EDITION 1 – 2016 Tim Finn Send in the gowns
Clare Watson Following directions
Ninna Tersman The view from the north
Leticia Cáceres Mum’s the word
A fresh new look Inside information
Welcome to the first edition of our new-look Scenes. This is the first of three editions you’ll be receiving throughout Season 2016, each with the information and sections you have enjoyed in the past, and now in a larger format. We don’t undertake changes to our communications, such as Scenes, without much thought and consideration. Even as little as five years ago, Scenes was still the main way we communicated with our Subscribers, told you the latest news and updates, advised you of changes, and gave you a peek backstage into the shows you were about to see. But the opportunities and demand for digital communications have exploded since then.
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Like most companies, MTC has embraced these new ways of speaking to you, because we know you now expect and, in many cases, prefer to receive news from us via your phones and tablets. The big challenge for us, however, has been to understand what content is best sent out digitally, what we should keep in print, and how we balance the two. By moving to three editions of Scenes, we now have more scope to write and create up-to-the-minute content for our digital platforms (such as articles for the backstage section of our website: mtc.com.au/backstage), while still giving you something to hold in your hands and read throughout the year. To give you an idea of the immense changes over the past five years: in 2010 we sent out ninety different email messages to various segments of our audience; already this year the figure has doubled. We now send out monthly newsletters and promotions for each show, pre-show reminder emails, and post-show links to articles, videos and audio. In all these innovations, our aim has been to enrich and deepen your theatregoing experience.
Video and audio is a particularly exciting and expanding area. We’ve created twenty-three videos this year that have ranged from a three-part documentary-style series for What Rhymes with Cars and Girls, to short and snazzy trailers, such as our promotion for North by Northwest, to behind-the-scenes interviews, such as our current video series for The Last Man Standing. All up, these have been viewed over 70,000 times and counting. And we are trying to keep up with growing popularity of podcasts with our series of extended interviews with playwrights and directors. We’ll have plenty more videos, podcasts and articles online to share in 2016. At the heart of the creation of all this content however, is our desire to give you the information you want in the format you want to receive it. Last year we engaged a research company to find out how you wanted to hear from us. And it turns out you want to hear from us a lot and through many different channels. Some Subscribers only want digital communications from us, some only print communications – and three quarters wanted to hear from us through both. So with this in mind, if you haven’t already, please make sure we have your email address on our email list. That way you’ll receive all our news immediately and firsthand. And for those who want to moderate your relationship with MTC, you can go online and opt in or out to our various communications to suit your preference. And as the digital world keeps evolving, we will trial new ways of communicating information to you. We are constantly evaluating what we do and how we do it, and making improvements. If you have any responses and suggestions, please let us know. Finally, enjoy MTC’s 2016 Season. We are very excited about sharing it with you. Vanessa Rowsthorn Marketing and Communications Director
Cover: Christen O’Leary in Ladies in Black 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 Barrett COVER IMAGE John Laurie INTERNAL PHOTGRAPHY Stephen Henry, Jeff Busby, John Laurie, Garth Oriander, Pam Kleemann, Emma Barrett, Kristoffer Paulsen, Heath Warwick, Hadyn Cattach. Melbourne Theatre Company is a department of the University of Melbourne
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Send in the gowns Songwriter Tim Finn finds life and music among the dress racks in a 1959 department store
Carita Farrer Spencer, Deidre Rubenstein, Kate Cole and Lucy Maunder in Ladies in Black
Tim Finn during Ladies in Black rehearsals
‘[St John’s] style I found very seductive. There’s no parody or satire. It’s a very tender, humanistic book, but sharp, seen through the lens of extreme intelligence.’
Ladies in Black, Book by Carolyn Burns, Music and Lyrics by Tim Finn, runs at the Sumner from 16 January. View rehersal and production images online at mtc.com.au/LadiesinBlack.
A few years ago, the songwriter and former Split Enz front man Tim Finn, found himself at Brisbane Airport needing a good read. He was on his way to Bougainville to research music for a film, Mr Pip, and he knew that the nights up there were going to get pretty long, so he picked up The Women in Black, the 1993 novel by Madeleine St John that had just been reissued in paperback. He’d never heard of it, but it sounded interesting, and on the cover were blurbs of recommendation from Barry Humphries, Clive James, Kaz Cooke and Helen Garner. Yes, he thought, that’ll do.
Black for this show, was the first novel by Madeleine St John, who had gone to Sydney University in the late fifties, taking an uncertain spot on the periphery of the literary and theatre circles in which Clive James, Robert Hughes, John Bell, Bruce Beresford and Germaine Greer held the centre of attention. Most of her old uni friends lost track of her until she re-emerged in London thirty years later as a writer of wryly comic novels of modern manners. Her third novel, The Essence of the Thing, was nominated for the Booker Prize in 1997.
