Love and Information Program

Caryl Churchill’s

LOVE AND INFORMATION 12 JUNE – 4 JULY 2015

Malthouse Theatre and Sydney Theatre Company present

LOVE AND INFORMATION By / Caryl Churchill CHAPTER TWO: POST // LOVE *** MERLYN THEATRE Direction / Kip Williams Set & Costume Design / David Fleischer Lighting Design / Paul Jackson Sound Design & Composition / THE SWEATS Dramaturgy / Mark Pritchard Stage Manager / Lisa Osborn Assistant Stage Manager / Roxzan Bowes Besen Placement (Dramaturgy) / Amelia Evans Cast / Marco Chiappi, Harry Greenwood, Glenn Hazeldine, Anita Hegh, Zahra Newman, Anthony Taufa, Alison Whyte, Ursula Yovich.

Malthouse Theatre would like to acknowledge the people of the Kulin nation on whose land this work is being presented.

Director’s Note

Love and Information is a unique text. Unlike a traditional play where narrative and character provide a clear compass by which to navigate oneself through the story, in Love and Information, Caryl Churchill instead constructs a work comprising a myriad of scenes and voices, none of which are directly connected. These vignettes combine to create a portrait of a community — one that allows us to meditate on time, mortality, love and the meaning of things both great and minuscule.

The play is written in seven sections, each containing seven scenes, save for the final section, which has an eighth scene that Churchill titles FINAL SCENE. Churchill stipulates that each of the seven sections must be played in order, but that the seven scenes within each section can be played in any sequence.

Further to this, she offers ten scenes at the end of the script titled DEPRESSION, of which any number can be inserted into the play at any point. The rule here is that the production must use at least one DEPRESSION scene.

In addition, she provides sixteen

scenes titled RANDOM, of which any can occur at any point in the production, but none of which are compulsory. Thus any given production of Love and Information will contain somewhere between 51 and 76 scenes. At the time of writing, our production has used 70 of them.

To offer the theatre maker even more freedom, Churchill stipulates neither specific context nor character for her scenes. Each scene of the play is given a title followed by dialogue that is entirely unallocated to any character. Who is speaking this dialogue, how many people are speaking the dialogue, and where this conversation is taking place is entirely up to the theatre-makers.

The scope of potential is both liberating and daunting.

At its heart, Churchill’s play is a text that offers theatre-makers a wealth of information with which to generate meaning personal to them and the audience. Therein lies the spirit of the play, and indeed the core philosophy Churchill explores in Love and Information.

Kip Williams / Director

Love and Information is a co-production with

COVER PHOTOGRAPHY /

Andrew Gough

COVER TREATMENT /

The Sisters Hayes

REHEARSAL IMAGES /

Sarah Walker