MTC Scenes | Edition 1 - 2019

EDITION 1 – 2019

Dan Frederiksen Empathy and apathy

Iain Sinclair On a great tragedian

Arbus & West Art imitating life

Così The triumph of art

Welcome Since moving to Southbank ten years ago, Melbourne Theatre Company has played a key role in the evolution of the Arts Precinct via our home venue, Southbank Theatre, and our headquarters down the road.

Southbank has changed considerably in the past decade and there are more exciting changes afoot as we start to see the results of the City of Melbourne’s redevelopment and the University of Melbourne’s new conservatorium, the Ian Potter Southbank Centre, at the Victorian College of the Arts.

West; and we look back on the history of Louis Nowra’s Cosí which is set to light up our stage in a new co-production with Sydney Theatre Company.

I hope you enjoy delving into the stories in this edition, and remember that you can discover more behind the scenes with stories, galleries and videos online at mtc.com.au/backstage.

The new era of the Southbank Arts Precinct signals great possibility and, of course, more world-class art and culture, including the very best theatre on our stages.

In this edition of Scenes, our first for Season 2019, we hear from Daniel Frederiksen about playing Alan Bennett 1 in our hotly anticipated production of The Lady in the Van; director Iain Sinclair writes about his love of Arthur Miller; we’re introduced to the legacy and lives of Diane Arbus and Mae West ahead of the world premiere of Arbus &

Virginia Lovett Executive Director & Co-CEO

Prompt Corner

Southbank Boulevard Roadworks The City of Melbourne roadworks along Southbank Blvd and Dodds St are in full swing and road closures are still in place.

Southbank Theatre is open and operating as usual but please continue to allow extra time to get to the theatre over the next few months.

MTC is excited to welcome Steve Bastoni (Underbelly) and Marco Chiappi (The Father) to the cast of A View from the Bridge, Jillian Murray (Jack Irish) to the cast of The Lady in the Van and Paul Blackwell (Faith Healer) to the cast of Così.

For full details about the roadworks visit participate.melbourne.vic.gov.au/ southbankboulevard

Go backstage on our blog Learn more about our 2019 season with video interviews from actors such as Nadine Garner, Miriam Margolyes, Caroline O’Connor and more.

Cover: Katherine Tonkin, Hunter Page-Lochard and Esther Hannaford Photo by Justin Ridler Photography throughout by Jeff Busby, Tim Grey, Justin Ridler 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.

MANAGING EDITOR Rosie Shepherdson-Cullen EDITOR and WRITER Sarah Corridon ART DIRECTOR Emma Wagstaff GRAPHIC DESIGNER Helena Turinski

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

Read more in extended interviews with playwrights, directors, actors, designers and other theatre makers.

mtc.com.au/backstage

Southbank Theatre 140 Southbank Blvd, Southbank Vic 3006 BOX OFFICE 03 8688 0800

Melbourne Theatre Company is a department of the University of Melbourne.

Melbourne Theatre Company acknowledges the Yalukit Willam Peoples of the Boon Wurrung, the First Peoples of Country on which Southbank Theatre and MTC HQ stand. We pay our respects to all of Melbourne’s First Peoples, to their ancestors and Elders, and to our shared future.

STAY IN THE LOOP MelbourneTheatreCompany melbtheatreco melbtheatreco Sign-up to receive our eNews at mtc.com.au or email info@mtc.com.au Pick up a $2 programme at your next show – they are filled with great articles and useful show information.

Empathy and apathy Actor Dan Frederiksen discusses privilege, performance, and preventing our peers from falling through the cracks.

Dan Frederiksen grew up in Kyneton, which in his youth, held the title for the highest rate of youth suicide in Victoria, and had an economy that ran on the success of the town’s abattoir.

Kyneton is a town that now lays claim to a growing population of creatives, who benefit from the approximate one-hour commute to Melbourne’s CBD on the V/Line. The town has changed inordinately in Frederiksen’s lifetime. ‘Renaissance’ is not the right word, he tells me, as that would imply Kyneton was once pleasant, he says brazenly. ‘It was just punch-ons on the oval and teen pregnancies,’ he grins before turning more sombre. ‘But really, it was a seriously rough place.’

These ‘rough’ country roots, whether he recognised them growing up or not, would prepare Frederiksen for the capricious working life of an actor.

Frederiksen’s career has ultimately been a successful one. He spent two and half years playing Mr. Wormwood, in Tim Minchin’s Helpmann Award-winning production Matilda: The Musical. He has appeared in multiple productions for Melbourne Theatre Company, including Cheech, Don Juan in Soho, Rockabye, Becky Shaw, Dead Man’s Cell Phone and Abigail’s Party, as well as playing various roles in TV and film over the last two decades.

Like most successful actors, however, his rolling list of credits doesn’t equate to financial security or any surety that next year, or even next week, he will have work.

It’s a livelihood that dances on the precipice of the next great project, or the next spell of unemployment and the emotional turmoil that ensues. To be an actor, or any creative person that conducts their life this way, requires a base level of privilege, he says, and an acceptance from family and friends that this vocation, is a valid one.

‘I couldn’t be an actor if I wasn’t ostensibly “middleclass”,’ he says. ‘It takes an enormous amount of sacrifice that I probably couldn’t make if I didn’t have the support that I do.’

There are many aspects of Frederiksen’s career, and life, which will inform his role in The Lady in the Van, directed

by Dean Bryant. The play follows the autobiographical story of writer Alan Bennett, who in 1974 befriended the homeless and stubborn Miss Mary Shepherd, when she parked her van in his London driveway and stayed for 15 years.

