Kate Cherry Digital Portfolio

Director Madame Butterfly Seattle Opera, New Zealand Opera, SOSA

HIGHLIGHTS

Initiated and directed first digital simulcast of a theatre production in Australia BSSTC, A Midsummer Night's Dream

Established NIDA’s Changemaking Series to inspire students

Improved NIDA’s worldwide ranking for a Performing Arts educational institution from 16 to 10 within 1 year

Commissioned and produced The Sapphires in a tour to the Barbican and the Daegu Music Festival, Korea (BSSTC, Belvoir St and MTC)

Initiated and consolidated the research and development arm of BSSTC

Produced and facilitated 25 world premieres, 3 Australian Premieres, 25 Western Australian premieres

Director, Madame Butterfly, Seattle Opera, NZ Opera and SOSA

Turn of the Screw, Victorian Opera, Coronation of Poppea, Victorian Opera

Director, Australian Premiere The Goat, or Who is Sylvie? Edward Albee, MTC

Director, American Premiere, The Bay at Nice, by David Hare, Lincoln Centre Theatre Lab

Initiated and directed first Australian simulcast of a theatre production

A Midsummer Night’s Dream BSSTC

Initiated commission and production of The Sapphires

BSSTC

Director, Guy Pearce, Sweet Bird of Youth, MTC

Director, Ben Mendelsohn, Glass Menagerie, MTC

Opera

MADAME BUTTERFLY

SEATTLE OPERA, NEW ZEALAND OPERA, STATE OPERA COMPANY OF SOUTH AUSTRALIA

“A magical production with stunning performances.”

Broadway World.

“Kate Cherry’s production sublime, visually fantastic, must see.”

Seattle Times

“The Seattle opera audience roared with approval on opening night….”

Mia T Vogel at Arts@dailyuw.com

MADAME BUTTERFLY

The Australian

KATE CHERRY’S MADAMA BUTTERFLY: UNMISSABLE PUCCINI

Graham Strahle, November 18, 2019

Just when one thinks Puccini’s operas might have worn themselves hollow in their thinly concocted stories and cliched cultural depictions, along comes a production that wholly demolishes any such notion. Kate Cherry’s Madama Butterfly has shown before in New Zealand in 2013 and two years ago in Seattle, but not until now in Australia.

It is a production audiences in this country really need to know about. Showing a deep respect for the work itself and an eagle’s eye for the emotional truths it contains, the Adelaide-born director has lifted the lid right off the top of this opera.

The results are explosive. It comes from no single interpretative decision but rather a series of profound insights into what this work is about. On the surface, Madama Butterfly is a love story set in a clash of cultures — traditional Japan and imperial America. But it is also an opera about human fallibilities. Lieutenant Pinkerton’s crime is the monumental insensitivity he shows in marrying a 15-year-old geisha on a whim and then abandoning her, while her weakness is the blind trust she places in him.

Cherry draws these leading characters not as cultural stereotypes but as believable human beings as they hurtle towards inevitable tragedy. Led with sensational force and intensity by tenor Angus Wood and soprano Mariana Hong in the two respective lead roles, the tension is almost unbearable at times, and Puccini’s music is delivered with exceptional beauty by the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra under noted Swedish conductor Tobias Ringborg.

The production has a cinematic look in its fast flow of action and vivid characterisation in each scene. This is thanks in large measure to designer Christina Smith, whose set consisting of sliding screens first depicts Pinkerton’s abode on the hillsides overlooking Nagasaki, before transforming into a cell that imprisons Butterfly. Gorgeous lighting by Matt Scott makes it all compelling to watch. Costumes give a subtle nod to traditional Japanese designs without descending into caricature. But it is the singing that particularly makes this one of the finest productions of Puccini you will ever see. The pairing of Wood and Hong is stellar. Douglas McNicol and Caitlin Cassidy are outstanding as Sharpless and Suzuki, and Pelham Andrews (as Bonze), Adam Goodburn (Goro) and Bethany Hill (Kate Pinkerton) add wonderful texture too. This is unmissable Puccini.

Alexey Dolgov as Pinkerton and Lianna Haroutounian as Cio-Cio-San in Seattle Opera’s “Madame Butterfly.” (Jacob F. Lucas)

Tearing at the heartstrings, this stunning, sensitive production is the perfect ticket for opera novice and specialist alike.

In what has been a highly successful first year for Artistic Director Stuart Maunder, State Opera South Australia has chosen to end the season with a thematically appropriate double header in Gilbert & Sullivan’s cautionary comic if slightly offcolour The Mikado and Puccini’s greatest

Limelight Magazine

MADAMA BUTTERFLY (STATE OPERA SOUTH AUSTRALIA)

Brett Allen-Bayes, November 16, 2019

intimate tragedy Madama Butterfly. And both choices are rather timely given the current international political climate. However, whilst The Mikado seeks to update the milieu to a ‘bubble pink’ post-modern confection to make it easier for the contemporary audience to digest the unpalatable politics and cultural differences, with Puccini, it’s personal tragedy where the traditional idea of honour looms above all else.

With this production of Butterfly directed by Kate Cherry after highly successful runs in both New Zealand and Seattle, there exists a balance between the traditional mounting of this tale and Cio-Cio San’s personal tragedy viewed through the eyes of the post-feminist. In interviews, Cherry has told of her fascination for the faithful ‘wife’ awaiting the return of her spouse. Indeed, this was an idea that inspired Monteverdi (The Return of Ulysses). Add to this premise a well-chosen cast and production and Cherry presents a Butterfly that ranks amongst the finest I’ve witnessed.

Here is a production which holds together and convinces as firmly as the interlocking Japanese paper screens which underpin it. Add a tasteful range of kimono-styled gowns and such little yet highly effective touches as the gentle, floating showers of petals and the use of strident blood-red to emphasise the depth of passion as much as Cio-Cio San’s own demise, and here is an all-too-rare production to which the audience cannot remain indifferent or uninvolved. Puccini’s score makes the experience all the more passionate with his clever enveloping of western and eastern musical modes and methods.

Whilst any production of Madama Butterfly must succeed or fail by the abilities of its title character, in this – Mariana Hong’s first performance in Adelaide after many successful Opera Australia roles – is the finest exponent that I’ve yet heard on the stage. But this is no mere solo task. The interaction between Hong (formerly known as Hyeseoung Kwon) with her servant Suzuki, played by Caitlin Cassidy, was heartfelt, and others were equally impressive in their roles. Familiar tenor Angus Wood proves to be a very fine exponent as the American sailor and cad, Pinkerton, as is

Douglas McNicol as the older and wiser Sharpless. Other familiar troupe members Adam Goodburn, Pelham Andrews and Bethany Hill (as the manipulative Goro, the empathetic Commissioner and the American wife, Kate respectively) are a few examples of the generous and appropriate casting undertaken for this production. As always, the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra provides highly sympathetic accompaniment, conducted by Tobias Ringborg, making his Australian debut and in what must be seen as a real coup for the company.

