MTC Scenes - Winter 2014

MTC

scenes Winter 2014

PLAY A LEADING ROLE

2014 Annual Appeal Alkinos Tsilimidos Storming the stage Brendan Cowell Kicking goals Chris More Throwing light

Play a leading role in our story Inside information

As a Subscriber, you are an important part of the MTC Family, and we rely on your continued support in order to achieve all that we do. This includes the support that you provide to MTC by purchasing your subscription but also, and importantly, by making philanthropic donations.

Many of you know that MTC is a notfor-profit organisation and that we rely on ticket sales to help cover costs.

However, our subscription and single ticket sales only cover 68% of our yearly expenses even in a good year.

Another fact that often surprises people is that State and Federal Government funding combined covers less than 12% of our costs per annum (which becomes 9% after we pay our state payroll tax). Strangely, the percentage of our costs covered by government funding is far less (nearly half) of that of most other major performing arts companies in Australia. But, this is the reality of the contemporary Australian economy.

We live in a world where government subsidies are rapidly decreasing while the costs involved in making first class art are constantly increasing. It still leaves us with a gap.

How do we address this? Do we increase our ticket costs, and risk making our art inaccessible for the majority of the community? Do we stop engaging with disadvantaged youth, leaving them without the opportunity to experience live theatre or gain confidence by working with our expert artists? Do we only produce productions that have toured internationally and are already hits, never taking a chance on a new Australian work such as Rupert, The Beast or Neighbourhood Watch? None of these are desirable options. Rather, we must find a way to continue – and further develop – our work without significant reliance on government support. And that’s where you can greatly assist.

This edition of Scenes contains our Annual Appeal Campaign materials. This year, we are asking you to play a leading role in our story by donating to MTC. By playing a leading role in MTC’s story, you enable us to continue to create the finest theatre imaginable. Theatre that delights, inspires, challenges, and thrills us. Theatre that brings us together as a community to laugh, debate and dream. Theatre that has the power to transform lives.

By playing this leading role, you also support all of our offstage projects and programs. This includes our Education Program that engages with over 13,000

Victorian students per year, with a particular focus on reaching disadvantaged students who might not otherwise experience the joy of live theatre or have an opportunity to gain confidence and strength through making it. Also, it includes our commissioning and development programs, which focus on ensuring that interesting and unique Australian stories are told to audiences around Victoria. Additionally, our offstage work includes promoting and mentoring Women Directors, encouraging multiculturalism within the arts sector and supporting independent theatremakers. And so much more!

By playing a leading role in MTC’s story, you allow us to continue to be one of Australia’s top performing arts companies, helping to ensure that Victoria remains the arts capital of Australia and Melbourne one of the most liveable cities in the world.

The truth is we need you to play this leading role. We simply couldn’t exist without your philanthropic support.

Every gift, no matter how large or small, is incredibly important and truly makes a difference to our efforts.

To donate, please visit the MTC website at mtc.com.au/annualappeal or call Ryan Nicolussi on (03) 8688 0954.

Tiffany Lucas Development Director

Remembering Wendy Hughes To celebrate the superb acting craft and sublime grace of Wendy Hughes, who died in March, MTC will host a special memorial reception at the Southbank Theatre on 1 June. Long-term MTC subscribers will remember her performances going back to the early seventies, as well as more recent appearances in All About My Mother, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, and The Clean House. She was widely known as a film actor, who broke through at the crest of the Australian New Wave in such classics as My Brilliant Career, Newsfront and Careful He Might Hear You. On behalf of Wendy’s friends and family, we extend an invitation to all subscribers and especially to those who worked with her at MTC or elsewhere to come and share their memories at the reception.

Wendy Hughes Celebration Sunday 1 June, 3pm, Southbank Theatre Foyer Wendy Hughes with Peter Curtin in The Plough and the Stars (1973)

Cover: Zahra Newman in The Mountaintop (2013) Scenes is produced quarterly and is a publication of Melbourne Theatre Company. All information was correct at the time of printing. Melbourne Theatre Company reserves the right to make changes.

EDITOR Paul Galloway GRAPHIC DESIGN Helena Turinski COVER IMAGE Jeff Busby MAIN PHOTOS Jeff Busby, Mandy Jones, Jo Duck, Pam Kleemann, Benjamin Healey Melbourne Theatre Company is a department of the University of Melbourne

MTC Headquarters 252 Sturt St, Southbank Vic 3006 TELEPHONE 03 8688 0900 FACSIMILE 03 8688 0901 E-MAIL info@mtc.com.au WEBSITE mtc.com.au Southbank Theatre 140 Southbank Blvd, Southbank Vic 3006 BOX OFFICE 03 8688 0800

Going live

Film director Alkinos Tsilimidos quickly got the hang of directing for the stage The business of producing plays and the business of producing films both include the job description ‘Director’, and, broadly speaking, the two types of director have a great deal in common.

