MTC Scenes | Edition 2 - 2016

EDITION 2 – 2016 Dean Bryant Making It Sing

Sarah Giles Stout-hearted Men

Sam Routledge The Illusionist

The meaning of participation Inside information

Supporters Ian Hocking & Rosemary Forbes, Carolyn Burns, John Molloy, Nadine Garner, MTC Ambassadors Gemma & Nesceda

Your MTC – Melbourne’s home of live storytelling – has been inspiring endless curiosity, entertaining and challenging audiences and creating opportunities for artists and theatre makers for over sixty years. It has opened up the world of theatre for countless generations of Victorians and remains to this day a much-loved Melbourne icon and leading Australian arts institution.

Whether you’ve been part of the MTC family for many years or you’ve just commenced your journey with us, this year through our Annual Appeal we are asking our subscribers to think about what it means to be part of MTC. We spoke with some of MTC’s greatest supporters and beneficiaries to find out what MTC means to them. From playwrights to donors, from actors to students, MTC signifies something special and unique to each person.

For prominent Australian actor Nadine Garner MTC provides a space to explore and develop the elusive craft of acting, allowing her an opportunity to collaborate with talented theatre practitioners at the top of their field.

For John Molloy, MTC’s Master Tailor, who has worked for the Company for more than forty years, MTC feeds his endless curiosity about the work he does both on and off stage and the people who make it happen.

Rosemary Forbes and Ian Hocking, who have been long term subscribers and donors for many years say that for them, MTC is a fun, challenging and inspirational experience.

Carolyn Burns, playwright of North by Northwest and Ladies in Black, credits MTC with helping her to explore new worlds which have given voice to ideas, dreams and passions.

Cover: Rosemary Forbes, Carolyn Burns, John Molloy, Nadine Garner Scenes 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.

WRITER Paul Galloway DESIGN AND ART DIRECTION Emma Wagstaff COVER IMAGE Jo Duck INTERNAL PHOTGRAPHY Jo Duck, Jeff Busby, John Laurie, Garth Oriander, Paul Galloway Melbourne Theatre Company is a department of the University of Melbourne

MTC Youth Ambassadors, Gemma and Nesceda, have had the world of theatre opened up for them during the time they spent with us as Year 11 students.

Many of MTC’s initiatives such as our Cybec Electric play readings, new writing commissions, subsidised tickets for schools and students, Women in Theatre Program and education and family initiatives are made possible through targeted donations. These activities are extremely 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 are extremely grateful to our generous donors and their ongoing interest in our company. But we are also aware of the need and inspired by the opportunity of enriching and extending the cultural life of our society.

For me, MTC is a creative powerhouse, filled with passionate people who love what they do. Each day I get the opportunity to work with brilliant artists, writers, marketers, set-builders, finance experts, costume-makers, fundraisers and others, all pulling together to create, stage and support thrilling productions. It’s challenging, stimulating and exciting! And when I sit in the darkened theatre and see the end results of all of our combined efforts, I am truly inspired. But I am constantly reminded that none of this would be possible without the support of private funding.

Your MTC has big dreams for the future – including creating and developing new landmark works for the As you know, crucial MTC initiatives such as writing Australian canon, touring internationally, and bringing commissions, play developments, and family and the best theatre from around the world to Melbourne education productions require funding over and above audiences – but we need your help to make these dreams the income MTC makes from ticket sales. MTC’s funding a reality. comes from a variety of sources: approximately 56% comes from ticket sales, 12% comes from Corporate Please join us in making Your MTC a sustainable and Sponsorship, 16% from other sources such as Southbank creative hub for generations to come, as we continue to Theatre, 7% from our generous donors and 9% from transform lives through theatre. Donate by going to our government (which is much lower than the 20 to website: mtc.com.au/yourmtc.

40% provided by government to other major arts organisations).

Thank you.

As an MTC Subscriber, you support MTC by purchasing tickets year after year – and we are incredibly grateful for this support. But because our ticket sales cover only 56% of our operating costs, government, corporates and our donors are helping subsidise part of each ticket, plus covering the costs of our off-stage innovation, educational and community building activities.

Tiffany Lucas Development Director

MTC Headquarters 252 Sturt St, Southbank Vic 3006 T 03 8688 0900 F 03 8688 0901 info@mtc.com.au mtc.com.au

KEEPING IN THE LOOP

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Making it sing Director Dean Bryant isn’t interested in being solely a director of musicals

‘Rehearsals for a play are about working with the actors, making sure we mine the text for every nuance and beat and interesting choice. You want the text to sing the way the numbers do in a musical.’

Dean Bryant

Skylight by David Hare plays at the Sumner from 18 June.

See more videos and podcasts about MTC productions at mtc.com.au/backstage.