It’s a work that questions the foundation of Frederiksen’s upbringing, one in which his left-leaning parents assured him there was a social order in place that caught the disaffected and prevented people from falling through the cracks. It’s a world that Frederiksen isn’t convinced exists, as Melbourne’s housing crisis worsens and the city’s homeless population grows. It’s a social order that the play’s protagonist Miss Shepherd certainly wasn’t privy to.

Dan Frederiksen in Abigail’s Party, 2018

‘I couldn’t be an actor if I wasn’t ostensibly middle-class...

It takes an enormous amount of sacrifice that I probably couldn’t make if I didn’t have the support I do.’

Frederiksen plays Alan Bennett 1, while his former co-star in Matilda, James Millar, plays his character’s subconscious, Alan Bennett 2. ‘I love that device’ Frederiksen says. ‘It’s so clever because we all have that internal dialogue, and I’m guilty of being like Alan Bennett 1, constantly trying to please people…often to my own detriment.’

Despite the challenges both Bennett and Shepherd encounter in this story, Frederiksen believes it is ultimately a tale of friendship, acceptance and, where possible, of not letting people fall through the cracks, however abhorrent they may seem. ‘The reality is, the world is filled with people who have addictions and mental illnesses, who don’t have the support networks and safety nets that the rest of us are lucky enough to have.’ They’re often referred to in the media as ‘rough sleepers’, which Frederiksen finds irritating and ultimately wrong. ‘This isn’t a lifestyle choice,’ he says, ‘these people are homeless. They don’t have homes.’

We gather from this story that Miss Shepherd was fiercly private and rejected intervention of any sort. Does Frederiksen see any exploitation in the real life Alan Bennett telling her story as he remembers it? I ask.

‘It’s hard to say, because essentially he is a writer, it’s in his soul, and his being, to find source material in the world around him. He can’t help that.’ But would Miss Shepherd be comfortable knowing that her condition had been written about and performed by some of the world’s most iconic actors such as Maggie Smith? His answer is probably not, Frederiksen thinks. But it cannot be refuted that by telling Miss Shepherd’s story, Bennett has helped elucidate a very real problem in our society, and that is a lack of empathy.

According to Frederiksen, Bennett uses Miss Shepherd as a vehicle to explore our own parameters of empathy, and to ask us what we’d be prepared to put up with if a homeless and mentally unstable woman parked her van in our respective driveways for 15 years. How much would we tolerate?

The Lady in the Van plays at Arts Centre Melbourne, The Playhouse from 2 February — 6 March.

Hear from Miriam Margolyes as Miss Shepherd mtc.com.au/backstage

Art imitating life Before the world premiere of Arbus & West, get to know the women at the centre of the story.

Diana Glenn and Melita Jurisic star in Arbus & West

The woman behind the lens: Diane Arbus

BY ANNE O’HEHIR ‘She was the most seductive person I ever met in my life.’

This was the way that Anne Wilkes Tucker summarised the photographer Diane Arbus after meeting her as a young curator. Arbus’s ability to connect to the people she photographed is legendary and the images she made as a result of her interactions have an intensity and power that have rarely been matched. Fellow photographer Joel Meyerowitz characterised her as ‘an emissary from the world of feeling’. She cared, he believed, about the people she photographed; ‘they felt that and gave her their secret’.

Where did the intensity come from? An intensity combined with an almost frighteningly relentless ambition that she girded her loins with as she set out to build a career in the mid to late 1960s. Such things are difficult to account for. Her biographers have suggested some answers. Diane (pronounced Dee-anne) was born into wealth and privilege to Jewish second-generation New Yorkers in 1923. Her father David Nemerov ran a Fifth Avenue department store specialising mostly in womenswear and furs. Alongside an older brother, Howard, and a younger sister, Renée, Arbus was brought up by nannies – her pre-occupied parents were emotionally absent: her father at work, her at times depressed mother more concerned with position and appearance. She attended the progressive, private schools of the Ethical Culture movement. Her school assignments are remarkable; the work of a student who is precocious, highly intelligent,

an original thinker, widely read. There is an early interest in myth and archetypes which would remain throughout her life.

She married her childhood sweetheart Allan Arbus at eighteen and had two daughters, Doon and Amy. The young couple set up a photography fashion studio on Allan’s return from war – it was middling successful, their work competent though not greatly original or inspiring, they got assignments for magazines like Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar and Seventeen – but by the mid-50s Diane was finding both the business and the marriage stifling – she left both to find her own way.

Mostly self-taught, Arbus took a number of classes. Those with the Austrian émigré photographer, Lisette Model provided a breakthrough. Model encouraged her students to shoot only when they felt it in their gut and Arbus specifically to follow her instinct, to pursue her desire to photograph people on the edge of society. Her advice that the more specific a photograph was, the more general its message became, was also something that became a fundamental aspect of Arbus’s approach to her practice.

She came to a distinctive style all her own, an edgy combination of classic, still compositions, working in black and white, that sit aside the deliberate use of a snapshot aesthetic where seemingly awkward moments and mistakes were used to give the images an immediacy and elements of surprising detail.

‘She took off her clothes and joined nudist colonies, she frequented the seedy worlds of the ‘freak’ circuses, she went amongst the subcultures in the city’s parks.’

Arbus played an important role in the history of photographic practice as it unrolled across the 20th century. She was part, certainly, of a wider move towards a more private, psychological way of making pictures, though in many ways her images seem to capture the anxieties, the frailties, of a Cold War America in a way that few others could match.

Arbus’s curiosity about the world was insatiable – she felt she had been kept from it during her closeted childhood and she set out with a vengeance to make up for lost time.

