MTC Scenes - Winter 2015

MTC

scenes Winter 2015

Susie Porter New kid in town Marg Horwell Designing woman Leith McPherson Spreading inflection

Imagine if…

2015 Annual Appeal

Imagine if…

Inside information

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his year, through our Annual Appeal, we are asking MTC Subscribers to join us on a journey of imagination – to consider the transformative impact that MTC could have on the lives of artists, students and our community.

Imagine if … every child in Victoria could build self-esteem and confidence through engaging with drama.

Imagine if … the next world-changing play could be written and developed by artists right here in Melbourne.

Imagine if … everyone had an equal voice regardless of gender, culture or ability.

As you know, all of these important activities take funding – and this funding is above and beyond what we can currently afford. MTC’s funding comes from a variety of sources: approximately 70% from ticket sales, 20% from community support such as donations, and only 10% from government (much lower than the 20–50% provided by government to many other major arts organisations).

As an MTC Subscriber, you support MTC by purchasing tickets year after year – and we are incredibly grateful for this support. But as noted above, our ticket sales cover only 70% of our operating costs, which means the government and our donors are helping subsidise part of each ticket, plus covering the costs of our off-stage innovative, educational and community building activities.

Plainly said, we are necessarily reliant on our donors to survive and thrive. In fact, many of our off-stage

activities such as play commissions, educational productions, our multicultural program (MTC Connect) and our Women Directors’ Program are all funded primarily by donations. These activities are incredibly important.

They are what sets MTC apart from a commercial theatre company. They are how we give back to the community, and also ensure that Victoria continues to lead the country as the arts and cultural capital of Australia.

We have big dreams at MTC of what Victoria can be with the positive impact of theatre. We believe we can achieve these dreams, but not without your support.

Please join us on our journey of imagination and donate to MTC’s Annual Appeal – just a small donation can help make imagination a reality.

Thank you!

Tiffany Lucas Development Director Engaging with drama: Students in our Youth Scholarship Course

Imagine if … our iconic theatre could lead the world in green, efficient energy use.

Cover: Imagine if … the 2015 MTC Annual Appeal 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 AND WRITER Paul Galloway GRAPHIC DESIGN Helena Turinski COVER IMAGE Pia Johnson 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

PHOTO: GINA MILICIA

As I sit and imagine, I see lifechanging, developmental impacts on Victorian students, opportunities for local artists to share their stories and have their voices heard around the world, access for all to live theatre, an increase in community understanding of people and groups who might be different than many of us, and the chance for Melbourne to be a leader in environmental sustainability through our world-class facilities. What exciting possibilities!

But, these are not just aspirations.

All these statements are directly linked to projects that the MTC Foundation is currently striving to fund.

The MTC Foundation was established in September 2014 with the mandate of funding four key areas of MTC’s activity: Innovation (all things creative, from set-making to play writing and development), Education, Community Activities and Southbank Theatre.

Trauma centre

In her Melbourne stage debut Susie Porter plays a tormented soul.

PHOTO: JAMES GREEN

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eading some old press interviews with actor Susie Porter for background research, I came across her declaration to a journalist a few years ago: ‘I would love to play an obsessive character.’ Well, I said to myself, she’s about to get her wish. In a few weeks, Porter begins rehearsals for Death and the Maiden, the intense 1990 revenge drama by Chilean writer Ariel Dorfman, set in the aftermath of a long military dictatorship. Porter plays Paulina, who years before had been arrested, tortured, and raped over many months by the military authorities. One night her husband brings a visitor, a certain Dr Miranda, into their house and she hears – or thinks she hears – the voice of her torturer.

Porter does recall saying that she would love to play an obsessive character, but she’s not completely sure this character qualifies, despite Paulina’s extreme and single-minded behaviour.

‘Yes, some would say ‘obsessive’, but to my mind everything that drives Paulina is perfectly feasible and well within what’s reasonable, considering her history. Obviously, everyone will have their take on it: whether the doctor is the doctor she remembers, or whether it’s a figment of her imagination leading her astray. For me, she’s someone who has just spent her life [since her torture] thinking about it, having her life consumed by it … So, if she’s obsessive, it’s in the sense of wanting to discover the truth and getting some justice.