Director Dean Bryant has been slowly ‘going legit’ – as they like to say in Variety. After more than a decade developing a reputation as director and co-writer of musicals and cabaret, Bryant is finding more and more work directing straight plays, such as MTC’s I’ll Eat You Last with Miriam Margolyes in 2014 and our forthcoming revival of David Hare’s Skylight.

‘Yes, I’m going legit. I feel it’s time to get rid of the tapshoes and whatnot,’ he says. ‘But, actually, I’ve always read and gone to plays. When I go to London or New York, I see as many plays as I do musicals. And my second professional job was working as Gale Edwards’s Assistant on Hitchcock Blonde [2005] here at MTC. In fact, I think Skylight must have been the first play I saw at MTC as a teenager, when I came down from the country once. It was Roger [Hodgman]’s production with Helen Buday and William Zappa.

‘Musicals were where I fell in love with theatre,’ he says.

‘It’s just how I started and what I’ve always been drawn to. But I’ve always wanted to do all sorts of theatre and, also, in Australia, if I just do musicals there’s a very small amount of work to go around. And another thing is – and it shouldn’t come as news to any musical theatre director or performer – but, even though musicals are incredibly complex to do, people still look at musical directors as if they’re not really directors until they’ve done a play. And that perception is crazy, because the amount of decisions you have to make directing a musical, which all have to come off at the same time, compared to the decisions made by a play director – well, it’s out of this world.’

Anna Samson and Colin Friels in Skylight

Bryant considers other differences between directing straight drama and musical theatre. ‘In musical theatre you make a lot of progress in a very short time. Maybe eighty per cent of the decisions that really count are made before you hit the rehearsal room floor. Rehearsal is about filtering those decisions down to the performers and adjusting and adding according to what they’re offering. Whereas directing something like I’ll Eat You Last or Skylight, firstly, the lighting and sound requirements are never going to be anywhere near as challenging as in a musical. But, really, rehearsals for a

play are about working with the actors, making sure we mine the text for every nuance and beat and interesting choice. You want the text to sing the way the numbers do in a musical.’

Written in 1994, as Thatcherite conservativism eked out its final years, David Hare’s Skylight is a social and personal cost-counting exercise. Former lovers, Tom and Kyra, attempt a reconciliation despite the differences that have opened up between them. He runs a chain of restaurants and has made a religion out of his faith in market forces; she idealistically teaches at a school in a disadvantaged area. They represent two views of an individual’s place in society and a middle-class divided against itself.

‘The biggest argument the characters have is around education: who is worth educating and to what level,’ says Bryant. ‘And that couldn’t be more relevant in Australian at the moment. Hare criticises that patriarchal view in conservative politics that puts a sort of benevolent face on a lack of concern for the poor, as if to say, ‘We want to support you, but you’ll have to work harder if you want anything.’

Hare’s way of intertwining the personal and the political has always been his strength, but it can be a pitfall for directors not skilled in handling what is essentially political debate.

‘I feel that the trick is to make the political aspects feel like drama and not exposition,’ Bryant says. ‘Let it still be humanly charged. The best thing about Hare’s writing here is that he’s written a super-smart romantic comedy.

It does all the things people love in popular theatre, and while still being very political in every sentence. You are getting the best of both worlds.

‘I am a little concerned that this may look like the ‘worthy’ play of the year,’ he adds. ‘So I just want the audience to know that the best reason for reviving it now and why it is worth doing now is that it’s a really sexy evening. It is not theatre that’s good for you; it’s theatre that’s fun for you.’

Prompt Corner

Family ties

Leon Ford in Private Lives (2014)

Many plays have exploited the tensions within a family gathering over Christmas, but Young Jean Lee’s outsider’s eye for detail gives the old trope a funny and sympathetic renovation in Straight White Men. The three brothers in this family are played by Luke Ryan (previously seen at MTC in Clybourne Park, as well as MTC Education’s Yellow Moon), Hamish Michael (The Beast), and Gareth Reeves (pictured above left, in his MTC debut). Veteran actor John Gaden (pictured centre left, Other Desert Cities) plays their widowed father, Ed, while rap artist and actor Candy Bowers, making her Company debut, plays the Stagehand-in-Charge, a role that places Lee’s perspective within ironic quotation marks.

Our former Associate Artistic Director Sam Strong, who left the Company earlier this year to take charge of Queensland Theatre Company, returns to direct Double Indemnity at the Playhouse. Also returning to our rehearsal rooms will be Leon Ford (main photo, Private Lives), Peter Kowitz (The Weir), Richard Piper (Ghosts), Lachlan Woods (North by Northwest), and Edwina Samuels (The Crucible). Appearing for the first time with the Company will be Claire van der Boom (pictured centre right) and Jessica Tovey.