This is a production of Butterfly that tears at the heartstrings whilst providing a truly excellent cast – as fine as any other that you’re likely the encounter anywhere in this country. Here is one of those rare treats where it’s hard to find fault with anyone involved in such a fine, sympathetic operatic experience. This Butterfly is the perfect ticket for novice and opera specialist alike. Congratulations to Stuart Maunder and his company.

Review: Seattle Opera’s ‘Madame Butterfly’ packs an emotional punch

Both casts deliver Puccini’s classic with passion in a beautiful setting.

It’s not often that you hear two singers sharing an opera’s leading-tenor role in the same evening. On Saturday, the opening night of Seattle Opera’s “Madame Butterfly” had a bit of extra drama: two Lieutenant Pinkertons.

Alexey Dolgov, who was scheduled to sing the role, was vocally indisposed, which became increasingly clear during the long first act (although he bravely landed the high C at the end of the duet). After intermission, company General Director Aidan Lang announced from the stage that Sunday’s tenor, Dominick Chenes, was in the audience and would take over the role for the remainder of the performance. (Pinkerton does not appear in Act II, and has much less to sing in Act III than in Act I.)

“Madame Butterfly” is never short on drama: love, pain, hope, despair, death. In our own time, the drama includes concern about the cultural insensitivity of Puccini’s opera — a subject on which Seattle Opera has engaged the community through thought-provoking essays, lobby displays, website discussions and an upcoming remount of its “an American Dream” production.

The Seattle Times

MADAME BUTTERFLY

Melinda

Bargreen,

In earlier centuries, many opera composers and librettists (almost all of them male) were clearly intrigued by the idea of slave girls, courtesans and exploited women, who were often depicted with a notable disregard for historical and cultural accuracy. Such is the case with “Butterfly,” which presents the 15-year-old heroine, Cio-Cio-San, as a “geisha,” a professional attainment that would have been highly unlikely at her age.

It is the music, with gorgeous arias and duets and a passionate orchestral score, that has always drawn operagoers like a magnet to “Madame Butterfly” — and the musical values of this production are compelling indeed. On Saturday night, conductor Carlos Montanaro, a company favorite, led a large-scale, opulent performance that was beautifully paced, giving the singers plenty of interpretive scope and expertly building the drama.

Saturday’s Cio-Cio-San was the brilliant Lianna Haroutounian, who commanded the stage all evening with an all-out, full-voiced, big-hearted performance that brought out the bravos (and the handkerchiefs). What a singer; what an actress!

Weston Hurt was an empathetic and noble Sharpless; Renée Rapier a dignified, compelling Suzuki; and Rodell Rosel a wily and adept Goro. In a bit of “luxury casting,” Daniel Sumegi proved an unusually powerful Bonze; Ryan Bede was the hapless Yamadori, and Sarah Mattox gave unexpected and lovely depth to the small but pivotal role of Kate Pinkerton.

August 7, 2017

The production originated with New Zealand Opera (of which Aidan Lang was previously the general director), and the design is both simple and beautiful. Set designer Christina Smith created a house cleverly defined by movable screens, imaginatively lighted by Matt Scott with glowing lanterns that illuminated the Act I love duet to great effect.

Director Kate Cherry’s staging was creative and lively, clearly defining the characters’ connections to each other and giving Cio-Cio-San and Suzuki some memorable moments with the former’s child, Sorrow (alternating in that non-singing role are Scarlett and Hazel del Rosario).

It was a great idea to stash the Seattle Opera Chorus (prepared by chorusmaster John Keene) near the theater’s high box seats for the famous Humming Chorus, for an otherworldly effect.

On Sunday, Yasko Sato took on the title role opposite Dominick Chenes (this time singing all three acts as Pinkerton). Sato is a lyrical singer and an affecting actress; she can convey vivid emotion in a single gesture or expression, and watching her hopes slowly decline in Cio-Cio-San’s long vigil was heartbreaking. Chenes displayed a bright, well-focused tenor and an energetic stage presence. Neither Chenes nor Sato was comfortable at the top end of Puccini’s above-the-staff scoring, but both know how to shape a phrase packed with Puccini’s emotional punch. That punch, conveyed most of all in the glorious arias, gives this opera its eternal power over listeners and musicians alike.

Colourful Culture Clash

Cio-Cio San aka Madame Butterfly (Antoinette Halloran) reprimanding Suzuki (Lucy Schaufer) for point out painful truths. Photo: Neil Mackenzie

We were welcomed to the opening night of Madame Butterfly by The Edge’s Director Robbie Macrae, billed as the grand opening of the newly refurbished ASB Theatre with improved decor and acoustics.

Having seen Madame Butterfly more than a decade before in Hong Kong we were intrigued to see how an American-Asian love story would play in an Anglo-Saxon country.

The story of Madame Butterfly follows an ‘oh so familiar’ theme – one we saw repeated over and over again in Asia whereby a handsome European (Gwai Lo) charms a young, beautiful Asian girl into a relationship – both have different hopes, desires and cultural values that ultimately tear them apart. As with many of the Pakeha in Asia that ‘went native’ – a large proportion struggled to maintain their ‘love’ when it was time to head back to the motherland and often the besotted and flattered young girl was literally left holding the baby while the ‘husband’ goes home to his white ways and often back to his unsuspecting white wife. The difference in cultural realisation of respect i.e. face and bringing shame to the family are and have never been fully understood leading to tragic circumstances. Giacomo Puccini’s portrayal of these events still has relevance today, and I still recall how many people in the audience of the Hong Kong version ironically comprised of older Pakeha guys holding

Theatre Scenes

MADAME BUTTERFLY (NZ OPERA)

Sharu Delilkan, April 19, 2013

hands with their Asian girlfriends less than half their age.

Being one half of a 13-year mixed Asian-Anglo marriage myself clearly I am not blind to the fact that love can conquer all but unfortunately in Puccini’s opera it clearly doesn’t – resulting in numerous sobbing audience members around us. I guess that means they happily paid a fairly substantial ticket price in order to be reduced to tears – complemented by the sound of the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra. As always the APO’s performance was exceptional, giving Puccini’s score its due respect, highlighting hit melodies coloured with exquisite orchestrations.

Christina Smith’s striking modular set that filled the stage was the first thing that caught my eye as I sat down. It was vaguely reminiscent of the geometric scaffoldinglike set that I had seen at the Auckland Arts Festival 2013’s dance show Babel. But that image very quickly faded as the fabulous Japanese rice paper screens were drawn open on stage. The silhouettes behind the screens added to the mystery of the production as we tried to get a glimpse of the geisha’s it cleverly shielded. I did however feel that as spectacular as it was, the set was a bit static. In addition to the movement of the traditional bamboo sliding screens, the cast could have been utilised a little bit more to highlight the set’s versatility and grandeur. And the huge trellis at the very top of the modular structure cried out for something like a giant elevator to rise up from the stage as a grand finale – I suppose my imagination got away from me, but I prefer dramatic sets to reach their potential but I’m afraid this one just stopped short.