‘So in the very intense tropical heat, I would retire to my room at night and read about a 1959 department store in Sydney and the young girl coming to work there,’ Finn says. ‘It was a real escape for me.’
Set in a Sydney department store (clearly based on David Jones), The Women in Black recalls another time and other morals: the Sydney of the late-fifties, provincial and smallminded. The group of shop assistants St John follows over a long, hot Christmas and New Year sales season endure the full range of sexist indignities of the period with good cheer, and everything more or less works out for the best in the end. Most readers would be charmed by the novel, though it’s not clear why it might inspire an old rock ’n’ roller like Tim Finn to set it to music.
But the casual reading soon found a purpose. ‘One character called Rudi is a Hungarian refugee and at one stage he says, “I was a bureaucrat in Budapest”, and that sounded like the title of a song to me. Light bulbs went off. I started exploring the text and kept finding opportunities for songs. I got in touch with [director] Simon [Phillips] and [writer] Carolyn [Burns] soon thereafter. I already had some songs written, but I was just feeling them out, gauging their interest. But they loved the book and said they’d love to be involved. So the project got huge momentum very early.’ The Queensland Performing Arts Trust decided to support a set of developmental workshops and readings, and Queensland Theatre Company backed a production. The show opened in Brisbane in mid-November and arrives at the Sumner in January. Finn is keen to stress that Ladies in Black is a proper musical, differing from his previous show for MTC, Poor Boy, written by Matt Cameron for our 2009 season, in which Cameron’s story was wrapped around a selection of songs from Finn’s back catalogue. ‘With Poor Boy we were constantly saying what it wasn’t. You know, it wasn’t a musical, it was “a play with songs”. So, it’s great to be able to say, “Yes, this is a musical.” Rather than being abstract soliloquies commenting on the narrative, the songs are integrated and pulling their weight. They are telling the story or filling out the characters, as in a true musical.’ The Women in Black, which has been retitled Ladies in
‘I know what you’re saying,’ Finn concedes, ‘Why a show about frocks and department stores? Yes, but I found it very easy to relate to the characters and parts of their lives had echoes in my own. Being a young person who dreams of being a poet, for example, as [the central character] Lisa does, and in a totally unsupported environment, is not too different from dreaming of becoming a musician and songwriter when you grow up in Te Awamutu, [in New Zealand] and no one in your family has ever been a musician and, in fact, you’d never even met a musician. Her far-fetched ambition was mine. And the character of Fay who is twenty-nine and has had her heart broken three times, but still believes in love. Well, that’s my romantic narrative – I suppose it’s almost everyone’s: fraught and complex. I’m just saying, it never required a great leap of imagination to understand these characters. ‘So there are many ways in which the book resonated for me. But above all it was Madeleine St John’s brilliant mind. She looks back with such wit and intelligence, and her style I found very seductive. There’s no parody or satire. It’s a very tender, humanistic book, but sharp, seen through the lens of extreme intelligence. It’s a very easy book to fall in love with.’
Prompt Corner
What’s in store? Ian Bliss, Matt Day and Justin Stewart Cotta in North by Northwest (2015)
CASTING NEWS Although the upcoming production of Ladies in Black originates at the Queensland Theatre Company, MTC audiences will find a quite a few familiar faces among the cast. A stalwart in many of MTC’s musicals from A Little Night Music (1997) to The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee (2006), Christen O’Leary plays Magda, the exotically cosmopolitan mistress of the gowns. Playing other sales assistants and customers from Madeleine St John’s novel set in a Sydney department store in 1959, will be Deidre Rubenstein (last seen in North by Northwest), Greg Stone (The Weir), Kate Cole (His Girl Friday), and Carita Farrer Spencer (Cyrano de Bergerac). The rest of the cast, most Brisbane-based, will be performing for the first time for MTC: Sarah Morrison (pictured above left), Lucy Maunder, Naomi Price, Andrew Broadbent, Bobby Fox, and Kathryn McIntyre. The show recently opened at the Queensland Performing Arts Centre and, from all accounts, Brisbane audiences left at the end happily humming the tunes. Lungs, by British writer Duncan Macmillan, has two surefire performers in Kate Atkinson (The Waiting Room, centre left) and Bert LaBonté (Birdland), playing the unnamed couple having parenthood jitters. Another pair of drawcards is director Clare Watson, following up her success in What Rhymes with Cars and Girls, working again with designer Andrew Bailey.
The runaway mum in Deborah Bruce’s hilarious new social comedy, The Distance, will be played by Susan Prior (centre right) who makes her MTC debut, but there’s a good chance you’ll know her from the television series Puberty Blues and films such as Animal Kingdom. The remaining cast will be announced early in the New Year. Auditions are currently underway for the eponymous heroine in Miss Julie, but whoever is cast will know that she’ll be well-matched, since the excellent Mark Leonard Winter (right), who gave a stunning performance recently in Birdland, will be playing Jean. This revival of August Strindberg’s classic is directed by theatre wunderkind Kip Williams, making his MTC directorial debut.