British playwright David Hare will be in town in May for a series of public engagements (including a sold out conversation with Julian Burnside at the Sumner) just as our staging of his acclaimed 1995 play Skylight goes into rehearsals. Directed by Dean Bryant, our revival stars Colin Friels, last seen at MTC in Endgame, Anna Samson (pictured right, Birdland), and Toby Wallace in his Company debut.

Finally, our show for families this year, Angela Betzien’s Egg, soon goes into rehearsals featuring popular comedy performer Genevieve Morris, last seen at Southbank Theatre in Joanna Murray-Smith’s True Minds in 2013.

Created in collaboration with Terrapin Puppet Theatre, Egg will also feature the puppetry and physical-theatre skills of Michelle Robin Anderson.

FAIR EXCHANGE

FREE CAST AND ARTIST Q&As

When things pop up unexpectedly and you need to rearrange your social calendar, you won’t have any trouble exchanging your Southbank Theatre tickets for another night. You don’t have to make a lunchtime trip to the box-office, or post in your tickets, or even make a phone call. It can all be resolved online. Subscribers can exchange tickets in their package for another performance date or, subject to availability, to another production entirely. Just log-in to your account at mtc. com.au and following the links for full details and terms.

We also offer a Free Up Seat function, which allows you to generously donate your seats back to us for resale if you cannot attend a performance.

All subscribers and their guests are invited to prepare for imminent productions by attending our free Cast and Artist Q&As. Part information session, part panel discussion and part theatrical teaser, each briefing is led by the director, with the actors and members of the creative team also contributing. The briefings are held on stage – often surrounded by set in mid-construction – at 6pm on the Monday evening before the first preview.

By all means, come with friends, even if they are not subscribers. The next Q&As are:

SUBSCRIBER TICKET DISCOUNTS And don’t forget that as a Subscriber, you are entitled to discounts on additional tickets for all our mainstage shows. So if you like a show and want to see it again, or want to buy tickets as a gift for family or friends, you will receive a substantial discount. You can book online at mtc.com.au or through the Box Office on (03) 8688 0888.

It is just a matter of quoting your subscription number to receive the best price available.

Straight White Men Fairfax Studio Monday 2 May, 6pm Double Indemnity Playhouse Monday 23 May, 6pm Skylight The Sumner Monday 13 June, 6pm Jasper Jones The Sumner Monday 25 July, 6pm

Stout-hearted men Sarah Giles directs an unconventional play about regular guys

‘As white people we’ve never needed to think about these things, about our privilege which we automatically have.’

Gareth Reeves and John Gaden in Straight White Men

Sarah Giles

The play is called Straight White Men, so there’s definitely nothing misleading in the title. In it, audiences will witness the Christmas gathering of a family of Caucasian men, a father and three sons, who all happen to be heterosexual. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. The Korean-American playwright Young Jean Lee hit upon the generic title in an early workshop when someone pointed out that many plays nowadays might as well be called Straight White Men. That’s a point not lost on the director of the play, Sarah Giles. Asked if there was any particular advantage for a woman to be directing this play about white male privilege, an outsider’s perspective perhaps, she answered that this assignment wasn’t much different to most. ‘Most of the plays I’ve directed have had more male than female cast members, and so often the roles are bigger for men. That’s true even with recent plays. As a female director you’re always directing men.’

Giles is excited to direct the Australian premiere of this intriguing play by an up-and-coming US playwright. In recent years, Young Jean Lee has been an energising disrupter on the New York theatre scene. (The T-shirts for her theatre company say, ‘Destroy the audience.’) Her recurring donnée is identity politics, though she strives never to be self-righteous about it, and most of her plays are rigorous self-examinations of her own attitudes and prejudices. Having created works about all types of racial and sexual identities over the years, Lee realised that one social group she was avoiding was the dominant one: white, heterosexual men. Since she has made it her practice always to write the play she least wants to write, she set to it.

For research, Lee discussed white male privilege with groups and individuals and discovered a richness of hidden attitudes and unspoken biases. Sarah Giles has discovered the same in rehearsals. ‘Normally, I like to get the actors up on their feet on the first day,’ she says. ‘But for this, we’ve stayed round the table talking. Because as white people we’ve never needed to think about these things, about our privilege which we automatically have.

The play is about how can you be a male and white and make a difference in the world when whatever you achieve is expected of you anyway.’

This will be Sarah Giles’s first directing assignment at MTC, though she was Directorial Attachment to the production of The History Boys in 2007. She subsequently studied at NIDA and her credit list includes productions for Sydney Theatre Company, State Theatre Company of South Australia, Griffin Theatre and Sydney Chamber Opera.

Since in Lee’s work the form always follows the content, Straight White Men had to be a naturalistic, ‘family gathering play’, a dominant mode for mainstream American theatre, its theatrical bedrock. Entering the Fairfax Studio, the audience will be presented with designer Eugyeene Teh’s detailed rendering of a suburban basement rumpus room where the three sons and their father hang out over Christmas. A naturalistic set usually spells safety for a theatre audience; it tells you that things are not going to get too weird. But Lee wants to disrupt that. Around the comforting naturalism she has placed an alienating frame. The stage directions call for loud hip-hop to be played before the show. This comes from the original production at the Public Theatre when Lee

was worried that the naturalistic setting and the plush theatre might be off-putting for her usual audience from the experimental theatre scene.