Along with the amazing set Smith’s costumes were equally remarkable ranging from the mono-chromatic outfits worn by the Westerners contrasted by the bright colours of the traditional Eastern/Japanese garments. This contrast of colour to depict East and West was used to great effect throughout the production. For example when Madame Butterfly (Antoinette Halloran) denounces her culture and background, she is dressed in white, which is totally different from her earlier costumes that were vibrant and full of colour. The clever combination of East and West of the marriage broker Goro’s (James Benjamin Rodgers) attire was also particularly fascinating – the ‘Western-esque’ coat with Japanese ‘kimono-esque’ sleeves coupled with the Japanese men’s trousers made for a very fascinating ensemble, complete with a bowler hat.

I was extremely impressed with the attention to detail that the lead geisha Suzuki (Lucy Schaufer) brought to her character. Her overall body language and the way in which she bowed and walked backwards away from the people she was serving was totally believable and brought Asian authenticity to the role. Some memorable lines in the liberetto included “in Japanese tradition…with the option for every month to annul the marriage”, “I’ve never heard of a foreign husband who returns to his nest” and “Japanese gods are fat and lazy”.

The duet between Pinkerton (Piero Pretti) and Madame Butterfly (Halloran), just before the interval, left the audience wanting more with their moving and memorable performances. However, while Halloran singing, acting and

overall movement was flawless, I must admit I felt that Pretti was slightly miscast. He didn’t strike me as someone that Madame Butterfly would fall for and pine after. His overall stature and demeanour was not convincing as the dashing, debonair ‘Officer and Gentlemen’ type character that he was meant to be. Sharpless (Peter Savidge) however was a lot more believable as the American Consul.

The descending lanterns that light up in the background worked extremely effectively as a visual statement but was a fabulous metaphor for a moth going toward the light, paralleling Madame Butterfly’s disastrous destiny as she is drawn to the light i.e. Pinkerton.

Like Turandot, Pucinni’s Madame Butterfly has strong political messages juxtapositioning the Western and Eastern beliefs and traditions.

Despite it being the launch of The Edge’s refurbishment and acoustic enhancement I was more transfixed by the tragedy unfolding on stage than improved design or sound. To be honest at times I found the voice projection a little lacking, especially when Pretti ‘belted’ out his first few lines. The sound levels didn’t really set my blood racing at the dramatic moments and I didn’t at any point really felt like shedding a tear unlike many surrounding neighbours. What were they really crying about?, I wondered. Was it the story, the tragedy, the music or were some of them sitting next to their current partners quietly wondering whatever happened to a certain Asian butterfly of their own…

CORONATION OF POPPEA

VICTORIAN OPERA

“Victorian Opera has finally got it together with Monteverdi’s last opera, The Coronation of Poppea….

Director Kate Cherry drew the best from her cast… the energy of the performers and instrumental ensemble coupled with Cherry’s deft staging combined to make Poppea an extraordinary success.”

Peter Burch, the Australian

CORONATION OF POPPEA The Age THE CORONATION OF POPPEA

John Slavin, 21 July, 2008

The most daring moment in Kate Cherry’s fine production of Monteverdi’s final opera comes towards the end.

The Emperor Nerone (David Hansen) and his consort, Poppea (Tiffany Speight), having cleared the deck of all human obstructions to their marriage, celebrate Poppea’s elevation to empress. The unscrupulous pair declare vows of passionate love on either side of a transparent mirror, which dominates the set of designer Richard Roberts.

As each in turn crawls along this annex shadowing each other’s longing, their voices become muffled and their image dimmed.

It sacrifices the principle that the operatic voice must at all times be clearly heard in the name of a more urgent thematic idea, and announces that this production is no museum piece.

In spite of their passion for each other the lovers are no closer to knowing who the other is. Amore (Jessica Aszodi) may have triumphed over the two other presiding divinities, Fortune and Virtue, but erotic love proves to be a desire for selfextinction exemplified by the duet I Wish to Lose Myself in You.

Beneath the glorious intensity of Monteverdi’s score the opera is about death as the ultimate goal of passion. The imperial couple kill Nerone’s tutor, Seneca, nobly sung by Paul Hughes, particularly in the astonishing debate between emperor and philosopherrealpolitik versus integrity.

Nerone’s Empress Ottavia, sung by Sally Wilson, who quickly establishes an elegiac character, and two would-be assassins, Drusilla (Jacqueline Porter) and Ottone (Daniel Goodwin), are sent into permanent exile. Naked power divests itself of human attributes.

Monteverdi’s emphasis is on the drama, with music providing both rhetorical exposition and the emotive underlay. Under conductor Richard Gill, the string and harpsichord ensembles make of the score a jewel that flashes dazzlingly musical phrases off its surface. The work’s concern with carnality is never vulgarised, but it is a steamy affair, nevertheless. Hansen’s Nerone has great power in the coloratura flourishes, while Speight’s Poppea is a languid, fruity-voiced slut.

On the one hand dark and tragic, on the other expressing ineffable beauty, this is Victorian Opera’s finest achievement.

TURN OF THE SCREW

The Herald Sun VO RISES TO THE CHALLENGE

By Sybil Nolan

Here’s yet another example of the cheekiness of the Victorian Opera, a small state company stealing a march on its big sister, Opera Australia.

The OA’s production of Turn of The Screw directed by Neil Armfield, has been described as one of the most powerful pieces in the national company’s repertoire.

But because this chamber opera by Benjamin Britten requires only six singers and 13 musicians to stage, it was inevitable that the VO would eventually take it on.

The result is a success-phew! Thank to director Kate Cherry and conductor Paul Kildea, an authority on Britten’s music who has previously conducted the work for the OA.

In their hands, every member of the talented young cast turns in an authentic, accomplished performance, dramatically and vocally.

Though novelist Henry James wrote The Turn of The Screw while Queen Victoria was still on the throne, its premise seems uncannily contemporary: the ghost of a sexual predator returns to a lonely house in the English countryside to haunt a vulnerable boy. The ghost (James Egglestone, in top voice) first appears encased in a black box with a screen over

it, like a curio in a Victorian collection of preserved fauna. He’s a frightful sight with his red hair and dead white face.

Yet as the boy, Miles and his sister fall under the ghost’s power, the effect is to disturb rather than scare us.

Year seven student Takshin Fernando and VCA student Gerogina Darvidis give remarkably artful performances as the children. Danielle Calder is just as convincing as their governess, all stretched nerves and strained gesture.

She also proves a capable interpreter of Britten’s beautiful but challenging scoreas if she has an indelible map inside her head showing the safest route between the mournful woodwinds, worried violin and clashing cymbals.

