About an Hour Program

CARRIAGEWORKS 19–24 JANUARY

ABOUT AN HOUR FREE PROGRAM PROUDLY MADE POSSIBLE BY

About an Hour returns to Carriageworks this year, with perfectly priced performances striking the 60 minute-ish mark. Dazzling, thrilling, funny and always fascinating, About an Hour has everything from acrobatics to theatre, dance, hip-hop, classical music and much more. A huge dose of Sydney Festival packed into each brilliant bite-sized show!

ABOUT AN HOUR

VENUE

+51 Aviación, San Borja

Carriageworks Bay 17

Double Blind

Carriageworks Bay 20

Fall Fell Fallen

TUE 19 WED 20 THU 21 FRI 22 SAT 23 SUN 24

7.45pm

4.45pm

6.30pm 9.30pm

1pm

9pm

6.15pm

8pm

1.15pm 4pm

Carriageworks Bay 17

6.30pm

6.30pm

5.15pm 8.15pm

11.45am

In Between Two

Carriageworks Bay 20

6.15pm

9pm

1.30pm 4.15pm

6.30pm 9.15pm

O Mensch!

Carriageworks Track 8

8pm

8.30pm

8.30pm

This Is How We Die

Carriageworks Bay 17

7pm

10.30pm 10.30pm 2.45pm

3.45pm 8pm

Tomorrow’s Parties

Carriageworks Bay 17

8.30pm

8.45pm

5.15pm 9.30pm

Cover photo: Strobed.

100

7pm

1pm

DOUBLE BLIND

STEPHANIE LAKE COMPANY | AUSTRALIA | WORLD PREMIERE

Photo: Pippa Samaya

CARRIAGEWORKS BAY 20 19–24 JANUARY 60MINS

Choreographer Stephanie Lake Dancers Alana Everett, Alisdair Macindoe, Amber Haines, Kyle Page Composer Robin Fox Lighting Designer Bosco Shaw Costume Designer Harriet Oxley Production Manager Glenn Dulihanty Producer Freya Waterson Stephanie Lake Company would like to acknowledge the support of Creative Victoria, Darebin Arts, Australia Council for the Arts, Transit Dance, Insite Arts, Chunky Move, Lucy Guerin Inc. and the Sidney Myer Foundation.

CREATOR’S NOTE Combining choreography, sound, light and design that is visceral, intense and crystalline, Double Blind came from an interest in a conflict between personal ethics or sense of responsibility to society and our obedience to those in a position of authority. Inspired by realworld psychological experiments from the 1960s, Double Blind asks how far one can be pushed to act outside of one’s moral code when instructed.

The work has evolved to engage with the nature of experimentation more broadly, across art, science, psychology and choreography.

For me, Double Blind is its own universe – a universe of four, in which different combinations and configurations set a series of consequences in motion.

These four are constantly at the whim of each other as well as some other unseen force. It’s as if they are subjects in one another’s experiment, as well as mine.

Working with speed, complexity and image, and driven by a pulsing score, Double Blind allows me to continue my fascination with movement invention.

At times funny, at others dark, Double Blind uses a rhythmically charged and precise choreographic language on the one hand and is recklessly spontaneous on the other. This beautiful brutality fuels the work.

Double Blind puts the dynamics of human interaction under the microscope.

STEPHANIE LAKE

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TOMORROW’S PARTIES FORCED ENTERTAINMENT UK | AUSTRALIAN EXCLUSIVE

Conceived and Devised by Forced Entertainment Performers Cathy Naden, Jerry Killick Director Tim Etchells Designer Richard Lowdon Lighting Designer Francis Stevenson Production Ray Rennie, Francis Stevenson and Jim Harrison Forced Entertainment Creative Team Robin Arthur, Tim Etchells (Artistic Director), Richard Lowdon (Designer), Claire Marshall, Cathy Naden, Terry O’Connor Forced Entertainment Management Team Eileen Evans, Jim Harrison, Natalie Simpson Tomorrow’s Parties is a production of Belluard Bollwerk International, made possible thanks to a contribution of the Canton of Fribourg to culture.

In co-production with BIT Teatergarasjen (Bergen), Internationales Sommerfestival (Hamburg), Kaaitheater (Brussels), Kunstlerhaus Mousonturm (Frankfurt), Theaterhaus Gessnerallee (Zurich) and Sheffield City Council. With the support of Stanley Thomas Johnson Foundation.