‘The pre-show music was meant to put them at ease,’ Giles explains. ‘But all she got were these angry complaints from white people about the music, that they felt assaulted by it. And Lee realised how much the largely white audience thought the theatre was their space and felt entitled to complain.’

‘So you have the familiar trope of the family play, all the family members coming home with their troubles, and it could easily be performed straight as if it were an ordinary night at the theatre. But it has this aspect with the music and the figure of the stagehand, played

by Candy [Bowers], that hopefully makes you view it differently.’

So then, is the play ultimately a satire on white male privilege?

‘Is it a satire? You know at this stage of rehearsals, we don’t know how we’re going to finally pitch it: how naturalistic or ironic it needs to be. The challenge is finding the best place for it to sit, which is what we are looking for now.’

Straight White Men runs at the Fairfax Studio from 6 May. Read more about Straight White Men at mtc.com.au/ backstage.

Protégées and mentors Women in Theatre

Building on the great success of the Women Directors’ Program we’ve been conducting over the past two years, MTC announced in February the names of eleven theatre workers selected for our 2016 Women in Theatre Program. We have expanded the scope in this new program to include other stage arts such as lighting and sound design, producing, dramaturgy and playwriting.

As with the previous program, the expanded scheme has a strong mentorship component, with nine participants, each well advanced in their careers, matched with an experienced theatre professional in their particular discipline. A further two participants, alumni of last year's Women Directors Program, will work as Assistant Directors on two major MTC productions.

The participants are Prue Clark, mentored by director Leticia Cáceres, Emily Collett, mentored by stage designer Christina Smith; Emilie Collyer, mentored by playwright Hannie Rayson; Mish Grigor, mentored by MTC Artistic Director Brett Sheehy; Kate Hancock, mentored

by MTC Executive Director Virginia Lovett; Jess Keeffe, mentored by sound designer Russell Goldsmith; Amelia Lever-Davidson, mentored by lighting designer Paul Jackson; Jennifer Medway, mentored by MTC Literary Director Chris Mead; and Natasha Phillips, mentored by MTC Producer Martina Murray. The two Assistant Director places have been taken by Justine Campbell, working under director Sam Strong on Jasper Jones, and Kat Henry assigned to The Odd Couple, directed by Peter Houghton.

The program is already underway, with participants and their mentors gathering at MTC HQ in March for a full briefing on the year’s events. As well as regular meetings with their assigned mentors or directors, they will receive leadership training, career advice, coaching, and access to all facets of the Company’s artistic and business activities. By the end of the program each participant will have a thorough grounding in how a flagship arts organisation is run. As has been demonstrated in the Women Directors’ Program, such an open door approach gives participants unheard of opportunities for networking and career advancement.

The program is curated by MTC Producer Martina Murray, who has drawn from personal experience to organise

Women Directors Program alumna Clare Watson

The envelope please …

Green Room Awards

the year’s events and contact opportunities. ‘The relationships I have formed with both official and unofficial mentors throughout my career have been an undeniably important support and resource,’ she says. ‘The insights I was fortunate to gain into the operations of companies, such as MTC, so early on were invaluable to shaping my practice, and I am thrilled to be in a position to share similar access and experiences with other women as they shape their careers in theatre.’

In announcing the eleven successful applicants to the program, MTC Artistic Director Brett Sheehy said that they represent ‘a group of exceptional women already doing great things in their respective disciplines. They will benefit immensely from the support and guidance these sorts of opportunities provide.’

At the 2015 Green Room Award ceremony on 23 March, MTC productions were recognised with nominations across most categories, with Leticia Cáceres winning the award for Best Director for Birdland and the cast of North by Northwest the award for Best Ensemble. Presented for performances in 2015 and judged by peer panels, the Green Rooms recognise achievement across the spectrum of performing arts in Melbourne. Other MTC nominees were: Female Actor: Sophie Ross (What Rhymes with Cars and Girls) and Julie Forsyth (Endgame).

Male Actor: Mark Leonard Winter (Birdland ), Bert LaBonté (Birdland and body of work) and Osamah Sami (I Call My Brothers).

Ensemble: Birdland and The Boy at Edge of Everything.

Award winner: Leticia Cáceres directed Birdland

Lighting Design: Paul Jackson (Endgame) and Lisa Mibus (The Boy at the Edge of Everything).

Set and Costume Design: Callum Morton and Eugyeene Teh (Endgame), Simon Phillips, Nick Schlieper, Josh Burns and Esther Marie Hayes (North by Northwest), and Andrew Bailey (The Boy at the Edge of Everything).

