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Contents
All’s Well That Ends Well ................................................................................................... 8 Complete Works Goes Global ............................................................................................ 9 School Holidays At Drum Theatre .................................................................................... 11 School Shows Around Oz ................................................................................................ 12 Shows For Schools .......................................................................................................... 13 National .......................................................................................................................... 13 New South Wales & A.C.T. .............................................................................................. 20 Queensland .................................................................................................................... 24 South Australia ............................................................................................................... 25 Victoria ........................................................................................................................... 25 Western Australia ............................................................................................................ 30 New Zealand ................................................................................................................... 31 Opera For Primary Schools ............................................................................................... 32 Costuming, Props, Make Up & Seating ............................................................................ 34 Study Resources .............................................................................................................. 51 Staging A Musical Or Play ............................................................................................... 68 Sound And Light ............................................................................................................. 84 Training .......................................................................................................................... 97 Welcome to Stage Whispers' annual School Performing Arts Resource Kit (SPARK). The aim is to provide school teachers with more tools to spark a love of theatre in their students. Please click through to the section that is relevant to you. We welcome feedback on this edition and any suggestions you have for us to improve it in future years. Leave your comments here.
Front cover image: Bell Shakespeare’s Macbeth: The Rehearsal.
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All’s Well That Ends Well
Bell Shakespeare Players. Photo: Clare Hawley.
Joanna Erskine, the Head of Education at Bell Shakespeare, explains how the company transformed during 2020 and what they have in store this year. Stage Whispers: How did Bell Shakespeare navigate around state roadblocks to tour to schools last year? Joanne Erskine: Our Players program tours to every state and territory each year, so an entire year of planned activity had to be pulled apart. We turned our focus to digitising content, streaming education programs online, creating new digital content and making archive recordings of previous productions available. As the year progressed and interstate touring remained uncertain, we decided to scale back to a limited tour of the A.C.T., Sydney and some regional NSW. We had to adapt the scripts and performances to fit the new restrictions, enhance the distance of the playing space between audience and performers, and remove any direct student interaction. We delivered about 80 performances instead of 500+. However, we were thrilled to at least deliver this program to some schools and provide employment to our artists. SW: What reaction did you get from schools when you arrived during this pandemic? JE: Our Players received quite a rapturous response from schools. Both teachers and students had been so deprived of live performance that it made for a very special experience. Teachers often gave a speech before The Players performed, about the value of live performances and the arts, particularly in such uncertain times. SW: What school productions are you taking on the road in 2021? JE: The Players will tour three of our most popular shows nationally for primary and secondary schools - Just Romeo and Juliet! in collaboration with the hilarious Andy Griffiths, Such Sweet Sorrow, and Macbeth: The Rehearsal. The Players deliver dynamic, entertaining and enriching 50minute performances interspersing Shakespeare’s original text with modern commentary and new narratives. Each show ends with a 10-minute Q&A and teachers are supported with pre- and post-show classroom resources. SW: For those schools you can’t get to, what digital resources are you offering? JE: In 2020 we set up a digital studio in our rehearsal room to create new content and deliver live-streamed student workshops and Shakespeare seminars for senior students, teacher Professional Learning and more. We even delivered large-scale Artist In Residence programs lasting one week over Zoom, in collaboration with teachers in the schools. We’ll continue to offer these to schools we can’t physically reach this year. Macbeth: The (Socially Distanced) Rehearsal is a new video resource available on demand. It celebrates theatre-
Discover the Bell Shakespeare 2021 Learning Program at bellshakespeare.com.au making, great storytelling, and the power of the imagination. We’re also bringing back the Bell Shakespeare Shorts Festival, where we ask students to submit short films reimagining Shakespeare, which is open to schools and households across Australia. SW: How did you rehearse Macbeth socially distanced? JE: Our popular Players show, Macbeth: The Rehearsal, is the story of one director and two actors rehearsing Macbeth with hilarious and illuminating results. We could have filmed the performance, however trying to capture the magic of a live show on film is near-on impossible, so we decided to embrace the Zoom medium. We adapted the Macbeth: The Rehearsal script as if the rehearsal was taking place during quarantine. The Director and two actors were each in a simulated Zoom-esque screen, meaning we could film the piece safely. Soliloquies over Zoom translate quite easily, but how about a scene between Lady Macbeth and Macbeth? How do you show Banquo’s ghost appearing on Zoom? The final battle between Macbeth and Macduff? The witches’ prophecies? We had a great deal of fun finding ways to make it possible. SW: Do they mention the name which can’t be mentioned during the rehearsal? JE: Well, given they were rehearsing from home quarantine and not in a theatre, yes they said the ‘M’ word! SW: Tell us about your national teachers’ conference? JE: In 2020 we had teachers tuning in from Phillip Island to Rockhampton, Darwin and even Christmas Island to our masterclasses. It was such a positive outcome that the idea for a weekend teacher conference online was born. Our inaugural National Teacher Conference will be delivered via Zoom on May 15 - 16. It will be a weekend of talks, masterclasses, speakers, discussions and strategies about the teaching of Shakespeare in Australian schools. Incredible speakers are lined up, from industry leaders to Bell Shakespeare artists. It’s going to be packed with practical classroom strategies, as well as big meaty discussions about the way we teach Shakespeare. We want teachers to come away with real techniques to test out with their students straight away. www.stagewhispers.com.au Stage Whispers 8
The Crucible. Photo: Ben Hudson.
Complete Works Goes Global Stage Whispers asked Andrew Blackman, founder of Melbourne based theatre company Complete Works, about all things theatre, going digital and surviving the pandemic. Complete Works has been delivering live incursions to schools around Victoria for 21 years. Challenged by the changing demand and delivery that last year’s lockdown introduced, the company created online resources to support remote learning, allowing it to reach interstate and international schools for the first time.
happening in the space between performers and the audience was somehow an integral part of the human experience; that learning through drama was valuable and necessary. Thus began my dream of having my own theatre company, and years later Complete Works was born. Our first season in 2000 was a compilation of Shakespeare scenes based around the theme of love, but Stage Whispers: Tell us a bit about we quickly learnt that schools really Complete Works. wanted performances of texts they Andrew Blackman: In my later were studying. Since then, we have years of high school a team of players been producing programs that do just from the Queensland Arts Council that. arrived to perform - three actors, SW: What is the appeal for schools minimal set and props, with the to book theatre-in-education audience gathered around on the incursions? carpeted space. The storytelling was AB: It’s vital that students get to simple and inventive, it was see a play performed. It’s one thing to entertaining and engaging, and we read the play in class, but it’s a very were completely enthralled. It was a different experience seeing the action transformative experience for me. I unfold in real time. The dynamic of realised even then that what was performers in the space, the 9 Stage Whispers SPARK 2021
interaction between characters, supported by a design aesthetic, can make interrogating a text far more enriching. Post-show Q&As, with the actors’ reflections, also offer students the opportunity for deeper discovery. SW: How did you survive the intense restrictions COVID-19 placed on metro Victoria? AB: The pivot was immediate for us. Coming off tour, we immediately went into one of the darkened theatres to film our shows. JobKeeper provided support to take all our major programs online, create new content and broaden our reach to students in remote and regional areas. Stage Four restrictions in particular were a great reminder of the importance of art to help us through dark times. SW: What does Complete Works look like in the digital space? AB: Going digital means that our programs can now be accessed by remote, regional, interstate and even international schools. A school in East Timor utilised our programs. Students
Head to completeworkstheatre.com.au for more information, or phone Sarah directly on (03) 9417 6166. working remotely can access our programs any time of the day, anywhere in the world. With the goal of being engaging, entertaining and accessible, our programs range from large scale theatre productions with full design elements to shortened versions focusing on the ideas, themes and issues being studied. In addition to our recorded live performances, we’ve also developed a series of filmed resources with a specific focus on education, including interviews, mini workshops and podcasts with the actors. SW: Do you have any advice for teachers who are tackling plays in their classes? AB: It can greatly help students’ understanding of the action if they have a go at putting the text into their own words, or even acting it out in class. Although there really is no
substitute for experiencing the play, whether that’s live, recorded or even a film version, it is so useful to lift the words from the page. SW: How can schools go about booking an incursion with you? AB: Our 2021 season is available on our website. Full productions of The Women of Troy and Medea are available exclusively online, as well as
Much Ado About Nothing. Photo: Jack Dixon-Gunn.
Much Ado About Nothing. Live and Online programs include Extinction by Hannie Rayson, Macbeth, Romeo & Juliet and an Australian Poetry program. Our comparative series for VCE includes Photograph 51 & The Penelopiad, The Crucible & The Dressmaker, The 7 Stages of Grieving & The Longest Memory.
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The Midnight Gang. Photo: Heidrun Lohr.
School Holidays At Drum Theatre Dandenong’s iconic Drum Theatre is ready to welcome audiences for two book-inspired, family friendly shows these school holidays presented by CDP Kids Productions.
The 91-Storey Treehouse. Photo: Heidrun Lohr.
The Midnight Gang brings to life British comedian David Walliams’ best-selling book. When the clock strikes midnight most children are fast asleep, but for the Midnight Gang the journey is just beginning. A story of friendship, love and the power of the imagination, this show is perfect for children aged 6+ and their families. There will be three shows, on Wednesday April 7 at 6pm, and Thursday April 8 at 10am and 12pm. Australian favourite The 91-Storey Treehouse joins Andy and Terry as their treehouse reaches amazing new heights. It’s now more fantastically dangerous than ever, with a deserted desert island, a whirlpool and a giant spider. A wild adventure for children aged 6-12 and their adults. Join the fun on Thursday April 15 at 6pm, or on Friday April 16 at 11am. Special prices apply for family and school bookings.
Visit drum.greaterdandenong.vic.gov.au or phone the Box Office on (03) 8571 1666 to secure your tickets.
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School Shows Around Oz
School productions are back on stage in 2021, with major companies launching their incursion and excursion programs. See extended listings at stagewhispers.com.au/spark Sydney’s Sport for Jove is offering three mainstage productions in 2021. All are 100 minutes long with no interval and will be followed by a Q+A session. Performances will take place for school audiences at The Seymour Centre (Sydney) and Riverside Theatres (Parramatta). The company offers detailed Student Resource Kits for all works in the season. The Tempest: A symphonic vision of forgiveness, discovery and self discovery - famous for its language, context, enchanting characters and breathtaking theatricality. Macbeth: A deeply atmospheric, faithful and exciting introduction to the play for young audiences. Shakespeare’s most immersive and haunting play tells of the murderous ascent to greatness of a husband and wife who believe they can control time and destiny. Othello: Easily Shakespeare’s most relentless and tightly compressed drama - a dark, brooding thriller. Sport For Jove also offers HSC Symposiums which involve lecture and scene work on HSC texts including The Crucible, The Merchant of Venice, The Tempest, Waiting for Godot, Henry IV, Hamlet, Summer of the Seventeenth Doll, Richard III and A Doll’s House. Sport For Jove’s Shakespeare Carnival has Sydney and Regional dates throughout April and May. sportforjove.com.au Brisbane’s Shake & Stir theatre company is touring a range of productions through Queensland in terms 1 - 4 and NSW in term 3. Revolting Rhymes: A frighteningly funny and seriously silly adaptation of Dahl’s Revolting Rhymes. 1984: Cameras watch every move; Thought Police roam the streets and Big Brother rules. Macbeth: Murder, corruption and manipulation. Is Macbeth a brave soldier or a cowardly slave to evil? Hamlet: He was excelling at uni, had the girlfriend of his dreams and a future fit for a King - but that’s all in the past. Romeo and Juliet: In this reimagining, live action is contrasted against retrospective on-screen interviews with the play’s minor characters, allowing them to consider what they would have done differently, had they their time again. Other productions include Terrortorial, Prankster, In the Cauldron and Fractured Fables. shakeandstir.com.au
Macbeth.
Magic Beach. Photo: James Morgan.
CDP productions is touring Magic Beach to NSW, QLD, Victoria and South Australia. This isn’t just any beach. It’s Magic Beach, where everything you can imagine becomes real. But this year is different. As the eldest child begins to grow up, does she have to leave the magic behind? Alison Lester’s classic book is adapted for the stage by Finegan Kruckemeyer. The text, song, light, shadow and movement production is recommended for children aged 3-12 and their adults. cdp.com.au www.stagewhispers.com.au Stage Whispers 12
Shows For Schools
Bell Shakespeare’s The Players’ Macbeth: The Rehearsal.
Online extras!
Check out a gallery of photos from an incursion of Macbeth: The Rehearsal. fb.watch/47ThNfeRN_ Let your imagination run wild and experience real quality theatre, in any venue you choose. Alpha Shows brings everything with them to create that theatre magic. They bring shows to your local area so everyone has the chance to experience a full theatrical show, no matter the venue. They are a group of dedicated theatre professionals who adapt classic stories into powerful metaphors for our lives, as well as highly entertaining and fun comedy shows! As a group, they have been touring for over 16 years and are dedicated to what we do. Relevant to all subjects. Q and A or study resources available.
BELL SHAKESPEARE bellshakespeare.com.au
ALPHA SHOWS
alphashows.com.au/shows Incursion All states except WA and NT Years P - 9 Real, quality theatre. That comes to your school.
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Just Romeo and Juliet! Incursion bellshakespeare.com.au/whats-on/educations/the-players All states and territories Terms 1 - 3 Featuring Shakespeare’s original language within a madcap adventure, follow Andy Griffiths’ beloved characters as they rehearse the greatest love story ever known with hilarious results. English, Literacy, Drama
Years 2 - 7 CRITICAL STAGES Q and A or study resources available bellshakespeare.com.au/publications/just-romeo-and-juliet-olp criticalstages.com.au Such Sweet Sorrow Incursion bellshakespeare.com.au/whats-on/educations/the-players All states and territories Terms 1 - 3 Love, hate, laughs, revenge, brawls, swords, marriage, life and death - this interactive Romeo and Juliet experience will keep students on the edge of their seats. English, Literacy, Drama Years 7 - 9 Q and A or study resources available bellshakespeare.com.au/publications/such-sweet-sorrow Macbeth: The Rehearsal Incursion bellshakespeare.com.au/whats-on/educations/the-players All states and territories Terms 1 - 3 Play observer and participant as two actors and a director take on Macbeth in rehearsal, illuminating key motivations, themes, language techniques and plot devices. English, Literacy, Drama Years 10 - 12 Q and A or study resources available bellshakespeare.com.au/publications/macbeth-the-rehearsal-olp
I’ve Been Meaning To Ask You Excursion The Good Room and Critical Stages Touring criticalstages.com.au/portfolio/ive-been-meaning-to-ask-you March 17 - 20 at Riverside Theatres, Parramatta NSW July 9 - 10 at The Street, Canberra ACT September 6 - 9 at HotHouse Theatre, Bundaberg QLD Age collides with experience when young people from your town ask the questions they’ve always wanted answers to, and get them, in this revealing and fun one-hour-tell-all. Primary School - Creative Arts, English. High School: Drama, English, Society and Culture. Years 6 - 12 Q&A or study resources: The show offers interactive and performance opportunities to students aged 9-13. Early outreach to engage these opportunities is recommended as places will be in demand, and the workshop and rehearsal schedule takes place over a matter of weeks before the performance. Additional education resources are available from the producers. Rovers Excursion Belloo Creative and Critical Stages Touring criticalstages.com.au/portfolio/rovers June 25 - 26 at Brown’s Mart, Darwin NT June 29 at GYRACC, Katherine NT July 6 at Moncrieff Entertainment Centre, Bundaberg QLD
Online extras!
Matt & Rich from The Listies talk about Hamlet: Prince Of Skidmark. vimeo.com/359456081 The Listies’ and Critical Stages’ Hamlet: Prince Of Skidmark.
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July 8 at Redland Performing Arts Centre QLD July 13 at Frankston Arts Centre VIC July 15 - 17 at Geelong Arts Centre VIC July 24 at Shoalhaven Entertainment Centre NSW Rovers is a modern comedy-drama celebrating the imagination, heart and spirit of Australia’s trailblazing women. High School: Drama, English, Society and Culture, History Years 9 - 12 Education resources are available from the producers. Post or pre-show Q&As are available by prior arrangement. Acting workshops for students aged 16+ Them Excursion criticalstages.com.au/portfolio/them July 26 - 31 at Arts Centre Melbourne VIC August 3 - 4 at Riverlinks, Shepparton VIC August 5 - 6 at Bunjil Place, Narre Warren VIC August 9 - 10 at Capital Theatre, Bendigo VIC August 12 - 13 at Casula Powerhouse, Sydney NSW Them tells the story of one young family as they face the decision whether to flee their war-torn city. Omar, Leila and their young child are counting down the days. Their friends enjoy fantasies of escape and the arrival of Omar’s sister brings a real chance to get out - but at what cost? Theatre, Drama Years 9 - 12 Additional education resources are available from the producers. Hamlet: Prince Of Skidmark Excursion The Listies criticalstages.com.au/portfolio/hamlet-prince-of-skidmark April 23 - 24 at Theatre Royal, Hobart TAS June 22 - 23 at Glasshouse, Port Macquarie NSW June 29 - 30 at The Joan, Penrith NSW July 2 at Dubbo Regional Theatre NSW July 6 - 7 at The Q, Queanbeyan ACT July 10 at Shoalhaven Entertainment Centre NSW September 10 at Orange Civic Theatre NSW September 13 at Logan Entertainment Centre QLD October 6 - 9 at UWA Dolphin Theatre, Perth WA October 13 at Albany Entertainment Centre WA October 16 at Goldfields Arts Centre, Kalgoorlie WA A very cheeky, very clever, utterly irreverent riff on Hamlet made especially for children. The Listies, maestros of children’s entertainment, have pulled apart Shakespeare’s classic and glued it back together with hilarious costumes, loads of silliness and plenty of interactivity. Ages 5+ The Bottle Collector Excursion Asking for Trouble & Critical Stages criticalstages.com.au/portfolio/bottle-collector June 29 at Horsham Town Hall June 30 at Elmore Memorial Hall 15 Stage Whispers SPARK 2021
July 1 at Heathcote RSL Hall July 2 at Bendigo Bank Theatre July 5 at Shirley Burke Theatre, Kingston October 12 at Ararat Town Hall October 14 - 15 at Portland Arts Centre The Bottle Collector is a thrilling combination of circus/ physical theatre and object-based puppetry where a collection of bottles provides impetus to share poetic images, remarkable physicality and stories of humanity. The show has been inspired by observing children and their collections, their delight in arranging coins or buttons, capturing small creatures and gathering pockets full of shells. Ages 3 - 10 There is an education kit available for teachers. Post-show Q&As can be arranged on request. FoRT Excursion Asking for Trouble & Critical Stages criticalstages.com.au/portfolio/fort-asking-for-trouble September 22 at Shoalhaven Entertainment Centre NSW September 24 - 25 at Riverside Theatres, Parramatta NSW September 28 at Cessnock Performing Arts Centre NSW September 30 at Laycock Street Theatre, Gosford NSW October 5 at Swan Hill Town Hall VIC FoRT is a circus/physical theatre production, which delves into the art of play and the creation of worlds from everyday objects. Two strange characters appear hunting for whispers of adventure. In a series of vignettes a couch, table, cushions, sheets and broomsticks transform into rockets, trampolines, cliffs and tents… places to explore. Images appear and disappear. FoRT is full of ridiculous clowning, spectacular acrobatics, poetic visual imagery and celebrates the kind of creative genius that has been known to turn lounge rooms into volcanoes, trees into castles and cardboard boxes into racing cars. Ages 3-10 There is an education kit available for teachers. Post-show Q&As can be arranged on request.
NEW ZEALAND PLAYHOUSE nzplayhouse.co.nz
Rumpelstiltskin Incursion newzealandplayhouse.co.nz/shows/rumpelstiltskin VIC and TAS Term 3 This adaptation of Grimm's fairy tale will have your students (and teachers) laughing and thinking about the value of kindness and cooperation, consequences of not telling the truth and the importance of keeping a promise. Drama Ages 5 - 13 Q and A or study resources available Study resources: newzealandplayhouse.co.nz/resources
Asking For Trouble and Critical Stages’ The Bottle Collector.
SPARK 2021
Online extras!
Watch a trailer for The Bottle Collector. Scan the QR code or visit vimeo.com/322941653 www.stagewhispers.com.au Stage Whispers 16
SPARK 2021 Belvoir’s Miss Peony 牡丹小姐. Photo: Daniel Boud.