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Photo: Hugo Glendinning

CARRIAGEWORKS BAY 17 20–24 JANUARY 80MINS

DIRECTOR’S NOTE Here in the future, I’m looking back at a photo-project that Hugo Glendinning and I did ten years ago, titled Looking Forwards. For it, we invited a small handful of individuals to sit for photo-portraits whilst thinking about the future, asking them afterwards to identify themselves as either optimists or pessimists. There’s something warm and generous about the presence of these thinkers-about-the-future, and a dynamic energy that circulates around these images. What will happen? What has happened? What is to come?

What has already arrived?

Re-looking at Looking Forwards I am also thinking about a much more current project – the performance Tomorrow’s Parties, which is also an attempt to think about the future although here, the guessing game of Looking Forwards has become a playful public attempt to put the future into words.

Two performers take the stage and proceed to name as many possible versions of the future as they can think of – from workless utopian idylls to post-technological disaster zones, to worldwide shopping malls and brutal

robot dictatorships. Shifting through science fiction scenarios and halfbaked fantasies of what’s to come, to the familiar terrors and dreams we get daily via the news, the performance switches angles, weighing up the different stories we tell ourselves about where we might be headed.

At the heart of this game we get to see the two performers very clearly, moment by moment, taking turns, competing, and out-doing each other and at times supporting each other.

Like the people we photographed for Looking Forwards, the performers are not experts on the future, instead, like the rest of us, they are interested amateurs – humans whose daily existence is intrinsically bound up with the ebb and flow of bigger narratives – scientific and political, banal and larger than life – which mark the globe, sometimes transforming things slowly, sometimes shifting things suddenly.

TIM ETCHELLS SHEFFIELD, 2015

Photo: Nicolas Hérédia, Philippe Laurençon

FALL FELL FALLEN LONELY CIRCUS | FRANCE AUSTRALIAN EXCLUSIVE

CARRIAGEWORKS BAY 17 21–24 JANUARY 50MINS

Creators and Performers Jérôme Hoffmann, Sébastien Le Guen Director Nicolas Heredia With the help of Marion Coutarel Lighting Designer Marie Robert Technical Manager Antonin Clair Set Construction Sylvain Vassas, Olivier Gauducheau A 2012 Lonely Circus production, Lonely Circus is a resident company at Balaruc-les-Bains (34 – France). Support from La Verrerie d’Ales, Pôle National Cirque Languedoc Roussillon, U4, Parc du haut fourneau, Uckange. Sponsored by Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication /DGCA et Drac Languedoc Roussillon, Conseil Régional Languedoc Roussillon, SACD.

CREATOR’S NOTE Originally trained as a tight ropedancer for 20 years, falling is the focus of my work. Maybe, it is the centre of my work even if and because, I tried to avoid it for 20 years. I think that the audience watching a tight-rope dancer expects them to fall, or can’t stop thinking about the possibility of them falling.

The first idea was to try to study the precise second before falling, and the one right after. I think those seconds contain a huge part of humanity’s fears and desires. To play with these ideas I’ve been imagining and creating very simple falling structures for different parts of the fall to demonstrate the art of falling.

The second major idea of this project is the sound: what is the sound of these particular seconds (the words ‘fall fell fallen’ in French language sound strange, enigmatic). This is the second project I did with the electroacoustic musician Jérôme Hoffmann with whom we imagine and explore le cirque électro (true dialogue between sound and movements). For Fall Fell Fallen, in order to play with me on our falling stage, he created his own falling musical instruments. Is Fall Fell Fallen a concert? Performance art? Physical theatre? Experimentation? A bit of all these...We would like to invite the Australian audience to take a seat and follow us on this bumpy road that could be life.