Both are storytellers for audiences and each has actors to organise and instruct, sets, costumes and lighting to deal with, and a script to follow. Yet, for anyone who has done both, such as Alkinos Tsilimidos who achieved acclaim as a director of film (Tom White, Em 4 Jay, Blind Company) before directing his first stage work, John Logan’s Red for MTC in 2011, the differences are subtle and significant.

One thing Tsilimidos hadn’t quite bargained on was the reduced role of a theatre director, the way the creative power is more equally shared in theatre.

‘The author of a film is the director,’ he says. ‘We have the screenwriter, the cast, the production team, but ultimately it’s a film by the director. You are involved in every aspect; that’s what the genre demands. That can drive you mad; making films can actually drive you insane.’ But in theatre, he found the production being gradually taken out of his hands. By Opening Night the show has become the responsibility of the actors, stage management and crew.

It was frustrating at first. ‘For a film director, theatre is like calling “Action!” and not being able to call “Cut!” for ninety minutes.’

It felt odd, too, not to have the convenient tricks of film-making at his disposal. ‘The “trickery” I’m talking about with film is the luxury to go again,’ he says, ‘to repeat the scene, and the luxury in editing and the whole mise-enscène with filmmaking. So, if you need to, you can carve out the performance you want partly out of the process of filmmaking.’ In theatre, by contrast, there’s no post-production, only the production – once up on the stage the show has limited scope for change.

The job is to prepare for that moment when an audience sees the show for the first time. ‘A theatre director’s function is really to become the show’s first audience – that’s the big difference.’

In June, Tsilimidos will be the first audience of MTC’s Glengarry Glen Ross, David Mamet’s 1984 play about shonky

Chicago salesmen selling sub-prime Florida real estate. His previous shows with MTC, Red and The Mountaintop, were two-handers, and he’s looking forward to working with seven actors in a play that explores the fluid and volatile dynamics of a masculine workplace.

One of the things he enjoys most about theatre directing is the amount of time he has to rehearse the actors – over weeks rather than days.

‘I teach acting and I have always respected what actors do’, he says.

‘Love what they do, love the craft. And to work in theatre has brought me

make that adjustment without thinking about it. Whether for stage or film, he sees his job with actors as the same: ‘to look for truthfulness. I’m always looking for a truthful performance and that transcends film, television, theatre – all the media. Truthfulness is the common denominator.’

You would think that another common denominator is that both films and stage shows rely on a script, but Tsilimidos notes that the two art forms take a completely different attitude to the written word. ‘Film language is not text; theatre language is text, it’s the

Colin Friels, André de Vanny and director Alkinos Tsilimidos in rehearsal (Red 2012)

For a film director, theatre is like calling “Action!” and not being able to call “Cut!” for ninety minutes.

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closer to the craft. I felt it all became pared back – the acting. The process became organic for me, getting back to the rawness of actors acting live.

It made me realise how important theatre is to actors. It holds a special place; it’s their playground. And you can’t cheat on stage. There are tricks with film, many tricks, but the stage exposes a performance.’

Tsilimidos doesn’t think stage acting and film acting are all that different.

He accepts that the stage requires a greater vocal projection from an actor, but experienced actors, he has noticed,

play. In film the script’s not the last word. Going into Glengarry the text is our bible and we need to make sure that we get it on stage, that text, fulfil that voice everyone hears when one reads the play. That’s what I want to achieve, to capture.’ ▲ Alkinos Tsilimidos spoke to Paul Galloway.

Glengarry Glen Ross by David Mamet runs at Southbank Theatre, The Sumner from 5 July to 9 August.

Male call Prompt corner

Male aggression, male fear, male confusion – there are some pretty basic emotional states explored in both David Mamet’s classic play Glengarry Glen Ross and Brendan Cowell’s The Sublime. Playing the seven desperate men trying to hit their sales targets in a squalid Chicago real estate office will be Steve Bisley (last seen at MTC in Inheritance), Alex Dimitriades (making his MTC

debut), Rodney Afif (The Golden Dragon), Greg Stone (The Crucible), and MTC first-timers Nick Barkla (pictured left), Justin Stewart Cotta and Brett Cousins.

Cowell’s show about the two footballing brothers and the girl that gets between them will feature fresh faces Josh McConville and Ben O’Toole and sees the return of Anna Samson (pictured centre) after her MTC debut in The Heretic in 2012.