PERFORM! EDUCATION performeducation.com
Book Week in Schools 2021: Bigger, Better, Brighter! Incursion, Live & Livestream-in-Schools Incursion, Live-inSchools LIVE: performeducation.com/aus---book-week-in-schools August 2 - September 10 LIVESTREAM: performeducation.com/livestream-aus-bookweek-in-schools August 16 - September 3 Join Marley and characters from a selection of The CBCA 2021 Shortlisted Books, as she seeks to discover what it is that is missing and how best to recover it. Celebrating the CBCA Book Week 2021 theme ’Old Worlds, New Worlds, Other Worlds’, this interactive and educational musical adventure is a fun filled and energetic celebration of CBCA Book Week 2021, and brings together all the elements of great storytelling - a hero, a mystery, a quest, and an exploration. English, Health and Physical Education, The Arts (Drama, Music, Dance), Humanities & Social Sciences. Science Week in Schools 2021: Time For Tech! Incursion, Live & Livestream-in-Schools Incursion, Live-in-Schools LIVE: performeducation.com/aus---science-week-inschools VIC and NSW August 9 - 22 Time For Tech! explores how the more we know about food science and technology, the more we can solve problems in everyday life. Celebrating the National Science Week 2021 School theme ‘Food: Different By Design’, students will learn all about sustainable agriculture and laboratory-developed foods as well as its (sometimes unintended) consequences, and so be better informed about STEM, career pathways and how we can all do our bit to support the planet. Science, Technologies (Design & Technologies), HASS (Geography), The Arts (Drama). Years 5 - 9
SHAKE & STIR THEATRE COMPANY shakeandstir.com.au
Online extras!
Michelle Law discusses Miss Peony 牡丹 小姐. Scan the QR code or visit youtu.be/nguITlzcOgo 17 Stage Whispers SPARK 2021
Romeo & Juliet QLD: Terms 1-4 NSW: Term 3 shakeandstir.com.au/2021-romeo-juliet A tale of two young lovers, trapped in their social roles, struggling to be heard in a world drowning in conflict, intolerance and hate. In this reimagined version, the live action is contrasted against retrospective on-screen interviews with the play’s minor characters allowing these key players to
Shake & Stir's Romeo & Juliet.
consider what they would have done differently, had they had their time again. When your first true love is also, devastatingly, your last. Years 8 - 10 Q and A or study resources available
life? Big Brother is back on our televisions and back in schools - more psychotically relevant today than ever. Years 10 - 12 Q and A or study resources available
Macbeth QLD: Terms 1-4 NSW: Term 3 shakeandstir.com.au/2021-macbeth Murder, corruption and manipulation. Is Macbeth a brave soldier or a cowardly slave to evil? Appearances can be deceiving and a hole-in-one- story this ain’t. Performed against a dynamic, cinematic background, interspersed with interviews from some of the key minor players, our take guarantees Shakespeare’s shortest play sticks with you the longest. Years 10 - 12 Q and A or study resources available
Revolting Rhymes QLD: Terms 1-4 NSW: Term 3 shakeandstir.com.au/2021-revolting-rhymes Think you know the story of the Three Pigs, Cinders, Little Red, Snow White, Jack, and Goldilocks? Think again! Due to giant-sized demand, shake & stir’s internationallyacclaimed adaptation of Dahl’s Revolting Rhymes returns to schools. Frighteningly funny and seriously silly, Revolting Rhymes takes the world’s best-loved fairy tales and rearranges them with hilarious twists. Exclusive to shake & stir Years P - 10 Q and A or study resources available
1984 QLD: Terms 1-4 NSW: Term 3 shakeandstir.com.au/2021-1984 Shake & Stir’s acclaimed adaptation of Orwell’s classic dystopian tale returns in 2021. Oceania is a place perpetually at war. Cameras watch every move, Thought Police roam the streets and Big Brother rules. What happens when one man stands up in an attempt to maintain some control over his otherwise totally controlled
Terrortorial QLD: Terms 1-4 NSW: Term 3 shakeandstir.com.au/2021-terrortorial Stephen, Craig and Sophie are about to face the unimaginable - starting grade 7. Targeting those students about to enter the terrifying world that is high school, this production arms your youngest students with an artillery of valuable tools designed to tackle change head on, renewing their confidence and reassuring them that everything will www.stagewhispers.com.au Stage Whispers 18
SPARK 2021 Griffin Theatre Company's Golden Blood.
work out just how it’s supposed to. Year 7 Q and A or study resources available Prankster QLD: Terms 1-4 NSW: Term 3 shakeandstir.com.au/2021-prankster All Nix wanted was to be insta-famous and he was prepared to do anything, ridicule anyone and risk it all to go viral. When one social media challenge takes a catastrophic turn for the worse, he achieves the recognition he craves. He didn't, however, anticipate the disastrous consequences that follow… Based on true stories provided by Australian teenagers - this honest, up-to-minute work will demystify the good, bad and ugly repercussions of online addictions. Years 7 - 9 or 10 - 12 Q and A or study resources available Fractured Fables QLD: Terms 1-4 NSW: Term 3 shakeandstir.com.au/2021-fractured-fables 19 Stage Whispers SPARK 2021
Did you know - Aesop wrote over 700 fables way back in the 6th century BCE, many of which have inspired countless retellings over time? It’s time to dust some of our faves off and repackage them for young audiences in 2021. Fables may be steeped in history and flush with comical characters, but their iconic messages remain the reason why generations have and will continue to share them around. Years P - 6 Q and A or study resources available In The Cauldron QLD: Terms 1-4 NSW: Term 3 shakeandstir.com.au/2021-in-the-cauldron Reality TV. So over-cooked right? Wrong. Welcome to MasterChef, Shakespeare style. Combining scenes from some of the Bard’s most-studied plays, In The Cauldron takes lashings of imagination, a sprinkle of irreverence, some carefully chopped themes and a healthy slug of Shakespeare and slow cooks for 50 minutes. The results are both surprising and delicious. Years 7 - 10 Q and A or study resources available
after night. Maybe it’s nothing. Or maybe someone in Paradise wants them out. Drama, English, Society and Culture Years 10 - 12 Golden Blood bit.ly/GoldenBlood2021 Excursion SBW Stables, 10 Nimrod Street, Kings Cross Term 4: October 5 - December 17 When her mother dies, an orphaned girl is left alone in Singapore in a home that is now terrifyingly empty. To make matters worse, she’s now in the care of her estranged brother - her new legal guardian - and he’s not exactly up to the gig. For one, he’s only a few years older than her. And two, he’s a gangster. Like, an actual one. Drama, English, Society and Culture Years 10 - 12
GRIFFIN THEATRE COMPANY
MONKEY BAA THEATRE COMPANY
Dogged bit.ly/Dogged2021 Excursion SBW Stables, 10 Nimrod Street, Kings Cross Term 2: April 19 - June 25 Set in alpine Victoria, on Gunaikurnai country, the greatest works of Australian Gothic tease a uniquely antipodean horror from the anxiety of living on stolen country. Drama, English, Dance, Aboriginal Studies Years 10 - 12
Hitler’s Daughter Seminar Excursion monkeybaa.com.au/shows/hitlers-daughter-seminar-2021-schools Term 2 In this specially curated seminar, led by the play’s original Director and Co-Adaptor, Sandra Eldridge, Monkey Baa brings the text to life for students studying the play and explores key themes and historical context for students studying Jackie French’s original novel. Years 5 - 9 English, Drama & History
Wherever She Wanders bit.ly/WhereverSheWanders2021 Excursion SBW Stables, 10 Nimrod Street, Kings Cross Term 3: July 12 - September 17 Writing the cheques this year is Jo Mulligan, the first female Master in the college’s history. For Nikki Gonçalves student resident and aspiring journalist - this is a time for hope, change and reform. This brilliant new work plunges into the growing gulf between different generations of feminist women. Drama, English, Society and Culture, History Years 10 - 12
Amphibian monkeybaa.com.au/shows/amphibian-2021-schools A Windmill Theatre Company Production Term 2 Windmill Theatre Co’s production of Amphibian is the fictional story of a young refugee who travels from Afghanistan to Australia in search of a better life. See the true story of Afghani refugee Muzafar. Years 7 - 10
griffintheatre.com.au
Orange Thrower bit.ly/OrangeThrower2021 Excursion SBW Stables, 10 Nimrod Street, Kings Cross Term 3: July 12 - September 17 A warm Aussie coming-of-age story, Zadie’s folks are back in Johannesburg, she’s holding the family fort. Then, in the middle of the night, someone starts pelting their house with oranges. Just once. Then twice. Then night after night
monkeybaa.com.au
SPORT FOR JOVE sportforjove.com.au
Othello Excursion to the Seymour Centre seymourcentre.com/event/othello-2021/NSW June 16 - 19 Excursion to the Riverside Theatre Parramatta riversideparramatta.com.au/show/othello2021 June 22 - 25 Othello, easily Shakespeare’s most relentless and tightly compressed drama, is a dark, brooding thriller. A rare www.stagewhispers.com.au Stage Whispers 20
SPARK 2021 Windmill Theatre Company's Amphibian.
Online extras!
Check out highlights from Amphibian. Scan the QR code or visit youtu.be/tbqvHEvMiPM chance for year 7-11 students across NSW to see this masterpiece live. English - Stage 4, 5 & 6; Drama - Stage 4 and 5; Language, Literature, Literacy; The Arts, Theatre and Cultural Studies Years 7 - 12 Teacher Resource Kits available Macbeth Excursion to the Seymour Centre seymourcentre.com/event/macbeth-2021 July 21 - August 6 Sport for Jove’s thrilling 100-minute Macbeth - a deeply atmospheric, faithful, and exciting introduction to the play for young audiences. English - Stage 4 & HSC: also suitable for all years in Drama; Language, Literature, Literacy; The Arts, Theatre and Cultural Studies Y7 - 12 Teacher Resource Kits available The Tempest Excursion to the Riverside Theatre Parramatta riversideparramatta.com.au/show/thetempest2021 May 19 - 28 Excursion to the Seymour Centre seymourcentre.com/event/the-tempest-2021/NSW June 8 - 11 Sport for Jove’s exceptional 100-minute production of The Tempest returns to the stage in 2021, adored by teachers and students over two seasons. 21 Stage Whispers SPARK 2021
English - Stage 4, 5 & 6 HSC, Drama - Stage 4 and 5 also suitable for younger years in Language, Literature, Literacy; The Arts, Theatre and Cultural Studies Y7 - 12 Teacher Resource Kits available
BELVOIR
belvoir.com.au/education Stop Girl Excursion belvoir.com.au/schools-performances/stop-girl Term 1 & 2 Suzie’s at the top of her game. She’s devoted the best years of her life to reporting from the dangerous frontlines all over the world. But even the most resilient foreign correspondents need to come home one day. What happened to Australia while she was away? And what happened to her? Years 11 - 12 Drama, English A Room Of One’s Own Excursion belvoir.com.au/schools-performances/a-room-of-ones-own-2 Term 2 It started as a lecture to a group of women in the nineteentwenties, and became one of the finest pieces of writing in the last hundred years. Wise, witty, passionate, incisive, the
story of women writers and the rooms in which they write. Carissa Licciardello’s impressive mainstage debut brought the famous essay into bold theatrical clarity, with a virtuosic central performance by Anita Hegh. Now a limited chance for those who missed out. Years 10 - 12 Drama, English The Cherry Orchard Excursion belvoir.com.au/schools-performances/the-cherry-orchard It’s an uncertain time. Change is coming, you can sniff it in the air. A family returns to a home that’s seen better days - but it still has its orchard. Precious, beautiful, but…in the way. Chekhov’s great, last play needs no embellishment to describe our times. What orchards are we cutting down? What orchards are we planting? Pamela Rabe leads a large cast from today’s Australia, in a classic as funny as it is profound. This promises to be one of the highlights of 2021. Years 10 - 12 Miss Peony 牡丹小姐 Excursion belvoir.com.au/schools-performances/miss-peony-2 Term 3
Lily’s grandmother was a beauty queen back in Hong Kong. She doesn’t care that times have changed and that Lily lives in a new country and a new century. She sees that Lily’s caught between worlds, and wants her to enter the Chinese community beauty pageant, the highly competitive Miss Peony. She won’t take no for an answer. And to makes matters worse, she’s a ghost. Years 10 - 12 Drama, English At What Cost? Excursion belvoir.com.au/schools-performances/at-what-cost Term 3 Tasmania, now. Boyd’s got enough on his plate between keeping a young family together and his responsibilities to land and people. But something’s happening. Every year more and more folk are claiming to be Palawa too. Folk no-one’s heard of until now, who haven’t been ‘round before. Are they legit? Or are they ‘tick-a-box’? Who decides? And how? If Boyd’s going to take everyone forward, they’re all going to have to go back, old mob or new, into the island’s knotty past. And they might not like what they find there. Years 11 - 12 English
Belvoir's A Room Of One's Own. Photo: Brett Boardman.
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SPARK 2021 Shopfront Arts Co-op and Milk Crate Theatre’s Tiny Universe.
Ensemble Theatre Company's Art.
23 Stage Whispers SPARK 2021
SHOPFRONT ARTS CO-OP & MILK CRATE THEATRE shopfront.org.au
Tiny Universe Excursion PACT, 107 Railway Parade, Erskineville shopfront.org.au/tc-events/17039 May 21 What's happening in our private moments that no one else might be able to see? Who are we outside of our own tiny universe? Years 10 - 12 Q and A or study resources Available
Nearer The Gods Excursion Ensemble Theatre, 78 McDougall Street, Kirribilli ensemble.com.au/shows/nearer-the-gods Term 4: November 2 - December 24 Petty politics, inflated egos, and fierce rivalries almost jeopardise one of the greatest discoveries in human advancement; Sir Isaac Newton’s laws of motion. Drama & English Years 10 - 12 Q and A or study resources at selected performances and teaching resources available.
ENSEMBLE THEATRE ensemble.com.au
Honour Excursion Ensemble Theatre, 78 McDougall Street, Kirribilli ensemble.com.au/shows/honour Term 2: April 23 - June 5 Explore the depths of human frailty and our capacity to love with this thrilling modern Australian classic. A funny yet frank exploration of intimacy and relationships. Drama & English Years 10 -12 Q and A or study resources at selected performances The Woman In Black Excursion Ensemble Theatre, 78 McDougall Street, Kirribilli ensemble.com.au/shows/the-woman-in-black Terms 2 & 3: June 11 - July 24 Prepare for scare’s in a gripping ghost story perfect for Ensemble’s intimate stage. This spine-chiller is one of the longest running plays in West End history. Drama & English Years 9 -12 Q and A or study resources at selected performances
HOMUNCULUS THEATRE COMPANY homunculustheatre.com.au
The Spirit Of The Mask Incursion homunculustheatre.com.au/secondary/the-spirit-of-the-mask QLD (Other states on request.) Available all year The Spirit of the Mask is a unique in-schools production, (versions for primary & secondary available) - created by renowned Commedia practitioner Tony Kishawi. It is an interactive performance and workshop in one, designed to Art demonstrate the essential conventions of traditional Excursion Commedia as well as comic and mask performance. The Ensemble Theatre, 78 McDougall Street, Kirribilli focus of the show explores the ways these comic traditions ensemble.com.au/shows/art continue to engage audiences. Characters showcased and Terms 3 & 4: September 17 - October 30 explored include the Zanni, the Lovers (Innamorati), Il The Chasers’ Andrew Hansen, Craig Reucassel and Chris Capitano, Il Dottore and Pantalone. Commedia conventions Taylor ponder the meaning of art and friendship in Yasmina demonstrated include lazzi, burle, canovacci, improvisation, Reza’s award-winning, infuriatingly hilarious modern work audience interaction, status relationships and heightened of art. physicality. Drama & English Drama, English, History, Italian Years 10 -12 P - 12 Q and A or study resources at selected performances Q and A or study resources available homunculustheatre.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Spirit-of-the-Mask.pdf
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SPARK 2021 Homunculus Theatre Company's The Spirit Of The Mask.
COMPLETE WORKS THEATRE COMPANY completeworkstheatre.com
SPLASH THEATRE COMPANY facebook.com/splashtheatre
The Book Show 2021 “Old Worlds/New Worlds/Other Worlds” Incursion Term 3 A lively engaging and entertaining performance featuring books, stories, songs related to theme designed to encourage reading and books. Literacy, Drama, The Arts. Years R - 7 Q and A and study resources available. 25 Stage Whispers SPARK 2021
Macbeth by William Shakespeare Incursion completeworkstheatre.com Terms 1 - 4 An abridged version of Shakespeare’s famous tragedy exploring ambition, guilt and temptation. Focusing on key scenes following Macbeth, his rise to power and his ultimate downfall. English, Drama Year 10 - 11 Q and A or study resources available
Romeo & Juliet by William Shakespeare Incursion completeworkstheatre.com Terms 1 - 4 An abridged version of Shakespeare’s famous tragedy, performed by three actors, follows star-crossed lovers as they try to outwit fate and end their family feud. English, Drama Year 8 - 9 Q and A or study resources available
The Women of Troy by Euripides - Online Incursion completeworkstheatre.com Terms 1 - 4 Euripides’ anti-war tragedy is a story told by the anguished voices of women; collateral damage in a war they didn’t make, powerless and tragic. English, Drama, VCE Year 11 - 12 Q and A or study resources available
Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare - Online Incursion completeworkstheatre.com Terms 1 - 4 Benedick and Claudio arrive in Messina after the war. Through conflict and parties, Claudio and Hero are betrothed, while Beatrice and Benedick reignite their courtship. Drama, VCE Year 11 - 12 Q and A or study resources available
Medea by Euripides - Online Incursion completeworkstheatre.com Terms 1 - 4 Jason abandoned his wife, Medea, and two children in order to marry Glauce, the daughter of Creon the King.. An ultimate betrayal ending in tragedy. English, Drama, VCE Year 10 - 11 Q and A or study resources available
Extinction by Hannie Rayson Incursion completeworkstheatre.com Terms 1 - 2 Extinction by Hannie Rayson explores the complex relationship between conservation and industry. What will be compromised in the quest to save the endangered tiger quoll? English, Drama, VCE, EAL Year 11 - 12 Q and A or study resources available
The 7 Stages of Grieving & The Longest Memory Incursion completeworkstheatre.com Term 3 A comparative study including scenes from both texts are woven into a performance, deepening students' understanding of the ideas, issues and themes of both texts. English, Drama, VCE Year 11,12 Q and A or study resources available
Complete Works Theatre Company’s Macbeth.
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SPARK 2021
LA MAMA lamama.com.au
Three Sisters Excursion La Mama Courthouse Theatre, 349 Drummond St Carlton June 2 - 13 Wed & Thu 6.30pm; Fri and Sat 7.30pm; Sun 4pm; Matinees on: Wed & Thu at 1pm & Fri at 11am A new translation of Chekov's play. The Prozorov sisters yearn for the excitement of Moscow, bemoaning their lives while others around them get on with theirs. Theatre Studies, Drama, English, English Literature, Social Studies, Russian History. This production is on the VCE syllabus for 2021. Years 10 - 12
MELBOURNE FRENCH THEATRE melbournefrenchtheatre.org.au
Asking For Trouble’s Pick Up Sticks.