TURN OF THE SCREW The Age THE TURN OF THE SCREW

By Michael Shmith, 12 July 2010

IN HIS preface to The Turn of the Screw, Henry James wrote that the reader must work at understanding the story: “Make him think the evil, make him think of it for himself, and you are released from weak specifications.” Benjamin Britten and his librettist Myfanwy Piper followed the same advice in their 1954 operatic adaptation of James’ Gothic tale; it was good to see, director Kate Cherry has followed suit in her intense and telling production of this superlative piece.

Cherry maintains the Victorian period, but strips it of all but the most important props: a doll’s house version of Bly (the house in which most of the action takes place), and a few shifting items of furniture are about the only distractions. Christina Smith’s bare, dark single set, placed within a William Morris-inspired frame, could be inside the bellows of an antique camera - perhaps a stereoscope, given the twin ghost-recesses at the back of the stage. Indeed, just as an aperture narrows, the setting focuses the drama towards its terrible conclusion. Matt Scott’s atmospheric lighting subtly emphasised the sinisterly effect.

Paul Kildea conducted the dozen players in a performance that matched exactly the mood on stage. A few firstnight blemishes of intonation will work themselves out; but the instrumentalists were, for the most part, inside the music.

Danielle Calder, as the Governess, gained confidence and vocal power as the night went on, essaying well her character’s curiosity and gathering determination.

Maxine Montgomery was a fine Mrs Grose. The ghostly Peter Quint was finely sung by James Egglestone, who doubled as the Prologue; but Melanie Adams’ Miss Jessel was under-voiced. Takshin Fernando and Georgina Darvidis were vocally and dramatically affecting as Miles and Flora. This is a production of which Victorian Opera can be proud.

TURN OF THE SCREW

The Australian

MAZY TALE OF CHILDREN AND GHOSTS

By Peter Burch, 13 July 2010

WRITTEN in 1898 for the magazine Collier’s Weekly, Henry James’s Gothic fiction The Turn of the Screw was adapted into an opera by Benjamin Britten in 1954 in response to a commission from the Venice Biennale.

With a cast of six singers and thirteen musicians, The Turn of the Screw faithfully retells James’s novella to heightened effect and has emerged as one of Britten’s most powerful and popular chamber operas.

By staging it in the Arts Centre’s 850seat Playhouse, which lost a few rows to accommodate the orchestra, Victorian Opera brought the performance to the audience with extraordinary effect.

Making his VO debut, conductor Paul Kildea directed an eloquent musical ensemble drawn from Orchestra Victoria. He drew out every nuance of Britten’s score while his players, both individually and collectively, performed with distinction.

Director Kate Cherry’s memorable previous work with the VO includes the richly deserved multi award-winning 2008 Coronation of Poppea. Cherry prepared a fluid and satisfying staging. The apparent seamlessness of The Turn of the Screw’s structure - a prologue and 16 scenes over two acts - generated an unstoppable energy and tension.

She was materially assisted by Christina Smith’s beautifully simple set and elegant Victorian costumes, Matt Scott’s hauntingly atmospheric lighting and Fiona Battersby’s choreography.

James Egglestone had the dual tasks of delivering the Prologue, then performing as the evil Peter Quint, and echoed many of the special qualities of the role’s originator, Peter Pears; a fresh, clear, true voice, impeccable diction and a strong, threatening presence.

Singing powerfully, VO artist development program graduate Danielle Calder delivered an urgent and impressive portrayal of the new governess at Bly, an English country house. Her character was increasingly overwhelmed by an awareness of the malevolence in the air.

Maxine Montgomery gave a sympathetic performance as Mrs Grose, the housekeeper. Melanie Adams played Miss Jessell who, with her former lover Quint, seeks to corrupt innocence.

As the children, Georgina Darvidis’s Flora and Takshin Fernando’s Miles were able to switch from innocent childishness to ratcunning vulgarians as the influence of the ghosts of Quint and Miss Jessell exercised their control.

It ultimately gave effect to a chilling line borrowed from W. B. Yeats’ poem The Second Coming: “The ceremony of innocence is drowned.”

In her frenzy to protect the children, the governess and Quint struggle to possess Miles who finally screams, “Peter Quint, you devil”, as he collapses dead, in the governess’s arms.

“It was good to see director, Kate Cherry follow suit in her intense and telling production.”

“This is a production of which The Victorian Opera can be proud.”

Michael Shmith, The Age, July 12, 2010

Musical Theatre

BOUNDARY STREET

BLACK SWAN STATE THEATRE COMPANY

“For every minute of light-hearted entertainment the first half of the play brings, the second half matches with emotion and the sobering reality of war and racism. Boundary Street is an absolute must-see, and a brilliant season debut for Black Swan State Theatre Company.”

Perth Now

BOUNDARY STREET

BLACK SWAN STATE THEATRE COMPANY

“Perhaps it is because this story is about my town or that I am a true-blue Jazz lover, but Boundary Street had me swinging all the way home.

I really hope to see another season of this sell-out show in Brisbane as many of my friends missed out on tickets.”

Aussie Theatre.com

Boundary Street, Kenneth Ransom and Clare Moss.

THE SAPPHIRES

BLACK SWAN STATE THEATRE COMPANY

“Spontaneous standing ovations are a rare thing in theatre. In the main your average theatre-goer will be moved only to a polite ripple of applause; at most an occasional chardonnay-induced whoop.The Sapphires, the first theatre in this year’s Perth International Arts Festival, hit all the right notes on opening night and left the audience on their feet cheering for more.”

The West Australian

Casey Donovan and Hollie Andrew. Image by Gary Marsh

Theatre

STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE BLACK SWAN STATE THEATRE COMPANY

...A truly memorable production featuring one of Australia’s finest acting talents. Black Swan have done us proud yet again.”

Sigrid Thornton in A Streetcar Named Desire Image by Gary Marsh Photography

Perth Now

GLENGARRY, GLENROSS

BLACK SWAN STATE THEATRE COMPANY

“It is rare that you leave a theatre so overwhelmed by the standard of acting you have just seen.

Black Swan at its very best.”

Independent Theatre Association

Glengarry, Glenross with Damian Walshe-Howling, Peter Rowsthorn & Ben Mortley, Image by Gary Marsh.

LAUGHTER ON THE 23RD FLOOR

BLACK SWAN STATE THEATRE COMPANY

“Will surprise and delight audiences. It’s good for the soul to get to laugh out loud in the theatre, whatever floor it’s on. You should seriously consider taking the lift to the 23rd.”

The West Australian

Humphrey Bower, Jo Morris and Peter Rowsthorn in Laughter on the 23rd Floor.

Image by Gary Marsh Photography

THE SEAGULL

BLACK SWAN STATE THEATRE COMPANY

“The Seagull is an excellent opportunity to be able to see a classic, often thought of as tired and uninviting, in a new way. This is a fresh, accessible and entertaining look at The Seagull, a must see for regular theatregoers, students and especially for those who think that they don’t like Chekhov.”

Stage Whispers

Greta Scacchi, Rebecca Davis and Andrew McFarlane in The Seagull. Image by Gary Marsh Photography

RISING WATER BLACK SWAN STATE THEATRE COMPANY

Rising Water, Geoff Kelso, John Howard. Image by Gary Marsh.