It will be good to see William McInnes and Sigrid Thornton together again and back on the MTC stage.

The former co-stars of ABC TV’s SeaChange will play researchers running a clinical trial in Lucy Prebble’s The Effect. McInnes last appeared at MTC in 2005 in Ray’s Tempest while Thornton’s last show was The Blue Room in 2003. Playing the human guinea pigs will be Zahra Newman (pictured on our cover in The Mountaintop) and Nathaniel Dean (pictured above right) making his Company debut.

Steve Bisley in Inheritance (2003)

Get caught in our net

There are many ways to stay up to date with everything happening inside and around MTC. You have probably received our regular e-newsletter, which is the best way to learn about performances, special events and offers – but if you haven’t, it’s easy to sign up (mtc.com.au/enews). The website should be your first resort when you need to check performance dates or times or are curious about the latest casting news, but by clicking onto ‘Interact’, you can also watch trailers and interviews on up-coming productions, view back stage photos and read background articles. There are also podcasts to download and blog posts to read. For those wishing to join the conversation, just follow us on twitter (@MelbTheatreCo) or go to our Facebook page (facebook.com/ melbournetheatrecompany).

Production Briefings

Going online is a great way of becoming informed about the show you are about to see; attending one of our Production Briefings is another.

Created for those curious about creativity, these free panel discussions, involving the director, cast and creative team, allow you to prime the mental pump before seeing the show.

They are open to all, so, by all means, invite your friends and colleagues – or perhaps the young person you know studying Drama for VCE. The next production briefings are: The Speechmaker Monday 26 May, 6pm Arts Centre Melbourne, Playhouse Glengarry Glen Ross Monday 30 June, 6pm Southbank Theatre, The Sumner The Effect Monday 11 August 6pm Southbank Theatre, The Sumner The Sublime Monday 18 August, 6pm Arts Centre Melbourne, Fairfax Studio

Make a date for 2015

Get out your diary and poise your pencil. Cue drumroll … The date for the launch of MTC Season 2015 will be the evening of Thursday 4 September at Hamer Hall.

You’ll want to be there. ▲

When worlds collide

Writer Brendan Cowell explores clashing cultures in his new play A few years ago, when playwright and actor Brendan Cowell was co-host of The League Lounge, a satirical football show on cable TV, he noticed something interesting about many of the Rugby League players he interviewed. These were big, tough guys, many with fearsome reputations, man-mountains of muscle and rage – at least on the field. Off the field, however, Cowell often found a completely different kind of person. ‘I got to see how they are a long way away from how they are perceived in the media,’ he says. ‘Many of them, they’re kind of sweet, you know, sweet kids in these tough bodies.’

big strong men or the teenage girl with the iPhone? Or is it the club management or the management of the NRL or AFL? Or the sponsors? Everyone is wielding power within these personal relationships.’

Aspects of Cowell’s tale might remind Melbourne audiences of certain recent AFL scandals involving footballers and very young women, but the writer hasn’t written a docu-drama. In developing the plot, he responded more to a climate in football culture than specific events. Sex scandals arise in both football codes

Those who have seen Brian Friel’s Molly Sweeney or Faith Healer will recognise the dramatic form Cowell has chosen for the play: the three characters – the two footballing brothers and the girl that gets between them – sitting or standing in their own pool of light and delivering their version of events in a series of intersecting monologues.

There are no locker room confrontations or romantic scenes.

There are no other characters. When MTC Artistic Director Brett Sheehy approached him about writing the play, Cowell said straight out that he didn’t

That contradiction was bound to rattle in his playwright’s mind. It’s a recurring theme in his writing. He calls it ‘finding the little boy behind the monster’, exploring the difference between the negative way individuals are perceived or judged and their true, often complicated and confused, inner lives.

He explored this theme when writing the episode ‘Harry’ in the mini-series of Christos Tsolkas’s novel The Slap a couple of years ago and again in his novel How It Feels. Now, in The Sublime, his play commissioned by MTC on the strength and urgency of its central idea, he has expanded his thoughts on footballers and the pressures placed on them.

‘Our society is partly to blame,’ he says, ‘because we manifest these sportsmen, want them to be elite, strong, fearless sportsmen who run into each other and crush each other, but then we want them to walk off the field after eighty minutes of gladiatorial warfare and be somewhat normal.’

The Sublime is the story of two brothers, one playing league in the NRL and one in the AFL, and their relationship with a wayward teenage girl. After a public scandal severs the bond between the brothers, the media pack into a scrum to determine who is to blame; who is devil and who is angel in this affair.