But I think if what happened to her had happened to me, I’d be the same.’

Death and the Maiden will mark the Melbourne stage debut for Porter, a remarkable statistic considering her high profile twenty-year career. In fact, she has done remarkably little theatre.

She graduated from NIDA in the midnineties and early breaks in film and television led to a steady stream of feature roles. Most people would recognise her from Puberty Blues and RAN on TV and films such as Paradise Road and Teesh and Trude, going back to Idiot Box. Theatre work has come more intermittently. Her last stage job was almost four years ago, playing Olive in Summer of the Seventeenth Doll at Belvoir, the same Neil Armfield production that MTC restaged in 2012. But a tele-movie commitment prevented her from re-joining the cast in Melbourne. Of course, she would like to do more theatre, especially since, she believes ‘it helps you get your craft back.’

‘You can’t be lazy in the theatre,’ she says. ‘You have to have your wits about you. There’s also been a sense that I haven’t been scared for a while.

You need to be challenged.’

Part of the challenge in theatre, she says, is the requirement to go deeper, to prepare more fully. Porter has already started reading and re-reading the script, pulling it apart, ‘getting the lines into my body’. She has pulled a few books out of the library about the Pinochet regime in Chile, and next

week, she says, she’s talking to a therapist who is a specialist in treating post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

She has a feeling that PTSD might be a key.

‘I’m interested in talking to him just as a way to find an entry into Paulina’s mind,’ she says, ‘into how she might react to such a horrible experience and how it might manifest in her life today.’

She admits that she doesn’t normally do quite as much preliminary work before the first rehearsal, ‘but I think the difference with this [play] is that it really happened. I know that the play’s particular story is fictitious, but generally. Knowing this really happened to people, I want to be as truthful and as honest as I can, and to honour that.

Without being too wanky about it, you have to be. People lost their lives, they went through so much. I think it’s important to honour the people who were victims.

‘That’s why getting prepared as much as I can is so important. So that in rehearsals I’m not rushing home, reading up, cramming all the lines. I want the lines to be – well not down – but very familiar by the time rehearsals start. So that will keep the fear in healthy limits.’

Death and the Maiden

by Ariel Dorfman plays from 18 July to 22 August at the Sumner.

Susie Porter spoke to Paul Galloway ▲

At a pinch Prompt corner

The next Production Briefings are: The Waiting Room, Fairfax Studio Monday 11 May, 6pm North by Northwest, Playhouse Monday 25 May, 6pm

Greg Stone. As the woman at the centre of all the bumbling male attention, Nadine Garner makes her first stage appearance since Private Lives last year.

Death and the Maiden, The Sumner Monday 13 July, 6pm

Open invitation

Catch it via the net

Fortune favours the prepared mind, according to Louis Pasteur. Not only that, the prepared mind has a better time at the theatre. So to prepare your mind for the shows you are about to see, MTC presents Production Briefings.

Part information session, part panel discussion and part theatrical teaser, each briefing is led by the director, usually with the actors and members of the creative team also contributing.

The briefings are usually held on stage – often surrounded by set in midconstruction – at 6pm on the Monday evening before the first preview. They are free to all and all are welcome.

The Weir, Fairfax Studio Monday 10 August, 6pm.

How often do you visit the MTC website? If it’s only once a year to book your subscription, you may be missing all the extra features we post which take you inside current and upcoming shows. This month you’ll find an audio interview with playwright Kylie Trounson, who tells us what it was like growing up as Dr Alan Trounson’s daughter during some of the most controversial years for IVF. Plus we take a look at the history of IVF, from conception to birth as it were, with a special interactive timeline.