“The inner lives and public relationships of the trio, the capable acting of the three leads and Kate Cherry’s imaginative and deft direction are the most successful components of this production..”

Stage Whispers

Profiles

Kate Cherry has reached a stage of life, in her early 50s, when the world is offering a new set of possibilities. She has been through a period of taking stock, sifting through, sorting out. Now, having emerged out the other side, she’s getting on with life and work with renewed focus and energy.

As a theatre director, she has spent the past quarter-century making shows and running companies: most notably with Perth’s Black Swan State Theatre Company, which she moved into a new home at the Heath Ledger Theatre, and where she introduced Tim Winton to the stage as a playwright.

Three years ago she left Black Swan for a new role in Sydney, as director and chief executive of the nation’s most storied acting school, the National Institute of Dramatic Art. The job didn’t work out and, 12 months later, she’s back where she wants to be, in control of her own creative life. On Thursday she makes her return to directing, with her production of Madama Butterfly due to open in Adelaide.

Family life, too, is coming into a new phase. Her elderly mother, Peg, was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease eight years ago, and has moved out of her own home and into a care facility. Peg grew up in poverty and went on to have a successful career in academe.

When her husband, theatre director Wal Cherry, accepted a job in Philadelphia and the family moved to the US, Peg became professor of English and creative writing at Swarthmore, one of the leading liberal arts colleges. But Kate says her mother was never really the same after Wal died

The Australian

THE BOOK OF KATE

November 8, 2019

suddenly in 1986. “It was like her life stopped when my father died,” says Cherry, 53. “The last conversation that we had, a few years ago, she said to me: ‘I’m just waiting for your father.’ We were talking on the phone. She said: ‘Do you want to talk to him when he comes home?’ I said: ‘Yes, have him give me a ring.’ What else can you say?”

Other fragments of conversations she has had with her mother crop up in this interview. I wonder if, for Cherry, they are verbal touchstones: memories of a loved one’s voice that help us navigate the present. During the past year, she has been going through the family archive of posters, plays and books — the accumulation of several lifetimes immersed in literature and theatre. Most of all, she says, she has been reclaiming some time for herself and regathering the threads of her creative practice. She uses the word practice often, almost as something fundamental to her being. She means the daily application of her creative mind and muscle, the thinking and doing of theatre.

The day we meet, she’s in Sydney for social visits, just before rehearsals for Madama Butterfly are due to start in Adelaide. She’s wearing top-to-toe black, as she often does, with a slash of red lipstick. As she sips her latte and the noise in the cafe grows louder, we find ourselves shuffling around to the same side of the table, for a candid conversation about work, life and family.

When Cherry won the top job at NIDA three years ago, she moved to Sydney from Perth with her husband, US-born actor Kenneth Ransom, and their school-age son Orlando. She stayed less than two years. In a media release in October last year, NIDA announced that Cherry was leaving, and its chairwoman Jennifer Bott was stepping in as head until a new leader could be found.

Cherry says she is proud of her work at NIDA, having pushed it up the rankings into the world’s top 10 drama schools, along with the likes of Juilliard in New York and London’s Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. Another of her achievements was to establish a conservatoire system that reaches across four artistic and technical disciplines. It ensured that NIDA had a “practice-led” model at its heart and that resources were allocated to it. She brought in Australian stars such as Margot Robbie, Judy Davis and Mel Gibson, and Game of Thrones designer Deborah Reilly, to encourage a dialogue between students and industry leaders.

I get the feeling Cherry would much rather have been mucking in with students in the rehearsal room than poring over paperwork and KPIs. She directed a student production of Venus in Fur, but this was not enough to satisfy her. “I couldn’t see how I could be practice-leading and not practise,” she says. “And it was becoming increasingly clear that I would have to give up my own practice … Then I wouldn’t have what makes me special.”

Cherry opted to resign — she says she wasn’t pushed — and an invitation the same week from State Opera South Australia to direct Madama Butterfly sealed her decision. NIDA has since restructured its leadership, splitting Cherry’s former role into artistic director and chief executive.

She is well known as a theatre director, having brought to the stage Hannie Rayson’s Life After George, Winton’s playwriting debut Rising Water and the Australian premiere of Edward Albee’s The Goat, or Who is Sylvia? She has worked less often in opera but steadily has been building her repertoire, with The Turn of the Screw and The Coronation of Poppea for Victorian Opera, and Madama Butterfly and La Traviata for New Zealand Opera. It’s the Auckland production of Butterfly that she’s now bringing to Adelaide.

Cherry is well versed in the politics of Madama Butterfly: the colonialist attitudes embodied in the character of Lieutenant Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton, the stereotypes of Japanese culture and society, and the gender inequality at play in the story of a betrayed woman who sacrifices herself on love’s altar. Her conception of the piece was stylised, rather than naturalistic, with a perspective that resisted a wallow in Puccinian sentimentality.

“I’ve always been fascinated by the stories of the women who wait — Penelope, CioCio San,” she says of the heroines of the Odyssey and Madama Butterfly. “We have Butterfly just waiting for Pinkerton, waiting and waiting. And that to me says it all.

“This man turns up when he feels like it, and the woman waits for him with their child, Sorrow … She is a geisha girl, but she is the one with honour, and stoicism, and love. Her patience and command of the stage just diminishes him. I think of Pinkerton as a man utterly without imagination.”

Aidan Lang, who commissioned the Auckland production in 2013, says Cherry’s clear-eyed vision of the opera made its emotional impact all the more devastating. When, five years later, Lang took Cherry’s production to Seattle, these qualities helped it withstand a critical onslaught about cultural appropriation. Seattle has a large Asian-American population and, while productions of Madama Butterfly are hardly rare — it’s regularly in the top 10 of most-performed operas — the 2018 season nevertheless stirred a vigorous debate about white male composers and sopranos in “yellowface”. Lang says Cherry’s production shifted the focus on to the bigger picture of US imperialism and “showed that there is more to the piece than the objectors thought”.

When the opera opens in Adelaide on Thursday, Butterfly will be sung by KoreanAustralian soprano Mariana Hong (formerly known as Hyeseoung Kwon). And in a clever move, State Opera artistic director Stuart Maunder has programmed Butterfly alongside Gilbert and Sullivan’s Japanese romp The Mikado. Critics of cultural appropriation will have a field day.

Cherry says the debate about casting, and who gets to tell whose stories, has been through several permutations since she was a student at the University of California in Los Angeles, a “racially politicised” campus where progressive talk in the early 90s was about colourblind casting. One of her lecturers there, Oskar Eustis, who would later help bring Angels in America and Hamilton to the stage, remembers her as being “out of the box impressive” and ferociously tenacious in fighting for her work.