She took off her clothes and joined nudist colonies, she

Any way we can get her: the story of Mae West

BY ELOISE ROSS

frequented the seedy worlds of the ‘freak’ circuses, she went amongst the subcultures in the city’s parks.

She stated at one point that there wasn’t anything she wouldn’t do to get a photograph. People who had suffered trauma – those born into physical disability for example, or those who didn’t fit in because of their sexual orientation or beliefs – fascinated Arbus. They lived, she felt, bigger lives than the rest of us, they were free in a way that we weren’t because they weren’t waiting for the axe to fall – for them it already had. They were, she believed, the real aristocrats.

Living a true life, an authentic life mattered to Arbus, even or especially if it meant fighting for it – while acknowledging that self-knowledge and clear intentions, for herself, for everyone, are tricky. When Allan Arbus was asked later to sum up Diane’s greatest attribute in one word, the word he chose was courage.

People gave Arbus ‘their secret’, to use Meyerowitz’s turn of phrase, because she got in close and spent time. She intuited that people could only keep appearances up for so long – after that they would start to slip up – and it was then she believed that people revealed their true self (she had to shoot celebrities, for she did work throughout her life on magazine assignments, but she found it difficult at times – they were covered in shellac she believed, their practiced and polished ready-for-the-camera personas, difficult to get past). She was always on the lookout for the slippage – when you see someone on the street, she reflected, what you see is the flaw. She famously called this ‘the gap between intention and effect’. How we want to be seen rubbing up against how others see us.

The complexity of the photographic exchange was something that Arbus thought about long and hard and to which she brought her formidable intelligence.

So often Arbus captures a moment of a real connection, of a great humanist empathy; you get the sense of the subject really staring back at Arbus, just as she was looking so intently and intensely at them – just as they now stare at us. Arbus moved to using a medium format camera in 1962 – this gives her work its distinctive square format and meant that she held the camera at waist level and so could remain visible to the sitter while the image was being made.

The emotional investment in her subjects, some of whom she knew of many years, sits alongside a dispassion, a toughness. There is cold distance in this; the camera is cruel, Arbus also said: the images themselves are never sentimental, never conventionally flattering. Meyerowitz may have felt she cared about the people she photographed but he also called her a ‘spider’, luring people into a soft and entangling and complicated transaction. These contradictions and complexities make the images Arbus produced in over little more than a decade, endlessly enigmatic, their meaning and intent still passionately debated today. They retain at their heart a mystery, a secret that will never be fully disclosed.

Anne O’Hehir is a Curator of Photography at the National Gallery of Australia and curator of the exhibition Diane Arbus: American portraits.

Arbus & West by Stephen Sewell plays at Arts Centre Melbourne, Fairfax Studio from 22 February — 30 March.

Hear from Diana Glenn who plays Diane Arbus mtc.com.au/backstage

In 1927, the up-and-coming theatre star Mae West was sentenced to time in prison, charged with obscenity, indecency, and immorality. The source of the charges was in her play, titled Sex and showing on Broadway, that she wrote, directed, and starred in. While a challenge for that particular play, serving eight days imprisoned on Welfare Island turned out to be one of the best things that could have happened to West’s career, as per that old adage that any publicity is good publicity, particularly if it’s bad. On the back of a stint in prison, West’s reputation became irrevocably aligned with liberalism and sexual forthrightness – she would withstand anything for her right to freedom of expression – and her shows on Broadway attracted big audiences. She was such a success, and so unique in the tone of her persona, that Paramount offered her a contract and she moved to Hollywood. Her vivacity came along at just the right time when a nation was suffering the lows of the Great Depression. The movie-going public always relished the star who could brighten up their screens.

While West was outspoken about many things – indeed, that was why she was a notable figure and has remained iconic amongst early-twentieth century feminist consciousness – at first she kept her year of birth a secret.

It’s likely that this was a publicity decision to shield her from a judgemental industry, and she may not have been

While clearly popular across the United States, West was not appreciated by all. Film production documents in Hollywood at the time made note of ‘the Mae West menace’, and Paramount had difficulty distributing She Done Him Wrong in some territories, including Australia.

For some, West’s presence as a cultural sign that challenged traditional gender roles was too threatening.

Yet she persisted, continuing to challenge the conservative view of the woman on screen by adopting roles and finding empowerment in them. Mae West was excessively and even aggressively feminine, and she constantly transgressed patriarchal ideas of feminine behaviour. Her continuous performance was of its own, and in actively shaping her roles, West owned not only her image but also navigated a path through culture.

The Universal Studios picture My Little Chickadee (Edward F. Cline, 1940), her first film made outside of Paramount, was her last real financial success in Hollywood, and she went on to appear in only one more film that decade.

Ultimately, it’s likely that her film career faltered because her bold persona was quashed during the Motion Picture Production Code, and audiences wouldn’t accept her as anyone but the sassy, sexy, sarcastic Mae West they had been introduced to. She would return decades later with the much maligned Myra Breckenridge (Mike Sarne, 1970) and made her final appearance in Sextette (Ken Hughes,

‘As a public figure Mae West was unafraid, and as a lasting cultural phenomenon she is irreplaceable.’

— ELOISE ROSS

happy when gossip later arose about her age. Whatever the case, the fact that she was offered her first Hollywood contract in 1932 when she was nearing the age of forty is remarkable, and she became a powerful sex symbol like no other. This was by no means the only barrier through which West broke as a woman in the industry. Her star persona, exquisitely curated through voice, performance, and physicality, was shaped more by her own fierce negotiating and business acumen than by any conservatively-angled publicity machine.