Sound Design and Composition: Russell Goldsmith (Endgame), J David Franzke (The Boy at the Edge of Everything), and Ian McDonald (North by Northwest).

Writing or Adaptation for the Australian Stage, Aidan Fennessy (What Rhymes with Cars and Girls) and Finegan Kruckemeyer (The Boy at the Edge of Everything).

Production: Birdland, The Boy at Edge of Everything, and North by Northwest.

Direction: Peter Houghton (The Boy at the Edge of Everything).

Our congratulations go to all!

Murder by the book

Before it was a great film, Double Indemnity was a great novel

Double Indemnity is one of the great American crime novels of the thirties, capturing in an oblique and sexualised way the desperation of the Depression era.

James M Cain; Lachlan Woods in Double Indemnity

With Double Indemnity, MTC goes back to the source.

Most people nowadays know the title as a 1944 movie, considered a classic of film noir, directed by Billy Wilder from Raymond Chandler’s screenplay. But fine as that film is, there are good reasons why director Sam Strong and writer Tom Holloway have based MTC’s new stage version on the original 1936 novella by James M Cain.

A former journalist, Cain moved to California to write for the movies in the early thirties, but found greater success when he moonlighted in crime fiction. His novels and short stories were popular but they were never pulp.

Taking his craft seriously, he was more interested in psychology than sheer sensation. Slick magazines took his stories, classy publishers brought out his novels.

Nor did he write detective fiction, despite often being placed in a Californian triumvirate of thirties crime writers with Chandler (creator of detective Philip Marlowe) and Dashiell Hammett (creator of Sam Spade). Indeed, the first-person confessionals of his most popular novels, The Postman Always Rings Twice (1934) and Double Indemnity, bear a closer relationship to Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment than to Hammett’s The Big Sleep.

In the film of Double Indemnity, a great deal of Cain’s brooding interiority was lost and can only be restored by returning to the novel.

With a story about an insurance agent and his lover planning the murder of her husband, Double Indemnity was for a time much too hot for Hollywood to touch – though it dearly wanted to. Even before the story was published, MGM sent a copy to the Breen Office, the arbiter on the Motion Picture Code of Practice, to field its opinion. Their opinion was it was way beyond the pale, citing its two unscrupulous protagonists (one would have been bad enough) with their adulterous motivation, its detailed depiction of how to commit a murder, and its lack

of suitable punishment for the killers at the end. Breen thought any film made from this material was apt to rend the moral fabric of Americans to tatters.

Eight years later, the code had loosened up enough for Billy Wilder to submit a treatment that the censors could accept. Although moderately bowdlerised and ending with justice served (a scene in the Californian gas chamber), the treatment managed to retain all the major plot and character points and the first-person narration. The green light given, Wilder went ahead, hiring Chandler to write the final script.

Raymond Chandler never cared for Cain’s writing. ‘He is every kind of writer I detest, a faux naïf, a Proust in greasy overalls, a dirty little boy with a piece of chalk and a board fence and nobody looking,’ is what he wrote (and more besides) to his publisher about Cain less than a year before accepting to work on the Double Indemnity screenplay. Once on the job, he set about 'improving' the material by giving it the Chandler touch, which at the level of dialogue meant replacing the lovers clean, direct exchanges for some standard Chandlerian banter, with the entendres doubling and redoubling with each exchange.

Walter Huff seems a more plausible character in the Cain novel, and admirers of the film over the years have had to overlook how an ordinary insurance salesman could sound so hardboiled and come on like such a wise-guy.

Double Indemnity is one of the great American crime novels of the thirties, capturing in an oblique and sexualised way the desperation of the Depression era.

At the MTC Season Launch last year, director Sam Strong described the story as one that ‘thrillingly dissects just how far we will go to get what we want’. But the America Cain wrote about was not the prosperous America we see in the film, enjoying a wartime boom. By going back to the original period, playwright Tom Holloway can properly capture the undercurrent to all the action, the feeling of being trapped and wanting to break out.

In the original, Cain is far more subtle in indicating the ignition of a sexual spark between Huff, the insurance man, and Mrs Nirdlinger, an unhappy wife with fair skin.

‘I believe you’re looking at my freckles.’

‘Yes, I was. I like them.’

‘I don’t.’

‘I do.’

Double Indemnity by Tom Holloway, adapted from the book by James M Cain, runs at the Playhouse from 30 May. See videos and podcasts about MTC productions at mtc.com.au/Backstage.