She’d met Ransom, her future husband, a few years before, during a production of The Tempest at Shakespeare & Company in Lenox, Massachusetts. Ransom has AfricanAmerican heritage, and Cherry points out that, at the time they met in 1989, vestiges of miscegenation laws remained in some US states.

In a program note for Madama Butterfly, she explains why this particular opera is so important to her. “My husband and I share a child who is half Anglo-Australian, half African-American. It is my greatest hope that as my son becomes a man he can integrate the two cultures that have loved and moulded him, and it is my greatest fear, that as the world becomes increasingly dominated by tribal instincts, we will lose our sense of curiosity and empathy and the Sorrows of the world” — children like the boy in Madama Butterfly — “will once again be displaced.”

Post-NIDA, Cherry is again stretching her wings artistically. She has an idea of doing Britten’s ghost opera, The Turn of the Screw, in haunted houses around the country, and would love to do Terrence McNally’s play about Maria Callas, Master Class, with her original Butterfly, Antoinette Halloran. She’s open to the idea of again running a theatre company. Asked about the vacancy at Sydney’s Griffin Theatre, whose artistic director, Lee Lewis, is leaving for Queensland Theatre in Brisbane, Cherry is circumspect. “Everything’s up for grabs,” she says.

Part of the reason opera is attractive to her is that it’s an art form in which she can make her own mark. Her father, Wal, left a substantial legacy in the Australian theatre, being one of the founders of the Union Theatre Repertory Company, forerunner of the Melbourne Theatre Company. His influence is one of the reasons she has not yet directed, although she would love to, The Threepenny Opera — father and daughter both being Brechtians to the core. “As soon as I do Threepenny Opera,” she says, “I’m going to be compared.”

The experience of watching her mother lose her mind to Alzheimer’s has given Cherry reason to think about memory and how precious it is — the memories that belong to a family, and those that form the connective tissue of a culture. She recalls a line from Deborah Mailman and Wesley Enoch’s play The 7 Stages of Grieving about broken songlines and the need she feels to nurture and protect our artists and storytellers.

She is aware of the passing of generations, and the memories that are lost unless they are cherished and handed on. A family can have broken songlines too, “stories that can’t be finished, answers that can’t be given”.

She recalls a conversation with her mother six years ago, before Alzheimer’s stole the last of her ability to communicate coherently.

“She is still alive, but she babbles — Alzheimer’s is a dreadful affliction, punctuated by a series of little deaths,” Cherry says. “When we first found out she had Alzheimer’s, she turned to me and said: Well, now I don’t have any …’

“She was going to say ‘words’, but she lost it.

“She said, ‘It’s all going to be …’ But she couldn’t finish. Then she said, ‘It’s up to you now.’ ”

Madama Butterfly is at the Adelaide Festival Theatre from Thursday until November 23.

Kate Cherry: ‘I adore problem-solving. I tend to look at it the same way as being a director’. Picture: Renee Nowytarger

Kate Cherry isn’t a newcomer to Australia’s performing arts. Far from it: she’s third generation theatre folk and all that implies. Her grandfather was a designer and her father was former Melbourne Theatre Company artistic director Wal Cherry, so performance pulses through her veins. She is married and has a son with American actor Kenneth Ransom.

Now, after almost a decade in Western Australia, where she was running Black Swan State Theatre Company, Cherry has moved to Sydney and taken the reins from Lynne Williams of the nation’s highest-profile acting school, the National Institute of Dramatic Art.

The Australian

NEW NIDA HEAD KATE CHERRY IS ONE OF FEW WOMEN LEADERS IN THEATRE

Michaela Boland April 24, 2017

Cherry’s challenge involves swapping a $6 million turnover, Perth-based theatre company for a multi-headed, $27m turnover beast, with myriad outposts and often disparate-seeming ambitions. “I love delegating,” she says. “And I adore problemsolving. I tend to look at it the same way as being a director. In the theatre you want to be surrounded by the very best people and hand over to them.”

NIDA, according to its 2015 annual report, takes in about 60 first-year students a year in Sydney and reaches another 16,000 through the many classes and courses its runs across the country.

Founded in 1958 and federally funded (though not through the university system), NIDA aims to be the country’s leading centre for education and training in the performing arts. Its teachers are industry professionals from across the dramatic disciplines including acting, writing, staging, movement, voice, costume and production design.

Graduates include Mel Gibson, Robyn Nevin, Judy Davis, Catherine Martin, Baz Luhrmann and Cate Blanchett — but one could easily argue that these powerpacks would have had their careers without NIDA, while NIDA has traded off their success for a generation.

“NIDA in its next incarnation will have more interest in blending all our different skills and make us be experts in collaboration and innovation,” Cherry says. “I know it’s become cliched but we’ve got this incredible foyer and into that foyer I want scientists, doctors, business people training from UNSW, people dropping by because we have such a great activated foyer and getting them into collaboration with us.”

Activated foyers aside, Cherry says NIDA is a custodian of empathy. “At the same time we’ve got a design school looking at virtual reality, great technology, wonderful voice teachers, movement,” she says. “We’re covering the gamut. What we’re not doing enough is blending the influence of our corporate NIDA with our students.

“When John Clark set up NIDA (and then remained its director for 35 years) he talked about the business of theatre and I think individuals now need to be safe and secure in the knowledge they know how to empower themselves, not just as individual artists but they know how to promote themselves. The industry is changing. When I started I didn’t have to think about Facebook or whatever. The endless opportunities are both anxiety-producing and exciting. I want our students to come out resilient and ready for lots of different adventures.”

NIDA’s graduates are preparing for an industry where they move across performance modes, but at its core the school is steered by old school theatremakers.

“We’re practice-led,” Cherry says. She is a theatre director while deputy director Michael Scott-Mitchell is a designer of great repute. “That differentiates us,” she says.

NIDA has long been the school that aspiring actors want to go to, and the annual report reveals it is still extremely competitive to get a place in the undergraduate program.

“It’s always contributed to the Australian film and television and theatre industry, and it’s always had a passion about the Australian voice. I’m looking at the new kinds of actors we’re training and the skill sets that are required as we’re going into virtual reality, gaming. We’ve got corporates, children from all over Sydney plus we’re national and we contribute to the international scene, extending and deepening is how I’ve put it,” Cherry says.

With this complexity of services, how does a school stay true to its core mission of training the next generation of performing artists? “We are a business and we’re an art school,” she says.

Cherry contends that each side of the remit has something to offer the other. The business contacts brought into the school’s orbit through courses designed to teach them to present better also bring business skills the young graduates need to manage their careers into the future.

“We’re also talking to the industry a lot, always making sure we’re up to date and offering the skill set people want right now.”

Whereas NIDA used to send out waves of people who would collaborate, such as the Strictly Ballroom team, she says “now we’re looking at people who have to run themselves as their own brand”.

“I want students coming out who can dominate the industry, have sustainable careers, but in order to protect their artistry they need to understand themselves as businesses at the same time.”