Scott Balcerzak, culture and cinema scholar, suggests that in the 1930s, Mae West was one of the only actresses who had the powerful role of ‘actor as auteur’ – which is not to say that other working women were without independence and agency in the industry. There were a number of stars, including Carole Lombard and West’s friend Bette Davis – negotiating contracts and shaping their own personas in a controlling environment. But West’s role was particular; not only was she in charge of her body and persona on screen, but she began rewriting some of her lines from her very first film appearance in Night After Night (Archie Mayo, 1932). As she came from the theatre, she continued to contribute to scripts through the rest of her career. This authorship of scripts was enhanced by an authorship of her body, and now her exaggerated hips-first walk, pursed lips, and caustic line delivery, comprise some of the most recognisable performance traits in film history.

She Done Him Wrong (Lowell Sherman, 1933) was her first big hit, modelled after her own stage show Diamond Lil, and Lady Lou became one of her most famous roles. In that film, her reputation precedes her appearance; as men crowd around speaking about the inimitable Lady Lou and women tsk-tsk at her presence, West arrives in a decorous horse-drawn carriage. Seen as both disapproving and even a little jealous, these women are representatives of the internalised repression that West’s persona is so keenly trying to break through, both in her drag performance and her acknowledgement of sexual pleasure. Her character here may exploit her sexual allure, and West achieves the same thing in her other films made around the same time, but the power is that West claims space as a woman who has an equal right amongst men.

1978), adapted from a play she had written. The 1970s was a decade when many popular stars from Hollywood’s studio era were appearing in cheap horror and exploitation films, as this allowed them to keep working in the altered landscape of industry and culture. The stunning thing about West, though, is how similar she was to the figure, persona, and posture of her early years in the film industry – you’d be forgiven for failing to notice there was a four-decade difference.

As a public figure Mae West was unafraid, and as a lasting cultural phenomenon she is irreplaceable. She was an unapologetic parodist of gender performance, using body language and verbal expressions to challenge norms and expectations. While Lea Jacobs writes that her ribald nature was tamed by Hollywood’s censorship from the mid-1930s, West never completely toed the line. Just as importantly, although her boldness was hinting at caricature, West was a feminist who used her position to encourage acknowledgement of female sexuality and create a space for women on the public stage. Like Jane Fonda who, decades later, would publicly discuss women’s pleasure and incorporate it into her work – particularly with the Netflix show Grace and Frankie – Mae West did not shy away from confronting the patriarchal erasure of female agency.

Some of her famous quips, coming from films or through her own publicity manouevres, have evolved as part of common parlance in the decades since first heard. Her plays, and roles that keep her image in the spotlight, continue to challenge attitudes today. A mammoth figure in film and theatre, West is deservedly remembered and admired as a groundbreaking figure for liberal, feminist values. Her first line in Sextette speaks volumes about West’s approach to her work, and her fans’ enthusiastic appreciation of West: ‘They like me any way they can get me.’ It’s a terrific way to say goodbye, and we should heed her advice.

Eloise Ross is Program Manager and President of the Melbourne Cinémathèque. She has a PhD in Cinema Studies from La Trobe University specialising in sound and embodiment, and has a special interest in 20th century Hollywood icons.

A great tragedian Director Iain Sinclair reflects on his endless fascination with Arthur Miller’s writing.

When Daniela Farinacci and I announced that Arthur Miller’s masterpiece A View from the Bridge would be part of MTC’s 2019 Season, I found myself making a grand statement. It was something like, ‘there are many great writers of drama, and there are even more talented writers of comedy…but for my money, when it comes to the truly great writers of tragedy you can count them on the fingers of one hand: Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Shakespeare and Arthur Miller.’ It sounds like a very bold statement to make but I’d like to share some of the reasons why I think it’s the case.

There are many great modern plays with tragic elements in them. Ray Lawler’s Summer of the Seventeenth Doll, Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night, Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Tony Kushner’s Angels in America, Sophie Treadwell’s Machinal and Sarah Kane’s Blasted to rattle off a few. However, there is something that is universal in all of Miller’s work, something singular and specific in the kind of trouble that he doles out to his central characters, something ancient and utterly irreducible that sets his work apart from his modern contemporaries.

Like the ancient writers, Miller’s plays throw human frailty into stark relief with the indifferent cosmos. There is a sense of unbearable infinity about them, between the earthly and the divine that resonate in a similar way to the Greek works. His characters sit comfortably alongside the biggest names in tragedy like Oedipus, Hecuba, Hamlet and Lear. Patsy Rodenburg, [British voice coach, author, and theatre director] who visited the actors studio I teach at, recently described the process like this: ‘The great tragedians get the best people, capable of the greatest good and then they throw them up into the great mincemeat grinder in the sky.’ And this most certainly is what Miller does with Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman, Kate Keller in All My Sons, John Proctor in The Crucible and Eddie Carbone in A View from the Bridge.

Tragedy is the highest form of drama and the most demanding. It demands a lot from its audiences but it’s worth it; for those willing to dive deep, the rewards are beyond measure. I have spent the past six years directing the tragedies of Arthur Miller and every time I do it feels as though the playwright joins the actors in the room, and encourages them to stand tall with their shoulders back, to open their eyes and to stare, gimlet-eyed into the pitiless gaze of the ancient gods. It’s a humbling and exhilarating experience.

As Christina Smith (Costume and Set Design), Niklas Pajanti (Lighting Design), Kelly Ryall (Composer and Sound Design) and I begin the rich and challenging process of generating a design environment for this elemental and deeply human play, I am confirmed in my belief that A View from the Bridge is Miller’s finest work.