To see all this content and more, visit mtc.com.au/interact. ▲

Sophie Ross in What Rhymes with Cars and Girls

PHOTO: JEFF BUSBY

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n US baseball the expression is ‘pinch-hitter’, a specialist substitute, the guy you get to step up to the plate when the game is in the balance. Since the last edition of Scenes, actor Aaron Pedersen has had to withdraw from The Waiting Room to accept a film offer. The role he was slated to play, Professor Alan Trounson, is central to Kylie Trounson’s play about her father and the early years of IVF, so director Naomi Edwards and our casting team needed an actor who could hit it out of the park. Enter Greg Stone (pictured above left), award-winner and MTC favourite, whose recent credits with Company range widely from Glengarry Glenn Ross to The Crucible to Blackbird. Joining him, Sophie Ross has stepped into the role of Kylie fresh from What Rhymes with Cars and Girls, with Kate Atkinson (last seen at MTC in Rockabye), Brett Cousins (Glengarry Glen Ross), Belinda McClory (Queen Lear) and William McInnes (The Effect) completing the cast.

Winners and Losers star Michala Banas has been cast in Simon Stephens’s Birdland, opening in June.

She joins MTC favourite Bert LaBonté (Mountaintop), Anna Samson (The Sublime) and Peta Sergeant (pictured centre left; All About My Mother).

Completing the cast, Mark Leonard Winter, in the lead role of the disintegrating rock star, and Socratis Otto will perform at the Company for the first time.

Steve Mouzakis (pictured centre right), who played Lopakhin in The Cherry Orchard in 2013, will return to MTC in Ariel Dorfman’s tense threehander Death and the Maiden.

Acclaimed Queensland-based actor Eugene Gilfedder and Susie Porter will make their Company debuts.

To fill the blarney-infested pub in The Weir with likable Irish rogues, our Casting Department and director Sam Strong have invited back Peter Kowitz (Australia Day), Ian Meadows (pictured right; Other Desert Cities), Robert Menzies (Cherry Orchard) and, after appearing in The Waiting Room and as another sign of his versatility,

Birdland, The Sumner Monday 1 June, 6pm

The alternative route

Award-winning stage designer Marg Horwell has learnt by doing

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he terrible little secret about Marg Horwell – though it’s one she’s quite happy to let people in on – is that she doesn’t have the formal qualifications to design for the stage. She studied neither stage design nor architecture at university and has no post-graduate diploma in scenic arts or costume. In these days when academic credentials seem essential if a designer is to have even a whiff of a career, Horwell, untrained, largely self-taught yet always in work, is an anomaly.

‘I said at a VCA talk recently that I was an untrained designer, and someone came up to me later and said, “That was very brave of you to say!” But you know, I never even imagined it as a detrimental thing. At the moment, there are many designers with many different approaches to stage design. There’s a very vibrant conversation, with so many voices and perspectives, that I couldn’t imagine that learning my craft the way I did could ever be a bad thing.’

After many years building her career, mainly in independent theatre, winning four Green Room Awards and two Sydney Theatre Awards for her work, Howell’s design credentials have become beyond question. In 2011, MTC appointed her Resident Designer for the Lawler Studio Season, in which she created costumes and sets for three distinct productions: The Dream Life of Butterflies, The Water Carriers and Circle Mirror Transformation. Mainstage designs soon followed: Music (2012), Constellations (2013) and Cock (2014).

‘We were a great year of people generating lots of our own work straight away,’ Horwell says. ‘I started designing accidentally. The designer pulled out of a show I was acting in, and I raised my hand and said I could probably do something.

Then someone else liked what I did and asked, “Can you work with me?” So while I was at uni, I ended up designing about thirty shows. I did a stupid amount of shows, terribly, badly – half-realised shows, half-made-in-my-house shows and bumped-in-badly shows. I learnt a lot about how not to do things, but I really loved that part of theatre. So I stopped acting and kept designing.

‘I have been very lucky in that I have Tom Conroy and Angus Grant in Cock (2014)

PHOTO: JEFF BUSBY; PORTRAIT: PAUL GALLOWAY

‘I feel I tend to look at things in a more architectural way than a designer who has come through the design courses,’ she says.