SÉBASTIEN LE GUEN

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P7

THIS IS HOW WE DIE

4

Image courtesy of James Mangohig

P1

DOUBLE BLIND

P8

IN BETWEEN TWO

Photo: Matthew Humphreys

Photo: Pippa Samaya

Photo: Philippe Laurençon

Photo: Yuta Fukitsuka

TOMORROW’S PARTIES

+51 AVIACIÓN, SAN BORJA P6 Photo: Samuel Hodge

P2

O MENSCH! P9

FALL FELL FALLEN

P3

5

Photo: Hugo Glendinning

+51 AVIACIÓN, SAN BORJA

OKAZAKI ART THEATRE | JAPAN | AUSTRALIAN EXCLUSIVE

Playwright and Director Yudai Kamisato Performers Masahiko Ono, Wataru Omura, Mari Kodama Set Design Yudai Kamisato Sound Designer Masashi Wada Lighting Designer Ryoya Fudetani Technical Manager Eiji Torakawa Stage Manager Naoko Yokokawa Dramaturg Hinako Arao Translation Aya Ogawa Surtitles Maho Watanabe Surtitles Supervisor Kaku Nagashima Production Manager Akane Nakamura (Precog), Sachiko Uchiyama Production Okazaki Art Theatre, Precog

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Photo: Yuta Fukitsuka

CARRIAGEWORKS BAY 17 21–24 JANUARY 75MINS

ABOUT THE WORK Born in Lima, Peru, Yudai Kamisato is the leader of Okazaki Art Theatre. His work is a manifestation of his sociopolitical opinions, themed around the idea of symbiosis between people who cannot fully understand each other.

Kamisato’s latest piece revolves around the concept of imin (‘immigrant’), a key word from his own origins, and one which he has frequently explored.

Grounded in actual investigative work, the narrative unfolds around places he went to and episodes about encounters with people there, as if to retrace his roots. More specifically, it moves from Tokyo, where he is currently based, to Okinawa, from which his father hailed, and from there to the Japanese-Peruvian community in Lima, where his grandmother, an Okinawa native, still lives.

But this is not all; along the way, the audience also makes the acquaintance of some engrossing but little-known personages. For example, the work references the life of Seki Sano, a dramaturg known as the ‘Father of Mexican Theatre’, who was active in the shingeki new theatre movement in pre-war Japan but was driven out of the country

for ‘thought crimes’. There is also an encounter with Ryoichi Jinnai, an entrepreneur who, while attracted to the prospect of immigrating, elected to remain in Japan and is still providing support to Japanese heritage communities in Peru and other South American countries.

In the communities founded by Japanese emigrants who left the land of their birth and did their best to build a new life by making use of the institution of immigration, Japan still exists as ‘the old home’. What is the difference between the Japan experienced by Kamisato in his life and work, and the Japan he saw in the immigrant community of Lima?

Showing us plural images of Japan, the work tasks us to look at our present life – and ourselves.

THIS IS HOW WE DIE CHRISTOPHER BRETT BAILEY | UK | AUSTRALIAN EXCLUSIVE

Photo: Jemima Yong

CARRIAGEWORKS BAY 17 20–24 JANUARY 70MINS

Written and Performed by Christopher Brett Bailey

CREATOR’S NOTE hello, welcome, etc.

Dramaturg Anne Rieger

in december ‘12 i started writing again on the insistence of an old friend – a hyper-articulate, straightedge, over-achiever called benoit charland (picture a quebecois henry rollins and you’re 1/2 way there...). he’d recently run away to france to work on his novel. after a few years adrift we were reunited and along with personal trivia benoit was keen to ask about my writing; lots of questions about craft and when could he read something new?

Lighting Design Sherry Coenen Sound Design George Percy, Christopher Brett Bailey Musicians Alicia Jane Turner, Christopher Brett Bailey, Matthew McGuigan, James Eccles Produced by Beckie Darlington Commissioned by Ovalhouse, and made with support from Arts Council England, the Basement, Cambridge Junction and Norwich Arts Centre.

and worst of all: he missed my voice! ugh, how couldn’t i admit the truth? i had nothing new and no plans to write. maybe it was laziness, maybe it was no confidence, maybe i had nothing to say... (it was laziness)... how do you explain laziness to someone who jogs before breakfast and is built like henry rollins?

so, i began to keep notes – any idea no matter how big, small, stupid or unrealistic. i was seeking the path of least embarrassment: if i could get something – anything – together then it’d look to benoit like i was writing again. words became sentences, sentences became one-liners, image became images became something i worried might be a poem. tiny scraps became less tiny scraps, became no-longer scraps, became a google doc so long it crashes my computer. what you see tonight is the best of that google doc... with love, from the stage, christopher brett bailey ps. benoit now lives in africa. i think he followed a girl down there. and ya know what? fucking guy won’t let me read ANY of his novel...