The Crucible & The Dressmaker Incursion or Excursion. Incursion completeworkstheatre.com Term 3 A comparative study including scenes from both texts are woven into a performance, deepening students' understanding of the ideas, issues and themes of both texts. English, Drama, VCE Year 11, 12 Q and A or study resources available Photograph 51 & The Penelopiad Incursion completeworkstheatre.com Term 3 A comparative study including scenes from both texts are woven into a performance, deepening students' understanding of the ideas, issues and themes of both texts. English, Drama, VCE Year 11, 12 Q and A or study resources available Australian Poetry Incursion completeworkstheatre.com Terms 1 - 4 A presentation of performance poetry, expressing diverse Australian voices. An interactive workshop with the actors provides students with ideas for writing their own poetry. English, Drama Year 7, 8 Q and A or study resources available 27 Stage Whispers SPARK 2021
A unique Australian theatre company presenting plays in French, organising events and serving as an agency for French actors for all multimedia applications Le Petit Prince Incursion and Excursion melbournefrenchtheatre.org.au/lepetitprince-performanceincursion-or-excursion Terms 1 - 4 A pilot (the narrator) crashes his plane in the middle of the desert a thousand miles from anywhere. Thinking he’s all alone and with limited water supplies, he starts to attempt to fix his plane. But a young boy suddenly appears one morning as if it was the most natural thing in the world. He demands that the pilot draw him a sheep. Slowing, through the following days, the pilot, hearing the little prince’s story, rediscovers some truths about the truly important things in life. The little prince comes from another planet, a very small planet. He leaves due to troubles getting on with his rose and decides to travel to learn about life. During his journey he visits six planets and meets their inhabitants: a must see experience for students French, Drama Grade 3 - Year 10 Designed flexibly and adapts easily to all school environments Q and A resources available Performance only - rehearsed reading Le Petit Nicolas Incursion (performance or workshop) and Excursion melbournefrenchtheatre.org.au/lepetitnicolas Terms 1 - 4 Performance or workshop of this classic. French, Drama Grades 3 - 6 (Performance only) Years 7 - 10 (Workshop or Performance)
Designed flexibly and adapts easily to all school environments Q & A Resources available Courtes Lignes de Courteline Incursion and Excursion melbournefrenchtheatre.org.au/courteline Terms 1 - 4 Monsieur Badin - Mr Badin: a public servant who never shows up for work! L’Extra-Lucide - the Super Clairvoyant: a sleepwalking fortune teller with a 6th sense! Une lettre chargée - A Registered Letter: a letter is trapped by a post office official. Avant et Après - Before and After: a picnic goes wrong between Marthe and René. French, Drama Grades 3 - 6 (Performance) Years 7 - 12 (Performance) Designed flexibly and adapts easily to all school environments Q and A or study resources available Performance only - rehearsed reading
EPR PRODUCTIONS eprproductions.com
Cultural Dance Experience Incursion and Excursion Ela Rose Studios, Fairfield Terms 1 - 4 2021 & 2022 Fun and educational portrayal of a journey through Dance from around the world including Spain, South America
(including Brazil & Argentina), Cuba, Central America, Italy, Greece & much more! An interactive presentation with a colourful array of instruments, dance, costumes & culture as we explore the various dance styles that are celebrated from numerous cultures. Culture, Multicultural, Physical Education, Harmony Day P-9
REGIONAL ARTS VICTORIA rav.net.au
Tōrō & Rose Incursion Mark Penzak rav.net.au/whats-on/education-and-families/toro-rose-by-mark-penzak Term 2: May 31 - June 11 Partially spoken in Japanese, Toro & Rose looks at the power of friendships - how it changes people, cultures, history and nations. Drama, English, History, Geography, Civics and Citizenship, Languages Billie & The Outback Dinosaurs Incursion Stella Rose Productions rav.net.au/whats-on/education-and-families/billie-theoutback-dinosaurs-by-stella-rose-productions Term 3: July 26 - August 6 A lonely girl, a gang of bullies and some lost dinosaurs! This is a musical journey through storytelling, movement and orchestral performance where audiences of young
Online extras!
Enter the incredible make-believe world of Asking For Trouble’s FoRT. vimeo.com/180666326
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SPARK 2021 The Flying Bookworm’s Bully.
learners can consider the unique palaeontology of the Australian continent. Drama, Dance, Music Pick Up Sticks Incursion Asking for Trouble rav.net.au/whats-on/education-and-families/pick-up-sticksby-asking-for-trouble Term 4: October 18 - 29 Asking For Trouble reimagine childhood games to create a spectacular tangle of circus, sticks, rope and clowning to explore ideas of belonging and connection. This performance is particularly suitable for people who are deaf or speak English as a second language. Drama, English, Design and Technologies, History, Health and Physical Education
THE FLYING BOOKWORM flyingbookworm.com.au
Magic Journey - Fairytales and Rhymes Incursion flyingbookworm.com.au/grades-prep-3 Terms 1 - 4 Bring vibrancy and theatricality to your students’ learning 29 Stage Whispers SPARK 2021
with The Flying Bookworm! Journey through the magic fairy tales of classic stories, guest starring your students! The Arts, Drama, English, History, Languages P-3 Bully Incursion flyingbookworm.com.au/bully-1 Term 1 - 4 Bully is a series of sketches examining bullying in schools, the workforce, and the effects of bullying on the victims and society as a whole. Drama, Health And Physical Education Years 7 - 9 Macbeth Incursion Shakespeare Without Tears shakespearewithouttears.com/macbeth Term 1 - 4 Macbeth! Our actors motivate, educate and create a connection with students through de-mystifying the bard’s language, characters, themes and humour in this much celebrated work! Drama, History, English Years 7 - 12
Romeo and Juliet Incursion Shakespeare Without Tears shakespearewithouttears.com/romeo-juliet Term 1 - 4 Our actors guide students through the Verona of Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet, highlighting the key themes and scenes that make this such a compelling work. The Arts, Drama, History, English Years 7 - 12 Intro To Shakespeare Incursion Shakespeare Without Tears shakespearewithouttears.com/intro-to-shakespeare Term 1 - 4 Our brilliant actors will inspire students who are venturing into Shakespeare for the very first time, emphasizing elements of the plays that de-mystify Shakespeare. The Arts, Drama, History, English Years 7 - 12 The World Of Banjo Incursion flyingbookworm.com.au/grades-3-6-1 Term 1 - 4 Our actors inspire students with a focus on language, poetry and Australiana, this is a fantastic show for looking at Literature & Australian History. The Arts, Drama, English, History Years 3 - 6
PERTH ARTS COMPANY pertharts.com
Suitcase Stories Incursion All year Eight different people from eight different countries and eight different eras tell of coming to Australia.
Perth Arts Company’s The Lucky Country.
Online extras!
The Lucky Country tells a funny story of post-WW2 migration to Australia. youtu.be/A4aKiLN-kyY www.stagewhispers.com.au Stage Whispers 30
SPARK 2021 Australian History, Multiculturalism. Years 2 - 6 Study resources: Teacher's Notes included.
Online extras!
Discover why teachers love Perform! Education’s incursion programs vimeo.com/488801229
The Lucky Country Incursion Western Australia and NSW All year Eight different people from eight different countries and eight different eras tell of coming to Australia. Australian History, Multiculturalism. Years 7-11 Study resources: Teacher's Notes included.
Perform! Education’s Book Week In Schools: Big Dreams!
CHCH Aug 2 - 6 WELL Aug 9 - 13 AUCK Aug 16 - 27 Join Henry and Lou in a brand new Live-In-School educational musical to celebrate the best New Zealand children’s books of 2021. This heartfelt and inspiring live-inschool production looks at different episodes in each character’s journey where they learn not to be discouraged by negative messages in order to follow their heart’s desire. Filled with humour, suspense and featuring student interaction throughout, this educational musical adventure encourages your students to pursue their ambitions. If you’re going to dream, let them be Big Dreams! English, The Arts (Dance, Drama, Music), Health and Physical Education
PERFORM! EDUCATION performeducation.com
Book Week in Schools 2021: Big Dreams! Incursion, Live-in-Schools Incursion, Live-in-Schools LIVE: performeducation.com/nz---book-week-in-schools Christchurch, Wellington, Auckland Term 2: CHCH May 24 - 26 WELL May 27 - 28 AUCK May 31 - 25 Term 3: 31 Stage Whispers SPARK 2021
Science/STEM in Schools 2021: The Marine Team! Incursion, Live-in-Schools Incursion, Live-in-Schools LIVE: performeducation.com/nz-science-stem-in-schools Christchurch, Wellington, Auckland Term 2: CHCH May 24 - 26 WELL May 27 - 28 AUCK May 31 - Jun 25 Term 3: CHCH Aug 2 - 6 WELL Aug 9 - 13 AUCK Aug 16 - 27 The Marine Team is a 40 minute, live-in-school performance that consists of two professional actors/educators with two goals. The first goal is to highlight what is ocean sustainability, how oceans impact our planet, solutions that generate healthy oceans and how YOU can help embrace innovative ocean technology. The second goal is to make your students laugh so hard that they forget they’re learning! Science, Technologies, Maths, English, The Arts
Opera For Primary Schools
Opera Australia is returning to schools across NSW in 2021, with the relaunch of its NSW Schools Tour that will present The Barber of Seville to over 100 primary schools from 15 March to 10 September. The benefits for children from learning music include increasing students’ self-confidence, self-discipline and team work skills. Cancelled after only three weeks of touring last year due to COVID-19, Opera Australia is happy to be able to re-mount the program and bring the
magic of opera to more than 35,000 children in regional and metropolitan areas in NSW. “After the disappointment of
Parents, teachers and local community members interested in booking the NSW Schools Tour to visit their local school can visit opera.org.au/events/schools-programs/nsw-schools-tour
cancelling the 2020 tour, it’s great we can start touring next week and get back to introducing Australian kids to opera in this fun way,” said OA’s Artistic Director Lyndon Terracini. The Barber of Seville is a favourite opera for kids and this 60 minute-long production was specifically created to appeal to all ages. Featuring a cast of four opera singers and a flexible set design, schools can host the opera in their gymnasium, hall or even a classroom. Teachers who book the tour will receive curriculum-focused resource materials. Learning objectives include playing instruments and musical expression, with preperformance and post-show activities designed to enhance the children’s experience of opera. Since 2000, Opera Australia has taken opera to more than 800,000 NSW school students and is committed to continue to bring opera to young audiences across Australia. This 2021 Schools Tour will operate within a COVID-safe environment, making the health and wellbeing of students, teachers, parents and the artists the number one priority. www.stagewhispers.com.au Stage Whispers 32
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Costuming, Props Make Up & Seating
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CLOC’s Costume Hire Ready And Waiting!
CLOC Musical Theatre’s Strictly Ballroom. Photo: Ben Fon.
Walking through the aisles of CLOC Musical Theatre’s Costume Centre ‘The Nancy’ is a stroll through centuries of style, fashion, colours, history and memories. This mammoth collection has well over 12,000 items from more than 110 productions over 55 years. Right now, however, it’s like walking through a ghostly parade of the most bejewelled, bedazzled, and brilliant costumes sewn for Priscilla Queen of the Desert waiting to take life when the COVID-19 crisis is over. The amazing CLOC Sewing Team began sewing Priscilla last October and had 90% of the production
But when that happens, CLOC will be ready! Ready to assist theatre companies and schools hire at very reasonable rates from individual costumes to entire costume sets for completed when scissors and sequins shows like Kinky Boots, Strictly were put away after their last sewing Ballroom, Les Misérables, A Chorus bee on Saturday March 14. Everything Line, Mary Poppins, 42nd Street and that could be completed at home has The Phantom of the Opera. been done and CLOC, like the entire CLOC’s Costume Centre ‘The theatre industry, is awaiting ‘the Nancy’ is located next to CLOCworks, vaccine’ and the easing of social on the corner of Old Dandenong & distancing. Kingston Roads in Heatherton, Victoria. Visits by appointment only.
Contact CLOC’s Wardrobe Manager Patsi Boddison for advice and service on 1300 826 788 or by email costumes@cloc.org.au CLOC Musical Theatre’s 42nd Street.
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Stiches In Time
to the brim and the racks packed to overflowing. If you are looking for something, don’t be surprised if we have it. We Diane Crease from Sydney’s Bankstown Theatre don’t have enough space to list Company reflects on how making costumes has everything here but a quick look on changed over the decades. our website at our ‘Past Productions’ would give you a fair indication of our Founded as ‘The Bankstown Opera costume supplier was no longer current stock. Company’, our theatre went quiet available and the logistics of sourcing Our costumes are available at very during World War Two. Soon after decent, affordable costumes raised its reasonable prices and we are often the ‘troupes’ came home it was ugly head. Pauline Paull, a long-time told that we are the best value for resurrected as Bankstown Theatrical member, took a deep breath and money in town. Society. It was a time when actors volunteered to set up our own Bankstown Theatre Company also were responsible for supplying their wardrobe. The rest is history. has a great range of furniture and own costumes, so they would beg, Nearly fifty years later Pauline’s small props for hire which would be borrow and steal to dress the legacy lives on. The sewing machines suitable for many shows. productions, with varying results. are kept busy, the storage bins are full Over the next few decades things changed. Some individuals revealed their skills and talents for creating Visit bankstowntheatrecompany.com for information on costumes costumes and, inevitably, formed and props. They’d be happy to assist you in any way they can. small costume businesses. One of these skilled individuals was Tony Stevens. Tony had been a professional Bankstown Theatre Company’s My Fair Lady. adagio dancer and later became the company’s president. These were simpler times. You chose a show, booked the hall with the council, booked the scenery from Jim Peet, booked the costumes from Tony, and you used what you were given. If another company chose to do the same show you knew that the scenery and costumes would be old friends. Sometimes even the principals would be the same! Ah, the good old days. In 1976 Bankstown decided to produce My Fair Lady. The regular
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Making A Scene
Scenic Studios was born from the JC Williamson Theatres company and is proud to hold a collection of 10 historical scene books from the period when ‘The Firm’ dominated Australian and New Zealand theatre. The collection comprises thousands of images of JCW sets, backdrops and scenic details stretching back to the end of the nineteenth century. Recently Scenic Studios has been approached to include them in an upcoming nomination for the Australian Memory of the World register by UNESCO. Scenic Studios specialises in theatrical painting of scenic backdrops and theatre scenery. It offers the highest level of craftsmanship in all fields of scenic art, passed on from scenic artists over generations. The company also manufactures scenic paints and hires
scenic backdrops and drapes for school, community theatre, film and TV productions. In the scenic hire range there are over 200 hire backdrops, which are professionally painted in their studios. The backdrops give depth to the scene and allow for lighting tricks, creating the atmosphere desired for a performance. The company has standardised the size (12m wide x 6m drop), fitting most theatres and school auditoriums. So many different themes are available from traditional productions such as Beauty and the Beast, Nutcracker and Aladdin to ballrooms, forests & skies. All can be
If you are painting a backdrop or scenery, give the company a call on (03) 9484 3422. Paints are shipped Australia-wide. Follow Scenic Studios on Instagram #scenicstudios_australia
found at scenicstudios.com.au under backdrop hire. The company also has sequin drapes, slash curtains, lame curtains and crush velvet drapes to give your production that something extra. The company’s Scenic Paints are designed to paint theatre backdrops and scenery. Over the COVID-19 lockdown Scenic Studios has created a new website for their paint products scenicpaints.com.au.
Singapore Dance Theatre’s Nutcracker backdrop painted by Scenic Studios Australia.
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NIDA 3rd year costume student Avril Bradbury-Hoath dedicated her research project to women who lost their lives making watches and costumes. What is the theme of the costume? The theme of the costume is invisible poisons in textiles with a specific focus on the tragic story of the 1920s “Radium Girls” who painted watch dials, with radium paint, for the Radium Dial Company. Why did it interest you? The topic of poisons in fabric throughout history and the health effects on the people who wore them fascinated me. Examples of this include arsenic used to dye dresses in the Victorian era and mercury used to stiffen hats leading to the term the “mad hatter”. It was when I was listening to the podcast “My Favourite Murder”, which covered the story of the 1920s Radium Girls who painted watch dials with poisonous radium paint, that I decided to create a costume to draw attention to their tragic story. In summary, the girls who were employed to paint watches in the 1920s were being poisoned. The watches, used by soldiers in dark trenches, were painted by the girls using radium paint for its night-time glow. They were instructed to use a technique called “lip pointing”, which required the painter to place the tip of their brush in their mouth before dipping the brush in the paint, to produce a finer brush stroke. After their shifts working at the factory, the girls’ clothes would glow in the dark when they were walking home, due to the radium paint particles coming in to contact with their clothing. They became known as “the ghost girls”. Essentially, the girls were slowly poisoned by the radium in the paint, became ill and eventually died. What is the dress made of? The under layer is made up of a black linen, cupro and tencal blend. The outer layer is made from 100% polyester taffeta, which has newspaper articles from that period of time printed on it and which glows in the dark. I chose this fabric as it was commonly used in the 1920s for the robe de style and it is also suitable to run through the
sublimation printer which heat sets the newspaper articles onto the fabric. The dress is finished with UV paint (non-poisonous) to create the glowing effects of the radium.
print from a special paper onto textiles. To ensure that the underdress aligned with the overdress and to also fasten the cape, I used magnets, which I covered with fabric to fasten them in the perfect position. When painting the fabric with the UV paint, I used the lighting studio. NIDA Technical Theatre students assisted me by rigging UV lights so that I could see the paint I was applying. How long did it take to make it? I spent approximately 67 hours on
For information on courses at NIDA call (02) 9697 7600 or visit nida.edu.au Any unusual processes to create it? To create my newspaper fabric, I had to produce my pattern to fit the newspaper articles into the exact shape of the garment. I then used Photoshop to edit and adapt the articles I found in the archives of the New York Times and the Chicago Tribune to ensure their best position on my pattern pieces. The newspaper articles need to be warped slightly in order to create a visually straight line on a 3-dimensional body. I created my very own newspaper fabric by using the process of heat setting, which transfers the sublimation
my project. This included 40 hours on pattern making, cutting, fitting and construction, 24 hours creating my newspaper print using Photoshop, and three hours spent in the lighting studio painting. How do you look after glow in the dark costumes? Glow in the dark costumes created with UV paint need to be heat set at 160 degrees for 2 to 3 minutes to lock the paint into the fabric permanently. I would choose to hand wash the costume delicately and let it dry naturally. www.stagewhispers.com.au Stage Whispers 38
Venice Inspires Physical Theatre
Online extras!
Check out a trailer for Make A Scene’s Pinocchio. Scan the QR code or visit https://vimeo.com/282116338 39 Stage Whispers SPARK 2021
Stage Whispers chats to Rosa Campagnaro, the founder and director of Make A Scene, a theatre arts education company specialising in Commedia dell’Arte performances and training in schools. Stage Whispers: How did Make A Scene start? Rosa Campagnaro: I was inspired to start the company in 2003 while visiting Venice, my father’s hometown. I stumbled across Venezia InScena, a school dedicated to Commedia dell’Arte, and here my passion began. The training continued with Norman Taylor (Jacques Lecoq technique) and Giovanni Fusetti (Bouffon) - teachers who have greatly influenced my approach to theatre training and performance. SW: How did you cope in 2020? RC: It was actually our 10th year anniversary and despite the challenges we faced as a result of COVID-19, we still had lots to celebrate: incursions to hundreds of schools, a company of super talented performers and two published plays through Currency Press. We may have been in iso but we used the time for inspo - getting ready to take off once restrictions lift. In the meantime, we kept busily creating teachers’ resources and the word on the street is - they’re pretty fabulous! (see testimonial) SW: Can you explain how incursions support learning? RC: Our shows and workshops tick all the boxes for commedia: exaggerated stylised physical comedy, audience interaction, improvisation and use of mask. Students experience performances with high production values by skilled professional actors - it is accessible, inspiring and encourages students to try it out themselves. SW: Tell us a little about your solo adaptation of Collodi’s Pinocchio. RC: We are proud of this show that features commedia conventions and masks. A fantastic team brought their expertise to develop this magical piece, with original music and a whimsical interactive set. The show works for primary and secondary students - with
Find teachers resources, workshop info, and tour dates at makeascene.com.au info@makeascene.com.au lessons on empathy and resilience, and for older levels - lots to analyse about the creative playmaking process. SW: How do the performances apply across the school curriculum? RC: The skills learned through commedia are transferable to other styles and there are opportunities for cross-curricular learning and groupbased projects: studying and making masks in Art; looking at the style and culture in History; or learning the Italian language through visual storytelling and gesture. In English, students can write commedia playscripts they’ve developed through improvisation, or study the choreography of commedia as a form of Dance. We’re also all about supporting teachers with professional learning sessions, our publications and teachers’ resources.
This image and opposite page: Jasper Foley in Make A Scene’s Pinocchio. Photo: Lisa Businovski.
“I purchased the digital pack for $60 and I can't rave enough. The package has links to professional clips by the actors showing individual physical offers based on the lesson plan. It is well laid out into 14 lessons... that is less than $5 a lesson ready to go, with questions, clips, activities, and deep contextual knowledge. I am supporting my students learning and a small independent theatre company.” - Andrew Benson (Newtown High School for the Performing Arts)
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Comfy Bums On Seats How recently have you wriggled your way through a theatrical performance? Roger Pratt from Hadley Australia explains how that can become a thing of the past. “Seating technology has changed tremendously over the last 10 to 15 years,” says Roger Pratt. “A theatre chair is now designed ergonomically to support you. It’s not like a cinema chair, where you’ve got lots of wriggle room. The theatre chair has to hold you so that you don’t wriggle, and you don’t fall asleep. “We specialise in manufacturing and installing high quality theatre chairs for the major theatres and performing arts centres around the country. We also have the ability to custom design and make for a theatre that requires a certain look such as Edwardian or Art Deco.” Recently Hadley re-seated Her Majesty’s Theatre, Adelaide. “We did the installation there four years ago, then recently they decided to add another gallery. We had to take out all the chairs while they did the complete interior re-build, then put the old chairs back into the high gallery and provided new chairs for the stalls and part of the dress circle, and they all had to match.” Her Majesty’s Theatre, Adelaide.