‘I feel there’s a formulaic way of designing a space … that I can go against.’

In the past year she seems to have been a fixture at MTC. She created the set for Marlin (co-produced with Arena) in September and last month bumped in the set for MTC Education’s I Call My Brothers. Her design for the forthcoming Birdland is currently being realised in the MTC workshops, while she finishes off the design for Dee & Cornelius’s Shit for the NEON Festival in June.

Now that her reputation is solid, she can look back in wonder at the way she drifted into the profession. While studying Creative Arts at VCA, she fell in with the theatre crowd, which at that time included playwright Lally Katz and writer-performer Angus Cerini.

had really great people teaching me,’ she says. ‘Although I am largely selftaught in terms of computer and drafting skills and things like that, I have worked with large companies where people do take the time to talk you through what you need to know.’

Mentors have been vital and the designer and VCA lecturer Trina Parker was an early influence. ‘She introduced me to a way of talking about my work, approaching my work in a formal and professional way that I had previously been doing haphazardly.’

Horwell believes there might be advantages to learning her craft informally. ‘I feel I tend to look at things

in a more architectural way than a designer who has come through the design courses,’ she says. ‘I feel there’s a formulaic way of designing a space, certain rules that other designers have learnt in their studies that I can go against. Maybe that’s to my detriment, but I tend to think of theatre spaces as immersive environments, rather than a frame to look into. I like conceptual art, I like abstraction, I like to find the core of an idea and then make it as big as it can be. It’s helped that I’ve mainly worked on new plays, works still in development, and not a lot of established scripts, except a few adaptations. The people I worked with were trying to look at things in a new way, to break the rules, and I’ve been lucky to be able to go with that.’

Birdland by Simon Stephens runs at the Sumner from 6 June to 11 July.

Marg Horwell spoke to Paul Galloway. ▲

Shocks to the system 2015 NEON Festival

For those who like it hard and edgy, new and nifty, down and dirty, bright and brainy or wild and crazy, MTC’s NEON Festival of Independent Theatre has become a highlight of the entertainment year. Our third NEON is about to start, with a range of new shows from some of the best independent theatre outfits in town and a stack of talks, workshops and readings, all adding up to an unrestricted celebration of the independent creative spirit.

As usual, over eleven weeks in the Lawler, five companies present new works their way. Australia’s premier company for radical playwriting, MKA: Theatre of New Writing (14 to 24 May) presents a tirade from new Australian voices: Tobias Manderson-Galvin’s late-night post-punk fantasy Lucky, and Morgan Rose’s bunged-up kitchen-sink drama Lord Willing and the Creek Don’t Rise.

The Zoey Louise Moonbeam Dawson Shakespeare Company (28 May to 7 June) presents Calamity (left), a fresh, funny, feisty and feminist slant on Calamity Jane, that rootin’, tootin’, foulmouthed cowgirl of the Wild West.

In The Lonely Wolf, director Gary Abrahams and his Dirty Pretty Theatre (11 to 21 June) explore the dual nature of the soul in a stream-of-consciousness adaptation of Hermann Hesse’s Steppenwolf.

Then there’s Dee & Cornelius’s Shit (25 June to 5 July), their electrifying exploration of the urban demi-monde of mean, downtrodden, hard-bitten and utterly-damaged women.

Finally, award-winning performance ensemble Elbow Room (9 to 19 July) creates imaginative mayhem in We Get It, in which the great heroines of classic theatre are thrown into the bear pit for a vicious, no-holds-barred, winner-takes-all stoush.

And of course, any visit to our five-ring circus isn’t complete with a wander down sideshow alley – our extensive program of ancillary activities and events. NEON resident company Rawcus, the acclaimed ensemble of performers with and without disability, will be holding open rehearsals and workshops. The Last Tuesday Society will present Pimp My Play (25 July), a flippant, improvised deconstruction of a well-known text. And there is a range of NEON Extra readings, conversations and workshops for independent theatre artists.