It rekindles all the familial warmth in All My Sons, the chaos and volatility of community hysteria in The Crucible, and the subterranean willful blindness of Death of a Salesman, and then it doubles down, tightens and contracts on each of them while also adding an excruciating sense of momentum and merciless inevitability that can only be rivaled by the ancient Greeks.

He does all of this with an efficiency that makes the psychological projections, period metaphor and ethical challenges of his earlier work feel almost tricksy. A View from the Bridge is Miller’s Lear, clear-eyed, devastatingly

‘A View from the Bridge is Miller’s Lear, clear-eyed, devastatingly tender and brutally efficient.’

Daniela Farinacci stars in A View from the Bridge

tender and brutally efficient. It is a modern tragic masterpiece, by a dramatist at the very top of his game.

against our will, wisdom comes to us through the awful grace of God.’

Red Hook stands on the waterfront right underneath the Brooklyn Bridge. Commuter traffic goes over this bridge night and day, right now even, and yet, right under this bridge, and hundreds like it, human tragedies rage like wildfire with no less ferocity than the flames that claimed the sons and daughters of Ancient Troy. Tragedy is not just for kings, you see, it stalks us all.

That last quote was from Aeschylus, our first great tragedian, a favourite playwright of the most recent truly great tragedian, Arthur Miller.

‘Sometimes,’ as the character Alfieri says, ‘God mixes up the people,’ and sometimes we love someone too much and sometimes that love can go the wrong way and nothing, and I mean nothing on this good earth will stop its deadly course.

A View from the Bridge is one of the most human plays you will ever see. It is also timeless, as ancient as fire, as modern as the breath you just took. It embraces the trembling frailty in us all…and like all the great tragedies, it consoles us in the knowledge that, ‘those who learn must suffer, and that pain…that cannot forget, falls drop by drop upon the heart, until, in our own despair, and

I am terrifically excited to be working with MTC on this master script and look forward to sharing more of my deep appreciation of this exquisite and heartfelt modern tragedy with you.

A View from the Bridge plays at Southbank Theatre, The Sumner from 9 March—18 April.

Hear more from actor Daniela Farinacci and Iain Sinclair mtc.com.au/backstage

The triumph of art Over its 26-year history, Così has proven that art has the power to transform lives.

Katherine Tonkin, Hunter Page-Lochard and Esther Hannaford appear in Così

Così is one of three semi-autobiographical plays written by acclaimed Australian playwright, Louis Nowra. All three plays share the central protagonist Lewis, as a fictitious characterisation of Nowra, and echo the political climate of their setting.

The “Lewis” trilogy begins with Summer of the Aliens, depicting a 14-year-old Lewis and his coming-of-age in a Melbourne housing commission in the 60s. In Così, Lewis appears as a university graduate who takes a job at a so-called mental institution in 1971, while he figures out what he wants to do with his life. The final instalment, This Much is True, shows Lewis as an older man living in inner city Sydney, mixing with an unlikely group of fringe-dwellers who gather in a Kings Cross pub and impact each other like family.

Summer of the Aliens was first staged as a play by MTC in 1992 at the Russell Street Theatre, with Nowra himself playing the role of Narrator. At the same time, Così was premiering at Belvoir in Sydney, starring Barry Otto and Ben Mendelsohn, who would go on to star in the film version in 1996. The production put Nowra in high demand.

Così tells the story of a young Lewis attempting to direct a play, which is overturned by one patient, the unrelenting Roy, who has his heart set on presenting Mozart’s opera Così Fan Tutte. There are just a few minor set-backs to overcome, beginning with a theatre on the verge of collapse, through to working with a cast who cannot sing or speak Italian.

The autobiographical undercurrent in Così comes from Nowra’s decision as a young man to work at the Mont Park Asylum, which had housed both of his grandmothers and sat within a stone’s throw of the housing commission where he grew up.

Così first appeared on MTC’s stage in 1994, with Barry Otto reprising the role of Roy, adding Pamela Rabe and Nadine Garner to the host of actors who have brought these complex and honest characters to life. Indeed, Così, in its many re-inventions, has drawn numerous notable actors under its spell, with the 1996 film featuring Jackie Weaver, Toni Collette, Rachel Griffiths, David Wenham and Colin Hay, alongside Mendelsohn, Otto and Rabe in career-defining roles.

The enduring appeal of this uniquely Australian comedy could be attributed to the thoughtful rendering of human frailty, vulnerability and difference present in each character. Nowra focuses on the patients’ ability to believe in themselves, their fears and doubts, as well

as their joy, self-discovery and coming together as an ensemble to bring a challenging – albeit slightly modified – opera to life. Equally, Così is a story about Lewis managing to overcome his own insecurities and the social pressures that afflict him.

Twenty-four years after MTC first staged Così, MTC Associate Director Sarah Goodes takes the reins of this Australian classic in a brand new production starring Katherine Tonkin, Hunter Page-Lochard and Esther Hannaford.

‘Many people have grown up watching Così either on stage or on film, or even performing in it,’ Goodes says. ‘The opportunity to revive this play in Melbourne where it is set is so exciting – to celebrate who we are, how far we have come and to remind us of the power and importance of art in our lives.’

Così plays at Southbank Theatre, The Sumner from 30 April—8 June and is supported by production partner The Little Group.

Hear more from actor Katherine Tonkin about starring in Così mtc.com.au/backstage

Auditions in progress Inside MTC’s casting department.