SUBSCRIBER TICKET DISCOUNTS If you have already subscribed to our 2016 Season but are having second thoughts about plays you left off your subscription, you can still see the shows and save money. Subscribers are entitled to discounts on tickets for all our mainstage shows. It is just a matter of quoting your subscription number and you’ll receive the best price available. You can also buy discounted tickets for your friends and family for that perfect gift or treat. Tickets are released to the general public in two stages. Those for Ladies in Black, Lungs and The Distance are on sale now – just in time for Christmas. The rest of the season goes on sale on Tuesday 8 March. You can book online at mtc.com.au or through the Southbank Theatre Box Office on (03) 8688 0800.
ROGER THORNHILL RUNS AGAIN The absolute unmissable show of the past season, Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest was, unfortunately, missed by many. As the show quickly sold out its season at the Playhouse cries could be heard all over Melbourne: ‘If only I included it in my subscription!’ Well, those poor souls can be comforted by knowing that this wildly inventive adaptation from director Simon Phillips and writer Carolyn Burns returns to the State Theatre at the end of January for a limited run of sixteen performances. If you are still curious about how they managed to stage the famous crop-duster scene or the precarious scramble over Mt Rushmore, you are advised to get your tickets quickly before they sell out again. North by Northwest, 29 January to 10 February 2016 at the Arts Centre, Melbourne, State Theatre. Tickets from the Arts Centre Box Office: artscentremelbourne.com.au or by phone on 1300 182 183 FREE CAST AND ARTIST Q&A SESSIONS Why not prime your mind and enrich your theatregoing by attending our Cast and Artist Q&As? Led by the director, with the actors and members of the creative team contributing, these briefings on the forthcoming production are part information session and part theatrical teaser, giving you some background to the play and the particular approach of the production. Come along and don’t be afraid to ask questions. Held on the Monday evening before the first preview, they are free to everyone interested in the process of theatre. There is no need to book. Note that there is no Q&A for Ladies in Black. The next Free Cast and Artist Q&A nights are: Lungs Fairfax Studio, Monday 1 February, 6pm The Distance The Sumner, Monday 29 February, 6pm Miss Julie The Sumner, Monday 11 April, 6pm
Following directions There’s always a little wiggle room in every straitjacket, says director Clare Watson ‘Working out the parameters is one of the exciting things about this play ... I think what we will be doing a lot of in rehearsals is building up the precise scene and then paring it back.’
Clare Watson
In an extended stage direction prefacing his hit play Lungs, British writer Duncan Macmillan lays down some strict ground rules: there are to be no sets, no props, no scene changes, no costume changes and no miming. That is, to perform his play that covers the ups and downs of a modern couple’s relationship over a number of years, he seems to be insisting on just two actors on a bare stage. And to make things just a bit more difficult for the actors and director (and perhaps even the audience), he hasn’t deigned to indicate scene breaks in his script, so all the action is laid out over seventy-odd pages as one long dialogue. Now, Houdini, get out of that one. ‘It’s a big, big challenge,’ says the director Clare Watson, who candidly admits she’s usually no stickler for stage directions. ‘I never ignore them entirely, but I don’t take them literally. They’re a guide, always open to reinterpretation.’ However, Watson, currently the Artistic Director of St Martins Youth Theatre and who recently directed What Rhymes with Cars and Girls for MTC, wants to play this particular game of theatrical austerity by the rules – well, up to a point. She’s looking for places where the rules might have some flex in them. ‘Working out the parameters is one of the exciting things about this play,’ she says. ‘We are not allowed props – fine, but [Macmillan] also says, no miming. Yet, for example, if the lines talk about the couple hugging, can they hug? If they mention dancing, can they dance? They’re going to be fun decisions to make in the rehearsal room. I think there’s a spectrum debate on all of those things. And I think what we will be doing a lot of in rehearsals is building up the precise scene and then paring it back and paring it back to where it functions best for the storytelling.’
Kate Atkinson and Bert LaBonté in Lungs
Lungs has some stylistic similarities to Constellations, Nick Payne’s play about multiple universes and alternate realities that MTC produced a couple of seasons ago. By playing through the scene breaks, it challenged the audience’s skills in reading what was happening. Macmillan similarly insists his story be laid out in whole cloth without showing any seams. This is another rule Watson isn’t keen to break. ‘The scene changes won’t be [physically] evident to the audience,’ she says. ‘There may be very subtle shifts that might occur in lighting, but they’ll be extremely subtle. Because the fun for the audience in this play is keeping up with the reality of the characters at all times. The characters talk so quickly and think so quickly, that part of the investment for an audience will be to keep on top of the evolving story. The rule of no scene changes is there to intensify the experience for the audience. One of the great things you can do in theatre, just with the power of words, is borrow the imagination of the audience to create all these extraordinary time sculptures. You can’t do that in film in the same way.’
