoe Scoglio, Ramble for Punctum, Sex Talk for Proximity Festival at Art Gallery of Western Australia in Perth. Her curatorial work includes WINNER! for Firstdraft Gallery, The Imperial Panda Festival, and she was the co-founder of Quarterbred, an artist run initiative that established the Tiny Stadiums Festival in Sydney. She is currently developing a new work entitled Exit Strategies.

Natalie Rose is the Creative Director at Shopfront Arts Co-op and has been involved in Australia’s contemporary arts scene for the past 18 years. She has a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Western Sydney and has previously trained at PACT Centre for Emerging Artists and Urban Theatre Projects. Her work has been seen at Sydney Festival, Belvoir St Theatre, Sydney Theatre Company, Arts House, Cambridge Junction (UK) and Brisbane Powerhouse, to name a few. She facilitates workshops for young people and emerging artists with and without disability. She is committed to creating work with those wanting to have their stories heard. In 2017, she has directed Ever After Theatre’s How to Build a Home as well as Shopfront/ ATYP’s Dignity of Risk which was awarded a Sydney Theatre Award for Best Production for Young People. In 2017 with post, Nat premiered Ich Nibber Dibber in Sydney Festival, We Are The World with Country Arts SA as well as touring Oedipus Schmoedipus to South America.

Zoë Coombs Marr is a performer, writer, artist and comedian. Her show Trigger Warning won the 2016 Melbourne International Comedy Festival Barry Award for best show, the Golden Gibbo, was nominated for a Helpmann Award and Best Comedy at Edinburgh Fringe. The show has been performed in New York, Los Angeles, London, New Zealand and at the Sydney Opera House. In 2017 she co-wrote, directed and starred in Wild Bore, with Adrienne Truscott and Ursula Martinez, at Malthouse Theatre, Edinburgh Fringe, Soho Theatre (London) and Sydney Festival. In 2014, her five-woman ensemble play Is This Thing On? was presented at Belvoir St Theatre and won a Sydney Theatre Award for Best Ensemble and was nominated for Best New Australian Work. In 2012, her solo theatre/ comedy work And That Was The Summer That Changed My Life was awarded the Philip Parsons Young Playwright Award and nominated for Best Newcomer at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival. Other works include Gone Off, Dave and most recently, Bossy Bottom.

CAST & CREATIVE BIOS

James Brown SOUND DESIGN & COMPOSITION

Michael is a NIDA trained Set and Costume Designer for theatre, dance, opera and film. For Malthouse Theatre he has designed for 247 DAYS (with Chunky Move) and Ugly Mugs (with Griffin). He recently designed The Sugarhouse, My Urrawai, Ghosts, Jasper Jones, Angels In America, Ivanov, Twelfth Night, The Glass Menagerie, A Christmas Carol, and The Dark Room at Belvoir St Theatre; Memorial for Adelaide and Brisbane Festival and the Barbican Centre in London; Jumpy for MTC/STC; The Merchant Of Venice and As You Like It for Bell Shakespeare; Dirty Rotten Scoundrels at the Theatre Royal; The Aspirations Of Daise Morrow for Brink Productions and Tartuffe for Brink/STCSA, You Animal You and Flock for Force Majeure, Three Little Words for MTC and Who’s Afraid Of Virgina Woolf for Ensemble Theatre. His designs for Belvoir’s Hir, Sport for Jove’s Of Mice And Men and Q Theatre’s Truck Stop have all won Best Stage Design at the Sydney Theatre Awards. Michael recently won the Kristian Fredrikson Scholarship, and has worked as an Associate Lecturer of Design at NIDA.

James Brown is a Sydney based composer and sound designer. He has worked collaboratively with companies both locally and internationally to produce soundtracks for performance, film, animation and games. He holds a Visual Arts degree from Sydney College of the Arts, and a Masters Degree in Acoustic Physics from Sydney University. He has extensive experience working in collaborative, multi-artform processes and has formed ongoing artistic relationships with artists and companies including: Bethesda, Victoria Hunt, Jane Campion, Australian Ballet, Sydney Dance Company, William Yang, George Khut, Matthew Day, Hans van den Broeck (SOIT), post, and Urban Theatre Projects. His process often involves creating music in synchronicity with the development of the project, creating a strong connection between the material and sound.