Emina Ashman rehearses for Cybec Electric, 2018

MTC Casting Director, Janine Snape, and Casting Executive, Matt Bebbington, have over 25 years combined experience recruiting the best acting talent in Australia and overseas. We asked Janine and Matt what they love most about their job and how they came to find themselves sitting in on auditions for a living.

How did you find yourself working in casting? Tell us about your career journey to this point.

Janine Snape: The job found me really. I have a background in music and dance, and I majored in writing at University; this also encompassed theatre studies where I discovered I preferred to be a part of a creative team behind the scenes. I worked in arts publicity in Melbourne and built up a good knowledge of performers before working for a theatre producer. I was roped into coordinating auditions across Australia and New Zealand with two international casting directors who travelled out to Australia to cast a musical. They were incredibly inspiring to work with, were open to me suggesting ideas and hugely experienced in the casting industry. It was my first taste of casting, and I had the realisation that this job existed and it was a possible career choice. It just clicked into place for me.

I then headed to the UK to go traveling and to gain experience. I found myself working in London for an actor’s agency during the day, then I’d sprint across Waterloo Bridge to usher at the National Theatre in the evenings. I really immersed myself in the industry.

Working within an agency means you are constantly in touch with casting directors, so it was a great way of making contacts. Some wonderful people in the industry have helped me along the way and opened doors for me.

I worked in theatre at the Royal Shakespeare Company in London and Stratford, and I also worked in freelance theatre and screen casting before returning to my home city of Melbourne to take up the position of Casting Director at MTC. Matt Bebbington: Having been fortunate enough to be a regular theatregoer from the age of five, I’d always had a tremendous love of the Arts and a great knowledge of actors, so I knew that my career would likely end up in this area. I’d studied performing arts at university – a general course with elements of acting, writing, directing and design, but very quickly realised I wasn’t willing to make the necessary sacrifices to pursue and sustain a career as an actor. I also realised that my favourite part of creating a show was interpreting the script and finding

the right people to create a particular universe, so a career in casting seemed like a worthwhile pursuit.

As there’s no clear path to becoming a Casting Director, I got a foot in the door at MTC as a Box Office Supervisor when the Southbank Theatre opened in 2009. Luckily, within 18 months, a position opened up in the Casting Department and somehow I weaselled my way in and haven’t left the office for eight years.

In recent years, there has been a lot of discussion about ‘colour-blind’ casting in film, television and stage. Can you tell us more about this?

JS: ‘Colour-blind’ casting is the practice of casting the best actor for the role without bias. The performer could be from any ethnic background. If we are talking about diversity in casting, this extends beyond ethnicity.

MTC engages performers by the Performer’s Collective Agreement, so we adhere to ‘a flexible, imaginative casting policy in casting roles where race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender or the presence or absence of a disability is not germane’. The Casting Guild of Australia, of which I am a member, also worked with’ the MEAA diversity committee to set guidelines: ‘As members of the creative performing arts community, we all have a role in

Introduce the joys of theatre to your loved ones this festive season

G I VE LOV E , L AU G H S , D R A M A .

Buy an MTC Gift Voucher mtc.com.au/giftideas

‘It’s just like working in recruitment – except for actors. The script is your job description and we use our knowledge and resources to find appropriately skilled candidates.’

— MATT BEBBINGTON

creating stories that reflect the diversity of the world in which we live. To that end, and in an effort to deliver more diversity in Australian film, TV and theatre, CGA members will, wherever possible, include and engage with diverse thinking and actions in all aspects of the casting process.

Diversity on stage and screen has been a vigorous and on-going conversation in the casting industry for many years. These conversations are now being discussed more widely and publicly which I think is essential to keep up the momentum to make change. It’s a responsibility of the job to, at times, initiate these conversations and approach the subject with sensitivity. The industry needs to continue working towards representing the cultural identity and demographics of the city and the world in which we live, across all mediums.

MTC holds general auditions every year – why are these important?

MB: Although I try to see as much theatre as possible, there’s so much going on all around the country that it would be impossible to see every actor in a full production. General Auditions are a great way to meet and see new actors in a very condensed amount of time.

In a week of generals (which we hold a couple of times a year) we could see up to 120 people. Actors are asked to prepare up to two pieces of their choosing that best reflect their skills and interests, so it’s a great way to learn a lot about someone in a short amount of time – usually about 10 minutes. As these auditions aren’t for a specific production, there is often a more relaxed atmosphere in the room as the pressure of ‘will I, or won’t I, get the role’ is removed and despite the short amount of time, it’s possible to get a strong sense of an actor, their personality and their interests.

What do you love most about your job?

JS: The variety of the work, meeting and working with a huge array of talented and interesting people, reading scripts and going to the theatre, as well watching film and TV often doesn’t feel like work, although it is a major part of my job. I love being in the audition room and I’m fascinated by what choices a performer or director makes in the room. Having the opportunity to open the door for

Joseph Lai and Gareth Yuen rehearsing at Cybec Electric, 2018

a performer to be considered, seeing them do a great audition, which can sometimes be the start of an ongoing working relationship between an actor and director, is a joy. I work for a company who has a great care and appreciation for every aspect of the work being created, and for the performers, creatives and the in-house team who make it happen.

MB: There’s so much to love about this job, but for me it’s working with the brilliantly talented staff across all departments at MTC. More so than in other positions, I have close working relationships with almost every other department in the company. From the wider artistic team, to stage management, to wardrobe, to marketing, to ticketing, to development and sponsorship, it is so great to collaborate with such a variety of people who are all working towards the same goal but in such wildly different ways. It really does take a village to get a show up and because actors are such a vital part of this process, I gain such a holistic perspective on all the amazing work that we do here.