Without giving away too much detail, Watson explains: ‘Essentially, we’ll be doing what the author wants: have a neutral playing space with the actors [the extremely capable pairing, Kate Atkinson and Bert LaBonté] indicating the space and time changes through their performances. But Andrew and I thought about what this play was saying about humans and how they treat each other in their domestic environments and refuse to see how destructive they are. We talked about gallery installations and art pieces that spoke about destructiveness, eventually landing on a design concept that references a number of art pieces, though the key one is by the Belgian installation artist Zeger Reyers. And our artwork can sit on the stage as an installation and be part of the aesthetic of the show without the actors having to interact with it. ‘It was an interesting, problem-solving activity, where we created something dynamic that made a statement, but without denying the author’s intention for the work. So I am hoping that we have reached a – cheeky – happy medium.’
For Watson, the constraint that pinches tightest is the one against scenery, especially since MTC audiences have high expectations of our design and workshop departments. Some might feel cheated if they were presented with just a black box or a plain square of carpet. ‘I certainly don’t want to disappoint that expectation,’ Watson says. ‘Yet there’s a loyalty to the writer’s intention, too.’ So she and the designer Andrew Bailey, who worked with her on What Rhymes with Cars and Girls and Robert Reid’s Lawler Studio play, On the Production of Monsters, have found a design that contrives to ‘have it both ways – that is, to satisfy the audience’s desire for design elements, but not make them in any way obtrusive.’
Lungs by Duncan Macmillan runs at the Fairfax Studio from 5 February to 19 March. Keep up to date with backstage stories and news from the rehersal room at mtc.com.au/Backstage.
The view from the north
Dramaturg and playwright Ninna Tersman delivers the Swedish perspective on Strindberg ‘Strindberg was very disposed to look upon things, such as the inequalities of the society he lived in, from a moral point of view. That is still a central theme ...’
Miss Julie opens in April
Ninna Tersman
For our forthcoming production of August Strindberg’s Miss Julie, director Kip Williams will be working from a new translation by Swedish playwright and dramaturg Ninna Tersman. Earlier this year, Tersman was in Australia and spent some time at MTC consulting with our Education Department on the translation of Jonas Hassen Khemiri’s I Call My Brothers. That relationship led to this commission, and we thought it would be a good opportunity to get a Swedish perspective on Strindberg, who many consider to be Sweden’s greatest playwright. What is Strindberg’s reputation in Swedish theatre today? NT: It depends on which generation you belong to, I’d say. There are still directors and theatre workers who regard Strindberg as the playwright, and many theatres regularly stage his main works. Others, however, and especially younger generations, tend to see Strindberg as a misogynist, and tend to think that his authorship has unfairly overshadowed the works of other interesting playwrights, including female ones. Strindberg has obviously had a profound influence on Swedish theatre, as is manifested for example in the work of Ingmar Bergman and the contemporary playwright Lars Norén. Bergman and Norén have both focused on the bourgeois family and its conflicts and discontents, and the inspiration from Strindberg is evident. The naturalistic style of acting is still very prevalent, compared to many other countries, partly due to Strindberg’s strong aesthetic commitments. Are his plays frequently revived? NT: All major theatres and even some fringe theatres regularly have Strindberg in their repertoires. Surprisingly few of his plays are completely ignored, although some of his historical dramas are very rarely staged. Do you think they have dated at all? NT: In my opinion, some certainly have. An outsider would probably feel that he is treated with too much respect. There has been more latitude in recent years, however, and we have seen some interesting innovative interpretations.
As a playwright yourself, is Strindberg still a writer that contemporary writers admire or aspire to imitate? NT: The excellent earlier work is obviously always an inspiration. For example, Strindberg was motivated by a strong desire to challenge things he saw to be wrong. Still, it is important to realise that Strindberg’s plays emerged in a particular cultural context, and that they cannot be meaningfully imitated to suit the present and very different context. Is there something in his writing or outlook on life that you would regard as specifically Swedish, something that might be difficult to translate or express for an Australian audience? NT: Ha ha, the bleakness perhaps! Seriously, Strindberg was very disposed to look upon things, such as the inequalities of the society he lived in, from a moral point of view. That is still a central theme in Sweden, but I don’t think this signals a major difference between Sweden and Australia although the sensibilities may manifest themselves a bit differently. Does he still feel like a modern writer to you? NT: Both yes and no. In comparison to Strindberg, many of his contemporaries seem hopelessly dated. Even Ibsen strikes me as more firmly tied to a format that now appears old fashioned, although he had more modern views about women’s rights. Strindberg was more flexible when it came to form, and his eye for the human psychology seems to me as valid today as it was during his lifetime.