Corporate Partnerships

A Perfect Match Partner Profiles K&L Gates We welcome world-renowned law firm K&L Gates as a Season Partner for 2016. K&L Gates has a long history with MTC, sponsoring the Company for seven years previously. In 2013, in recognition of their valuable work with our Company, MTC nominated K&L Gates Partner and MTC Board Member Jonathan Feder for the Arts Law Arts Community Award, which he won. MTC Executive Director Virginia Lovett said, ‘He has provided advice on legal matters, administration and governance issues, particularly through a significant transitional period of new leadership in the company. He has backed this footwork with personal philanthropic contributions through his generous and substantial personal giving.’

Melbourne is home to one of K&L Gates’s largest offices in the Asia Pacific region, which was established more than one hundred years ago and consists of more than one hundred and ten lawyers, who each have a deep understanding of the Australian regulatory landscape. This, combined with K&L Gates’s ‘one-company, one-team’ mentality, aligns perfectly with Melbourne Theatre Company’s long-standing reputation as a leading presence in Australian theatre.

Taxi Kitchen View of Arts Centre Melbourne and Yarra River from Taxi Kitchen

Network Ten Kat Stewart with Mitchell Butel in Disgraced

Network Ten is Australia’s entertainment network and artist station. Aiming for excellence, Ten supports local work and fosters Australian talent, much as we do at MTC. As well as sharing these values and goals, MTC and Ten also share many actors across stage and screen, such as Kat Stewart (Offspring and MTC’s forthcoming Disgraced), Shaun Micallef (Talkin’ ‘Bout Your Generation and MTC's The Odd Couple), Jessica Tovey (Wonderland and our Double Indemnity), Susie Porter (Puberty Blues and last season’s Death and the Maiden), Christie Whelan Browne (Wonderland and The Odd Couple), and Susan Prior (Puberty Blues and our recent production of The Distance).

Taxi Kitchen is located right in the heart of Melbourne in the Transport building at Federation Square. Its sleek design and glass walls showcase Melbourne’s skyline with a 180-degree view of the CBD, Yarra River and the Arts Precinct. It’s the ideal setting in which to grab a bite before seeing a show, or perhaps a glass of wine afterwards. Taxi Kitchen’s chefs use only the highest quality produce in their dishes, which are modern, playful and designed to share, complemented by a current and concise wine list.

Open every day of the week from midday (11am on Sundays) until late, Taxi Kitchen delivers a relaxed, enjoyable experience for all its patrons, whether you’re a local or an out-of-towner.

For more information on MTC partnerships, please visit mtc.com.au/partnerships, or contact Dean Hampel, Head of Corporate Partnerships, on 8688 0951 or partnerships@mtc.com.au.

Philanthropy

Building for the Future MTC Endowment

MTC's Foundation Board: Louise Myer, Brett Sheehy ao, Leigh O'Neill, Hilary Scott, Virginia Lovett, Richard Tegoni, Jane Hansen, Jannette Kendall, Terry Bracks am, Dr Samuel Margis and Fiona Griffiths; (below) Betty Amsden OAM and Jane Hansen

Earlier this year we formally launched the MTC Foundation with the announcement of the largest ever single donation from a private donor to the Company of $1 million from the Little Foundation. This landmark gift will be used to create a General Endowment Fund to help realise the vision of securing a strong, sustainable and artistically vibrant future for MTC. The Little Foundation, established by Jane Hansen and Paul Little in 2015, is a philanthropic body built on the values and methods the couple applied in their successful corporate careers. It is a large-scale, active philanthropic undertaking that has the singular objective of leaving a legacy of significant and positive change.

The MTC Endowment Fund is vital to the future of MTC and will have a profound effect on the Company. Additionally, the benefits from the MTC Endowment Fund will flow through the sector – it will enable more plays to be written, more creatives to be employed and greater access for the wider community.

We are incredibly grateful for the leadership gift from The Little Foundation. MTC has exciting plans for the future, but it needs ongoing support to help make them happen. MTC’s General Endowment Fund will work to ensure this iconic institution’s core business can continue to thrive into the future and turn the Company’s dreams into reality.

MTC Foundation Chair Jane Hansen said, ‘Theatre inspires imagination and innovation, teaches us to be compassionate, and can challenge our beliefs and perceptions. It brings people together, sparks discussion and debate and helps people learn about the world in which we live. The Little Foundation is proud to support organisations like MTC that have real, positive impact on the community and people’s lives.’

The Capital of the General Endowment Fund will be invested to grow and provide a sustainable revenue source for the Company. It will be managed by the MTC Foundation Board.

If you are interested in learning more about the MTC Endowment Fund or how to donate to it, please contact Patrick Rundle, MTC Philanthropy Manager, on 03 8688 0959 or p.rundle@mtc.com.au

Progress is intense.

The all-new Audi A4.

Visit your preferred Audi Dealer or audi.com.au

Major Partner of Melbourne Theatre Company.

Overseas model shown.

MTC Members

Not so guilty pleasures A whole world of benefits just got more affordable.

From 1 April, receive up to 20% off with MTC’s pro-rata membership options. Enjoy a single membership $200 (from $250) or a double membership for $325 (from $400).