A topic close to Cherry’s heart is how slowly Australia’s performing arts have embraced gender equality. Her father’s alma mater, the MTC, has never had a female artistic director, except for the year Robyn Nevin and Pam Rabe shared the job for a year with Aidan Fennessy awaiting Brett Sheehy’s arrival. Nevin previously ran both Sydney Theatre Company and Queensland Theatre Company, and Cate Blanchett was co-artistic director of STC with her husband Andrew Upton.

“Certainly (men are) still in charge of the performing arts,” Cherry says. “The other thing we don’t talk about that is very dear to my heart is that even if theatres manage to give women as many opportunities as men, are they giving them as much money?

“One of the things I was passionate about at Black Swan was if I was passionate about a mature female writer, for example, we would invest heavily in that play and take a long time before we put it on stage.

“One of the really disturbing things with the Australia Council losing much of its funding (recently restored in part) is the small to medium sector was hit, and that’s where a lot of women go to set up companies that are not like the majors.

“As an old-fashioned leftie, I say I don’t want to see four women out of eight people working in the theatre, I want to see four women out of eight people getting 50 per cent of the money. This is one of the reasons I went to NIDA: we need to see women producing, we need to look at the annual reports and see where does the money go. It’s not enough to say we’ve got 50 per cent of women if they’re sent to the basement.

“Are they on the main stage with the same level of funding? Why do they have to be assistants? The boards obviously are the ones selecting the leaders, (so) we should be looking at the boards of our not-for-profit theatre companies and saying, ‘Are there people who are passionate about the arts? Are they people who are engaged? Are half of them female?’ ”

While everyone knows that the theatre is a world that has its exits and its entrances, and that the dramas backstage can be dark and crooked, it was boggling earlier this year when the newly appointed head of the Sydney Theatre Company, Jonathan Church, departed, and it’s possible to think of the Australian theatre at the moment as a world in which administrators can jostle for power and do their best to defeat artists. So, in this context, it is encouraging that the National Institute of Dramatic Art has appointed Kate Cherry, late of Black Swan, Perth’s premier theatre company, not only as director, but as chief executive. Here at last is a performing arts organisation, far and away the most famous drama school in the country, that has placed the administrative and financial reins in the hands of the woman who will also be calling the shots artistically and will be in charge of charting the overall direction of teaching the many skills that make up the business of creating theatre. It makes sense. Kate Cherry, with her famously quiet manner, has the theatre in her blood, and she is superb at going out and getting talent. She is not the kind of director who thinks the theatre is about nothing but herself.

The Saturday Paper

KATE CHERRY TAKES CENTRE STAGE

Peter Craven, September 24–30, 2016

was being brought to life with maximum precision and with the closest possible attention to the centrality of the actors and the primacy of the text.

It was Kate Cherry who gave Melbourne audiences the production of Tennessee Williams’ Sweet Bird of Youth, with the late Wendy Hughes as the old star Alexandra Del Lago and Guy Pearce as Chance, and A Glass Menagerie in 2004 with that great actor of insinuation and mock naivety Ben Mendelsohn in the Tennessee role of Tom and Gillian Jones as Amanda. And it was Kate Cherry who at Black Swan in 2014 did a production of A Streetcar Named Desire with Sigrid Thornton, which had an engulfing desolate quality that was unrivalled.

Cherry is the daughter of the theatre legend Wal Cherry, who brought modern American theatre to Australia in the 1950s akin to the transformative power of antibiotics. What will she do with NIDA? Well, she won’t burn it down, as some people might like.

Caldwell as part of history within reach.

Of course, Perth and Black Swan put her at the heart of the goldmine of artistic patronage. “The past nine years for me,” she says, “have been about negotiating between business people and government in order to further the culture.”

She talks with fondness of Janet Holmes à Court and Alan Cransberg, the former head of Alcoa.

“I found it all quite enlivening and exciting,” she says with sober understatement. “They showed me the different ways people can collaborate and contribute to a city.”

She emphasises the way the philanthropists of the West, the Janet Holmes à Courts and the Twiggy Forrests, existed in a context that was rich with artists.

“In the West they were often practitioners in solitary art forms,” she says, instancing Tim Winton, though she did succeed in doing plays with the nation’s most popular literary novelist.

“There’s a classic example,” Cherry says. “We had identified her as someone who was seriously exciting as an actor, and then we conscripted Chris Isaacs of Rio Tinto and made her part of the bridging company as an emerging artist. We succeeded in getting the legendary speech teacher Kristin Linklater, who I knew in America, who taught for years at Columbia and has a phenomenal track record, to work with her. She identified Rose as a serious talent, and she helped to hone her skills.

“I haven’t had time to drill down and put my feet under the table at NIDA, but I do want to empower artists in this way, and allow them to collaborate with people who are outside the building. I think NIDA can be a tremendous, empowering hub for artists and artisans who can enter a terrific collaboration between history and innovation. It’s the transformation we could get by doing that which I would like to put at the top of my agenda.”

Back in 2000 when she put on the first production of Life after George, Hannie Rayson’s play about the maverick professor, with Richard Piper as the academic, Julia Blake as his wife, Sue Jones as the tough villainess, and the then novice Asher Keddie as the daughter, you had the feeling – rarer than it should be – that a significant piece of contemporary drama

“I see it as a hub of intellectuals and practitioners, designers and directors and actors,” Cherry says, weighing her words, “all in one place, stimulating each other and working together and bouncing off each other.” She cites Stephen Sewell, the playwright who is the head of writing for performance, and Michael Scott-Mitchell, the head of design.

Cherry is good at the collaborative business of theatre because she’s been watching it since she was in her cradle, with a mother who was an actress and a father a director, and with legends such as the great Zoe

In her days at Black Swan there was also a close relationship with the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts (WAAPA), which has always been seen as a drama school that punched above its weight – not least because the place that produced Heath Ledger, Hugh Jackman and Frances O’Connor has never forsaken its emphasis on skills. Cherry talks about Black Swan’s sponsorship of the rising star Rose Riley, who was so striking recently in the Belvoir–Malthouse production of Menagerie as a very beautiful and sensuous-looking Laura.

One of the things that is most striking about Kate Cherry as a director is the skill with which she casts. Sir Peter Hall, the man who invented the Royal Shakespeare Company, who did the first English-language production of Waiting for Godot and gave the 26-yearold Peter O’Toole his gig as Shylock opposite Dame Peggy Ashcroft’s Portia, said once that a fair fraction of directing was casting, and no one in this country has a better record at it than Cherry. She tells me how as a student at UCLA she was part of the Mark Taper Forum, and saw the kinds of decisions that were taken apropos casting, particularly the work of Oskar Eustis at the Public Theatre at Astor Place.

“AT NIDA I WANT TO EMPOWER ARTISTS AND ALLOW THEM TO COLLABORATE WITH PEOPLE WHO ARE OUTSIDE THE BUILDING.”