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That was a fairly straightforward installation. “They wanted to have a red upholstery - a garnet upholstery and a stained timber component to match other timberwork within the theatre.” But Hadley also customises seating to match the ambience of the theatre, and the specific performance needs of the venue. “Every job is a little bit different. We work with the architects, the interior designers and the acoustic consultants. “For Her Majesty’s Theatre at Ballarat we designed the arm of the chair and the aisle panel of the chair to suit the period of the theatre, so that design theme went through the whole venue. “For the Palais at St Kilda, which is on hold at the moment because of Covid, they wanted to retain the lovely, sculpted aisle and chair stanchions. In the old days they were done in cast iron. For that theatre we’re going to replicate those in
aluminium. So, we put modern seats and backs into the theatre between replicated support stanchions.” The seating may look classic, but the seats themselves will be modern and designed for comfort. “With old theatre chairs they used to have just foam seat cushions, but with our chairs we have what we call Elastomeric Suspension - more like a Pirelli webbing - which gives you extra comfort. “We also specialise in air conditioned chairs, where air is delivered through the pedestal of the chair, so all you are doing is air conditioning the area around the person rather than having to air condition the whole of the void. That’s called displacement air pedestals. The cost of air conditioning a theatre is much less using that system.” The type of chair will also vary based on the acoustics required. “If you’re working in a Concert Hall they want to have reverberation, so we use timber on the backs of the seats and the outer seat shell, but for spoken word, they want absorption, so we don’t have exposed timber.”
Got seating questions? Contact Roger Pratt from Hadley Australia on 0412 435 089 or visit hadleyaustralia.com.au
Caring For Costumes Tracey Nuthall from Costumes Without Drama makes a priority of caring for costumes after a performance. “We are fanatical about sorting. After scanning costumes back in, they are thrown straight into tubs. There will be a tub for hand washing, one for whites, blacks, reds, blues, greens, etc. “Please be kind to our planet. Choose environmentally friendly detergents and avoid tumble drying. “We hang wet costumes directly onto coat hangers, trying to straighten and shake out creases then leave them to air dry on racks. “But, if you wish to save yourself all this work, you can always hire costumes from Costumes Without Drama. “Our costumes are all barcode labeled. The costumes are picked out and chosen specifically for your students, with respect and sensitivity to your student’s specific sizes. Where possible, you receive costumes approximately two weeks before the concert, and, best of all, we do all the laundering on return.”
Contact Tracey by phone on (03) 8838 2616 or email info@costumeswithoutdrama.com.au
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Making Your Own Costume Shine
Tanya Szulc from Shine Trimmings & Fabrics says making your own costumes should not seem like a daunting task. Taking an initial design through to a successful costume might feel like a difficult journey, however if you follow these guidelines, you will increase your chances of success immensely.
excellent design templates you can download from our website. Create a concept sketch of your costume. Include as many notations as you can into your concept sketch to help guide you through the construction process. These notations Initial design will ensure your overarching costume Research your theme and costume concept is not lost in creation. The requirements thoroughly. Make sure colours, fabrics, trimmings and your design will also match the music embellishments you intend to select if required. Pinterest has some for your costume should also be fabulous ideas, as does the Shine noted in your design. Instagram account. Discover what are the important design elements that Measurements your costume will need to portray the An extensive list of measurements look, feel and/or era that you are should be obtained from the intended looking to capture. recipient of the costume. Accurate A costume may need to have a measurements provide you with the high shine/sparkle element, ensuring information you need to calculate the it looks effective under stage lights, or lengths of fabric you require and also perhaps it needs to portray movement with draping/flowing fabric or trims, or capture the feel of an era gone by. Determining these factors and incorporating them into your design is a crucial step in developing your fabulous costume. Shine have
Shine sales staff possess extensive knowledge in costume making with many of them being costume makers in their own right, and are always happy to provide advice and assistance. Call 1300 SHINE 1 or visit shinetrimmingsfabrics.com.au 43 Stage Whispers SPARK 2021
allow you determine the cost of your creation. Ensuring a costume fits its recipient well is crucial. Again the Shine template you downloaded from our site is perfect for this step and provides you with a document that you can continually refer back to throughout the entire construction process. Choosing your fabrics and trimmings Take the time to thoroughly search for quality fabrics, trimmings and embellishments that will best achieve the design you have worked hard to develop. Obtaining samples will ensure that the fabrics and trimmings you have chosen for your costume are true to colour, have the necessary look/texture/feel/stretch required for
your creation and are complementary to one another. Once you have confirmed your choices it’s time to order/purchase your selected fabrics, trimmings and embellishments. Shine Trimmings & Fabrics stock over 12,000 products which can be viewed on our website or in our Port Melbourne retail store. We ship direct to your doorstep worldwide. Construction A dressmaker’s mannequin is an ideal tool at this stage, however if you do not have access to one, the next best option is a dressmakers bodyboard. A bodyboard is a flat, stiff template which you can stretch your costume on, ensuring your costume will look great and will also fit the natural curves and shapes of a body. These are perfect when you commence beading & decorating the costume. Plan how you are going to construct your costume before beginning construction. Ensuring you know which step you need to do before another will save you time and mistakes. If you’re ever unsure how to proceed, simply seek advice from an experienced costume maker/designer or Shine Trimmings & Fabrics. The team at Shine are highly qualified in costume making, fashion design or dance. They are always happy to help and are looking forward to making your creation shine!
Smoke And Fireworks
Geelong Fireworks is well known for indoor pyrotechnics and the “world’s largest range” of flash and fire products, but the company also stocks a range of other items to enhance productions.
The Actor Electronic Cigarette is used in many movie productions as it enables the actor to inhale and blow smoke. It has a “burning” tip while inhaling. The product is available with a tan or white filter and charges via a USB port. A budget Puff Cigarette, which contains corn-starch that is blown out of the cigarette, is also available. A new range of products for ghost/horror productions includes rotating candelabras, haunted vases that fall on command, books that open and can shoot flames, books that fall - all by the press of a remote control. A showstopper is a skull that can shoot fire from its eyes. Just as spooky is a collection of books falling off a bookshelf. Spirits About is the product which makes it happen.
Visit the Geelong Fireworks website to see what is available or to order a custom-made special effect. www.geelongfireworks.com.au
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Taking It To The Next Stage Stage School Australia’s The Staging Dept in Melbourne is a treasure trove of theatrical sets and props, many produced specially for the company, with others purchased from other productions. Popular items include sets and props from the Australian premiere of The Addams Family, full sets and props for Wicked, Les Misérables and Spring Awakening, Professor Marvel’s caravan and Emerald City Gates from The Wizard of Oz, the Chitty Chitty Bang Bang car, props and handprops from The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, The Secret Garden, Alice in Wonderland, Honk, and many more. Similarly, The Costume Dept is a veritable Aladdin’s cave of costumes from a range of shows and eras.
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Responsible for costuming all of the performances and production seasons of Stage School Australia, the Costume Dept has sets of costumes for casts as young as four years, all the way up to adult sized costume sets for shows such as Wicked, Les Misérables, Hairspray, Grease, Mary Poppins, Shrek, Babe, Thoroughly Modern Millie, Madagascar Jr, Joseph and lots more. “We’ve been making our costumes available for school and production hire for about ten years,”
To get help bringing your production to life, visit: costumedept.com.au stagingdept.com.au said Artistic Director Robert Coates. “In that time we’ve gone from costuming about 10 external shows per year, to over one hundred this year. Most days a team of five or more costume staff are working on production, maintenance and assisting hirers with their requirements. Plus, each semester we’re adding hundreds of new costumes to the collection - so even if you’ve come and had a look before, it’s always worth another visit.”
Buttons To Dye For Tracey Nuthall from Costumes Without Drama pins down the secret to gorgeous fasteners. Buttons can make or break a costume. Did you know how easy it is to dye buttons? The process is simple: in fact, it is easier than dying fabric. Start with plain white buttons or translucent buttons. Dying synthetics involves a different process to dying natural products. Sublimation dying incorporates the dye right into the structure of the fibres/plastic, meaning that the colours last longer, and remain stable - we all know that a cotton garment will fade when laundered synthetics and their colours last much longer. Sublimation dying generally requires heat, pressure and duration to set the If you need custom made costumes, or anything from colour, so when printing a synthetic t-shirt, Costumes Without Drama’s collection of more than 12,000 the dye is printed onto transfer paper in inventoried items for hire, visit costumeswithoutdrama.com.au reverse, and pressed onto the t-shirt with heat and pressure, for a set period of time. Dying fabric usually involves putting the garment into a or on a hot washing machine setting. The washing machine container or pot and heating over a stove, in a microwave on a very long hot cycle gives a great result, usually with an even finish. Buttons use very little dye and can be dyed in a coffee cup. Simply mix equal quantities of liquid dye, vinegar and water in a cup (10 -15 ml of each would suffice) add the buttons, place in a microwave for thirty seconds then wait 30 seconds. Lift one button out with a fork or spoon and check for the intensity of colour. If it isn’t dark enough, heat and wait another couple of times (I find about 3 X 30 seconds gives a good rich colour). If it still isn’t dark enough add some more dye to the cup and repeat the heating and standing until the colour is attained. Once the correct colour has been reached, lift the button/s out of the liquid and rinse under water. Dry with a towel. If it is too dark, you cannot go back, so it is strongly recommended that you start with a weaker solution and gradually add more dye. In theory, from start to finish it can take less than 5 minutes. The dye bath in a cup may be used for multiple buttons in one go - remembering to stir well between heating, or batches one after another. The dye colour will gradually become weaker, so add more dye concentrate if necessary. Don’t forget, different proportions of dye, vinegar and water may change the colour slightly so batch colours will vary (quite a bit of the water evaporates as part of the microwave process). www.stagewhispers.com.au Stage Whispers 46
Curtains For Shakespeare In Love
Love. MTC’s Shakespeare In Photo: Jeff Busby.
When the Melbourne Theatre Company needed lavish looking drapery for its blockbuster production of Shakespeare In Love in 2019, a local specialist company was on hand to assist with the design and creation. Theatre Star Pty Ltd has a specially fitted out factory in Melbourne, with a large squeaky clean floor-space, huge cutting tables and a motorised bar for test hanging drapes. Owner Rod Paton says whilst Gabriela Tylesova designed the lavish look for the MTC play, it was up to his company to work out how to create some of the more challenging aspects. He says the components of the drapery in Shakespeare In Love included “big stylised pleats on the OP side, three enormous swagging velvet curtains above, a whole range of cut canvas cloths with scenic artworks to create depth, a huge scenic painted cloth at the rear, and various other gauzes and panels.” Rod says drapes play an important role in many shows and often add to the illusions used in theatre. “Layer after layer of various speciality cloths are often used for various purposes such as filtering, reflecting or blocking light, adding depth, concealing and revealing scene changes, not to mention painted backdrops, projection surfaces and fancy front drapes.” Rod says his team of professionals have many years of experience. “We manufacture for theatre productions, events, films, television studios, schools, universities, churches
and festivals and have worked on countless productions all around Australia.” For those without the budget of the Melbourne Theatre Company, he has other solutions. To assist with school and amateur productions, Theatre Star has recently introduced a new drape support product known as the Instaframe.
The Instaframes are a lightweight and portable drape or backdrop support which fold out for use and pack away for storage. The frames can support digitally printed backdrops as well as black masking curtains. Rod says “not only are they portable, lightweight, safe and budget friendly, but they are re-usable for years after.” Bumping-in at MTC’s Shakespeare In Love.
For details about Theatre Star’s “Drama Deal” packages, which include Instaframes, digitally printed backdrops and black masking curtains, visit theatrestar.com.au/dramadeals or call (03) 8761 6927.
LET’S PUT ON A SHOW! ALL THE RESOURCES YOU NEED TO STAGE YOUR NEXT PRODUCTION stagewhispers.com.au/StageResources 47 Stage Whispers SPARK 2021
It’s the most common question CVP Events, Film and Television is asked by school and amateur theatre companies. Can you do Projection Mapping? The answer is yes and it’s quite simple.
it and repeat until you are happy. A slow, frustrating process but cheap. Other packages let you move and scale the object live, thus speeding up Projection mapping is the art of will make it easy (M-Box, Catalyst, the programming dramatically. placing images onto a surface and ArKaos, Pandoras Box, Green Hippo Another highly useful tool when being able to position and scale the etc). Qlab is an ideal tool as you can projection mapping is to put masks image to align/complement the rent it for the duration of your show, over your content. You can use the surface/piece of set you are projecting but you can even do this in mask when you make your content, onto. In other words, take the PowerPoint. put them in the projector (to mask beautiful moon picture you have If you want a more complex high- out a permanent piece of set), or your downloaded and have it appear to end solution, then Watchout or playback software may let you do it as the right size to sit exactly above the Disguise servers come into play (you part of its programming. house you have built. can chat to CVP about rental The important bit is to make the It gets more challenging when arrangements). mask line up with your set. The trick projecting on complex 3d surfaces like All you need is a software package is: buildings, with multiple projectors, that allows you to move and scale 1. Open Photoshop (or any but those complexities are solved by your images/videos. If you were using drawing program). Make a having the right software tools. PowerPoint then you would put the white rectangle that fills the The right software dictates how image on the slide, display it and if it screen. simple or challenging the process is. doesn’t look quite right, go back to 2. Set it up so the white rectangle Any lighting/DMX-driven media server edit mode, adjust the content, display is outputting to your projector and is in full screen mode. 3. Then simply trace around the piece of set you want to create a mask for. You will now be able to create a mask that is exactly the right size and proportion for your projector. Alternatively, you can take a photo of your set, taken from where the projector lens is. Projection mapping is one of the things that is often wrapped in mystery but is quite simple and turns projection into a useful tool for any theatrical production.
For information on how CVP can help with you next project, call (03) 9558 8000 or visit www.cvp.com.au www.stagewhispers.com.au Stage Whispers 48
Let’s Put On A Show Suppliers offer tips on some of their most popular products.
Portable Seating And Stages
For nearly a decade, Transtage has been selling portable seating and stages for schools, churches and theatres. The Sydney company, which delivers Australiawide, says purchasing the stages is more cost effective than renting, if you have a few repeat uses. The company says the modular stages can be put together in about an hour and easily deconstructed into flat packs for ease of storage. The stages have a load capacity of 750 kilograms per square metre, and can be set outdoors or on uneven terrain. Different uses for the stages include choir risers, seat risers, catwalks and regular platforms for speeches, music and dance. transtage.com.au
Stage Make-up And Accessories
Centrestage Costumes supplies schools around Australia with stage make-up, costumes and accessories for productions, drama classes and Year 12 monologues. Owner Mary Gurry says the family owned business is one of few companies left in Melbourne which specialises in stage make-up. “Our most popular products for parties and professionals are fantasy make-up and special effects kits,” she said. The company is proud to have costumed the Melbourne Marching Girls for their annual appearance in Sydney Mardi Gras. Mary Gurry says the theme this year is white steampunk.
centrestagecostumes.com
Protecting Sets
Creative Film and Theatre Solutions says FoamCoat is an under-rated product which theatres and schools should put on their shopping list. It’s a non-toxic, water-based coating for styrofoam and polystyrene foam, as well as other surfaces. The company says FoamCoat provides a hard, durable finish that resists chipping and cracking, yet can be sanded smooth or carved to add detailing. The flame retardant and water-resistant product is also used on primed wood, concrete block, primed fiberglass, papier mâché, muslin and many other materials. Creative Film and Theatre Solutions’ new business development manager Natasha Srbinovski is available to advise schools, theatres and universities on their upcoming projects. Photo: Jann Whaley.
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Scenic Studios
Scenic Studios is a Melbourne based company and has been trading for over 40 years, specialising in theatrical painting of scenic backdrops and theatre scenery. It offers a high level of craftsmanship in all fields of scenic art and also manufactures scenic paints and hires scenic backdrops and drapes. The company’s scenic hire range includes over 200 backdrops which are professionally painted and give depth to the scene to allow for lighting tricks and ambience. The standard size, 12m wide x 6m drop, fits most theatres and school auditoriums. Scenic Studios says a good backdrop will set the scene or create the atmosphere you desire for your performance. Many different themes are available, from traditional productions such as Oliver!, The Lion King, Seussical and Beauty and the Beast, to ballrooms, circuses, forests and gardens. All can be found on the company’s website scenicstudios.com.au - under backdrop hire. The company has also has sequin drapes, slash curtains, lame curtains and crush velvet drapes. The scenic paints it supplies are designed to paint theatre backdrops and scenery. There are 28 colours to choose from, with special paints such as texture, canvas / surface primers and stage black. The company ships paint and hires backdrops Australia wide.
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Study Resources
Sport For Jove’s Macbeth.
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drying to keep them entertained for those four appalling minutes. The only thing that surpasses the closing song in lack of coordination is the final bow. What the hell was that. I’ve told you a thousand times, you have to wait for the leader in the Playwright Kirsty Budding’s latest collection of monologues covers centre to bow, which is [pick on everything from comedy, to teen life, to Greek and Norse mythology. someone in the audience] Sebastian. Here’s a monologue all thespians can relate to. Sebastian, you were only given this role because you’re tall, not because Man Number Three? I don’t want to you have any talent. The Director hear excuses; just get your act [Sincerely] Finally, I’d like to give a So, this is it. Opening Night. We’ve together. warm thank you… to the cleaners. rehearsed for three months and, uh, [Refers to list] The closing song. I Rob and Wendy. You’ve done a well - we can’t do much about it don’t know where to begin. You wonderful job cleaning up after now. How do you all feel? ...Good? seem to have all forgotten how to rehearsals. If only the performers were Really? After that dress rehearsal? move, how to smile, and how to sing. as thorough with their lines, as you I just wanted to chat to you before ENERGY! If you don’t seriously lift are with your vacuum cleaners. [claps] the show because a lot of work has your game, I will make an Clap everyone! Show your gone into this. A lot of blood, sweat announcement over the PA telling the appreciation for the cleaners! and tears. And I wanted to tell you audience to Google a video of paint [Drops smile] Now, get backstage. that, whatever happens on stage Your parents will be arriving soon. tonight, even if the production is a complete disaster… it will not be my fault. With this in mind, here are my notes from the dress rehearsal. [Refers to clipboard] Joseph, you missed your Kirsty Budding is a writer, cue. Again. How hard is it to producer, and actress. Her first remember that when the Angel monologue collection, Paper Cuts: Gabriel - [pick on someone in the Comedic & Satirical Monologues audience] looking at you, Billy - I’ve for Audition or Performance, won never seen such a bland interpretation the 2018 ACT Writing and of an angel - when the Angel Gabriel Publishing Award for Fiction. exits, that’s your cue to kneel down The 100 is her second book. and look up at the sky. And when you Kirsty is currently developing kneel, can you please remember to screen content through her kneel in profile rather than with your production company, BE. back to the audience? You can find her work on And that goes for all of you. If Facebook or Instagram by you’re speaking to the back of the following @BuddingEntertainment stage or the floor [pick on someone in the audience] or your hand, for some reason, Wise Man Number One, then The 100: New and Classic the audience can’t hear you. Monologues for Children & [Refers to list] Props. I don’t recall Young Adults is available the baby Jesus receiving the gifts of from Amazon, local retailers gold, frankincense and a hand full of and Stage Whispers books. nothing! [Pick on someone in the Find links at audience] Where is your myrrh, Wise
100 New And Classic Monologues
About Kirsty Budding
kirstybudding.com
Online extras!
Watch as Canberra teens perform excerpts from Kirsty Budding’s new book of monologues, The 100. fb.watch/3MyWVda-1j www.stagewhispers.com.au Stage Whispers 52
Kate’s Joy, Magic And Darkness As she perfected a new work to reopen Sydney’s Wharf Theatre, the celebrated writer and actor Kate Mulvany, admired for her generosity, shared her remarkable career - one lived in constant pain - with Martin Portus.
Kate Mulvany in Belvoir’s The Seed (2008). Photo: Heidrun Lohr.