But, the purpose behind Cowell’s retelling is to move away from snap moral judgements to a much more ambiguous state. ‘Hopefully I have written a clever enough polemic to make an audience not exactly sure whose side they’re on. I want audiences to question who has the power: the

Josh McConville in The Sublime

from time to time and Cowell thinks they might even be inevitable. ‘You look at some of these young guys and all their lives they’ve been given everything they want. So what happens when they’re told that they can’t have something, especially when they have been showered with praise, money and, then, there are these girls throwing themselves at them. The notion of ‘no’ is often a foreign word. And also a lot of the girls are too young and conflicted to be clear about it, they don’t say ‘no’ right out. So they might say ‘maybe not now’, or ‘let’s see how we go’. Then add drugs and alcohol and nothing is cut and dried.’

want to write ‘a naturalistic play where they walk into the kitchen with their secrets.’ Rather, he was interested in very direct storytelling, ‘to peel away at all the sort of artifice of naturalism until I just have actors and words and a great moral conundrum.’ ▲ Brendan Cowell spoke to Paul Galloway.

The Sublime by Brendan Cowell runs at the Fairfax Studio from 22 August to 4 October.

Sean O’Shea as Rupert Murdoch with the Rupert cast; (below) Bert LaBonté and Simon Gleeson in front of the White House.

Rupert in America On 12 March, Rupert, David Williamson’s hit play from last season, opened at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC as part of the World Stages International Theater Festival. The rollicking satire on the extraordinary life and times of Rupert Murdoch was our first overseas production for thirty years. All the hard work from MTC staff and the Rupert Company to get it there was rewarded by a rapturous reception. In the brief five-performance season, our new American audience got a taste of the true larrikin spirit within Australian theatre. MTC is working hard to ensure we don’t have to wait so long for our next international tour.

And the envelope, please Green Room Awards

Normally, during the Green Room Awards each year, the main interest for MTC is in the Theatre Company category, where this year we had twenty-one nominations across nine disciplines. That is gratifying recognition. However, this year we could also take a keener interest in the Independent Theatre category in which many of the companies in our inaugural NEON Festival were nominated. In the end, our mainstage season received four awards: Steve Mouzakis, who played Lophakhin in our widely-acclaimed production of The Cherry Orchard, won Best Male Actor; Danny Pettingill picked up Best Lighting Design for Other Desert Cities, and our special family production, The Book of Everything, having already won a swag of awards and accolades in its original Sydney season, won the Best Direction Awards for Neil Armfield and Best Ensemble for the entire hardworking cast.

There were nine nominations for NEON shows and Sisters Grimm came away with Best Independent Production for The Sovereign Wife and its co-writer and actor Ash Flanders was named Best Performer.

Congratulations to all.

The Green Room Awards are the Victorian performance community’s annual recognition of excellence. You can see the full list of nominations and winners on their website. (www.greenroom.org.au) ▲

Steve Mouzakis in The Cherry Orchard (2013)

Insubstantial pageant

Video Designer Chris More creates environments out of light Chris More has the technological insouciance of his generation: everything new is kind of old hat.

Asked about the digital machinery that will support his visual design in MTC’s forthcoming production of The Effect, he says ‘it’s nothing special, nothing high end.’

He then goes on to explain how each separate high definition video element he creates will be digitised and placed on a laptop, ready to be cut, merged, faded, flipped, moved or morphed as it is feed through either of the two projectors, one at the rear of the stage and one at the front. Using special software to create a three dimensional representation of the set, the images can be mapped perfectly onto the irregular layers of scrim mesh in Andrew Bailey’s stage design. (It is the same technology that is used to create lightshows on public building during arts festivals.) Once this has all been set up and placed in a cue log in a computer it’s all pretty simple really – you just press Go. Video effects such as these have been used widely in dance, children’s theatre and performance art for decades, but text-based theatre, particularly mainstream naturalistic theatre, has generally found the technology too cumbersome and the effects too artificial to be worth the candle.

But lately, with the technology and software becoming more flexible and plays themselves becoming more filmic and abstracted, video projection is being used more and more. Last season at MTC, there were significant video elements in The Other Place, Rupert and The Mountaintop, but The Effect looks like it will set new benchmarks in creating scenes and environments through the manipulation of projected images.