If you value your reputation for being up on the latest thing in performance, you can’t miss NEON 2015. For more information, just go to our website: mtc.com.au/NEON. ▲

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In a manner of speaking

Once (2014)

Accent coach Leith McPherson finds the sound of Irish storytelling

PHOTO: JIM LEE

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here are seven billion people on our planet and each one of them has an accent.

Whatever language you speak, you will speak a variation that will betray the place you grew up, your ethnicity, your class, your education, your profession, and your social status. That’s why accents are so important in theatre. They add to the theatrical illusion by dropping the audience quickly into a certain place and time (or, when not so good, leaving them alienated and unconvinced). Within a few precisely accented sentences, actors can do more to define their characters and set the scene than pages of detailed exposition.

According to voice and dialect coach Leith McPherson, within the babble of accented English the same few general types keep cropping up in plays. Irish is one of them. Only last year she worked extensively with the cast of Once, set in a pub in Dublin, and soon she’ll be in rehearsal with the cast of Conor McPherson’s The Weir, oddly enough, also set in a pub. But which among the dozens of possible Irish accents will she chose for the play?

‘Conor makes a reference to rural Ireland,’ says Leith McPherson, ‘and, more specifically, to County Leitrim and County Sligo in the northwest. One of

the things which is extraordinary about this play is how it gets through to something universal via the window of quintessential Irishness, tapping into our innate pleasure in storytelling using the Irish love for a good story. You don’t want to undermine that with a difficult accent.

‘So my focus with the actors will be on County Sligo,’ she says. ‘For a couple of reasons. First, it’s a softer accent and easy to listen to. The hard edges of a few Irish accents can be distracting or difficult to understand for the foreign ear.

With any of the plays I do, there’s always a balance between authenticity and intelligibility. The worst thing for an accent coach is to be told that the accents were wonderful but no one could understand what was said. That’s a fail. The second reason is that an accent should be something that the actors can get into reasonably easily, and Sligo is not far from many rural Irish accents that actors may have already worked in.’

Leith McPherson studied to be an actor at Queensland University of Technology, but found during her training that she enjoyed voice and accent work more than performing. The Central School in London was the place to learn the trade, so she saved up for a couple of years for fare and tuition and joined Central’s post-graduate Voice Studies program. That was a good decision.

This was her element. She even loved phonetics. During her year at Central, practically every voice and accent expert in Britain came in to lecture, and she took her fill of theatre in the capital, watching – or rather listening – to the best stage

actors in the world. (She saw the original production of the The Weir in 1998 from Standing Room at the back of the Royal Court Theatre.) After leaving Central, she worked for a few years in various drama schools in Britain, eventually returning to Australia to teach voice in the drama and musical theatre programs at WAAPA. In 2009, she moved to Melbourne and worked at MTC for the first time on August: Osage County. In her eighteen shows since then, McPherson has coached MTC actors in every twang, lilt and drawl from Oklahoma to Boston, from Italy to Islington.

Actors, she says, vary a great deal in their accent skills, some have an astonishing facility, others no knack at all. ‘The way I work is very individual,’ she says. ‘It’s a matter of first finding out what the actor’s perception of the accent is, to discover if I need to break that down and build up from scratch, or polish and finesse.

‘An accent should never be a flashy technical exercise,’ she says. ‘You always want, if anything, for people not to comment on the accents at all. Then you’ve done your job. The audience hasn’t been distracted, focussed on the play, rather than the delivery of the vocal work.’

The Weir by Conor McPherson runs at the Fairfax Studio from 14 August to 26 September.

Leith McPherson spoke to Paul Galloway. ▲

Supporting the business Corporate Partners

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heatre is designed to transport us, drawing us into the world on stage, and MTC’s high quality productions often do this so well that it’s easy to forget the bustling business that helps produce our art. MTC’s longstanding partnership with Frontier Software is an integral part of this business, making it possible to us to produce excellent theatre.

2015 marks the fifteenth year of MTC’s strong and vibrant partnership with Frontier Software. Frontier Software provides the platform through which MTC processes its payroll, ensuring that our 95 full-time and 228 part-time staff are paid correctly and on time. MTC began using Frontier Software’s HR program Chris21 in 2000. This has grown in recent years and now MTC uses a number of Frontier products.