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Kate Mulvany was raised in the windy, if story-rich, port of Geraldton, north of Perth, but spent most of her first decade in the hospital. The little three-year-old was carrying a tumour the size of a football, and to remove it, they severed ribs, cut out organs and glands and blasted her with so much radiotherapy that her spinal cord is atrophied and her vertebrae still continue to shatter. Lying there in the oncology ward, where some kids would just disappear, she discovered books. She consumed fairy tales of magical exploration and possibility, playful but with an uncompromising darkness, all of which power her writing today. And as a teenager, she read Playing Beatie Bow. Her adaptation of Ruth Park’s novel reopened the Sydney Theatre Company’s Wharf Theatre in February after years of renovation. It’s an apt story to blow away the COVID-19 pall and open our eyes to the world outside. It’s the modern tale of a troubled young girl who finds meaning and connection by following Beatie Bow back through the lanes and lives of The Rocks in 1873, right there on the Wharf’s very doorstep. The STC’s Kip Williams directed, as he did Mulvany’s epic adaptation of Ruth Park’s trilogy The Harp of the South in 2018; this centred on Sydney’s then working class suburb of Surry Hills. With 18 actors playing
characters spanning decades, Mulvany spent nearly three years translating the trilogy’s 900 pages into an astonishing six hours of theatre about love and grief, families and communities struggling against development. Her compass point? “It’s to look up,” says Kate. “It’s for theatre audiences to look up and see the history around them that is often still engraved on the tops of buildings and see Sydney’s shifting light. Sydney itself was, and is, a fascinating character.” She’s cautious to avoid “poverty porn” but Mulvany has, unlike some young playwrights with something to say, always been comfortable writing in the Australian working vernacular even with an occasional flowering of fairy storytelling. “Working class, country dialogue and accents is my forte, since that’s where I came from.” She can also turn Gothic with shocking theatricality, as she did in her first play, when a tomboy teenager at Geraldton High. Rosemary Lamb showed a wife cooking up her husband’s mistress and feeding her to him! One favourite early play, Storytime, at Sydney’s Old Fitz in 2004, partly drew on her own family. Two criminals in a max security cell entertain each other telling dark Gothic tales. A part inspiration for the language was watching her uncles when she and her father (Danny)
visited his home in Nottingham, England. “I got a bit of an understanding into their dealings, their ‘bits and bobs’ as they called it; it was mostly just black-market Viagra, illegal steroids, but there was a bit of standover as well.” Storytime was the antecedent to her award-winning autobiographical play The Seed, staged at Belvoir and around Australia from 2007. It grew from hearing that her childhood cancer had left her unable to have children, and her anger and growing militancy about how she had been likely poisoned by the defoliating dioxin Agent Orange, which her father had been exposed to while (Continued on page 55)
Kate Mulvany’s childhood. Top: Kate’s hair regrowing following radiotherapy. Bottom: With her father.
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(Continued from page 53)
fighting in Vietnam. Danny had been conscripted soon after he migrated to Western Australia as a Ten Pound Pom. “I was one of the Children of the Mist, as they’re often called,” says Kate. “He tried not to go but he thought later that he could have been more belligerent about what happened, so I think there was this level of guilt, real deep loathing, anger and bitterness, and in my Mum to some extent. So as a child having the disease, I had it too - I thought it was my fault.” The Seed lays out this story, dramatizing three Mulvany generations as Rose/Kate, a journalist, and Danny visit his own estranged father in Nottingham, who’s a bullying IRA sympathiser with a criminal charm. The play’s considerable humour has equal touches of Irish, British and Australian. Mulvany was reluctant to play Rose, but the director, Iain Sinclair,
convinced her. “They’re your scars show them,” he said. Kate’s parents came to the Belvoir premiere along with dozens of other veterans. “They hadn’t read the play - they trusted me; I offered it to them to read because there’s a lot of eggshells and clichés around veteran stories.” She saw her Dad after in the foyer, for the first time truly happy, proud, head high, now with her “a different ally in a different kind of war.” As Ambassador for MiVAC Mines, Victim and Clearance - Kate later travelled with her father to Vietnam and Laos, along with her husband, the actor Hamish Michael. Danny Mulvany died in 2017 of a suspected Agent Orange cancer. It was in the same week Kate opened in what is arguably her greatest role, as Richard III, her own disability for the first time fully laid bare to play the ‘crippled’ king. “My Dad was my best friend, my ally and my muse,” she says. Kate Mulvany suffered another profound loss in 2008 with the
suicide of the well-known TV actor Mark Priestley, then in the top rating hospital series All Saints. She’s still haunted by memories of hospital staff asking for his autograph, some even disbelieving the actor’s pleas for help, and then the media intrusion. She suffered a long depression and anxiety, didn’t act for nearly three years, but suicide and mental health continues to feature in her plays and her public advocacy. “There was a lot of suicide in my community around me growing up and again that was due to the absence of mental health facilities. It was in the first play I wrote after Mark with The Web; it’s a very raw story about a woman who has just lost her partner to suicide and has to deal with the trauma and getting on with life.” Another quality in Mulvany’s work is storytelling, often set in country towns and told through the eyes of young males. The Web is about social isolation in a regional town, cyberspace crime and an ill-fated friendship between two male
Helen Dallimore and Louis Fontaine in Masquerade. Photo: Brett Boardman.
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teenagers. The Danger Age shows how World War II might threaten a country town, as seen through the imagination and innocence of a tenyear-old boy. “I learnt that the most dangerous age for a male is at ten - the time we take risks - it’s the Danger Age! “I think my ten-year-old boys are an amalgamation of myself, a little ten-year-old tomboy as I was just after I was cleared of cancer. And I got up to mischief because I was finally free! I idolised my father and I grew up in a very masculine community. So, in a way these boys are me and the ones I grew with and love, and who became fine young men. “And I often set my plays in country towns or small communities because I think they’re the perfect petri dish or microcosm of the bigger world.” In the same tradition is Mulvany’s acclaimed adaptation of Craig Silvey’s Jasper Jones, as narrated by nerdy young Charlie, during the Vietnam
Rory Potter, Blazey Best & Joseph Kelly in Belvoir’s Medea (2012). Photo: Heidrun Lohr.
War, in a country town thriller around the mysterious Aboriginal boy, Jasper. While one focus may be on the juvenile male, Mulvany ensures her plays and adaptations expand the women in the story into meaty roles she’d be attracted to play. It’s what you’d except from a writer known, especially recently with works like The Mares, for her feminist assertions...let alone as an actor who’s excelled in new gender-blind role-playing, notably in Julius Caesar, Richard III and An Enemy of the People. Medea (2012) was a masterpiece of these different sensibilities. With two boys who’d never performed before, and her frequent collaborator, director Anne-Louise Sarks, Mulvany developed the story of Jason and the traumatised Medea through the eyes of her two young sons playing and bantering in their bedroom. Their games show they grasp some of the adult issues beyond the door; Medea enters rarely, finally lingering to feed them poisoned cordials. It’s horror theatre and, oddly, we almost understand the abused Medea. Medea won success in five overseas productions but - in a familiar provincial crime of Australian theatre - is another fine play barely staged beyond its origin city. Euripides of course is much too dead to take issue with anything done to his famous story. And so too is Friedrich Schiller, whose Mary Stuart Mulvany adapted for the STC two
centuries after he wrote it. She was the first woman in a long line of males who’ve adapted it - and was staggered at all the information and revelation about the two feuding queens left out of the original play. “The whole play is about men moving the women, the queens, around as pawns, and I wanted to shift that to having the women move the men, the ‘obscure men’ as they’re called in one contemporary document. “Adaptations usually start with talking to the author, if possible, in the process of babysitting their child and being very grateful for what they’ve created, but leaving room for your own contribution. I’ve never met a writer or their estate which hasn’t let me do that. But I ask them to tell me everything they think I need to know and their perspective on what they think this is about. It’s really important that all of us - and the creatives - have a piece of the jigsaw, and that includes the audience as well.” Mulvany’s journey to adapt Kit Williams’ celestial fairy tale Masquerade - for a three city tour of Australia - had her flying to England, at his request, and knocking on his cottage door in Stroud exactly one year after Mark Priestley’s death. This simple love story between the moon and the sun had entranced young (Continued on page 57) www.stagewhispers.com.au Stage Whispers 56
Her career as an actor has rocketed since playing the Helpmann Kate back in that oncology ward. Award-winning role of Richard III in Williams gave his permission but only 2017. if she included her own story. “Through all this time my spine “That, out of all my plays, was has been gradually crumbling beneath where real life and fiction melded in my body and skin. I wasn’t aware I the best of ways.” could use the word disability; I didn’t One of Kate’s godmothers, Tessa, know how to claim that this far in, a local farmer’s wife, first brought her because I’d been in hiding. For fear of this fantastical riddle of the lost people not hiring me, I didn’t amulet. Tessa later took her own life mention my chronic pain.” but she lives on in Masquerade as the “But I was encouraged by seeing mother. One of Tessa’s sons, Joe those bones dug up (in a Leicester car young Kate’s best friend - is reborn as park in 2013) - where everyone could the boy in that oncology ward, see what Richard lived with every day amalgamated with kids in the real - with such severe scoliosis.” ward who Kate befriended and who She understood why Richard, in never left it alive. In Masquerade Joe battle, so desperately cried for his travels with his Mum in search of the horse - for its supportive high arching amulet, but he dies in the end. saddle - and why he turned to red Mulvany doesn’t pull punches wine to dull the pain. And so, in the first week of the Bell Shakespeare and certainly not for kids. rehearsals, Mulvany stripped off her (Continued from page 56)
shirt and showed the cast her condition - how her body lands when released. “The moment I came out of my spinal closet, my Richard closet, life got a lot easier.” She won another Helpmann for her solo role in the British audience participation play Every Brilliant Thing, rejecting suicide for the simple joys of living. It was cathartic, life-affirming theatre, but tough. “I never enjoyed performing that one as much as it looked because you had to be so careful with its impact. It would be rare to have a group of 300 people who haven’t been through that experience in some way.” Mulvany is perhaps on safer ground now, playing in the Amazon Prime series Hunters, opposite Al Pacino, as the Nazi hunting nun and ex-spy Sister Harriet.
Kate Mulvany spoke to Martin Portus for the State Library of NSW oral history collection on leaders in the performing arts. The full interview will be available soon on the Library’s website. If you or anyone you know needs help, contact Lifeline on 13 11 14 or Beyond Blue on 1300 224 636. Kate Mulvany in Belvoir’s Every Brilliant Thing (2019). Photo: Brett Boardman.
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Stephen Sewell’s Furies
Australia’s celebrated, most political, surely most impassioned playwright Stephen Sewell shares his life’s anger and achievements with Martin Portus. He decries our mainstage theatres as dominated by “exclusive gangs” bereft of artistic directors able to develop new work. Stephen Sewell returned six years ago to live in the gritty western Sydney suburb of his childhood. With his young family, he’s back to the same Granville house, even sleeping in his old bedroom. “Back to the roots,” he says. “When I was a boy Granville was full of Italians and Maltese; they’ve made their money and moved on, and now it’s Arabs, Asians and Africans - all incredibly nice, hard-working people but I joke that whenever there’s a shooting in Sydney, it’s one of my neighbours. So, a good place for a dramatist.” Here lived the former Catholic altar boy whose teenage conversion to communism still inflames his belief in individual moral responsibility and a theatre of shared confrontation and catharsis. In that bedroom he read his first book - Orwell’s 1984 - which at 13 inspired him to write. From this local hood and his older relatives - “ignorant, wild and larrikin Australians” - Sewell saw early the disappointment and suspicions, the oppression and violence that he says permeates Australia’s working class. He drew on this world for his plays, so applauded in the 1980’s, and notably
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to unravel the evil forces which drove those who raped and murdered the western Sydney beauty queen Anita Cobby. His screenplay for The Boys in 1998 was much celebrated. To really penetrate this explosive masculine violence, Sewell actually ignored the Cobby case. Instead he “looked inwards to myself as a man, finding this violence and hatred of women within myself, to try to understand it and replicate it into film.” It’s a remarkable insight from a writer long distinguished by his great roles for women. And his increasing exploration of female concerns, as in his MTC premiere last year of Arbus & West, about how the famed feminist photographer met the indefinable icon Mae West. Now from Granville, Sewell, aged 65, travels to NIDA at the University of NSW where he’s been Head of Writing for Performance since 2013. He’s also working through a kaleidoscope of different projects across his desk multiple play scripts, films, physical theatre shows, multi-media performances, even a musical based on Patrick White’s A Cheery Soul. And he’s just completed The Lives of Eve, a play inspired by Jacques Lacan, about
a female psychotherapist treating a female client unable to orgasm (he wants to direct it himself; but he’s told it will only get up if he gives it to a female director). This irrepressible storytelling channelled into such a diversity of outlets models what is Sewell’s first lesson to his eight students every year. “It is to go through a story, how do you tell it and how can you do so in different forms,” he says. And, importantly, give up all hope your work will be developed or staged in Australia’s major theatres. “The things these writers talk about are the catastrophe of global climate change, the environmental collapse; they are very political - issues of gender, women’s liberation, social justice issues. And they write very well about these concerns of people in their 20s and 30s, from direct personal experience and in a contemporary vernacular. But they leave NIDA and find their plays are rejected by the mainstage theatres, by people for whom none of these things matter.” Instead, Sewell bitterly argues, these companies claim the occasional cutting-edge credit by restaging contemporary but well-tested plays from foreign writers. Few artistic directors here have the interest or ability to create programs to develop new work. Every year he takes his writers to the Edinburgh Festival and to London, where theatre directors, in contrast, welcome them profusely and
MTC’s Arbus & West. Photo: Jeff Busby.
Online extras!
Diana Glenn and Sarah Goodes discuss MTC’s production of Arbus & West. https://youtu.be/zg90uWA63pg show them extensive writing programs. And don’t get Sewell going on the Sydney Theatre Company! Across his 40 year career, it’s staged just one of his plays, a two hander. Not that there was much support anywhere when he started. Once young Sewell had rejected the fate of being a science teacher - and “went to Plan B which was to become a famous writer” - he remembers the horror of facing his ignorance of how to write plays. “For the first ten years I felt suicidal every day. At NIDA I try to save my writers from that experience. Being in that state of utter despair didn’t teach me anything.” But Sewell did thrive under the generosity of key directors and theatres, as everyone then, equally ignorant, muddled along finding ways to stage what in the 1980’s was an astonishing range of Australian plays many of them ambitious, philosophical big cast epics. Sewell’s certainly were. His first, The Father We loved On A Beach By The Sea, at Brisbane’s La
Boite, borrowed from Orwell and projected a future military dictatorship in Australia. Next, Traitors was about the intense battle in 1920s Leninist Russia for the direction of communism; while his thriller Welcome The Bright World, set in West Germany, was crammed with political and scientific debate. Dreams in an Empty City, about nothing less than the collapse of capitalism, with a crucifixion to end it all, premiered at the 1986 Adelaide Festival. Sewell wanted machines set up in the foyer for audiences rushing to withdraw their money. The State Bank of SA, a sponsor, complained about the play. Soon after the bank collapsed in ruins, its CEO was imprisoned, and the world faced the 1987 financial crash. Maybe Sewell was right. “No one took their money out in time,” Sewell says with his hearty laugh. “The idea that you can seriously engage with the issues of a play, and that that can have some impact on (Continued on page 62) www.stagewhispers.com.au Stage Whispers 60
With its crackling political dialogue and rich Australian characters, this your behaviour, is not part of our was a landmark for Sewell. He and culture.” friend, fellow writer Louis Nowra, both Adelaide’s State Theatre also set early plays in foreign settings. They premiered Sewell’s most celebrated were dubbed the Internationalists, but the young writers were also play, The Blind Giant is Dancing, in 1983. It was directed by Neil Armfield, postponing how to express ideas and who restaged it at Belvoir the next passion in their own country, in the decade, where it was restaged yet understated Australia vernacular. again in 2016 by director Eamon Somehow the lingo seemed Flack. inadequate… Mirroring his own family, not for “I’m still involved in trying to get the first time, Blind Giant centres on under the skin, to understand the truth of this place. How can I do it three sons, one a party apparatchik, and their conservative working-class when Sandy Stone (Barry Humphries’ father - a cloth cap Tory - against the suburban pensioner) is one of the paradigms of who we are?” moral and political compromises of the Labor Party. (Continued from page 60)
Nicholas Eadie in Myth, Propaganda and Disaster in Nazi Germany and Contemporary America (2003). Photo: Jeff Busby / Currency Press.
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“Unlike Louis, I don’t believe a play is ever really finished; it’s not a time capsule. As an artist you are always biting off more than you can chew so there are always going to be faults in any play. And decades on, I now feel I’m capable of getting these things right, so I did another draft of Welcome Bright World. And I rewrote Blind Giant for all three productions … but Eamon stayed with the original for that last one; he liked the rawness.” Despite the success of Blind Giant, Sewell collapsed months later, depressed by what he saw as the futility of being a political writer. Like his central character, he was now without faith in communism, politics and human beings. He decided to kill himself. But soon he took a different path, abandoning this “rational conclusion” of suicide and instead opening himself to the unconscious, and a new fascination in psychoanalysis, in fantasy and a theatre of the poetic. This has taken him to some very dark places when career opportunities shrunk in the 1990’s and his plays explored extremes of sexual and violent behaviour. One good thing, following the end of his second marriage, and during Anger’s Love, premiered by a performing arts school in Adelaide in 1996, was meeting his current partner, designer Karla Urizer. “The pits around this time was when I was yelling down the phone to the poor receptionist at Belvoir Street, and saying, don’t you know who I am?” “And she didn’t!” (huge laugh) He was increasingly writing for film. Theatre though was still delivering him moderate hits like The Sickroom (Playbox, 1999) about a corrupt stockbroker and his dying daughter, and earlier The Garden of Granddaughters, about a dying Jewish conductor returning to his three warring daughters. Death was around every corner. Miranda, about two strangers, one a war journalist, in a one-night stand of sex and drugs, Sewell describes as “a roller coaster ride on razor-blades”. He later reworked the play into the first film he directed himself, Embedded, in 2016.
Sewell’s push to the poetic and unconscious has this century produced rich theatre around visual artists. The Secret Death of Salvador Dali begins with the surrealist’s deathbed catching fire and little redemption for the old foul-mouthed fascist. Surprisingly, Sewell says he ended up in love with Dali and his infantile perspective. In Three Furies Sewell then relished the savagery and sadness of Francis Bacon and the extremities of emotion and homosexuality he shared with his muse and partner George Dyer. Simon Burke played Bacon in its premiere for Sydney Festival 2005. Director Jim Sharman describes it as hallucinogenic theatre, a theatre to transform people. “The realistic, naturalistic part of the world is actually quite insignificant in any experience,” says Sewell. “That’s what I want on stage - the full complexity, the fantasies, the emotion, the imaginative, the dreams of the world. I don’t want it reduced to a matchbox. It’s a very theatrical idea but then you’re struggling with the stagecraft of how to do it. But Sharman completely understands that moving in and out of fantasy.” The two then took their hallucinations to film and together made Andy X, about Andy Warhol, but Sewell didn’t share Sharman’s love for this far cooler customer. Abstraction aside, Sewell’s plays this century have demonstrated a powerful immediacy to the urgent debates and headlines of our time like American racism, global warming, Olympic drugs and corruption, Australian war crimes in Afghanistan, and how we answer terrorism. This prolific wave started with his popular thriller, Myth, Propaganda and Disaster in Nazi Germany and Contemporary America (2003), about the end of liberal tolerance and the rise of an Orwellian surveillance in America after 9/11. The epic title came to him in a dream; he took just 12 days to write it. The US of Nothing (2006), also directed by Sewell, haunted us in 2020 with its dark comedy about a white family surrounded by 20,000 angry blacks, trapped in the New Orleans Superdome after Hurricane Katrina.
Like so many playwrights, Sewell has long sought a family - a director, a theatrical home to share the long collaborative process of bringing stories to the stage. “Theatres here,” he says, “are increasingly dominated by exclusive gangs without any doors open to the outside, just the winner takes all. Then they eventually change but the next gang running the institution is just as exclusive.” For Stephen Sewell though, NIDA has become that next best thing to a professional home. Final year productions have premiered many recent plays and allowed him big cast, big picture epics - just like the old days.
And still he keeps writing. He has high hopes for a new play, A Portrait of You, about Lucien Freud painting David Hockney. His mate Bruce Beresford wants to direct it. And Barry Humphries wants to play Freud. “I’m also about to begin a big play called Time. It concerns a futures trader making the bet of his life while his philosopher father is dying in the other room. Time. I feel it’s running out, and there’s so much to write.”
Stephen Sewell spoke to Martin Portus for a State Library of NSW oral history project on leaders in the performing arts; the full interview now available on the Library’s website.
Gillian Jones, Robert Grub, Melita Jurasic and Geoffrey Rush in The Blind Giant Is Dancing (1983). Photo: David Wilson / Currency Press. The original Playbox production of The Garden Of Granddaughters (1993). Photo: Jeff Busby.