Two months out from rehearsals, More is a long way from completing his design. Soon he’ll get together with director Leticia Cáceres and Bailey to storyboard the play. The use of a storyboard, a technique borrowed from film that’s rare in theatre, will help him create a rough design that can later be tweaked and adjusted in rehearsal. The Effect, from British writer Lucy Prebble, is about two volunteers in a clinical drug

trial and, after preliminary discussions with Cáceres, More has a fair idea of what he’ll be throwing on to the white walls of the clinic. This will be his canvas. ‘The base layer is the sterile world of the research environment,’ he says. ‘Through this runs a constant state of monitoring, so in terms of images I’m thinking at this stage of data feeds and monitor readouts, EKGs and other medical imagery that the actors can interact with. Then there are the emotional states of these two participants, they’ll need to be represented. And then there are the effects of the drugs. So, there’ll be a balance between representing the world and creating metaphoric elements, between the real, the psychological and the abstract.’

Chris More didn’t mean to become a video designer for theatre; it just worked out that way. Over a decade ago – an eon in technological terms – he completed his course at Swinburne in Electronic Design

relationship with the director, Rosemary Myers. When she moved to head Windmill, the Adelaide-based youth company, she brought him in to work on specific shows. He solved problems as he went along, though his close collaboration with Myers and the designer Jonathan Oxlade helped flatten the learning curve.

Between theatre projects he operates Studio Organic, his own design company that focuses on animation and interactive media, but he counts stage work as often the most challenging. ‘The work I do is taxing and very labour intensive,’ he says, ‘and the theatre environment requires a degree of discontinuity that makes it just a bit more difficult. In the rehearsal room decisions are being made on the fly and you have to respond. There’s always a tight schedule and theatre is completely collaborative, so you’re adjusting your work all the time. So it’s tricky and sometimes stressful to be flexible in that environment.’ ▲

there’ll be a balance between representing the world and creating metaphoric elements, between the real, the psychological and the abstract

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Chris More’s visual design for The Duck Death & The Tulip (Barking Gecko Theatre, 2013)

and Interactive Media thinking he’d go into interactive CD ROM design. But CD ROMs were on their way out and he fell into general graphic design, with the odd bit of freelancing. One gig put him in the design team of Skid 180, a major production by Arena Theatre Company about the BMX subculture, out of which came a working

Chris More spoke to Paul Galloway.

The Effect by Lucy Prebble runs at Southbank Theatre, The Sumner from 16 August to 20 September.

A portfolio of Chris More’s designs can be found at theloop.com.au/studioorganic

The Joy of Giving

An Interview with Peter Clemenger AM Who inspired the philanthropist in you?

Somewhere in my psyche, I remember somebody saying to me ‘It’s better to give than receive,’ and I believe that.

In a way, that small saying has had a bearing on our involvement with philanthropy in general, not just the arts. We’ve had great pleasure in being able to do various things to support the arts and certain aspects of medical research.

Two of last year’s most talked about MTC productions The Beast by Eddie Perfect and Simon Stone’s adaptation of The Cherry Orchard are among twenty-one playwriting commissions made possible through support from

MTC has been fortunate to have had your support specifically for playwriting commissions. Do you feel a sense of pride in that you have enabled twenty-one unique stories to be told?

It’s nice to know that we’ve done that, but I wouldn’t have had any idea that it was that many. It was our idea to do it, and to some degree it comes about because of the business that I’m in.

Advertising is a creative business. We are dealing with creative people all the

We must support theatre in our own country – we have to support the writers, the producers and the performers. the Joan and Peter Clemenger Trust.

Over the past eight years, Joan and Peter’s unwavering commitment to the development of new and diverse Australian works has resulted in plays that have provoked, challenged and delighted audiences. Later this year, our newest commission will be unveiled when Brendan Cowell’s The Sublime opens in August.

We spoke with Peter Clemenger AM about a lifelong tradition of giving and how rewarding the experience can be.

When did you and Joan first begin supporting the arts?

We were married in 1956 and we’ve been involved with ballet, art and theatre all our married lives. We had been supporting the arts for many years in a less disciplined way, so in 2001 we started a Trust.

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time like artists and writers. And we know that not everything that you do is going to succeed but you have to keep trying. So we’ve been happy to support writers on the basis that if they get something on stage, that’s fantastic, if they don’t quite make it, that’s too bad but they hopefully will try again.

You clearly believe it is important for Australian voices and diverse stories to be told?

Absolutely. The last MTC play we saw, Neighbourhood Watch, is an Australian play in every sense of the word. We must support theatre in our own country – we have to support the writers, the producers and the performers. That’s not to say that it’s not a good idea to occasionally bring in plays from overseas, because we are competing with the rest of the world.

If we’re going to have theatre here, it

has to be as good as you can see in New York or London.