Since 2012, with the assistance of Frontier Software, MTC has been upgrading its payroll and HR systems.

Prior to this upgrade, each fortnight MTC staff cumulatively spent more than

72 hours and more than a ream of paper to process payroll. Since embarking on this upgrade, there has been a significant reduction in time and costs, allowing much needed funds to be spent on our artistic endeavours.

Founded in Melbourne in 1983, Frontier Software is renowned for providing integrated HR and Payroll systems worldwide. Like MTC, Frontier Software is known for relentlessly striving for excellence, therefore this partnership is a natural fit. MTC’s Executive Director Virginia Lovett says, ‘We are proud to be celebrating fifteen years of a wonderful partnership with Frontier Software. We look forward to continuing to grow together into the future.’

Currently MTC is in the process of rolling out another module from Frontier Software, TA21, which will surely prove to be mutually beneficial to both businesses. MTC has been able to provide feedback on how the system can be applied to our unique operating environment, which in turn has allowed Frontier to see their product in new ways.

MTC’s Corporate Partnerships team has had a busy few months and is proud to announce some terrific new partners.

MTC has recently embarked on a partnership with The Luxury Network, placing us amongst some of Australia and the world’s most prestigious brands.

We are also delighted to welcome Readings, Wilson Parking and Bayshann as new Season Partners and welcome back Invicium and Genovese, who continue to be valued supporters of MTC. We also thank Dumbo Feather and Karton Group for coming on board to give much needed support to our NEON Festival of Independent Theatre.

Join our long list of corporate partners that include Audi Australia, Qatar Airways, Goldman Sachs and Uber.

For more details please contact Dean Hampel, Corporate Partnerships Manager on 03 8688 0952 or d.hampel@mtc.com.au

Thank you to Frontier Software for fifteen years of committed support!

We look forward to continuing to work with Frontier Software to improve and streamline our business processes, allowing us to focus on continuing to create great theatre for the next fifty years and beyond! ▲

Sneak preview Philanthropy

Over two weekends in February, the 2015 Cybec Electric Play Reading Series transported audiences from the Sober-Up Centre in Broome to a 1948 murder scene on an Adelaide beach, from virtual war in Dandenong to the bedrooms of Asian Australian twenty-somethings. It was an eclectic ride!

PHOTO: DAVID PATERSON

Offering their different perspectives, playwrights Dan Lee, Tobias Manderson-Galvin, Melissa Reeves and Michele Lee told their stories with humour, surprise, empathy and inspiration. Cybec audiences and artists joined together to be the first to experience these new works, which may well grace the MTC mainstage in years to come. If so, they will follow the trend set by The Waiting Room by Kylie Trounson (15 May to 27 June), which was part of the 2014 Cybec Electric series.

Curated by MTC Literary Director, Chris Mead, Cybec Electric offers playwrights an important opportunity to nurture their fledgling work. Like anxious parents watching their child in playgroup for the first time, playwrights agonise through the first public airing of their script, never knowing how the outside world will receive their baby. Words in print can lose authenticity when spoken; audiences laugh (or don’t laugh!) in unexpected places; what seemed like a clear story on paper is somewhat confusing on stage – this first exposure is essential to developing and refining a script for the stage.

For playwrights, this is a critical part of the process. For audiences, Cybec Electric is a fascinating experience quite unlike attending a staged production. It is a remarkable, up-close opportunity to be part of the creative process.

The actors have scripts in hand. Sometimes the text has only just been finalised moments before the reading begins. There are no costumes, no set. This is pure theatre at its genesis and, as such, it encourages imagination and teases with exciting possibilities.

The Cybec Electric Play Reading Series is made possible by the generosity of Dr Roger Riordan am. His vision and commitment nurtures great playwrights of the future and we thank him for his ongoing support.