What are your top three tips for an actor for auditions?

JS & MB: 1. Prepare – if you are sent the full script, read it. Preparation also includes knowing who you are meeting – research their work if you aren’t familiar with the director.

2. Be flexible and listen – it’s great to come in with your own ideas but keep an open mind and remain flexible enough to offer up new options in the audition.

3. Be yourself – we are interested in knowing about you.

It’s worth remembering that you’ve been called into an audition because we believe you can get the role.

Philanthropy

From humble beginnings MTC celebrates 10 years at its home, Southbank Theatre.

Since treading the boards as the Union Theatre Repertory Company, founded in 1953 by John Sumner, Melbourne Theatre Company has seen many iterations on its journey to becoming the Company you know today. From the small congregation of Melbourne University students who presented repertory seasons of the world’s best plays, to the heart of the Russell Street Theatre, MTC grew rapidly to become a major Australian arts company, and a Melbourne institution.

The closure of Russell Street Theatre in the mid-1990s saw the start of conversations about the future of this Melbourne icon; a future where the company could create works of ambition and significance in a home of its own.

After 15 years of planning, significant investment from the University of Melbourne and the Victorian Government, and the generosity of the MTC@Home Capital Campaign Donors, this home would become Southbank Theatre and MTC HQ.

Contruction of Southank Theatre 2008

In 2007, then Artistic Director Simon Philips said, ‘If life imitates art, we need to give Melbourne something to aspire to. Something extraordinary. Southbank Theatre is just that…

It’s the project for our new theatre and our creative headquarters, MTC HQ. But more than two buildings, it’s a new stage for MTC. One of physical development as well as financial, artistic and cultural growth.’

‘By providing a new home for both audiences and artists, these two buildings will enable us to make the best theatre in the world. The finished products will be places for creation, contemplation, exploration and – dare one say it – entertainment.’

Approaching the 10th Anniversary of MTC’s home in Southbank, we celebrate and acknowledge the considerable efforts and generosity of the inspirational Founding and Leading Donors to the Capital Campaign, without whom this new chapter would not have been possible.

With triumphs this year including two Helpmann Awards for The Children, and rave reviews for the brand new play from Aidan Fennessy, The Architect, MTC continues to live by these sentiments, creating meaningful work to entertain, challenge and enrich audiences.

FOUNDING DONORS Lyndsey Cattermole am and Andrew Cattermole The Joan and Peter Clemenger Trust Allan Myers ao qc and Maria Myers ao Orcadia Foundation

As MTC celebrates 10 years at Southbank Theatre, we look towards the future and our vital place within Melbourne’s thriving Arts Precinct. With the City of Melbourne’s $200 million Southbank redevelopment signalling a new and exciting chapter for the precinct, MTC is proud to be at the heart of Melbourne’s cultural epicentre.

LEADING DONORS John and Lorraine Bates The Dodge Family Jeremy and Sarah Kirkwood Helen Macpherson Smith Trust George and Rosa Morstyn

Ray Lawler, Simon Phillips and John Sumner

Sandy and Sandra Murdoch Elisabeth Murdoch Trust Lorraine Pearce Tom and Ruth O’Dea Orloff family charitable trust Professor David Penington ac and Dr Sonay Hussein The Ian Potter Foundation The Robert Salzer Foundation Tim and Lynne Sherwood Ralph Ward-Ambler am and Barbara Ward-Ambler Maureen Wheeler ao and Tony Wheeler ao Price and Christine Williams

A family affair Diane Tweeddale has dedicated a seat at Southbank Theatre to her drama-loving family.

Ten years on and our Subscribers continue to celebrate their love of drama by naming a seat in the Sumner at Southbank Theatre. Each named seat tells a story of friendship, family and love of theatre.

One such story is that of Diane Tweeddale and her family who have a long connection with MTC. It started for Diane when she got involved with the Tin Alley Players, the then theatre group of the University of Melbourne graduates. Here she met her husband, Alistair, working backstage together on a production of Clare Boothe Luce’s The Women at the Union Theatre.

As a University student, Alistair had been directed by John Sumner, playing several minor roles in Romeo and Juliet. Although tempted, he decided to concentrate on his studies rather than join Sumner’s newly formed Union Repertory Theatre Company.

Diane has been subscribing to MTC for many years now and remembers attending her first production at the

Russell Street Theatre in 1965, Bandicoot on a Burnt Ridge,

by Australian playwright Marien Dreyer.

MTC is important to Diane as it offers, ‘a varied diet of plays, the pleasurable expectation of next year’s program and the frequent exposure to new and challenging productions.’ Which is why she has made the visionary gesture to include a gift to MTC in her Will.

Diane and her husband’s passion for theatre has been passed on to their two sons who both remain actively involved in the arts. The love this family shares for the performing arts is now celebrated in row G of The Sumner by a seat dedicated to the Tweeddale family.

MTC would like to thank Diane, the Tweeddale family, and all of our seat donors for their generous support.

Why not become a part of the MTC story by dedicating your own seat in honour, or in memory, of a loved one, or to celebrate your love of theatre?

For more information about naming a seat or including a gift in your Will to MTC visit mtc.com.au/support or call Chris Walters, Annual Giving Manager on 03 8688 0938.

Corporate Partnerships

A glimpse behind the curtain ANZ joins MTC as the exclusive Major Partner of ANZ Forum Nights.

Literary Director Chris Mead, Paul Blackwell, Alison Whyte and Colin Friels at the Faith Healer Forum Night (2017)

2019 ANZ Forum Nights ANZ Forum Nights occur directly after the first two Monday night performances for most productions and are available to ticket holders attending these performances. In 2019 there will be 20 ANZ Forum Nights held across the season.