In working on the translation, have you discovered anything about Strindberg’s art that you didn’t know before, or that there was something that surprised you? Like most theatre practitioners in Sweden, I had read Strindberg’s Miss Julie several times during different stages of my life, and I had seen the play performed quite a few times too. I felt quite familiar with the work when I started with the translation. What struck me this time, though, was how extremely modern Strindberg was, in his way of constructing his characters. The play was authored in 1888, and although it is located in a cultural context that has undergone major changes, the subtle knowledge of the human psyche that the text displays is clearly just as relevant today. It made me think of Dostoyevsky, whose novels I also find, in this respect, remarkably modern. One undoubted theme of the play is how differences between the classes and the sexes seem to be breaking down. If Strindberg feared such changes in 1888, how do you think these themes play with contemporary Swedish audiences in these days of greater political equality between the sexes and classes? NT: Strindberg had in fact strong egalitarian impulses. He would surely have been excited about many of the changes in that direction during the nineteenth century. Gender equality, however, was a more tricky issue for him.
Miss Julie is probably his most famous and most frequently revived play on English-language stages. Is it as frequently revived in Sweden? NT: It is not the play that is most commonly staged in Sweden today, perhaps because there have been so many iconic performances in the relatively recent past. I’d say that A Dream Play and The Ghost Sonata are more popular at the moment. Directors nowadays often try to do it in novel and nontraditional ways, for example by seeking a less naturalistic style of acting than the one Strindberg was attracted to, or by confronting the themes with more modern ideas about sexuality and gender and also politics.
Miss Julie by August Strindberg runs at the Sumner from 16 April to 21 May. Learn more about this production at mtc.com.au/MissJulie.
Mum’s the word
In The Distance, director Leticia Cáceres explores society’s last taboo
‘Everyone is sold this ideal of motherhood, that it’s easy and natural, that you just need the biological equipment, but it’s hard work.’
The Distance opens in March
Leticia Cáceres
By definition, a ‘motherhood statement’ is a statement we can all agree on. That’s why politicians drop them into their stump speeches. Who could possibly have anything ill to say against motherhood? Well, playwright Deborah Bruce does. Or at least, Bea, her central character in her new play The Distance, will give you a fiery argument if you suggest that motherhood is a sacred trust and a woman’s destiny. Not for all women it isn’t, and not for her. As the play opens, Bea has landed among her old friends in England having left her husband and two small children in Melbourne. In this incisive social comedy, sympathy for the break-up of her marriage lasts only as long as everyone thinks that she will be applying for custody. But Bea doesn’t want custody. The kids are better off with their father. She’s had it with being a mother. She hates it, isn’t any good at it, and so why should she bother? ‘Everyone is sold this ideal of motherhood, that it’s easy and natural, that you just need the biological equipment,’ says MTC Associate Director Leticia Cáceres. ‘But it’s hard work. And it seems therefore profoundly unfair that women should be judged so harshly for their mothering skills, especially when men are judged far less on their abilities as a parent.’ In preparation for this interview, Cáceres suggested I read the chapter on the role of mother in Simone de Beauvoir’s 1949 feminist classic The Second Sex. Following her general thesis that ‘one is not born but becomes a woman’, Beauvoir argues forcefully that there is ‘nothing natural in maternal love’. She creates a catalogue of misery and failure as she describes modern women trying to live out the impossible maternal ideal. ‘[The Second Sex] completely smashed our traditional notions of what the feminine is and should be,’ says
Cáceres. ‘Beauvoir’s ideas are still very confronting, even though more and more women are now choosing not to have children and there are different forms of families taking shape these days. But still we believe that the fact that we have been given the biology to reproduce means, somehow, we are predestined to be, unquestionably, mothers.’ Beauvoir was one of the first to argue that motherhood cannot be taken on without loss: economic loss, loss of career and purpose in life, a loss of self-respect, a narrowing of horizons. Over this loss comes bitterness and dissatisfaction, which Beauvoir believed mothers will inevitably affect their relationships with their children. ‘She gives a great analysis of why women cannot have these idyllic relationships with their children and become perfect mothers,’ says Cáceres. ‘Even if she devotes too much attention to psychoanalysis, ultimately Beauvoir recognises that it comes down to economics. That’s the real issue of women’s liberation: that circumstance means everything and economics becomes everything. So if a woman cannot be supported in the real world by things such as child care, then dissatisfaction will follow.’