Congratulations to the 2015 Cybec Electric writers: Dan Lee (Frogs Cry Wolf), Tobias Manderson-Galvin (The Unknown Man on Somerton Beach), Melissa Reeves (Archimedes’ War) and Michele Lee (Moths). ▲

2015 Cybec Electric: (top and bottom) Moths; (centre) Frogs Cry Wolf

The Qatar Airways MTC Lounge

Now in flight mode Membership Late to the party?

There’s still lots of great theatre to come in 2015, so why not join MTC Members and get the most out of your MTC experience.

Pro-rata Membership fee April to December 2015: $200 individual (full year $250) $325 joint (two people in the same household; full year $400)

For all queries about membership and benefits, please contact: Syrie Payne, Memberships Co-ordinator members@mtc.com.au or phone 03 8688 0958 Or join at the Southbank Theatre Box Office or online at mtc.com.au/members. ▲

(Above, from left) Qatar Airways Ground Staff Member Jenny; MTC Chair Terry Moran ac, MTC Executive Director Virginia Lovett, Qatar Airways Australasian Country Manager Adam Radwanski and Qatar Airways Ground Staff Member Jenny at the cake cutting for the official launch of the Qatar Airways MTC Lounge.

PHOTOS: KRISTOFFER PAULSEN (TOP); HEATH WARWICK

Opening Night of Endgame was a double celebration for MTC, as we officially launched the Qatar Airways MTC Lounge.

Around fifty guests, including representatives from Corporate Partners Qatar Airways and Artbank, were present, as well as the talented creative team of Endgame.

Inside the tent Women’s Directors’ Program

K

at Henry loves being a director.

What does she love about it?

‘Everything!’ she says. ‘I really do.

Essentially, I love creating a piece of artwork collaboratively, that has its own unique voice, that has something new to say, that can bring together a team. There is nothing more pleasant than working on a show where you feel comfortable and collaborative, where everyone is working towards something in a communicative fashion.

At its best, it’s like family.’

An important voice in independent theatre in Melbourne, having directed for MKA and Red Stitch, Henry is a decade into her directing career and things are going pretty well. She’s not one to bemoan the long apprenticeship of the modern director, with its low remuneration, uncertain rewards, and limited opportunities for advancement.

She has as many ambitions and career goals as anyone, but for her, for now, it’s all about the journey not the destination.

‘I guess there are two ways of looking at it,’ she explains. ‘Yes, I do want to work for a major company on a mainstage show, and it may be a long slog towards that goal. But at the same time, I’m already a director. I’ve been a freelance director directing wonderful and satisfying pieces. And that’s my life. When I think about it in those terms, I am exactly where I want to be. And I thoroughly enjoy my lifestyle and feel very grateful that I can be a theatre director. So it’s not such a long slog, because in one way I have already arrived.’

Recently Henry was accepted as one of ten mid-career and emerging directors in MTC’s 2015 Women Directors’ Program.

Now in its second year, the program was set up to redress what was seen as an

through the glass ceiling, and already a few of the 2014 program’s alumnae have passed through. Clare Watson directed What’s Rhymes with Cars and Girls earlier in the season, Nadja Kostich directed I Call My Brothers for MTC Education, and Naomi Edwards is about to put

PHOTO: PAUL GALLOWAY

‘There is nothing more pleasant than working on a show where you feel comfortable and collaborative, where everyone is working towards something in a communicative fashion. At its best, it’s like family.’ under-representation of women directors within the country’s major professional theatre companies. During 2015, the directors have access to the professional culture of MTC, getting to know how a company of our size operates and how we create our seasons and programs.

There are opportunities to build relations and to pitch projects, with support in leadership and career development.

Last year, we began with the hope that the program would be a trapdoor up

The Waiting Room on the Fairfax stage.

Most of the directors in the program already have extensive directing credits in independent theatre, and a few, such as Kat Henry, have already worked within professional theatre. She has directed shows for QTC and La Bôite, having been a beneficiary of other mentoring programs, which boosted her career in Brisbane and got her a place in the Director’s Course at NIDA. A great believer in the importance in such

professional development, Henry hopes that this MTC program will create similar opportunities for her in Melbourne.