MTC Members enjoy a range of exclusive benefits, including access to the Qatar Airways MTC Lounge at Southbank Theatre, discounted parking at Arts Centre Melbourne and invitations to attend MTC Members events throughout the year.

You don’t even need to be seeing a show to experience the privileges that come with being an MTC Member. Around the Arts Precinct and Southgate, you can always enjoy exclusive discounts and special offers at our fantastic array of retail and dining partners.

When you are heading out to a show, enjoy discounts at the Southbank Theatre Foyer Bars and Arts Centre Melbourne dining partners The Barre, Café Vic and Cento Espresso. If you arrive at Southbank Theatre a little early, why not head upstairs to the Qatar Airways MTC Lounge and enjoy complimentary snacks and drinks while taking in the stunning views of the Melbourne city skyline and exhibitions of contemporary artworks from MTC Partner Artbank.

For more information on MTC Members, please visit mtc.com.au/members, or contact Memberships and Partnerships Co-ordinator Syrie Payne on 8688 0958 or members@mtc.com.au

Sangeeta Sandrasegar, Untitled 2008. Paper and glitter.

Artbank Boasting an incredible collection of contemporary Australian art curated over more than thirty years, Artbank is a one of a kind government initiative designed to support, collect and promote the work of living Australian artists. From curatorial support to assisting with installation, the Artbank team played a crucial part in realising the current exhibition in the Qatar Airways MTC Lounge.

The exhibition, curated by MTC’s Executive Director Virginia Lovett, was launched on 8 March, which was also, fittingly, International Women’s Day. The exhibition features artworks by contemporary female artists from Sally Smart, Rapunzel in Suburbia 1989. Oil and enamel on canvas.

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the Artbank collection – including Jenny Watson, Jill Orr, Sally Smart and Sangeeta Sandrasegar – delving into the themes of place, loss and female identity. Virginia chose the artworks specifically to complement the subject matter in MTC’s mainstage production of The Distance, connecting the exhibition with the key concerns and themes of Deborah Bruce’s play.

The exhibition will be on display in the Qatar Airways MTC Lounge until 23 July.

MTC 11-Play Subscribers can enjoy a further discount, with a special offer of $160 for a single membership and $260 for a double (for two people living in the same household).

4/13/16 2:35 PM

The Illusionist

Terrapin’s Sam Routledge brings life to inanimate objects

‘The way the actor looks at the puppet and responds to it animates it almost as much as the puppeteer does.’

Sam Routledge

Puppetry is the illusion that’s not really an illusion. That’s the key to its appeal. When a puppet magically comes to life, we can usually see how it’s being done. The strings are apparent or the black-clad puppeteers are in full view.

Nevertheless, we ignore the signs of manipulation and believe in the life-like creature before us. If the essence of theatre is contained in Coleridge’s ‘willing suspension of disbelief’, puppetry might be theatre’s purist form.

Artistic Director of Tasmania’s Terrapin Puppet Theatre Sam Routledge certainly believes so. He loves the ambiguous illusions of the art form, but probably loves more its richness of expression. As an arts student at Sturt University, he realised that the conventions of naturalistic text-based drama didn’t really appeal to him.

‘I felt theatre at its most powerful was metaphysical and figurative and visual. A puppet communicates in a physical way. It communicates through what it does, not what it says. It moves and lends itself to extreme forms of expression, to forms of surrealism and imagination.

For me, the interest was in the fantastical nature of the puppet.’

Routledge is Puppetry Director on MTC’s forthcoming family show Egg, in which puppetry and live actors combine to tell a surreal story about a dry and dying planet and two tinkers who must look after an enormous egg, though no one can tell them why. Written by acclaimed writer Angela Betzien and directed by Leticia Cáceres, it’s a kind of Samuel Beckett fable for family audiences. Routledge has been part of the show’s development from early on, brought in as a puppeteer when it was showcased in 2010 as part of the New Visions New Voices Festival at the Kennedy Centre in Washington DC. Back home, the project stalled for lack of funding, but, after Routledge became Artistic Director at Terrapin and Càceres became Artistic Associate at MTC, the opportunity to develop the work as an artistic collaboration between the two companies opened up.

Now in their thirty-fifth year, Terrapin has an international reputation as an arts company producing original work for young people. Last year they toured to Canada, the US and the Netherlands, and Ireland and the UK are on this

Genevieve Morris stars in Egg

year’s itinerary. Paradoxically, they struggle for recognition in Australia. Being based in Hobart places them on the edge of the radar, which is why a collaboration with MTC, with access to new audiences in Melbourne, is crucial for their artistic development.

For MTC, which has committed itself to providing more high-quality theatre for families, Terrapin is the perfect partner.