[Ibsen’s] A Doll’s House is the famous starting point for this work, except [The Distance] deals with the aftermath of leaving and with a comic touch. And I also thought that it has a really great and precise representation of female relationships and great roles for women.’ Our conversation moved from Beauvoir to the folk singer Ani DiFranco, who has never minded saying the unspoken thing. In interviews, she has admitted that, after having her children, she realised she didn’t enjoy having a boss. ‘That’s exactly what you feel like when you have children,’ Cáceres says, ‘that you are subservient to them. And the other thing she says is that she thought she made a much better “husband” than “wife” in their relationship. She wanted to be the one who said, “Okay, I’m going on tour now and I’ll leave the child with you.” I think it’s interesting that she very deliberately called herself “the husband”, the role that men typically play, which they don’t even have to think about when they become parents. Children come along and life changes much less for the man, and Bea, I think, feels this strongly.’
Like the best comedies, The Distance trades on our current anxieties. We do seem overly preoccupied nowadays about what constitutes good parenting. We hold in our minds these high, unstated benchmarks of performance and probably most parents feel at times that they cannot match social expectations. ‘It’s such a great, lively social comedy,’ says Cáceres. ‘It deals with one of the last taboos left for women: what happens when a woman decides to abandon her children. That’s something drama has dealt with before. Obviously,
The Distance by Deborah Bruce runs at the Sumner from 5 March to 9 April. See more videos and podcasts about MTC productions at mtc.com.au/Backstage.
No concessions MTC Education
Susie Dee
Peddling opens in April
‘I don’t want to be patted on the head. I don’t want to see didactic sort of crap. Nor does a sixteen or seventeen year-old ... [They] want to be entertained, which often involves being taken out of their comfort zone.’
Peddling by Harry Melling runs at the Lawler from 21 April to 6 May. Learn more about MTC’s award-winning Education Program at mtc.com.au/Education.
Susie Dee has had a long, varied career on Melbourne’s independent theatre scene and has never been busier. When I speak to her, she can list six shows, in various stages of development, that she’s currently working on either as an actor, director or dramaturg. One of those projects is Peddling, a one-person show by British writer Harry Melling, which she will direct for a season at the Lawler in April, with a regional tour to follow. Even though Peddling is being produced by MTC’s Education Department, she’s adamant that she’s doesn’t want to educate any one.
and fifteen year-olds. I want the young people who come to see Peddling to think, “This is good, I might keep going to theatre”; or “Geez, I never thought about those issues”; or “I’d love to do this sort of art, explore my creativity in theatre’. A response that’s personal and immediate, that’s all I want.” Peddling is the first play by Harry Melling, who spent a great deal of his childhood playing Dudley Dursley in the Harry Potter films. It concerns a young man, who goes from door-to-door selling household items for charity. But there is no charity; it’s just a scam and he’s being exploited. You can see why the play has made the VCE list for next year: it explores serious social justice issues and has a young, sympathetic protagonist. But Susie Dee insists that the issues are for later class discussion, not for her to re-enforce in the production.
‘Honestly, I don’t think young people want to go the theatre to be taught something. They want from the theatre what I want from it – hopefully, to be entertained, but entertainment contains being challenged, being presented with ideas. I go to the theatre to be stimulated, to be shocked sometimes, to be surprised. That’s entertainment. ‘Yes, this play ticks the boxes for youth theatre, for I don’t want to be patted on the head. I don’t want to see education. I think [the VCE panel] have chosen this play didactic sort of crap. Nor does a sixteen or seventeen yearbecause it’s about a young man struggling to find his place old. Like me, seventeen year-olds want to be entertained, in the world. That’s relevant to a young audience – despite which often involves being taken out of their comfort zone. being very English and set in London. And it’s also written ‘I think we bore [young people] too much, absolutely we in a lively, rap-inspired language that’s very accessible to do. Live theatre should always be a little dangerous; it a youth audience. But, as a director, I’m not about to treat should be surprising. It’s not TV where you sit back with it any differently. I’m not going to simplify the play, or find a cup of tea and have the choice to switch it on or off, or some sort of message to underline. chat through it. Theatre has to hold the attention, it has to ‘My initial thoughts are that we have to keep this work quite be immediate; it has to grab you and take you somewhere. minimalist, without flashy sets and lighting. This piece I love the idea of presenting a really electric, surprising needs to be pretty raw. The audience has to watch one hour-and-a-half to a young person that gets them excited person for maybe an hour and twenty minutes. That’s a about things. I want them to be excited by what they see, big call for me as a director and this new work. So it has to get that buzz. to have a pace and nuance to keep young people on the ‘For a few years, I saw a lot of theatre for young people edge of their seats. You know, we often talk about young and there was a lot of work that was very patronising, that people’s attention spans these days, when everything talked down to kids. We always underestimate young comes in these three minute bursts of YouTube, but, people’s intelligence and what they understand. I think having worked with young people for a long time and just it’s important to create good theatre that speaks in a way recently at the Malthouse, they have enormous reserves of so that a young person can rise to it. It’s important to me attention. You just have to hold them.’ not to compromise in a piece for young people. Sure, you know your audience is different to you and me and other adults. They have a different experience, a different view of things, a whole different culture. But I will always try to treat any piece of theatre I’m involved with in the same way. I want it to work on ninety year-olds, forty year-olds