What is it you enjoy most about supporting MTC? I have enjoyed meeting most of the writers we have supported. I think it’s important to know who the writers are, what their past history has been, and what they are aiming to achieve. From my point of view, it makes it more personal rather than just saying here’s the money.

People talk about ‘the joy of giving’ – do you feel a sense of joy when you support theatre?

Yes. We are rather quiet about what we do. Some people say you should talk about what you give and that gives other people an example of what to do. I see the merit of that. On the other hand, in our particular Trust we are somewhat reserved and that’s our personality. But it’s nice to be acknowledged.

Do you think MTC is worthy of support?

MTC has had its ups and downs over sixty years, as has every other artistic company. The important thing is to be able to keep going through the tough times. Today, MTC as I see it is in very good shape, perhaps in better shape than it has ever been. It’s important for people who love MTC to stay involved, to see the shows, and for those who can to help financially. MTC is a great part of Melbourne, long may it continue successfully. When MTC needs support, I would hope the people who go regularly also feel the way that Joan and I do and contribute what they can.

MTC is extremely grateful to Joan and Peter Clemenger AM for their remarkable generosity. If you would like to find out how you can help support play commissions or any other area of our work, please contact: Mandy Jones Engagement and Events Manager (03) 8688 0958; m.jones@mtc.com.au ▲

Upcoming Dress Rehearsals for CentreStage Members At the time of printing the dates and times of Dress Rehearsals for Glengarry Glen Ross, The Effect and The Sublime are still being confirmed. All members will be notified of the details by mail in the coming weeks.

To find out about becoming a CentreStage Member, please contact Mandy Jones on membership@mtc.com.au, phone (03) 8688 0958 or visit mtc.com.au/support

The Audi A3 Sedan starred in the Opening Night display for Private Lives, complete with a honeymooning couple and piano; (below, from top) The Lawler all ready for the excitement of the pre-show event; Just Married!

Our honeymooning couple with the Audi A3 Sedan

A beautiful collaboration

Accolades abound for Audi’s Opening Night Festivities Opening Night of any MTC production is not to be missed – particularly now that MTC and Audi Australia, our Opening Night Partner, have taken the Opening Night festivities to a whole new level!

winning 2014 World Car of the Year for the Audi A3 – a major achievement in the car industry. Congratulations to our friends at Audi Australia on this fantastic achievement and thank you for your continued support of MTC!

The partnership hit a stylish high with the Private Lives Opening Night, which featured a display outside the theatre of the new Audi A3 Sedan, surrounded by actors dressed in attire worthy of the glitz and glam of Noël Coward himself. Guests were treated to a red carpet entrance, an elegantly themed pre-show cocktail party – including a two metre-wide chandelier and a champagne fountain – and a man in tails tinkling on a piano.

Contest draw

The excitement continues at the Ghosts Opening Night, where we are set to bring guests into the world of Ibsen, a unique and memorable experience.

We’ve received an outstanding response to the new format of Audi Opening Nights, with guests buzzing after Private Lives. And, Audi isn’t just a winner with MTC audiences; it has also just had the prestigious distinction of

On behalf of Audi Australia, we would like to offer all MTC Subscribers to chance to win two tickets to the next Audi Opening Night – The Effect on 21 August 2014. To enter, please email sponsorship@mtc.com.au by Friday 20 June, and include ‘Audi Opening Night Drawing’ as the subject line.

Enter now to join in the excitement of Audi Opening Nights – you won’t want to miss this extraordinary opportunity!

Corporate Partnerships with MTC?

Please call us to discuss ways of integrating your brand with our unique money-can’t-buy experiences. ▲ Dean Hampel Corporate Partnerships Manager (03) 8688 0952; d.hampel@mtc.com.au

Watching the neighbourhood Education

‘I didn’t like the part with the axe, though,’ said Amelia Newman. ‘Because I felt the play was really grounded and realistic and when he pulled out the axe for me it was all of a sudden very heightened and felt a bit silly. I think that’s just my taste though.’

Discussions about performances naturally focused on the funny, prickly characterisation of Ana from Robyn Nevin (‘Robyn Nevin is always really good at embodying a character; she’s very intense.’), but many of the students identified with the main female character, who is closer to their age.

‘In the second act, I definitely teared up a bit near the end with all the stuff about the young girl Catherine,’ said Charlotte Usher. ‘The whole show is so ‘Melbourne’, so realistic, that from the start it makes you connect with the characters incredibly easily.’