‘Those [early] programs were so important when I was starting out,’ she says. ‘Getting myself attached to a company and learning the company

model, how it operates. And getting them to be aware of you.’

She’s also looking forward to building relationships with the other women on the course, networking with ‘other strong passionate creative women’ in theatre.

‘Sharing our experiences, having conversations about career, discussing the difficulties, celebrating each other’s successes – it’s an important aspect of the program.’

Henry believes that having more women directors in top flight theatre could have profound effects. ‘It’s very important to allow women to retain their own voice and their own expression,’ she says. ‘Yes, opening doors to women is important, but so is allowing women to be who they are. If allowed, they could change the paradigm of mainstream theatre.’ ▲

Special offers Winter 2015 Movie Offer

Movie Offer

DVD Offer

Gemma Bovery

From 28 May

From the director of Coco Before Chanel comes Gemma Bovery, a sumptuous dramedy which opened the 2015 Alliance Française French Film Festival. When English couple Gemma and Charles Bovery move to a small Normandy town, Martin, the baker and resident Flaubert fan, can’t believe it.

Here are two real life people who seem to be replicating the behaviour of his favourite fictional characters right before his eyes.

Starring Gemma Arterton as the playfully modern version of one of France’s most famous heroine, with Fabrice Luchini as the smitten baker and film’s narrator, Gemma Bovery releases through Regency Media on 28 May.

For your chance to win one of fifty in-season double passes to Gemma Bovary, email your name and subscriber details to offers@mtc.com.au with BOVERY in the subject line, or call 8688 0900, by Friday 22 May 2015.

Partisan

From 28 May

Alexander is like any other kid: playful, curious and naive. He is also a trained assassin. Raised in a hidden paradise on the outskirts of town, Alexander has grown up seeing the world through the eyes of his father, Gregori. As Alexander begins to think for himself, creeping fears take shape and Gregori’s idyllic world unravels. Starring Vincent Cassel (Black Swan), Partisan is the debut feature film of AFI Award-winning Australian director Ariel Kleiman (Deeper than Yesterday). Variety said Partisan ‘marks the arrival of a filmmaker to watch’.

For your chance to win one of fifty in-season double passes to Partisan, email your name and subscriber details to offers@mtc.com.au with PARTISAN in the subject line, or call 03 8688 0900,

by Friday 22 May 2015.

The Imitation Game The Imitation Game is a dramatic portrayal of the life and work of one of Britain’s most extraordinary unsung heroes, Alan Turing.

Benedict Cumberbatch (The Fifth Estate, Sherlock) and Keira Knightley (Atonement, Pride and Prejudice) star as Turing and his ally and fellow code-breaker Joan Clarke, alongside a top-notch cast, including Matthew Goode (A Single Man), Mark Strong (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy), Rory Kinnear (Skyfall), Charles Dance (Game of Thrones), Allen Leech (Downton Abbey) and Matthew Beard (An Education).

DVD Offer

For your chance to win one of twenty DVD copies of The Imitation Game, email your name and subscriber details to offers@mtc.com.au with IMITATION in the subject line, or call 03 8688 0900,

by Friday 22 May 2015.

Song One Oscar-winner Anne Hathaway (Les Miserables) stars in this romantic drama set against the backdrop of Brooklyn’s vibrant modern-folk music scene. When Franny’s (Hathaway) musician brother suffers an accident that leaves him comatose, Franny returns home after a long estrangement to seek out the musicians he loved and meets James Forester, Henry’s musical idol. Soon a strong romantic connection develops between Franny and James – can love bloom under the most adverse circumstances? With an original soundtrack composed by Jenny Lewis and Johnathan Rice, Song One is a heartfelt story of two souls sharing a tender journey.

For your chance to win one of twenty DVD copies of Song One, email your name and subscriber details to offers@mtc.com.au with SONG ONE in the subject line, or call 03 8688 0900, by Friday 22 May 2015.