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A Treasure Trove Of Programmes Theatre programmes have provided an invaluable historical record in Australia for just on 225 years. Susan Mills, the archivist at the Seaborn, Broughton & Walford Foundation in Sydney, looks at their history. At the heart of the Seaborn, Broughton & Walford Foundation’s performing arts archive collection is a treasure trove of more than 18,000 theatre programmes. It’s a remarkable resource for research into Australian theatre and one that fulfills the vision of the organisation’s founder - Dr Rodney Seaborn AO OBE - to preserve and promote Australian performing arts. Friends of the S,B&W Foundation have been donating programmes since 1986, while a large transfer took place in 2006, from the Dennis Wolanski Library of the Performing Arts at the Sydney Opera House. Foundation archivists and volunteers have painstakingly sorted through each of the thousands of programmes in the collection, categorising and indexing by venue, company and location. These programmes are now held in archival standard environmental conditions for preservation in the archive’s compactus shelves, available for researchers to access
sell in the theatre, with pages of information, illustrations, and embellishment, and also advertisements!
Australia’s Earliest Programme Australia’s earliest surviving printed document is a theatre playbill. It was for a performance of Jane Shore on the 30th of July in 1796 at Sidaway’s Theatre in Sydney (also known as ‘The Theatre’) which was opened in 1796 by pardoned First Fleet convict and baker Robert Sidaway. The main play was followed by two short comedies. It was discovered in a scrapbook in Canada (there are no details as to how and why it travelled so far) by a Library and Archives Canada bibliographer. This small playbill was printed by Government Printer and sometime-actor George Hughes, who indeed acted in one of the comedies listed on the playbill, The Wapping Playbills vs Programmes Landlady. George printed playbills and Generally speaking, a ‘playbill’ is a government orders on a small press single-sheet poster, usually printed on brought over on the First Fleet. one side, while a ‘programme’ The Jane Shore playbill tells us contains more than one page and is something about early European printed on both sides. colonial life in Australia. It shows that Simple playbills have been around life in the early colony mirrored the since the Middle Ages. In addition to social conventions of Britain - such as broadcasting processions of actors ticket prices and seating and town criers, early playbills were arrangements. Gifted in 2007 by the usually a small sheet to advertise the Government of Canada to the name, location and cast of a show, Australian people, it is now preserved and given out or posted nearby the in the National Library of Australia theatre. By the 19th century, more and was added to the UNESCO elaborate magazine-like ‘programmes’ Australian Memory of the World began to be produced to give away or Register in 2011. 63 Stage Whispers SPARK 2021
Jane Shore playbill (1796). nla.gov.au/nla.obj-1419486
Some Programmes from our Collection Not quite Australia’s first, but the oldest programme in the S,B&W Foundation archive collection is from 1860. The programme is for a performance of Verdi’s Il Trovatore at the Prince of Wales Opera House in Sydney. As programmes range from the simple to the grandiose, due in part to costs and advances in technology, the Foundation’s collection contains many beautiful programmes. The souvenir and magazine programmes of productions by the J.C. Williamson Ltd company which dominated Australian theatre from the late 1800s to 1976 are such an example. With the funds to produce costly programmes, these were often very decorative. From the 1920s to the 1950s, the J.C. Williamson Magazine was a jam-packed form of a theatre programme. The Foundation will be arranging an exhibition of these programmes later in the year.
The first performance by Doris Fitton’s Independent Theatre company at the Independent Theatre in North Sydney was French Without Tears, which opened on the 2nd September 1939, just as the Second World War broke out. In 2019, the Foundation organised an 80th Anniversary play reading of the play at the Independent Theatre. The programme included a mock-up of the original 1939 programme inside. The programmes of the Independent Theatre have also been added to a Facebook history group dedicated to the theatre. Another exciting project just begun is the listing of programmes in the Foundation’s collection onto the online AusStage performing arts database. Making the Foundation’s programmes collection more widely known helps share the valuable stories of our performing arts heritage. Theatre programmes furnish both evidence and colour to the story of actors, productions, stage technology, companies, buildings, social themes, and advances in printing technology.
Clockwise from above: J.C. Williamson Magazine (1938). Il Trovatore (1860). French Without Tears (1939). J.C. Williamson Magazine (1928).
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The writer and composer of hit Australian musical Fangirls, Yve Blake, spoke to Peter Eyers for his Stages podcast. In high school Yve Blake was discouraged from choosing music as a subject because she could not play an instrument. Now she’s penned a hit musical, after learning how to use music composition software on YouTube. Her musical Fangirls is based on a teenager whose crush on a pop star gets out of control. The career of the writer/composer/actor is now on a star trajectory with a string of movie and TV commissions.
said, ‘Sure, who is he?’ And then she they’re at a concert at several points said, ‘Harry Styles.’ I laughed at her with lasers and smoke machines. even harder, because at the time he PE: You’re obviously a fan of was a big pop star in the world’s musical theatre. Why is it such a great biggest boy band. And then she said, form? ‘Don’t laugh at me, I’m serious, I YB: Sometimes people see it as a would slit someone’s throat to be genre, and they see it as capable of a with him.’ I was just arrested by her sort of narrow set of things, like tits conviction. From a place of morbid and teeth or singing or dancing, but I curiosity, I was, like, I must write think there is so much more to about this. explore. If you see a play and it I became obsessed with touches you, it’s ephemeral and you researching fangirls. I assumed it was remember it. But it’s slightly out of Peter Eyers: What were you like as going to be super aggressive and your grasp, and something that’s so competitive, and all about young girls a 14-year-old? Yve Blake: Very ostentatious. competing for the attention of a boy Fangirls is sort of a love letter to my and attacking each other, but I was wrong. There were so many stories 14-year-old self. I just had no idea how to be in my body. I’d walk to about fangirls that were these high school and not know where to extraordinary reflections of young put my arms. I remember running my female enthusiasm and its capacity for thumb nail down the sides of my nose good. It felt unfair that fangirls were and I was a disgusting, smelly grease described as hysterical, but the image ball. But around me, the whole world of young men screaming at a football was telling me that to be a teenage match was described as passionate girl, and to do it right, was to be like and loyal. (For young men) that’s the young and hot and sexy. I was love of the game, whereas women watching TV shows where 30-yearscreaming at a pop concert was olds who looked like models were minimalized and ridiculed. playing teenagers, and all had PE: So, I guess you could quite possibly have grandmothers taking boyfriends. And I just remember constantly feeling I could never get their grandchildren to the musical, anything right. with the Nannas having experienced the same thing with The Beatles that PE: Did you have any crushes yourself? their grandchildren experienced with YB: The reason I wrote this show is One Direction. that, as a teenager, I was not a YB: It’s fun that people of all “Fangirl”. I felt above it all. Was that generations are going. I loved to see an internalised misogyny? That being so many teenage faces and glinting expressive is too feminine and being braces in the audience. The clever feminine is weak and uncool? thing about the show, too, I think, is the production concept is very Privately I was obsessed with theatre and playwrights. immersive. The audience feels like PE: What then drove you to write about this obsession that (other) teenage girls had? Online extras! YB: I met a 13-year-old girl who Pick up a copy of Fangirls from Stage told me she met the man she was Whispers books. Scan or visit going to marry. I laughed at her and I bit.ly/3qyffBv 65 Stage Whispers SPARK 2021
Belvoir’s Fangirls (2021). Photo: Brett Boardman.
powerful to me about musicals is you can go home and smash the cast album and continuously relive it. And so, the lyrics in these shows can be like spells and handrails that you reach for in tough moments of your life. I certainly have felt that way with musicals. PE: Did you learn an instrument as a child? YB: I got assigned the euphonium in Year Four, and then after a year of piano I could only play “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star”. Year Nine music (Continued on page 67)
Belvoir’s Fangirls (2021). Photo: Brett Boardman.
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(Continued from page 66)
rolled around, and they were like ‘Listen, um, you can’t play any instruments, so you can’t do this subject.’ I had a couple of singing lessons in high school because I wanted to get into the school musicals, but I could not read or write music. PE: How then did you end up composing a musical? YB: I had always made up songs and sung them into my phone. But it had felt like I was a computer with no printer. There was no way to get them out. So, when I was 20, I started on a music composition software called Ableton Live. I watched a lot of YouTube videos of sweaty teenage boys giving me tutorials on how to use it, and I taught myself how to use it to compose songs. Then somebody takes that and arranges it (for musical instruments). PE: When you’re writing a musical, what comes first, the music or the lyrics? YB: (Sometimes) I meditate on a certain theme- say the theme was the feeling of being a teenager and not feeling at home in your body. I would just write mad sentences and then I would cherry pick which ones seemed interesting. And then I would say them and try and notice if there were any rhythms and if I wanted to say them with pauses in them. (Then I explored) how those words work with melody. Another way in is I would spit out these little sections (of music) that were maybe four bars long and just go on a walk and repeat and hum them to myself. I came up with drafts of songs that were way too long, and then I would work with my dramaturg on Fangirls - Johnathan Ware - and he would help me condense it down. PE: What’s the most difficult thing that you had to write about? YB: Oh, whoa, that’s such a good question. The thing that maybe was the most painful is a ballad, from the perspective of (the lead character) Edna’s mother. She’s trying to get through to her daughter but there’s 67 Stage Whispers SPARK 2021
PE: What wisdom did you gain from playing the lead role? YB: Being in the show humbled me. As a writer it gave me so much appreciation of what actors put their bodies through. Doing that show eight times a week for two and half hours, and this show has stunts, is very physical. PE: Were you a zombie after hours? YB: Completely. It was challenging to also have a full-time job as a writer. The energy or blood you need to flow to your brain to come up with writing are spent on big dance numbers. It was a complete privilege. I am so Peter Eyers spoke to Yve delighted to hand it over. I finally get Blake for his Stages podcast to watch the show. PE: What is the future for Fangirls? stagespodcast.com.au YB: I have been lucky enough to kind of nothing she can say. Every have been offered a (screen deal). For time she tries to appeal to Edna to a couple of years, I’ve been working look out for her best interests, she just on it with some really cool people. I’m can’t get in. In this moment she just interested in a kind of a new way to tries to explain that it is just because I go about it. (As a stage production love you. This was the fastest song I overseas) we’ve had a lot of nibbles. A wrote in the show. The unbelievable producer came from New York to see Sharon Millerchip played my mother it but that is on hold with COVID-19. in the (original season) and sang that PE: What else are you working on? song, and every night we would both YB: All of my commissions are for just be sobbing. screen. I am co-writing a feature PE: Can only young people tell about the Rock Eisteddfod for stories about young people? Aquarius Film - they did Lion. I am YB: I don’t think that’s necessarily writing a movie musical I can’t talk true, but it’s something I reflect on a about for a company in the States. I lot. I am in my late twenties and I’m am also co-writing a podcast musical writing about teenagers, but I don’t for Playful Productions (on feminist) know what it’s like to grow up with Mary Wollstonecraft. the Internet at the scale that an actual PE: Where would you like to see 15-year-old does now. There are yourself in five years? some things that will never change YB: Oh, wow. I love these about being a teenager. questions. I hope in five years I’m PE: For the first season in Sydney making checks in my pyjamas. I hope and Brisbane you were in the lead I’m having a really good time working role. What was it like in the rehearsal with legends. Big opportunities can room when you were the writer, and come knocking but my manager leading player? Did you have always says to me like, if I get a big arguments with yourself? offer, what’s it worth in grief? Like, YB: The director Paige Rattray are you working with people who you really supported me. She was like, we want to be on the phone with till two can meet before rehearsals and you AM? can have your writer’s hat on, but I (also) want Fangirls to be in high then as soon as the clock strikes 10 schools as I wrote it for teenagers. I and everyone shows up, you are an won’t rest until the day that I see the actor. Just be an actor until six, when tallest girl in Year 11 play the mum we’ve finished, and then you can put and that’s my dream. your writer’s hat back on. Yve Blake.
Staging A Musical Or Play
Mad Musicals’ Supernova The Musical!
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Read scripts, listen to music and order free catalogue at: davidspicer.com.au david@davidspicer.com (02) 9371 8458
The Australian Junior Musical Collection
Superb locally adapted musicals for young performers with CD backing tracks.
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Smithy.
Simon Denver is represented by Maverick Musicals. This year the company, founded by Simon’s family, was proudly taken over by new owners Rachel Fentiman and Howard Tamplin. Between them they have over 50 years of theatrical experience. “We believe we have the best job in the industry: helping you, your school or theatre group discover the best play for your needs,” they told Stage Whispers. “It’s our privilege to guide teachers, directors, producers and everyone in-between, all over the globe, to find that perfect play. We will help you narrow down plays that have the right cast size, theme, genre and whatever else you’re looking for to make your play a roaring success.”
For samples and online rights applications visit maverickmusicals.com
The Benefits Of Youth Theatre Simon Denver, the writer of Man of Years ago, I read the results of an international survey on fear. The greatest fear facing an individual was not Thermo-Global Nuclear War. Neither was it cancer, terminal illness or extinction-level events such as asteroids, volcanoes, tsunamis or climate change. The eventual winner left them all in its wake. Divorce, losing your job and the aforementioned fears were all in the shadow of the undisputed number one: the fear of public speaking. No wonder the rest of society looks upon performers in a strange way. It's not that we don't have this fear - it's because we have learned to rise above it. And how? Here is a recap of what belonging to a youth theatre, or being in a school musical or play, should teach you. Trust All theatre is a huge trust exercise. And just as you are trusting everyone will get their bits right, they trust that you will get your bit right. When working to a deadline you don't have time to develop your "relationship" with everyone; certain shortcuts must
seemed like an impossible journey over a frighteningly short time frame.
Pride You soon learn to take a pride in your work. No matter whether you are chorus, lead or backstage you Steel, shares his trade secrets. should take pride in your work and be taken. You have to learn to trust strive to constantly be better. A chain your co-workers from the get-go. You is only as good as its weakest link. forge an effective working Your pride in yourself and your relationship with people, whether you project should make sure that this is like them or not. You must learn to not you. trust early and completely. Confidence Teamwork Any show is a monumental The more disciplined and achievement in its own right. This rehearsed any theatre team or achievement gives you confidence in ensemble is, the better the result. yourself. I recently went to a youth Getting something right is never easy. theatre reunion. Dozens turned up. If it was easy then everyone would One of the common topics discussed always get everything right. It sounds over a few refreshing ales was strange but the more disciplined the confidence. Many claimed youth rehearsals, the more the team has fun theatre had given them skill sets, led and finds solidarity. It's never a case of by confidence, to guarantee they'd learning your place in the team, it's never fail a job interview. about realising that the team actually needs you and it isn't quite the same Adaptability without you, and vice versa. A great skill set to hone. The more theatre you do, especially Camaraderie improvisation, the more you learn to The friendships you make in youth think laterally. Theatre tends to theatre stay with you for life. Why? present us with almost inconceivable Because you share that special time problems that need us to come up that "outsiders" just don’t understand. with some incredible solutions. It You were part of a highly emotionally teaches us how to explore a situation charged project which had what from more than one viewpoint. In short - it keeps you on your toes. www.stagewhispers.com.au Stage Whispers 70
LET’S PUT ON A SHOW! ALL THE RESOURCES YOU NEED TO STAGE YOUR NEXT PRODUCTION stagewhispers.com.au/StageResources
2021 COURSE GUIDE READ OUR COMPREHENSIVE ONLINE TRAINING GUIDE stagewhispers.com.au/training
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TOP TEN TIPS
real life students have a wide range of interests competing for their time. Taking part in a school production involves a large time commitment and students need to be sold that this show is for them. Rather than a simple poster with the show’s logo, a poster showing a large photo of a professional version of the show on stage is a great way to Simon Parris, who has directed 15 school musicals, shares his top ten help students visualise themselves in a tips for the process to run as smoothly as possible. particular show. Set up a portal or intranet page Taking part in a school production Secure the rights well in with further photos, links to YouTube can be one of the most joyful and advance. Performance rights for clips and a detailed list of characters memorable times in a student’s life. plays are relatively along with the usual audition details. While some school leaders may well straightforward to organise, whereas A full list of rehearsal and performance attend opening nights and think that rights for musicals can take a long dates and times should also be productions just appear of their own time. This is worth doing the year included to ensure that the time accord, the workload for staff is before the production is staged. Start commitment is clear. immense - but it doesn’t have to be. as early as August to ensure that the contracts and deposits are secured Create a detailed schedule. The Select the show with care. One before the end of the school year. fastest way to turn off students of the most dangerous traps for Do not mention the chosen show is to take the easy route and call teachers is to choose a show until the rights are locked in. Shows all cast members to every rehearsal. because they like it or are familiar with are regularly pulled from circulation for Students have many demands on their it, rather than its suitability for a range of reasons, the main one time, not the least of which is students and the parent audience. being the possibility of a professional homework, and their goodwill is Establish a brief set of criteria to production. quickly lost if they sit around at help decide. Is a big chorus important? Final approval by school leaders can rehearsal. Are there strong dancers available? Is also derail plans. Starting work on a Working out a detailed schedule the staging within your technical show only to find that it is not pays off. When students see their time capabilities? available or not permitted is a waste of is valued, it elevates the importance of Tonal guidelines must be followed, time and energy. attending rehearsals punctually and as the school is ultimately footing the regularly. bill for the generally unavoidable Pre-plan the production with A schedule also maps out the time shortfall between production costs and the creative team. School staff available to colleagues on the creative ticket sales. One school where I bring a range of skills and team. A clear timeline can help ensure worked would only do recent, cutting knowledge to a production, but it that expectations of planning ahead edge shows; another was only willing cannot be assumed that they all know and utilising rehearsal time efficiently to do traditional, old fashioned shows. your play or musical. Nothing slows are clear to all involved. Perusal copies of librettos and the process down like team members music are available from rights holders, who do not know the characters, the Involve all cast in the first read and YouTube clips are very useful. story or the songs. Buy advance copies through. A full read through of Also assess the availability of of the script and music for colleagues the script is common practice at particular students with skills to suit before the hire materials arrive. the first rehearsal. While the lead cast specialised lead roles. No point doing Buy tickets for the team to attend a will feel important to be out the front The Music Man, Evita or King Lear if local staging of the show if there is reading their lines, it is important to continue to sell the show to the full you do not have a potential student to one available. This sort of outing is play the lead. This does not mean that also a great chance for the production cast. the show is pre-cast - other students team to bond. For a musical, have the music ready may well surprise the panel at to play an excerpt from each song as auditions - but a degree of confidence Sell the show to auditionees. they come up throughout the read in knowing that the lead role can be While television series often through. A focus on chorus songs can filled is a necessity. depict a simple list being help the ensemble members to see pinned on a noticeboard leading to an their importance in the show as they abundance of suitable auditionees, in visualise their friends and family
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watching them sing and dance. For a play, involvement of the ensemble can be similarly highlighted. In both cases, single lines from smaller characters can be assigned to members of the ensemble. Presentation of design elements and introductory speeches from colleagues on the creative team builds excitement and deepens confidence that a production of high quality is being produced.
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Make a visual record of choreography and blocking. Advances in technology make it easier to record segments of rehearsal for later reference. A higher expectation can be placed on students knowing their steps at the next rehearsal when this record is available. This also helps where a student is absent from rehearsal. Such footage should only be shared on a closed system such as a school portal or intranet. Google Drive is also a perfect way to share the material, presuming that it is only visible to invited members. Before spending a large amount of time recording vocal lines for the cast of a musical to use for home practice, be sure to check if such material is already for hire with the librettos and scores. Computer programs, such as MTI’s RehearScore are becoming more prevalent.
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to share contacts and use the same technicians and hire companies. Other schools are also a great resource. Liaise with other local schools to share and hire resources. Use state or national drama associations to seek items to hire or to share equipment or contacts. The final step in maintaining strong connections is to acknowledge all suppliers in the program. Even though they are being paid a fee, suppliers appreciate the additional acknowledgement and thanks.
Duties should be transcribed, with simple lists posted on backstage walls. Unlike professional productions, a stage manager may be a staff member who is joining the production for the last few stage rehearsals. The greater the knowledge of the show held by the stage manager the better, so encourage some earlier attendance at full runs, and meet with the colleague away from rehearsal to make design elements as clear as possible.
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Thank your colleagues. Even when staff are paid to be Hold a special crew rehearsal. involved in a production, it The inherent tension of final is quite likely that the time involved stage rehearsals can be will outweigh any financial benefit. unnecessarily elevated by trying to Encourage students to make suddenly include the backstage crew. presentations on the final night. On Ideally, all members of the backstage top of this, it is ideal for the director to and technical crew should be invited give a simple yet heartfelt message of to watch a full run of the show so that thanks to each key member of the they can absorb the characters and creative team. I have often made some storyline of the show. small purchases of theatre-related Following this full run, but before items and cards while overseas. These they work with the cast, a rehearsal are relatively inexpensive gifts, and yet that is solely for the backstage crew is the forethought adds its own special the best way to plan which students value over and above a simple bottle will be responsible for the movement of champagne. and supervision of which sets and props. Doing this in full light without Working with students is a special the cast in the way facilitates a smooth way to pass on the love of performing process and allows the crew to begin as well as the love of theatre in to bond. general. They may be somewhat An experienced stage manager will exhausting, but school productions not expect students to remember every create cherished memories for many duty and position from one rehearsal. years to come.