Fausto Brusamolino LIGHTING DESIGN Fausto designs lighting for live performances and film, creates his own lighting installations, and provides lighting designs and consultation for other artists’ artworks and exhibitions. Fausto has lit productions in conventional venues like theatres, studios and galleries, as well as less conventional locations like multi-level car parks and large outdoor installations. In his work, creative coding is used as a ground for personal research, prototyping visual solutions, and for building user interfaces to control clusters of lighting or other scenic effects. Creative coding and video design are also implemented as an organic element of a show, and become distinctive production assets to create stunning and unique aesthetics. Fausto received the 2018 Green Room Award for Best Visual Design for Tangiwai, directed by Victoria Hunt, for which he designed the lighting and implemented the water effects.

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Michael Hankin SET & COSTUME DESIGN

CAST & CREATIVE BIOS

Anne-Louise Sarks DRAMATURGY

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Anne-Louise works professionally as a director, writer and dramaturg. She is currently Artistic Director of the Lyric Ensemble at the Lyric Hammersmith London. Selected Malthouse Theatre shows include The Testament of Mary, The Fiery Maze, Ich Nibber Dibber (as dramaturg), and Thyestes. She has also directed Medea (Belvoir/ Theatre Basel, Switzerland/ Gate Theatre, London), Minnie and Liraz (Melbourne Theatre Company), Merchant Of Venice (Bell Shakespeare), Seventeen (Belvoir/Lyric Theatre, London), Jasper Jones (Belvoir) and By Their Own Hands (MTC Neon). Anne-Louise was Resident Director at Belvoir Street Theatre, Sydney from 20132015. In 2011, Anne-Louise held the position of Female Director in Residence at Malthouse Theatre. From 2010-2013 AnneLouise was Artistic Director of The Hayloft Project.

Harley Stumm PRODUCER, INTIMATE SPECTACLE Harley Stumm has worked in the performing arts since 1994, and established the independent producing company Intimate Spectacle in 2011. In that role he has produced and toured artists including post, Branch Nebula, Vicki Van Hout, Cambodian Space Project, Sam Routledge, Erth, Team Mess and Lenine Bourke, to major festivals & venues nationally, regionally and internationally. Previously, he was Producer at Performing Lines 2005-2011, managing the Mobile States contemporary touring program, and touring or producing artists such as Tanja Liedtke, Chamber Made Opera, version 1.0, Marrugeku, Back to Back, Gavin Webber and My Darling Patricia. He was Executive Producer and joint CEO at Urban Theatre Projects 1995-2003. He undertook the National Touring Framework consultancy with Rick Heath for the Australia Council in 2011-12, instrumental in the recent positive reforms to performing arts touring.

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SEASON 2018

ABOUT MALTHOUSE THEATRE

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STAND TOGETHER WITH MALTHOUSE THEATRE. At Malthouse Theatre we collaborate with local and international artists to create inventive performances that cut to the core of the human experience. Theatre has the power to interrogate, disrupt and be an agent of changeâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;and we think it always should. At Malthouse Theatre the work we produce explores the world personally, socially and politically. Based in a dedicated venue, The Coopers Malthouse in Melbourne, we are a home for live experiences that entertain and provoke a dialogue with and within audiences. Welcome to Malthouse Theatre. 8

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POST

post is a theatre company lead by Natalie Rose, Zoë Coombs Marr and Mish Grigor. Considered some of Australia’s top theatre makers, they take being silly very seriously.

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of 25 volunteer performers for each performance. Centro Gabriela Mistral in Santiago Chile presented a bilingual version with Mish and Zoë performing in surtitled English and local volunteers in Spanish. In 2018 post will collaborate with Hong Kong Repertory Theatre, West Kowloon Cultural Precinct Authority, and writer Pat-To Wan on a Cantonese language adaptation, to premiere in Hong Kong Reps International Black Box Theatre Festival, co-commissioned by Arts Centre Melbourne and Asia TOPA. Other works include Who’s The Best?, which was commissioned by STC, and toured nationally in 2011, Everything I Know About The Global Financial Crisis In One Hour, commissioned by Belvoir and toured to United Kingdom, and We Are The World, commissioned by Country Arts South Australia in Mount Gambier (2017).

Borrowing from experimental theatre, comedy, and whatever else they can find, they could be described as formally innovative but prefer genre-queer. In 2017 they premiered Ich Nibber Dibber at Sydney Festival, commissioned and produced by Campbelltown Arts Centre. Their show Oedipus Schmoedipus was commissioned by Belvoir for Sydney Festival 2014, and has since toured to Melbourne (2015), Santiago Chile (2017) and an eight-city Australian regional tour (2018). The work features a new cast

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PICK FOUR OR MORE SHOWS TO BUILD YOUR OWN SEASON PASS.

SCENE & HEARD

post started recording themselves because they donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t work with a director, and they wanted to be able to watch what they were doing on stage.