The Lady in the Van Monday 11 February Arbus & West Monday 4 March Monday 11 March A View from the Bridge Monday 18 March Monday 25 March

When the curtain closes and the house lights come up at the end of a show, most of us can think of a question or two we’d like to ask the actors and creatives. ‘How did you get into that wig so quickly?’ or ‘How did you get the set to flip upside down?’

In 2019, ANZ Forum Nights will connect MTC’s theatrelovers to the creators and makers of the work they see on stage. Actors, directors, dramaturgs and designers answer all your burning questions in a facilitated question and answer forum.

Ahead of the first ANZ Forum Night in 2019, we asked two of our regular forum facilitators what they love most about participating in these conversations.

MTC Associate Director Dean Bryant, who will direct The Lady in the Van and Kiss of the Spider Woman in 2019, embraces the opportunity to interact with MTC audiences.

‘The ANZ Forum Nights are a brilliant chance for the cast and creatives to talk about the show we’ve built after all the stress of getting it onstage has blown over,’ he said.

‘You rarely get an official opportunity to share with an audience (or each other) what you achieved, what you learned and what you struggled with making a production so these nights are invaluable. It’s a really warm connection between the audience and cast – going from the magic of the world you’ve just experienced – to talking about creating that world on the same stage.’

MTC’s Literary Director Chris Mead says every Forum Night is unique, and in its own way, remarkable.

‘Something extraordinary takes place at the meeting point of our audience’s inquiring minds, the richness of the plays on offer, and our artists’ and artisans’ ability to expand the space of the possible.’

‘There is nothing more thrilling than to meet an engaged audience at the height of their curiosity about a new show, that is, just after it has concluded. Audiences remain keen to get a sense of the work’s ambition – why it was commissioned and programmed – to discover some remarkable details in its construction, to hear silly stories and to discuss honestly what goes into the making of a new play.’

With the support of ANZ through a new major partnership, there will be 20 ANZ Forum Nights held across the 2019 season.

ANZ Australia Group Executive Fred Ohlsson says, ‘Supporting theatre in Australia enables us to share inspiring and unique experiences with our customers and the broader community. We are pleased to start our association with MTC, which is an important part of ANZ’s commitment to helping communities thrive.’

To learn more about the ANZ Forum Nights visit mtc.com.au/anz-forum-nights

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Così Monday 6 May Monday 13 May Heisenberg Monday 27 May Monday 3 June Storm Boy Monday 24 June Monday 1 July Shakespeare in Love Monday 22 July Golden Shield Monday 19 August Monday 26 August Black is the New White Monday 7 October Monday 14 October Photograph 51 Monday 11 November Monday 18 November Kiss of the Spider Woman Monday 25 November Monday 2 December

Special offers Opening Night Ticket Offer

Film Offer

Arts Centre Melbourne presents a Little Ones Theatre Production Merciless Gods

At Eternity’s Gate

Dan Giovannoni’s Green Room Award-winning adaptation of Christos Tsiolkas’ Merciless Gods is a brutal and tender examination of queer immigrant experiences in Australia.

A collection of theatrical vignettes, from migrant camps to gay saunas, pill-popping hipster dinner parties to porn sets, prison cells to the streets of the Cross; Merciless Gods captures haunting slices of our psyche and unveils the hidden faces of ancient deities on mortal ground. Intercutting between families, friends and accidental encounters, this is humanity laid-bare – virtuous and vengeful, domestic and divine.

Julian Schnabel’s ravishingly tactile and luminous new film takes a fresh look at the last days of Vincent van Gogh, and in the process revivifies our sense of the artist as a living, feeling human being. Schnabel; his co-writers Jean-Claude Carrière and Louise Kugelberg, also the film’s editor; and cinematographer Benoît Delhomme strip everything down to essentials, fusing the sensual, the emotional, and the spiritual. The pulsing heart of At Eternity’s Gate is Willem Dafoe’s shattering performance: his Vincent is at once lucid, mad, brilliant, helpless, defeated, and, finally, triumphant. In cinemas 20 December.

For your chance to win a double pass to the Opening Night performance on Wednesday 6 February 2019, 6:30pm at Arts Centre Melbourne, email offers@mtc.com.au with MERCILESS GODS in the subject line. First in, best dressed.

For your chance to win an in-season double pass, email offers@mtc.com.au with AT ETERNITY’S GATE in the subject line. First in, best dressed.

DVD Offer

Partner Offer

White Dragon

Melbourne Theatre Company Partnership Celebration with Scotchmans Hill

University lecturer Jonah Mulray’s world is turned upside down when his wife Megan, a high-ranking international development worker, is killed in a car accident on a mountain road outside Hong Kong. Overcoming his fear of flying, Jonah jets out from London to identify the body. Alone in an unsettling alien environment, given the run-around by overworked and underpaid local cops and haphazardly assisted by the British Consulate, Jonah discovers that the accident is not all it seems. Megan had been living a dangerous double life that left her exposed to sinister business interests.

A special offer for our friends at MTC. To celebrate Scotchmans Hill as a valued Southbank Theatre Partner, they are offering a celebratory discount on their delicious 2014 Swan Bay Chardonnay and 2015 Swan Bay Sauvignon Blanc. This is your chance to enjoy a case of either wine for the special price of $120, down from the retail $228 per case.

For your chance to win this thrilling series on DVD, email offers@mtc.com.au with WHITE DRAGON in the subject line. First in, best dressed.

Offer closes at the end of March 2019. Order now at scotchmans.com.au/MTC