Megan Holloway and Robyn Nevin in Neighbourhood Watch (right) 2014 MTC Youth Ambassadors

‘It was beautiful,’ said Ada Hale. ‘The way it transitioned from the present to the ‘dream’ sequences and the memories was gorgeous. I love Robyn Nevin, she’s fantastic.’ Ada is an MTC Youth Ambassador, one of twenty-five theatre-lovers drawn from schools around Melbourne to be given a special insight into the workings of a mainstream theatre company. The program has been running for a few years now and the 2014 group met for the first time on 8 April, before going on to a performance of Neighbourhood Watch. The idea behind this year-long extension programme is to give some bright enquiring minds access to MTC and the day-to-day processes of theatre-making, hoping that their enthusiasm will seed further interest within their schools and their social circles. Each comes to the program with specific interests. Some are interested in plays and writing for the stage, others in the technical and directorial aspects, and, undoubtedly, some have acted and might be thinking of drama school. But a passion for live performance is the common factor.

Each monthly meeting is structured around a talk by a theatre creative person or technician, followed by a trip to a performance. Of course, there is plenty of opportunity for the students to get to know each other and to share their theatre experiences.

At Neighbourhood Watch, MTC’s Acting Education Manager Meg Upton recorded their responses during the interval and afterwards.

Apart from their enthusiasm, the most notable feature of this foyer chat was the ease with which the students drew on their analytical skills.

They are already thinking like future theatre-makers.

‘I liked the use of music,’ said Sam Rowe. ‘The contrasting nature of the music was a very important aspect of the production. There was a particular moment when a certain chord was played which suddenly changed the whole atmosphere. I knew that the man was going to do something ….’

‘Pull out an axe,’ someone else chimed in.

‘Well, not that, but I knew he was going to do something. But also there was a juxtaposition between naturalism, which it originally started with, and then there were sequences which were completely non-naturalistic. It’s a great contrast and I absolutely loved it.’

There was another opinion about the sequence in which the young Ana in the play is confronted by a serial killer.

The students all seemed to agree that the use of the revolve was economical and marvelled how so much exposition and scene-setting could be achieved with so little.

‘I enjoyed the shadow-play that they’ve been using,’ said Teagan Connop-Galer.

‘It gave a really nice effect to the whole thing, especially in the flashbacks, those sequences. It gives it a real mystical feel.’

‘The lighting had a big impact on showing the change of era,’ added Anyuop Dau. ‘You didn’t need any other visual changes or change in costume.

It was all done by lighting.’

Since these interviews, the group has already met again to talk theatre and see MTC Education’s Yellow Moon, and is excited about the year of discussion, debate, friendship and theatre ahead. ▲

Fiercely independent NEON Festival

‘It is important for people to realise that those of us who do independent theatre do so not because we can’t do mainstream theatre but because we want to do a piece that doesn’t fit into that paradigm.’

Brian Lipson, who has a string of mainstream theatre credits, has always returned to the independent sector to work. It’s where he started – writing, directing and performing with experimental theatre groups in London in the seventies. More recently in Melbourne, his regular independent work has included his own shows such as Berggasse 19: The Apartments of Sigmund Freud and A Large Attendance in the Antechamber, his award-winning play about English scientist Francis Galton that he performed throughout Australia, America and Europe.

For MTC’s second NEON Festival, Lipson has teamed up with writer Daniel Keene and actor Helen Morse to direct and design Photographs of A, another story of nineteenth century science. Keene has sifted through the case study of ‘Augustine’, the fifteenyear-old patient of the psychiatric pioneer Jean-Martin Charcot and produced a theatrical impression of a troubled mind. ‘Daniel’s play gives a voice to a young woman who was widely written about, but never had a chance to speak,’ says Lipson.

In particular, Keene was inspired by a series of disturbing photographs taken in 1876 of the young girl in the attitudes and spasms of hysteria.

These provide the structure of the

Keene’s play – a series of short, psychological snapshots. ‘The thing about a photograph is that it allows you to see,’ Lipson says. ‘The photograph can be of a horrific thing but you find that you can look at it. So, the show is called Photographs of A. Like the photos, each scene has a different mode of presentation. The play’s cinematic in that it resembles the way a film is shot out of sequence, with those different modes jammed up against each other.’

Photographs of A has had a long developmental phase. Helen Morse is the third actor attached to the project, but Lipson enjoys the evolving nature of this kind of work.

‘The earlier drafts presented a highly poeticised and very intense vocal explosion,’ he says. ‘With Dan’s later drafts there was another mode of writing incorporated, more internalised, conversational. And, of course, Helen [Morse] brings an extraordinary sensitivity to the piece. Yet she’s very strong. She has a very playful side to her and she’s completely unafraid of the darker side of human nature.’