Corporate Partnerships
Rising to the heights
We celebrate and thank our Corporate Partners, including Audi Australia, Qatar Airways, Goldman Sachs and InterContinental Melbourne The Rialto. For more details please contact Dean Hampel, Corporate Partnerships Manager on 03 8688 0952 or d.hampel@mtc.com.au
Central Equity was MTC’s Production Partner for The Weir
MTC are privileged to receive support from many corporate partners who help us to create powerful theatre yearround. 2016 will mark the fifth year of our partnership with Central Equity. Over this time, Central Equity has consistently supported MTC to present quality theatre works to Melbourne. Most recently, they partnered with MTC’s hit show The Weir. Central Equity has been creating homes in the Melbourne Arts Precinct for over twenty-five years. They are an award-winning property developer and property manager, creating contemporary inner-city apartments in the heart of Southbank. Central Equity’s latest project is Southbank Central Apartments. This stunning, forty-eight level, glass tower rises high above the world’s most liveable city. Immersed
Nadine Garner looking at research photos for The Weir
in Southbank’s riverside lifestyle with cosmopolitan restaurants, cafés, theatres and galleries, Southbank Central is just a short walk from MTC and other iconic attractions including Arts Centre Melbourne, National Gallery of Victoria, Federation Square and the Royal Botanic Gardens. Construction is now underway on a range of one, two and three-bedroom apartments featuring spacious designs enhanced by floor to ceiling windows. The Corporate Partnerships team is pleased to announce that MTC will continue to partner with Central Equity for another two years. MTC would like to thank all of our partners for their ongoing support in creating the finest theatre imaginable.
Philanthropy
Fellowship brings the world’s best to MTC Please consider donating to MTC and transforming lives through theatre. For more details please contact Patrick Rundle Philanthropy Manager on 03 8688 0959 or p.rundle@mtc.com.au
This December, Olivier Award-winning writer Simon Stephens will make the journey from London to teach playwriting, deliver a free public lecture and spend four weeks working closely with MTC Literary Director Chris Mead as part of the University of Melbourne’s Macgeorge Fellowship. MTC audiences know Stephens as the author of Birdland, his thrilling exposé of rock-star fame that we staged in June. One of Britain’s most important contemporary playwrights, Stephens’s work also includes the acclaimed plays Punk Rock and Harper Regan and his stage adaptation of Mark Haddon’s novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, which received the Best New Play Award at the 2013 Olivier Awards and is still captivating audiences in the West End and on Broadway. MTC’s Literary Director Chris Mead describes Stephens as ‘one of contemporary theatre’s deepest thinkers and most restless playwrights. His work is sinuous, engaged and startling, offering a creative team every chance to build a theatre event of power and poignancy. Simon is also a brilliant teacher – inspiring, funny and generous. We can’t wait to welcome him to Melbourne.’
Simon Stephens
The prestigious Macgeorge Fellowship was created from the bequest of Norman and May Ina Macgeorge, who donated their property in Ivanhoe to the University of Melbourne for the benefit of creative people ‘with special emphasis on those studying fine arts, literature and the history of philosophy’. Macgeorge Fellows are absorbed into the University’s rich artistic community for up to eight weeks and deliver a series of public lectures, departmental seminars and postgraduate workshops.
What the fellowship means for MTC is the opportunity to bring internationally renowned playwrights, directors and theatre artists into our fold. This helps increase the profile of MTC abroad and also allows us to connect first hand to contemporary debates, trends and fault lines. Stephens will be our second Macgeorge Fellow, following British playwright and screenwriter Joe Penhall (Blue/Orange and Dumb Show), who spent April this year working closely with MTC’s artistic team and commissioned playwrights, delivering a number of public lectures and university seminars. And later in 2016, we will welcome eminent young director Jamie Lloyd to MTC for a short period as honorary Directorin-Residence. Jamie has carved out a name for himself as Artistic Director of the Trafalgar Transformed program at the Trafalgar Studios in London, especially with his production of Richard III, The Homecoming and Macbeth. In the future, the Macgeorge Fellowship will enable MTC to secure residencies with some of the world’s finest theatre practitioners, which will also provide our Subscribers with opportunities to engage with these remarkable individuals by means of free public lectures and Q&A-style events. MTC is truly grateful for the opportunity granted to us through the Macgeorge Fellowship and we are looking forward to hosting Simon and Jamie in the coming months.
‘In the future, the Macgeorge Fellowship will enable MTC to secure residencies with some of the world’s finest theatre practitioners.’