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Build up a network of suppliers. Depending on time, budget and skills, it can be difficult for school staff to craft all the production elements required for a spectacular show. Fortunately, there are a plethora of companies that provide services and hire costumes and props, sets and backdrops, and lights and microphones. In the rush to opening night, there is a temptation to source items from wherever possible but taking a longterm view is valuable. Get to know staff at supply companies. Plan ahead to reserve sets of items, especially for design-heavy shows such as Disney musicals. In schools where more than one annual production is held, be sure
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Opera Australia’s West Side Story. Photo: Prudence Upton.
Musicals And Plays For Outdoors Rights holders recommend shows from their catalogues that are most suited for outdoor performance. Stuart Hendricks from Music Theatre International Australia says, “many of our shows can be done outdoors. In Australia West Side Story was staged on Sydney Harbour by Opera Australia, while Children of Eden (2005) and Into the Woods (2004) were presented in Sydney’s Cumberland State Forest by Music Theatre on Location. “We also had Disney’s Beauty and the Beast staged at the Melbourne Zoo, in a production which starred David Harris, Patrice Tipoki and Anne Wood.” Other MTIA titles that have been performed outdoors include Little Shop of Horrors, Mary Poppins, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Singin’ in the Rain, Disney’s Tarzan and The Who’s Tommy.
Bankstown Theatre Company’s The Secret Garden. Beach Blanket Tempest.
Classic outdoor theatre recommendations from ORiGiN Theatrical include The Wind in the Willows, The Secret Garden, Oh! What A Lovely War, Agatha Christie’s Toward Zero and Oklahoma! New releases suited to outdoor performance include Mr. Burns, A Post Electric Play by Anne Washburn - after the collapse of civilization, a group of survivors share a campfire and begin to piece together the plot of The Simpsons episode Cape Feare entirely from memory. Hands On A Hard Body by Doug Wright, Amanda Green & Trey Anastasio sees 10 hard-luck Texans under a scorching sun for days on end, armed with nothing but hope, humour and ambition, fight to keep at least one hand on a brand-new truck in order to win it. David Spicer Productions recommends Beach Blanket Tempest - a surf rock musical inspired by Shakespeare - as an excellent production for outdoors. It is set on a desert island where Tony Prospero, the former king of rock’n’roll, has been banished with his daughter and a genie who wants to ride the wild surf and be free. Jungle Book the Musical by Markus Weber and Michael Simms would also be spectacular in a natural setting. Snugglepot and Cuddlepie the Musical based on the children’s classic by May Gibbs, with music and lyrics by Peter
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Combe - would be a delight if staged outdoors in an Australian bushland context. Judith Prior recommends The True Blue Aussie Review - a medley of music, monologues, skits and short scenes - as “a great revenue raiser to be rehearsed and staged outdoors, with or without a BBQ meal. “The action is loosely set at the time of the local agricultural exhibition and rodeo or show in any large city of Australia. You may like to set it at the local golf club, or race meet. “Invite audience and guests to wear jeans, country shirts etc. Half the fun of doing something like this is the dressing up, so be sure to go absolutely over the top with the costumes and props.” Rachel Fentiman from Maverick Musicals asks what better way to sit back and enjoy mother nature’s fruits than in the setting of outdoor theatre? She recommends the following choices: His Majesty’s Pleasure by Ian Dorricott and Mary McMahon, a comedy musical based on a true story and set on the shores of Sydney. This merry yet turbulent tale set in the late 1780’s is about a rag-tag assortment of rogues as they wilfully discover their ability to survive in the harsh environment of Australia. Garbage by Helen Wyngard is a 30-minute one act play, with moments of comedy and sorrow, about three homeless drifters who find an alley that offers a little shelter and seclusion. A Rock in the Water by Simon Denver is a one act drama set in Ancient Greece, based on Sophocles’ tale of Antigone. It poses the challenge about what to do when you believe your stance to be right, even when the government, your peer group and your family tell you that you are wrong.
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Read scripts, listen to music and order free catalogue at: davidspicer.com.au david@davidspicer.com (02) 9371 8458
Our Most Popular Musicals
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The Magic Pudding
Cruisin’ The Musical
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School Musical In Pandemic
In June 2020 one of the only places in Australia where theatre was able to take place was in the Northern Territory. Students at Taminmin College in Humpty Doo (40 kilometres from Darwin) were lucky enough to get their musical to the stage. The annual school musical at Taminmin College is a highlight of the yearly calendar in Humpty Doo that brings in past students, staff and wider community members. At the start of 2020, 85 year 10 and 11 students were enrolled into the timetabled musical course and auditioned for roles within The Great Australian Rock Musical. The students were placed into four class groups: Drama (actors), Music (band), Dance and the Technical Crew (lights, costuming and props). They were
excited in anticipation of being on stage. Taminmin College is one of the largest composite high schools in the Northern Territory, with 90% of the students based in the rural area. Director Taryna Deslandes said, “initially I was dubious about putting on The Great Australian Rock Musical, but as we are a rural school, I found that our students could relate to the ‘true blue Aussie’ characters that the story followed.”
Actor Mitchell Scott commented, “I found the role of Mick Peed to be a role you could really explore and develop as both a person and an actor.” Similarly, music director Joscelyn Markerink reflects, “They all grew up with their parents playing Aussie rock, so it was great to see them appreciate it as well as they began to play the songs.” “Everything was running smoothly,” says Taryna, “and then bam, global pandemic.”
The cast perform Divinyl’s ‘All The Boys In Town’.
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In the throes of the uncertainty of COVID-19, despite the school remaining open, attendance was dropping off rapidly due to family choices. “Having an understudy is normal, but having 12 is beyond ridiculous,” Taryna remembers. “This is when we were under pressure to make a decision.” When discussing alternatives to a live performance, there were ideas for postponing, staging online, or creating a filmed version; still, this brought up issues of timetable clashes, staffing commitments, and all without any confirmation of whether the situation would change. As the school is in a rural area, internet access is limited at best, so it made a live show the school’s only option. Year 11 band members Charlie Clarke and Shannon Hellet told teachers they were upset “because it was our last opportunity to be in the musical,” and the fact that “we couldn’t perform it in front of an audience was heartbreaking.” So then came the question: How does one put on a musical for a socially distanced live audience and cast? Siobhan Niland, choreographer, said that “choreographing and staging for Aussie pub belters was a challenge from the beginning, let alone with the possibility of incorporating social distancing.” At this point, the team had to make the final call; were they going to put on the show or was their hard work going to disappear down the proverbial drain? After facing this soul -crushing dilemma, there was relief when the Department of Education declared during the school break that
The cast perform Rick Springfield’s ‘Jessie’s Girl’.
it was business as usual as of week one term 2 due to no community transfers. “Unlike our interstate counterparts, we had it easy from that point,” said Taryna. On returning to normal from the whirlwind that was COVID-19 in term 1, a fire was lit under the entire cast and crew to work harder than ever to ensure that the show could go on.
When reflecting on her experience, Taryna commented: “It was hectic in the sense that we did not know whether it was going to happen at first. There was a rollercoaster of emotions, but the kids were the ones who really pushed it and made sure that it could happen because they were so determined to perform.”
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MTI High School Editions
Music Theatre International is releasing high school editions of many of the classic musicals it represents. MTI High School Editions include resources to assist teachers, including director’s scripts, reference recordings, Rehearscore App and fully orchestrated backing tracks. Titles include school editions of Les Misérables, Rent, West Side Story, Miss Saigon, Aida, Avenue Q, Ragtime and Sweeney Todd. A new release for MTI is Oliver! JR. This spirited 60-minute version of the Golden Age musical introduces a new generation to Oliver Twist, Fagan, the Artful Dodger, Nancy, and other cherished characters. As with every Broadway Junior show, there is a role for everyone to join in on the fun.
Oliver! JR.
Teacher Resources Australian Plays has launched a new resource to help teachers integrate the performance or study of locally written works into the school curriculum. Each script and the accompanying activities are designed as a mini unit of work or series of lessons for students. The on-line resource suggests monologues, duologues or scenes for
students to perform and be assessed on. There are also ways for students to consider the design element of theatre, interviews with playwrights and production trailers.
Masquerade.
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One of ten works featured is Masquerade by Kate Mulvany, based on the book by Kit Williams. The resources analyse the themes of love, courage, mortality and dreams in the musical. There are also interviews with the set designer, composer and playwright. Other works include School Dance by Matthew Whittet, Things I know to be true by Andrew Bovell and Stolen by Jane Harrison.
A Message From ORiGiN Theatrical
These are incredibly challenging times for the entire theatrical community. We are here to do all we can to spread some cheer and help to keep us connected. Some of the cheerful things we are offering include: Free access to the entire TRW digital script perusal library! No limits, free of charge. Visit origintheatrical.com.au for the links. Free Read Friday - Weekly free PDF downloads of play scripts and musical perusals. Sign up to our e-newsletter via our home page to receive weekly free reads direct to your inbox. Online performance rights for Nick Hern Books titles available for both live-streamed performances and broadcasts of recorded productions. Visit origintheatrical.com.au for all the details and to apply. SPOTLiGHT ON - A series on Facebook where we are shining a SPOTLiGHT ON exceptional productions from 2019. Keep an eye out for someone you know. …and many more exciting things to come! Stay safe and well. Team ORiGiN™ Theatrical
origintheatrical.com.au facebook.com/OriginTheatrical instagram.com/OriginTheatrical twitter.com/ORiGiN_Theatric enquiries@originmusic.com.au
Staging The Magic Pudding A new release from David Spicer Productions is the only adaptation available for licencing of Norman Lindsay’s The Magic Pudding. The children’s classic was adapted into a musical by Andrew James and composer Sarah de Jong for Sydney’s Marian Street Theatre for Children in 2010. Until then, all stage adaptations of the book, first published in 1918, had featured marionettes or rod puppets playing Albert, the cantankerous Magic Pudding, and the cast of pudding owners and villains. Andrew James’ adaptation has a cast of 11 and chorus. It includes one puppet in the lead role of Albert the Pudding. He was too difficult to be played by an actor given Albert's round, pastryskinned tummy and pencil-thin legs. “I considered putting an actor in a suit for all of a couple of seconds,” James admits.
For more details visit davidspicer.com.au/shows/magic-pudding www.stagewhispers.com.au Stage Whispers 82
Scenic Projections Music Theatre International (MTI) and Broadway Media are set to offer digital scenery for MTI’s top 20 titles in their Australasia theatrical licensing region from mid-March. Scenic Projections are full-show digital scenery packages that can be projected onto a screen or surface behind onstage performers as a backdrop. The product notably follows the official licensed script. Designed to make great production values simple and more affordable than traditional set design, Broadway Media’s offering combines their free, projection cueing software with beautiful artwork that includes all the scenes, settings and special effects in the script. At launch, Scenic Projections will be available in animated or still image variants for Music Theatre International (Australasia)’s 20 most popular full-length and Broadway Junior titles. “Our customers in the U.S. have really embraced Scenic Projections as a resource. We’ve heard countless
testimonials from the theatres we serve about how easy and effective the Scenic Projections are to use and how they have greatly enhanced their productions,” said John Prignano, MTI’s Chief Operating Officer and Director of Development and Education. “MTIA are thrilled to be able to offer our valued schools and community theatres across Australia and New Zealand this outstanding resource to assist our clients with staging their productions,” continues Stuart Hendricks, Managing Director of MTI Australasia.
“Scenic Projections is the tool you need to elevate your production values, all from the touch of a button, at an affordable price. We are excited to keep offering you new resources to bring the magic of theatre to your school or community.” MTI says the program is designed for straightforward integration into amateur theatre and schools. It states that a combination of simple, intuitive software, free how-to resources, and customer support from like-minded theatre makers makes it easy to take the first step into projections for theatre.
For more information about Scenic Projection Show Packages visit broadwaymedia.com For additional information on MTI and licensing please visit mtishows.com.au
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Sound & Light
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Multi-award-winning Nick Schlieper talks to Martin Portus about the rigour and magic of lighting our landmark operas, plays and dance works for four decades.
STC’s Saint Joan (2018). Photo: Brett Boardman.
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Nineteen-year-old Nick Schlieper first plugged into his craft alone backstage at Doris Fitton’s old Independent Theatre in North Sydney in 1977. It was a time in Australian theatre when the lighting guy was usually one of the mechs. Nick was the Independent’s resident stage manager; restless, he began experimenting every night during the show by shifting around the lights. Actors learnt to just work around it. Schlieper has been playing with light ever since, earning - and demanding - a respect for the precision, invention and storytelling role of his craft, and his very distinctive signature in lights. It’s no surprise that painters are his first inspiration - think Turner and Edward Hopper and Nick’s own late brother. Michael Schlieper, Nick’s senior by 11 years, would work on his canvases through the night at the family home in Chatswood. Every morning, getting ready for school, Nick would observe the added layers, the depths appearing from new light and colours. “I think I learnt most about lighting design and light from that exposure, watching him painting and then, growing up, talking to him about it, and watching his style change radically over a few decades,” says Nick. “He started out as a wildly abstract painter, went through a very figurative, so-called Teutonic, social commentary period and then ended up painting landscapes but with a great facility for technique, which I learnt from him.” Nick’s start in stage management also added a practical insight into the logistics of theatre - and the required diplomacy. He was soon responsible for casts and crews far older than he, calling shows, later operas, with the big companies in Sydney, Brisbane and Adelaide. Finally as a production manager, young Schlieper always had work …until, that is, he put out his shingle as a freelance lighting designer. The jobs were few but, somehow, he scored the lighting gig on the STC’s Summer of the Seventh Doll and
Away, both of which went to New York in 1988. He remembers Roger Kemp’s three model houses signifying the three families intersecting in Away. “It was played in tight areas and was the first time I had to create a naturalistic pool of light in an abstracted stylised space yet evoking a sense of place. And I approached it from an incredibly simple point of view - of standing under a light bulb, but expanded.” German director Harald Clemen commissioned Nick to light a show at the prestigious Schillertheater/ Berlin just before the Wall came down,
angles, very cold light, all things very unfashionable then.” Home he may be, but Nick was also staggered at the absence in Germany of expressive techniques in lighting design. Images of German theatre may look stunning, but the lighting was fixed. The idea of leading the audience’s eye, lighting the actor and expanding on the emotion was becoming essential to Nick’s story-telling toolkit back in Australia but, then at least, it was foreign in Germany. “Germans called it dramaturgical lighting, and actors even said to me that they resented me doing their job
Bangarra’s Bennelong (2017). Photo: Daniel Boud.
which was, he says, like “dancing on a volcano “ with the arts integral to everyone’s fervent conversation, and part of the arsenal between East and West. “And at the theatres I suddenly understood where my aesthetic had come from - it was like coming home,” says Nick, whose family immigrated from Germany. “In Australia I was jokingly criticised for my work being very Teutonic, very stark, without much colour. I spent a lot of time making people look right, not nice - which is not the same thing. I do use very steep
for them. It was best to do it under fluoros and with the house lights on! It was a Brechtian hangover.” Times have changed. Nick went on to work regularly across Germany, and notably at the Salzburg Festival: he’s just returned from there, lighting a brilliantly urbane contemporary version of Médée. For more than a decade he’s taught lighting design in Munich and he went on to see WAAPA in Perth establish Australia’s one major lighting course. But ‘dramaturgical’ remains his best descriptor. He rejects all jobs (Continued on page 87) www.stagewhispers.com.au Stage Whispers 86
“We always made sure that after fabulous visuals we came back to a permeable box with no scenery in it, just lots of light and that light in those interludes, even more than usual, with a focus all about the singers.” With a set that filled 38 shipping containers (an average opera may fill three) and a lighting rig with a thousand lamps, this was the biggest theatre show ever staged in the country. Oddly for the celebrated designers, the job offers then dried up. “You’re so easily pigeon-holed by this industry. I think we were branded as, they only do huge now!” Nick however did join another trusted collaborator, director Simon Phillips, in 2006 to create the stage Still, five years out, he joined the version of the film hit, Priscilla, Queen (Continued from page 86) creative team, all of them leaving of the Desert. unless he’s included from the start in behind their phones and locking “I’m not drawn to musicals but I that first collaborative planning with themselves away in a Blue Mountains was keen to get over my prejudice the director and other designers. He retreat. that they’re all flash and giggle and reads the script or score over and over “But at the end of that week at not much craft.” again and, he says, he eschews tricks “Camp Wagner”, we’d only got as far With a colour palette beginning and focuses his lights only on as the first five minutes of the first with hot pink, he was also repainting advancing the meaning of the work. opera, and most of that was the his reputation as a master of stark “We start with that simple prelude! white light. Nick’s starting point with question - why are we doing this “Still, all that time we were Priscilla was that every scene have the work? It’s all the more vital a question addressing the whole framework with sparkle, the heightened colours, as when it’s a classic. I’ve done five the same question - why are we doing though viewed through the lens of a productions of Macbeth; if you don’t this work yet again and why in drag show - just like back then at the ask why you’re doing it here at this Adelaide?” famed Imperial Hotel in Newtown, time and place, then they’d all look This landmark Ring had massive, Sydney. He admits that the lighting the same. And once you answer that strikingly lit set pieces, but here again took a leap elsewhere, especially with question, you find the environment in for the lighting designer the priority the introduction of Brian Thomson’s which you’ll do it.” was story-telling, of not losing sight of magically inventive bus and a huge All this was well tested when Nick the human stories over time. and his frequent collaborators, director Elke Neidhardt, and set and Médée (2019). costume designers Michael Scott Photo: Thomas Aurin. Mitchell and Stephen Curtis, started planning what was Australia’s first full production of Wagner’s Ring Cycle. It was premiered by the modest sized State Opera Company of SA in 2004, but years earlier Nick was getting his head around a score lasting 16 and a half hours. And it was all the harder, given his block about Wagner, one he suggests is common in many Germans. “It just makes me very uncomfortable, to the base of my spine, since it’s so laden with his vile thoughts…. so learning what I find fairly repugnant music was a challenge.” Nick Schlieper at the lighting desk for Love Never Dies (2012). Photo: Jeff Busby.
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tech budget. And Nick finished up with a lighting plot of 2,500 cues. The arc of Nick Schlieper’s career has seen an ever-growing respect from audiences, critics and industry colleagues - for the craft of a lighting designer, and an astonishing shift in the technology at their fingertips. “I’ve seen manually operated desks replaced by computer boards; football -sized globes replaced by ones golfball -sized; and colour temperature and heat emissions have changed so much we can have an expanded palette of colour gels. And importantly we can now have a whiter, less yellow light. “At first with computers doing a lighting fade we missed the skill of a good operator, but now these have a control which is incredibly sensitive. You can virtually move a host of lights throughout a show without the audience being aware of what you’re doing.” A negative for Nick is LED technology. He argues it reduces the colour ring spectrum to just 70%; with the missing 30% so critical because that’s the light most sympathetic to
MTC’s North By Northwest (2016). Photo: Jeff Busby.
skin tones, to lighting the actors and telling the story. It didn’t stop him, however, employing a huge back wall of white light in the STC’s Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. The lighting bank initially simmered and then blasted direct into the audience, suggesting the fireworks - and raw emotions - that climaxed at the end of the play.
Nick has the perfect collaborator in STC artistic director Kip Williams, whose own stage signature often strips everything to an empty space, often with a revolve, defined with little set or clutter, and so often dramatised by cross lighting. Their recent credits also include (Continued on page 89)
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Chinamerica, with its complex storytelling across countries and decades; the epic dramatisation of Ruth Park’s Harp in the South; Brecht’s Arturo Uri with Hugo Weaving; White’s ghoulishly vaudevillian A Cheery Soul; and Shaw’s St Joan. He just finished lighting Simon Phillips’ STC production of Stoppard’s The Real Thing. He remains a big fan of white light and cross-lighting, and his reasoning, of course, comes back to what’s true to the performers. “It solves the age-old problem of people standing next to each other talking as we do in real life, by lighting along the axis they’re speaking to each other. “And it gives such a sculptural impact to dancers. It makes bodies look fantastic and faces so much more interesting and more present.” Nick has lit six notable shows by Bangarra. With Patyegarang and the most recent, Bennelong, he’s lit Stephen Page’s significant shift to a dance theatre storytelling involving
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Ring (2004).