Lipson is not entirely happy with the term ‘experimental theatre’, but can’t find a better word to express the desire to discover new theatrical forms to tell new stories in a new way.

In this project, for instance, Lipson will work with a text of disconnected scenes and a mature actor playing a fourteen year-old. He also plans to use only candlelight throughout and avoid as much modern theatrical technology.

Mainstream theatre rarely takes such bold artistic choices, which is why the NEON Festival is such an important event for MTC to host. And Lipson thinks it’s also important that mature theatre practitioners such Keene, Morse and himself bring their experience to the independent sector.

‘I think the general impression is that independent theatre is for young people to develop their skills on their way to mainstream theatre. Whereas I believe it’s where you go to create a certain kind of work. Theatre is a continuum, a continuum of modes and strands. And I enjoy working these various strands.’ ▲

Photographs of A by Daniel Keene runs at Southbank Theatre, the Lawler from 26 June to 6 July.

The NEON Festival of Independent Theatre runs at the Lawler from 29 May to 3 August.

For information on the six NEON productions and associated events go to mtc.com.au/neon Brian Lipson in The Crucible (2013); (left) Augustine, 1878, one of Jean-Martin Charcot’s patients.

Special offers Winter 2014

Working Dog Productions

Cinema Nova

Melbourne International Jazz Festival

2-for-1 Offer

Major Prize Pack Working Dog, the iconic team behind classic Australian films such as The Castle and The Dish, as well as TV series Frontline and The Hollowmen, have teamed up with Melbourne Theatre Company to present The Speechmaker, a hilarious political satire.

The stellar ensemble cast, which includes Lachy Hulme, Kat Stewart and Erik Thomson, are currently busy rehearsing at MTC HQ.

For your chance to win a major prize pack featuring some of Working Dog’s most popular television series (Frontline, The Hollowmen, Thank God You’re Here, The Late Show) and books (Audrey Gordon’s Tuscan Summer, Jane Kennedy’s One Dish Two Ways and the Jetlag Travel Guide series), email your name and subscriber details to offers@mtc.com.au with WORKING DOG in the subject line, or call 8688 0900 by Friday 6 June 2014.

National Theatre Live: King Lear

11 June 2014

National Theatre Live presents a new production of King Lear captured live in HD from London, in cinemas from June 21.

Academy Award-winner Sam Mendes (American Beauty, Skyfall) directs Simon Russell Beale as Lear. Beale is praised as ‘the greatest stage actor of his generation’ (Independent, UK). This acclaimed new production also stars Anna Maxwell Martin, Kate Fleetwood and Olivier Vinall as Lear’s three daughters, and Adrian Scarborough as the Fool.

Sharmill Films is offering MTC subscribers fifty double passes to a preview screening of King Lear on Wednesday 11 June 6:30pm at Cinema Nova, Carlton.

For your chance to win a double pass, email your name and subscriber details to offers@mtc.com.au with LEAR in the subject line by Wednesday 4 June.

Davi Sings Sinatra

7 June 2014

As part of the Melbourne International Jazz Festival, Hollywood tough-guy-turnedcrooner Robert Davi brings his inimitable tribute to Ol’ Blue Eyes to Australian shores for the first time. Be swept away by classics such as ‘I’ve Got the World on a String’, ‘Witchcraft’ and ‘Day In, Day Out’.

Davi Sings Sinatra plays Palais Theatre on Saturday 7 June at 8pm. To receive 20% off A Reserve tickets, visit www.melbournejazz.com/program/davisings-sinatra and click ‘Buy Tickets Now’, then select your tickets under the title ‘MTC Member offer’ and enter promo code MTC.

Grace of Monaco

Valid from 5 June

Set in 1962, six years after her celebrated Wedding of the Century, Grace of Monaco tells of a year in the life of the twentieth century’s most iconic and glamorous Princess – Grace Kelly. From the director of La Vie en Rose, featuring a captivating performance by Nicole Kidman, Grace of Monaco is a sweeping romance and portrait of the greatest transformation Grace Kelly would ever undertake.

Entertainment One is offering MTC Subscribers a 2-for-1 ticket deal for Grace of Monaco. Simply present this coupon at any participating cinema to receive two tickets for the price of one full-priced adult ticket. Valid from 5 June until the end of the film’s theatrical season at all participating cinemas, excluding public holidays, discount days and after 5pm on Saturdays and Sundays. Not valid at HOYTS La Premiere, IMAX®, 3D or special event screenings; Village Cinemas Gold Class, VMAX or 3D; Reading Cinemas Gold Lounge or Special Event Screenings.