Mark Leonard Winter in Simon Stephens’s Birdland, 2015
Stuck for gift ideas? Give the gift of great entertainment this festive season. For gift vouchers, tickets & more visit mtc.com.au/giftsideas
MTC is a department of the University of Melbourne
MTC Memberships
Treat yourself – or someone special – to an MTC membership in 2016. No matter how many plays you’re seeing in the 2016 season, be treated like a VIP all year round by becoming an MTC Member.
Qatar Airways MTC Lounge
To find out more about MTC Members visit mtc.com.au/members or contact Memberships Co-ordinator Syrie Payne on 03 8688 0958.
Treating themselves: Paolo LoLicato, Mark Simpson and Kat Band
AT SOUTHBANK THEATRE
AROUND TOWN
MTC Members receive exclusive access to the Qatar Airways MTC Lounge – the perfect place to relax pre-show and at interval. Enjoy a range of complimentary drinks and snacks, including Redbank wines, beers from Little Creatures and Genovese coffee. Soak in the stunning views of the Melbourne city skyline and discuss the latest exhibition of contemporary artworks from MTC Partner, Artbank.
You don’t need to be seeing a show to enjoy the benefits of MTC membership. Members receive discounts and special offers at dining and retail partners around the arts precinct and Southgate, including Script Bar & Bistro and The Deck Southbank.
AT ARTS CENTRE MELBOURNE MTC Members enjoy special treatment at Arts Centre Melbourne with discounts at Café Vic, Cento Espresso and The Barre. Members also receive a 20% discount on general parking and a 15% discount on valet parking at the Arts Centre Melbourne car park.
5-star journeys
to Europe
MTC MEMBERS EVENTS AND OFFERS Get involved and go behind the scenes with a range of MTC Members events throughout the year. Receive exclusive special offers and stay up to date with MTC happenings with the quarterly MTC Members eNews. Whether you’re looking for a gift for that special someone, or just feel like treating yourself, there’s never been a better time to become an MTC Member.
More choice. More flexibility. Choose from over 34 European destinations. Enjoy fast connections via Doha’s state-of-the-art airport. Experience our modern fleet and awardwinning service. qatarairways.com/au
Special offers Movie Preview
Spotlight 10 January A tense investigative thriller starring Mark Ruffalo, Michael Keaton and Rachel McAdams, Spotlight tells the riveting true story of a team of Boston Globe journalists who exposed one of the biggest cover-ups in modern times, when the team delved into abuse allegations against the Catholic Church, fully aware they were taking on the most powerful institution in their city. Wholly captivating from start to finish, with an impeccable ensemble cast, Spotlight has received overwhelmingly positive critical and audience acclaim internationally and is tipped as a favourite in this year’s Oscar race. Entertainment One invites MTC subscribers to a special advance screening at Palace Cinema Como, South Yarra, on Sunday 10 January at 11am. To secure two complimentary seats at this exclusive MTC preview screening, be quick to submit your RSVP online via www.digi-tix.com/SPMTC. Tickets will be granted on a first come, first served basis until the cinema is full. Spotlight opens in cinemas 28 January 2016.
DVD Offer
The Beautiful Lie
The Eighties: The Decade that Transformed Australia
The Beautiful Lie is a contemporary Australian reimagining of Leo Tolstoy’s great tragic romance Anna Karenina. The six-part series follows the sprawling saga of three families and their complex myriad of relationships. With love acting as the crux of this irresistible drama, The Beautiful Lie is an epic tale of adultery, seduction, scandal and mayhem. It is about love that saves and love that destroys, starring screen favourites Rodger Corser, Catherine McClements, Dan Wylie, Sarah Snook and Gina Riley.
The eighties were perhaps the most controversial decade in Australian history, with high-flying entrepreneurs booming and busting, torrid debates over land rights and immigration, the advent of AIDS, a harsh recession, and the rise of the New Right. The Eighties: The Decade that Transformed Australia, by award-winning historian Frank Bongiorno, brings all this and more to life.
For your chance to win one of twenty copies of The Beautiful Lie on DVD, email your name and subscriber number to offers@mtc.com.au with BEAUTIFUL in the subject line by Friday 18 December 2015.
Discover what’s on in the world of entertainment with The Age BRINGING YOU THE VIBRANCY OF MELBOURNE’S ARTS, ENTERTAINMENT AND CULTURAL SCENE Explore in–depth performer profiles and interviews, read the latest entertainment news, plan your next movie experience, immerse yourself in the arts scene or find out about the must–see shows, as reviewed by our experts.
FIND OUT MORE
Book Offer
theage.com.au/entertainment
‘The definitive account of an inspired, infuriating decade.’ George Megalogenis For your chance to win one of twenty copies of The Eighties, email your name and subscriber number to offers@mtc.com.au with EIGHTIES in the subject line by Friday 18 December 2015.