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IN BETWEEN TWO PERFORMANCE 4A AUSTRALIA | WORLD PREMIERE

Written, Composed and Performed by Joelistics, James Mangohig Director Suzanne Chaundy Dramaturgs William Yang, Annette Shun Wah Designer Eugyeene Teh Visual Designer Jean Poole Lighting Designer Lucy Birkinshaw Production Manager Stewart Campbell Producer Annette Shun Wah

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Photo: Cesar Rodrigues

CARRIAGEWORKS BAY 20 21–24 JANUARY 70MINS

CO-CREATOR’S NOTE James and I share many bonds. Both of us grew up on a steady diet of rap music and rebellion, we are both the first sons of mixed race marriages with Asian fathers. And we both like to talk.

When we first met, we started telling each other stories about our families and this was the start of the show.

With the help of William Yang and Annette Shun Wah we created In Between Two to trace the threads of history and family, to explore what growing up Asian in Australia means and to plot the course of our migrant forebears. In the process of researching and writing IB2 I have felt like an archeologist excavating photos from basements and storage units, like an amateur historian picking over dates and details, and like a therapist analysing secrets and scandals that make up the best bits of any family history.

So, where do we begin? For me it’s my Chinese grandmother who at the age of 17 moved from Hong Kong to Sydney and went from selling fruit and veg in Haymarket to cofounding Sydney’s most infamous and glamorous night club. James begins with his Filipino father who wooed his mother across continents with letters and tapes, emigrating to Australia to work as a butcher before becoming a preacher.

What follows are the stories we uncovered, and oh my, what stories!

Chinese gangsters, mad aunts, Filipino boxer preachers, socialite murderers and interwoven throughout, love and bravery and unbelievable fortitude.

Music, photos and storytelling. It’s personal and universal like any good story should be. And besides, what are we all if not a collection of stories.

JOEL MA (AKA JOELISTICS)

SYDNEY CHAMBER OPERA AND CARRIAGEWORKS IN ASSOCIATION WITH SYDNEY FESTIVAL PRESENT

O MENSCH! SYDNEY CHAMBER OPERA AUSTRALIA | AUSTRALIAN PREMIERE

Music Pascal Dusapin Text Friedrich Nietzsche Baritone Mitchell Riley Piano Jack Symonds Director Sarah Giles Lighting Designer Katie Sfetkidis Assistant Director Danielle Maas Production Manager Huw Belling Surtitles Takefumi Ogawa Sydney Chamber Opera wishes to thank Kawai Pianos Australia and the Goethe-Institut Sydney for their generous support of the production.

Photo: Samuel Hodge

CARRIAGEWORKS TRACK 8 22–24 JANUARY 70MINS

PROGRAM NOTE Completed in 2009, O Mensch! is pre-eminent French composer Pascal Dusapin’s follow-up stage work to Passion, and his most intimate stage work yet. It gives musical voice to one of history’s greatest minds: notorious philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche.

Over the course of 27 sharply etched miniatures, fragments of Nietzsche’s poetry both early and late are transformed into an intricate musical procession embroidered by the fierce declamation of a lone voice. Nietzsche’s brilliant epigrams and metaphors, sparkling polemics and ceaseless stylistic experiments come to life in a passionate and intense journey – a Winterreise for the 21st century.

Dusapin’s composition contains a restrained carnality that threatens to erupt into cascading torrents of passion. It possesses the fluid rhythms of improvisation, progressing like a long-form riff around a few unifying chords, always evolving to test the limits of this central musical idea.

One voice and one piano shoulder the entire spectrum of this vision.

Dusapin often asks the pianist to produce flurries of irrationally fast notes that crash into long, sensual chords. From the baritone, he demands the entire range of vocal production, from whispers and distortions to cries, shouts and full-throated operatic song.

It careens between emotional states and ideological viewpoints with cinematic ease, a synthesis of stage-work, poetic dramaturgy and song cycle. The composer calls it “a promenade inhabited by themes as different as humanity, the heights, the night, the death, the despair, secret love, Richard Wagner, nature, The Joyous Science, Diogenes’ barrel, glory, the moon.”

JACK SYMONDS ARTISTIC DIRECTOR, SYDNEY CHAMBER OPERA

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