As Puppetry Director on the project, his role within the collaboration is clear. ‘Leticia and I are not co-directing, which is difficult to do anyway. My job is solely to give the puppetry the attention it needs, keep it polished and integrated in the show, but the production as a whole needs cohesiveness, with Leticia having an eye on that.’

The cast members also have their specialties. Comic actor Genevieve Morris bears much of the responsibility for moving the story forward, while puppetry duties fall on her co-star Michelle Robin Anderson, an experienced physical theatre performer and expert puppeteer. But in performance, both are responsible for giving life to the artful assemblage of cloth, wire and foam. ‘Any actor working with a puppet needs to develop a relationship

with it. That’s important. The way the actor looks at the puppet and responds to it animates it almost as much as the puppeteer does.’

The script has strong environmental themes, though Routledge makes clear that Terrapin isn’t in the business of dispensing lessons to children. ‘Although we play to more than ten thousand school children a year throughout Tasmania, we’re not a theatre-in-education company. We are not there to impart a lesson. Now, that isn’t to say there aren’t meaningful ideas and relationships that children will pick up on, but teaching is never the focus.

‘And with regard to the environmental core of the play: you know, the poet Ted Hughes said that he’d never met a child without an instinctual connection to the natural world. Children have a deep feeling for nature, so any play about the environment is going to connect with a young audience. It’s really not about teaching them to care about the environment; they care deeply already.

It’s already enormously important to them.’

Egg, by Angela Betzien, runs at Southbank Theatre, The Lawler from 29 June to 15 July.

See behind the scenes at mtc.com.au/backstage.

Special offers CD Offer

Film Offer

Rufus Wainwright’s Take All My Loves

A Month of Sundays

Rufus Wainwright celebrates the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death in typically dramatic fashion by releasing a unique collection of nine sonnets in stunning performances by actors and vocalists. The performers on Take All My Loves, which is released on 22 April on Deutsche Grammophon, include vocalists Florence Welch, Martha Wainwright, Anna Prohaska and, of course, Rufus himself, as well as actors Siân Phillips, Helena Bonham Carter, Carrie Fisher and William Shatner. ‘For me, recording this album has been a marriage made in heaven, as it combines my love of classical music with my love of pop music,’ says Rufus. ‘It’s literally historically fun.’

Real estate agent Frank Mollard won’t admit it, but he can’t move on. Divorced but still attached, he can’t sell a house in a property boom, much less connect with his teenage son. One night Frank gets a phone call from his mother. Nothing out of the ordinary. Apart from the fact that she died a year ago. A Month of Sundays is about parents, children, regrets, mourning, moments of joy, houses, homes, love, work, television, Shakespeare and jazz fusion. It’s about ordinary people and improbable salvation. Because everyone deserves a second chance – even a real estate agent.

In cinemas from 28 April.

For your chance to win a copy of Take All My Loves email offers@mtc.com.au with SONNET in the subject line.

For your chance to win an in-season double pass to A Month of Sundays email offers@mtc.com.au with SUNDAYS in the subject line.

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Florence Foster Jenkins in cinemas 5 May From acclaimed director Stephen Frears (Philomena, The Queen) and starring Meryl Streep, Florence Foster Jenkins tells the true story of a New York heiress and socialite who obsessively pursued her dream of becoming an opera singer.

The voice Florence Foster Jenkins heard in her head was beautiful, but to everyone else it was hilariously awful. Her manager and dearest friend, St Clair Bayfield (Hugh Grant), an aristocratic English actor, was determined to protect his beloved from the truth and help realise her dream.

Entertainment One and participating cinemas are offering MTC subscribers a two-for-one ticket deal to see Florence Foster Jenkins. To redeem this offer, present this coupon at any participating cinema and receive two tickets for the price of one full-priced adult ticket.

Valid Monday to Fridays, 5 May to 26 May inclusive (excluding public holidays, weekends and discount days). Not valid at HOYTS Luxe, Bean Bag Cinema, Xtremescreen, Nova Deluxe, Village Cinemas Gold Class, VMAX or Special Event screenings.

Sydney Dance Company Sydney Dance Company’s CounterMove is an exhilarating double bill that will intrigue, move and entertain you. Featuring Helpmann Award-winning dancers and a string quartet live on stage, the program consists of Alexander Ekman’s hilarious Cacti and Rafael Bonachela’s fiercely physical Lux Tenebris featuring an electric score. Running at Southbank Theatre, from 25 May to 4 June, CounterMove is the show critics are calling ‘Utterly amazing!’ (The Guardian).

Book to see Sydney Dance Company’s CounterMove before 18 May via 03 8688 0800 or mtc.com.au/countermove and quote SDCMOVE to access 25% off tickets and be in the draw to win a trip to Europe.

Make Mum’s day with an unforgettable theatrical experience Personalise an MTC Gift Voucher this Mothers’ Day and treat Mum to something truly special

mtc.com.au/giftideas