Nick Schlieper spoke to Martin Portus for a State Library of NSW oral history project on leaders in the performing arts; the full interview is now available on amplify.gov.au points of view both indigenous and colonial. “In terms of the practical, it’s about being very careful about colour and choosing the optimum angle for dancers … but with the episodic story of Bennelong I also had to be wary about leaving the audience with a clear dramatic structure.”
He’s getting over being what he describes as “the whitest thing possible in that context, yes Aryan even! “It’s a very useful reminder - as if it’s needed - of how strongly you can feel being the ‘other’, and useful to have the boot on the other foot.”
Video Wizardry The Sydney Theatre Company’s production of The Picture of Dorian Gray has won rave reviews for technical wizardry and acting. Eryn Jean Norvill played all 26 roles in the Oscar Wilde classic. On multiple screens, she interacted with her own pre -recorded performances as different characters. One of the highlights was a dinner party where live Eryn sits at the end of a table and has a razor-sharp repartee with a smorgasbord of eccentric characters. Read David Spicer’s full review bit.ly/36PrlyL.
Photo: Daniel Boud.
Rosco Celebrates 30 Years Creative Film and Theatre Solutions is the exclusive agent for Rosco Products in Australia and New Zealand - supplying to the performing arts and entertainment industries for 30 years. The company kept its business ticking over under trying circumstances in 2020 but is excited about the year ahead. Rosco Laboratories - a lighting equipment, live entertainment, film and broadcast equipment supplier - is committed to being a one stop shop for producers. Products include paint for scenery and props, and digital compositing paint for blue and green screens - formulated with the assistance of video technicians. The company has what they describe as world's largest catalogue of gobo templates, created by lighting designers. They also have LED Effects Projectors capable of throws of up to 33-ft (10m) engineered to create “stunning” illumination effects. Other products include a full range of flooring. A popular line is Rosco's Chroma Floor, which solves the long-standing problem of repainting a studio floor for every shoot. Creative Film and Theatre Solutions ship to all areas via their Sydney warehouse and have dealers in most capital cities.
Check out the product range at au.rosco.com/en, or get in touch with them on (02) 9906 6262 or by emailing sales@cfats.com.au. www.stagewhispers.com.au Stage Whispers 90
triangle-tape technique, to secure and surround a lavalier capsule. Stashing The Pack For each mini microphone, a wireless transmitter (bodypack) will be required. It’s easy to imagine simply popping it under some clothing, but steps need to be taken to ensure both the integrity of the wireless signal, and also the longevity of the wireless transmitter. Sweat from an actor’s skin is the number one enemy of sensitive electronics, so care must be taken to avoid direct skin contact. A protective neoprene pouch is often used to safely strap a pack to the waist area. Sometimes an extra layer of protection via a latex sheath is used if the actor is “a sweater”. Moisture seeping into the Artie Jones from Factory Sound shares his tips electronics of a bodypack will decrease for schools and amateur theatre companies on the functional lifetime and affect the discreet and crackle free use of microphones. wireless integrity. Antennas must be clear of any An incredible amount of research, sound will be great, unless some metals to avoid ‘detuning’ the wireless design and engineering goes into careful steps are followed signal and ensure they are allowed to producing every microphone you can Securing a miniature lavalier sit in their ‘straight’ position, without see (and those you can’t see) in use on microphone right at the hairline, at the an unnatural bend. the stage and in studios around the top of the actor’s forehead, is a great world. place to hide the microphone. It also Before Moving To Miniatures This won’t guarantee perfect picks up a very natural sound from the Both the “Primary” and performance every time. There are singer, without overloading the capsule “Secondary” microphones listed above steps you can take to improve via a ‘proximity effect’ (the more are not without their charm and performance - or at the very least, pronounced bottom end sound which benefits. While a handheld microphone prevent audible interference or physical you may get from a handheld mic has the obvious drawback of taking a problems that arise from misuse. when it is closest to the source). performer’s arm away, it does offer the Other places include elsewhere most flexibility for a powerful singer. Shrinking Graduation around the hairline, such as above the We can all visualise the action of a In Primary School performances, ear. Underneath clothing is an option singer being able to control how far lead roles often pass a handheld for some actors and costumes, but the away from their mouth the wireless microphone to each other horrible sound of clothing rustle on a microphone capsule sits, depending on when there is a line to deliver or a song microphone capsule (which can sound how hard they’re belting out a note. to sing, while many Secondary School like wireless microphone interference) The headset solution turns fixed productions will feature headset may then arise. distance into a feature, by ensuring the microphones. microphone capsule is in exactly the More sophisticated productions will Tale Of The Tape same place for the entire performance. ‘feature’ microphones totally hidden Essential in the theatre audio toolkit In effect, the microphone moves with a from the audience, but what is the best is tape, and lots of it. Gaffer Tape (the performer’s mouth, so every time they way to do this? 510-matte variety), Hypoallergenic turn their head for a stage direction or surgical tape, Lav tape, and specially choreography, the microphone capsule Invisible, Not Impossible prepared Undercovers and Stickies are is right there ready to capture the Moving to miniature microphones, all useful in making sure the capsule sound without missing a beat. often called lavalier microphones, is a stays put, and the actor is comfortable. As always, if wireless microphones step in the invisibility direction, but this Should a microphone need placing are causing more headaches than you usually comes at a cost. A highunder clothing, the UNDERCOVER can handle, get in touch with an RF performance microphone capsule range of adhesives makes sure that the specialist to make sure you get looked smaller than your pinky fingernail is not apparel does not rub against the after. only often priced higher than the other capsule. In an emergency, try the options, but there is no guarantee the factorysound.com
Keeping Mics Hidden
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Taking Charge Artie Jones from Factory Sound estimates that more than a quarter of a million disposable batteries could end up in landfill after being used in productions each year in Australia. He says there is a better alternative. Batteries, maths and landfill When it comes to the best way to power your wireless systems - alkaline battery or rechargeable - there are many factors to consider. The saying “Less is More” is the key. A wireless microphone system that’s used for three performances, then put back in the cupboard until next year, equates to fewer performances, but a greater risk of battery leakage inside the wireless transmitter. The risk of battery leakage from a nickel metal hydride (NiMH) rechargeable battery, however, is negligible, even if left inside a device for a prolonged period. How much landfill is acceptable? Let’s imagine a typical user of wireless microphones - the annual school production. A small-tomedium sized production, with a handful of shows and a couple of tech rehearsals, could consume 140 batteries for a production. There are around 8000 schools in Australia. If just 15% of these attempt an annual production, 168,000 batteries would be used. Add to that a few end-of-year concerts, and it would be a very conservative estimate of 250,000 batteries heading to landfill annually. This figure doesn’t include amateur theatre, professional
productions, theatre restaurants, nor the thousands of bands that use the same wireless systems and in-earmonitoring systems. Brand-specific rechargeable batteries If you are the person responsible for wireless microphones, the very first thing you’ll notice is how quickly alkaline (single use) AA batteries disappear. It might be because the AA batteries have been ‘borrowed’ by students and co-workers, as they fit a variety of other devices. Generic rechargeable AA batteries offer the ‘double-whammy’ of not only being desirable to the borrower, they also may not deliver the (approximately) 1.2V per cell consistently throughout the charged state. Once your battery level drops, although the wireless will remain on, the actual RF performance - the quality of the wireless transmission will suffer greatly, leading to dropouts and possible interference. The safety net and convenience factor With single-use alkaline batteries giving us a landfill concern, and generic rechargeable batteries possibly not performing ‘up to scratch’ , there are great reasons to choose a wireless-specific rechargeable (such as BA2015 for Sennheiser, or SB900A for Shure).
For all your wireless microphone system needs (including spare batteries) get in touch with the friendly staff at Factory Sound at factorysound.com or on 1800 816 244.
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If you load your BA2015 into the Sennheiser bodypack, then drop it into the L2015 charger after the gig, it simply will not over-charge. Similarly, if you put the bodypack into the charger without the correct BA2015 battery in place, it won’t charge. The safety nets are in place to ensure there is no danger of damage. With a lifecycle of around 1000 discharge / charge cycles, using the correct NiMH rechargeable battery pack in the wireless transmitter, the battery is highly likely to last for the same number of performances as the wireless itself. Because they’re a unique shape, they are unlikely to be borrowed as well. Smart RF (wireless) technicians keep a spare rechargeable battery for each wireless device, and they will also find a way to document the life of each battery. Get ready to buy another one after around 800 charges. If all theatres and performance venues around the world approach battery usage the same way, imagine how much less landfill we would contribute each and every year.
Microphones In The Pit
Royal Opera House Covent Gardens Photo: Sim Canetty-Clarke.
Artie Jones from Factory Sound dives into the orchestra pit to help ensure your magnificent musicians can be heard with clarity.
The ‘spot’ microphones that work best are usually a small diaphragm ‘pencil’ condenser mic. Use one of It’s not just about the audience the mixing engineer to blend the these for each of the sections that From a full 2,000 seat theatre, music with the cast’s wireless may need a little extra tickle of right back to a small school microphones. Once this is blended volume to be heard when the whips production held in the multipurpose nicely, it’s all sent out of the speakers are really cracking - like the smaller hall, it’s not ‘just’ the audience who for the audience, which has the effect hand percussion, or flutes. needs to hear the right balance of of the sound ‘making sense’ all music and singing. In fact, the coming out of the same place (even if Limitations of the mixing console performers on stage are the first ones the audience doesn’t realise it’s Unless you’re involved with a big who need to get a clear feed of the happening). Broadway show, with 180+ channels music, to ensure pitch and timing of worth of microphones and a their singing is perfect. Getting the right balance sophisticated mixing system, there will When the music is provided by Having a great conductor is the be a point where you’ve reached the (gasp) a CD or laptop, it’s even more best way to ensure a nice balance maximum number of microphone important to have a speaker on the between all the instruments. channels available on the mixing side of stage, pointing at the However, if you’re doing West Side console. performers. This ‘foldback’ speaker Story, it’s hard for the percussionists For smaller shows, it may be 5 or 6 makes it much easier for the singers playing finger cymbals, small maracas wireless packs, 2 or 3 hanging to have the best chance of singing in and claves to keep up with the microphones for the stage, a couple time, and in pitch. Waiting for the volume generated from seven brass of ‘floor’ microphones for the stage sound to travel from the Front of and the ‘orchestra pair’ plus 3 spot players. Equally, the flute may House (audience) speakers, back to struggle to heard over the 12 string microphones for your musicians. Very the stage can be problematic. players. quickly, that has already added up to 16 channels (which is the size of a This is where ‘spot’ microphones Microphones for the band in combination with ‘orchestra’ small digital mixing console). Having actual musicians perform microphones become important. the score is easier than playback in Setting up a pair of microphones We’ll take a closer look at different many ways, but it’s not without its (large-diaphragm condenser mics microphones for specific instruments, own set of concerns. work very well for this application) to along with hanging and floor Depending on where the record the overall sound of the microphones for stage in the next musicians are positioned, there may orchestra are essential. This will allow edition of Tech Tips. be no need for the abovementioned As always, get in touch with a ‘feed’ to the foldback monitor on ‘foldback speaker’, as playback is now stage (if needed), and also a feed to microphone specialists if you need generated acoustically, with no CD or the backstage/green room area. more immediate information. laptop involved. Factory Sound have the skills and expertise to help guide your At the very least though, a couple next microphone purchase. Call 1800 816 244 or visit of microphones picking up the ‘overall’ sound of the orchestra allows factorysound.com www.stagewhispers.com.au Stage Whispers 94
Going Wireless Using a hard wired intercom system was proving one big headache for students and production staff at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts at ECU.
WAAPA is recognised nationally and internationally for the quality of its graduates. It provides the most comprehensive range of performing arts training in Australia. WAAPA’s world-class staff, working in state-ofthe-art performance and teaching facilities, provide rigorous and specialised training of the highest order. Over the course of its academic year, WAAPA stages around 25 key productions of musicals, plays, dance, jazz and classical concerts. With such a rigorous production schedule, having a reliable communications infrastructure is paramount in the successful delivery of each show.
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Speaking with Tim Landauer, Venue Services Coordinator of WAAPA, he explained a few of the challenges that WAAPA faced before he found a new wireless system, installed by Riedel Communications. “The best approach in teaching is with clear concise communication. However, after using the old hardwired system for production communication between technical crew such as lighting, sound, stage managers and mechanists, we saw around 50 hours of downtime annually.” Maintenance delays and fault finding hampered WAAPA’s ability to
put on modern productions and the downtime was amplified in all the key departments, leading to hundreds of ineffective student hours as staff triaged the breakdowns in communication. “It was obvious our systems were at the end of their useful life in terms of supporting multiple productions. This left us with the choice of investing in reliable, state of the art technology or ultimately a reduction in production
capability, which was simply not an option,” said Tim. In May 2018 WAAPA commenced installation of a Riedel Bolero Wireless System into their venues. The modular system has been used both on and off campus for a major musical production, highlighting several benefits of the portable wireless system, including: Using a modular and integrated design allows for fast setup times and cost efficiency No extra hardware is required, only minimal configuration changes No risk of cable entanglement with machinery - such as fly lines and large moving trucks Safe and reliable communication for stopping elements and calling out hazards. “Riedel Systems are Industry standard in the broadcast and theatre production/event workspace meaning that our production students receive training on technology they will use in the real world. Riedel can also provide additional equipment when required on a rental basis which keeps our total cost of ownership down,” Tim added. Publication and recording management is integrated with digital
rights management and IP control allowing a neatly edited face to the world backed by well managed campus-wide infrastructure. Prior to the upgrades WAAPA hired two discreet systems annually, at a substantial cost for the equipment, whilst having to pay the associated support costs on top. With Riedel, WAAPA receives convenient support in a local time zone after setup, training and install. “It is not impossible to foresee the end of analogue technology’s general use for this purpose within the industry,” explained Tim. “We also found that Riedel’s experience in major performing arts venues, theatres and universities across Australia was invaluable in helping us optimise the system design.”
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Training
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Western Australian senior drama students attend a NIDA workshop.
NIDA Creative Schools Programs
opportunities can range in length from a one hour visit to artist in residence programs lasting up to a year. Working in collaboration with classroom teachers, NIDA customises the workshops to address state The National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA) offers performing arts curriculums. The program is ideal for educational activities to support learning for both school students schools looking to access specialist and school teachers. skills in performance styles, rehearse Reflective of NIDA’s worldprofessionals, guest artists, teacher scenes from a prescribed text, develop renowned approach to education and resources and workshops. practical skills in devised performance training, developed over 60 years, the NIDA’s customised workshops are or use drama as pedagogy to enhance schools programs are carefully available for preschool, primary and literacy outcomes. designed to provide dynamic and secondary school students. The NIDA’s teaching resources include engaging skills development to workshops integrate creativity into notes on acting, creative voice, and enhance the early childhood, primary student learning, and are based on a movement as well as a suggested and secondary syllabuses. collaborative approach that reading list for students. Their online It reflects NIDA’s practice-based recognises the expertise of teachers in program NIDA Devised: Group conservatoire training model and creating programs that best meet the Performance, which follows emphasises the importance of needs of their school community. professional actors as they collaboration and communication. Customised courses can take place brainstorm, develop and showcase The schools programs include at NIDA (in Sydney or Melbourne) or work is now free to all Australian specialist training, access to industry onsite at a school. Learning secondary school teachers.
For more information or to discuss creative learning programs for school students, go to nida.edu.au/schools-and-teachers or call 1300 450 417.
Online extras!
See what NIDA’s student improvisation and playbuilding workshops entail youtu.be/hmLYV2q4wD4 www.stagewhispers.com.au Stage Whispers 98
Easy Stagecraft
this scene? The discussion then turns to introductory elements of lighting design, script analysis and design composition. Teaching Drama and Theatre Studies to students has never been in “I realised there was a crucial part such an interesting and tumultuous time of change as it was of stagecraft - of theatre - being during the COVID-19 pandemic. missed at the classroom level because Whilst the jury is still out on lighting and projection designer. it was either so hard to get accurate whether face-to-face teaching or e“I noticed that during these and easy-to-digest information, or learning is now the best platform, the productions, I would always have an because the schools didn’t have a next step is for teachers to create amazing team of school students to theatre, or space of their own to content and lesson plans for this new mentor, that had an insatiable experiment in,” said Daniel. method of teaching. appetite for learning how the theatre “The best bit about Easy Stagecraft Easy Stagecraft has been and this technology worked,” is that I am constantly updating it as reimagined from an in-school remarked Daniel. technology is constantly changing. stagecraft training service to a “But whenever I asked them if they I’ve tried to take an open, honest and completely online platform. Teachers had the opportunity to learn this deliberate look at not only how we and their students have direct access during class time, their response was design, but why we design what we to a program designed to fill the hole always a categorical ‘No, we do not do for the stage. But behind the when it comes to teaching stagecraft, get that chance, we just don’t have design elements, in my belief, as part of the drama and theatre the gear or resources’.” students need to know how it all goes studies curriculum, nationwide. So Easy Stagecraft was formed as together, and that’s why there is such Daniel “Goz” Gosling - Easy an in-school training program, a deep look at the systems and Stagecraft’s founder and senior originally starting out with a lighting practical elements behind the design stagecraft coach - has over 15 years’ workshop component. It taught component. experience in live production - from students how lights worked, how to “While I want teachers to have the touring with international artists to operate them, how colours worked, resources, they need to break down working on theatre, opera and dance but also the beginning of those questions and assign tasks - I also in every department imaginable. fundamental discussions of how the want to give them a break! The Recently, he has been spending most light, colour or angle impacts the course is designed to be self-guided, of his time working in the schools scene? How is the mood affected, or and self-led. There are quizzes, videos, sector on school musicals and plays as impacted by the use of certain worksheets - all of which the students both a production manager and a lighting? What do you need to light can work through at their own pace!”
For more details on course, and to sign up please visit easystagecraft.com With yearly access starting at just $197 for 1 teacher and 20 students, each package gives full access to the following courses: Stagecraft 101 Stage Management Lighting Basics Lighting Design Sound Basics Sound Design The Interview Hub And for teachers - The Teachers Hub Resource Centre.
Students participate in an Easy Stagecraft lighting workshop.
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Preview the course contents with these sample videos: youtu.be/ymTNELEcKFE youtu.be/xGKeJo7NppE
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Sophia launched her EP with a live show at the Royal Oak Balmain with many APGS students in attendance. “Replay” instantly shot to number 1 on the country music charts and reached number 3 across all genres on iTunes. “Replay” climbed the charts and was featured on the KIX country radio Hottest 20 chart at number 16; it reached number 10 on the Australian Independent Record Labels Association 100% Independent Singles Chart. Sophia released a music video for “Replay” and performed at Tamworth Country Music Festival and the Sydney Royal Easter Show. All of this coincided with the start of Sophia’s final year of high school, Sophia Chesworth released a song that went to the top of the as she was entering Year 12 and country music charts whilst still at High School. She attends the focusing on achieving academically in Australian Performing Arts Grammar School (APGS), which allows her HSC. students to study and chase a creative career. When asked about balancing academics and her dream of making Sophia moved to the inner-city APGS has several showcases it big as a musician, Sophia said, “The Performing Arts school in Sydney for throughout the year in venues support I’ve been given has enabled her senior studies because she wanted ranging from the school’s own hall to me to pursue opportunities for my to be supported to pursue her the Seymour Centre. In Sophia’s first own music and the school has helped passions. Showcase after she joined APGS she me maintain the same academic “I have to say my favorite thing sang an incredible country pop song grades that I’ve been getting, which is about APGS is how supportive it is,” that she had written and blew really important to me.” say Sophia. everyone away with her incredible APGS is a unique school where just At APGS Sophia is surrounded by voice and catchy lyrics. over a hundred students with peers with similar creative goals and a Later that year Sophia worked passions in the arts come to extend teaching staff that understands hard outside of school developing her themselves and be around people creative learners. At APGS the EP. The song she performed at that who have the same drive. At APGS academic curriculum is fitted into the showcase, “Replay”, was the title Sophia is surrounded by students who first four days of the week and track of her EP as well as the first share the same passion that she does, students enjoy a full day of single she released. but for others at the school their Performing Arts on Fridays. On the day the song was released passion might lie in musical theatre, In these specialist classes students on iTunes and Spotify there was a lot acting, film making, drumming or are led by industry professionals. of excitement at APGS. Sophia arrived dancing instead of singing. The Sophia is working towards her HSC to her classmates singing her song in students at APGS come together to in subjects she loves; she is also the halls and the school celebrated celebrate their creativity. extending her skills and talents with the launch with an assembly where For information call people in music industry and making Sophia performed the song with (02) 9518 5123 or visit valuable contacts in this close-knit everyone singing along with her. community. apgs.nsw.edu.au
High School Student’s Hit Song
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