“I sat in on the casting sessions, and witnessed the incredible exchanges which went on in the casting office. You wouldn’t necessarily agree with all of them, but I watched how major American casting works, and it influenced how I set about things. They had a very powerful sense of their purposes. And I must say I feel such gratitude for the actors here who have taken such huge chances with me. People like Guy Pearce and Sigrid Thornton…”

I mention Ben Mendelsohn, who won an Emmy this week for Netflix’s Bloodlines, and she melts. “Oh God!” she says, “what a marvellous actor he is.” The conversation shifts to Helen Morse, who featured in Cherry’s production of Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking in Perth in 2009, and who has been one of the legends of Australian stage and screen since she made Picnic at Hanging Rock with Peter Weir 40 years ago.

Cherry almost shivers when she thinks of her. I say how remarkable – and how remarkably different from her everyday self – Morse was as the establishment matriarch in the TV mini-series of Christos Tsiolkas’s Barracuda.

“She’s someone,” Cherry says, “who can seem to literally change her DNA.”

It will be fascinating to see if Morse ends up playing the role of Patricia Highsmith in Joanna Murray-Smith’s Switzerland, which Black Swan has scheduled for 2017, and which Cherry may direct. One of the things she should be able to do as both the artistic and administrative head of NIDA is to moonlight as a director, to keep her own hand in as a maker of plays on the Sydney stage.

“Well, Sydney is certainly an exciting place,” she says. “It would be good for me to be able to educate and to bring people together, while also doing my own practice, but not doing my own practice all the time.”

She’s certainly keen on the fact that NIDA will necessarily throw her into contact with the young. “I’ve just hit 50,” she says, “and it’s been fascinating to me working with young people on a student production of Angels in America in Queensland.” She’s recently done Tony Kushner’s epic in Perth, with a cast that included the veteran John Stanton as Roy Cohn, and with her husband, the AfricanAmerican actor Kenneth Ransom, as both Belize and Mr Lies.

“One of the things that strikes me about students these days is that they’re so fearless, and so interested in illuminating the world, and boy, with Angels in America, those kids do get it. They’re so fiercely engaged with the text and they’re 30 years younger than me, and it’s very strange for me to be looking at it again through their eyes after nearly 25 years.”

Cherry talks about the horror at the heart of the play, the apprehension of the tragedy of the young facing death. It seems a humane and civilised perspective for the top theatre teacher in the country to have, and it tallies with the loftiness of her sense of what NIDA can achieve, as well as the personal modesty with which she speaks. But there is nothing modest about what she wants the institution to achieve.

For Cherry, NIDA’s overall function is to be “an artistic hub which can create culture and take us into the future. It has vast potential because it presents so many people engaged with different aspects of the same work. It can create its own ecology, an ecology which is necessarily a generous ecology”.

In a world of self-generated auteurship, of amateurism and iconoclasm, NIDA seems to have shown great canniness in making its top administrator and its supervising artistic intelligence a woman who is not so much interested in what can be done to the theatre than what the theatre can do.

VENUS IN FUR NIDA

The Australian

ARTISTIC DIRECTOR, BLACK SWAN STATE THEATRE COMPANY

March 20, 2013

In the five years that Kate Cherry has been at the helm of Black Swan State Theatre Company, she has asserted the company as the undisputed home of mainstage drama in Perth.

When Cherry arrived in 2008, development of the new State Theatre Centre was already underway (the $100 million venue finally opened in early 2011), and Black Swan had been elevated to flagship status with an accompanying increase in funding.

But it was up to her to raise the dramatic pitch at the company. She wanted to give WA’s theatremakers reason to stay and not migrate to the eastern states. She wanted to see more local stories on the stage.

Cherry’s 2013 season may encapsulate the high production values she has brought to the company. A working stage director as well as artistic head of the company, she has just opened a new production of the Oscar Wilde classic, The Importance of Being Earnest. Later in the year she will direct a modern American classic, Jon Robin Baitz’s family drama Other Desert Cities. It is a co-production with Queensland Theatre Company, being an example of the strategic partnerships that Cherry has sought for her outfit.

And Cherry has demonstrated a high-profile commitment to telling WA stories at Black Swan. In 2011 she presented Tim Winton’s first original stage work, Rising Water, and followed up last year with Signs of Life. Cherry will direct a third play by the popular author, Shrine, in August.

Cherry’s improvements at the company were recognised last week in the Creative Australia national cultural policy launched by Arts Minister Simon Crean. Black Swan was one of six major performing arts companies to share a funding package of $9.3 million, with additional contribution from the state government. Cherry says the funding will enable the company to increase the number of plays it presents at the State Theatre Centre, and continue such projects as its live broadcasts.

Before taking up her role in Perth, Cherry worked as a freelance theatre and opera director, and was previously associate director at Melbourne Theatre Company and artistic associate at the former Playbox (now Malthouse) Theatre.

THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST

“This Black Swan production of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest is the best version of the play this reviewer has ever seen.”

Artshub

THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER PUTS NIDA IN TOP 10 WORLD DRAMA SCHOOLS AS NEWLY-APPOINTED AUSTRALIA COUNCIL FOR THE ARTS CHAIR SAM WALSH AO ADDRESSES GRADUATING STUDENTS

June 2018

Australia’s National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA), where award-winning actors like Cate Blanchett, Baz Luhrmann and Miranda Otto learnt their craft, has been named in the top 10 of The Hollywood Reporter’s world’s best drama schools. The Reporter’s international ranking of acting schools places NIDA in the top echelons, along with London’s Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and New York’s Juilliard School.

The Hollywood Reporter canvassed alumni, instructors and top theatre and Hollywood pros to arrive at its list of the top 10. The rigorous ranking took into account management and staff, guest mentors and visiting artists, recent graduates notable film, TV and theatre credits, and buildings and facilities.

‘The vision for the school remains the same, with rigorous artistic practice at the heart of the ‘conservatoire’ system’ said NIDA Director/CEO Kate Cherry, speaking at the recent Graduation Ceremony for the class of 2017. Newly-appointed Australia Council Chair Sam Walsh AO and former NIDA Academic Board member and alumni Alana Valentine also delivered an inspirational Occasional Address to the future creatives.

For The Hollywood Reporter, NIDA was proud to list its recent achievements. These include appointing an accomplished and active theatre director and arts leader as Director/CEO in Kate Cherry, who brings renewed artistry and industry networks to NIDA. Director of Acting, John Bashford, is the former Head of Acting and Vice Principal

at London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA). Iconic Australian actor Sigrid Thornton and NIDA alumnus and Sydney Theatre Company Artistic Director, Kip Williams have recently been appointed to NIDA’s Board of Directors to help shape the future of the institute. And this year Gavin Robins, NIDA Head of Movement, is working on King Kong the musical on Broadway.

In 2017, award-winning actress and director Judy Davis directed a student production of Love and Money. One of the most recognised names in the field of voice training for actors, Kristin Linklater, was engaged to work with our Acting students and in March 2018, the award-winning actor and producer Margot Robbie, Australian filmmaker George Miller and Australian composer and performer Tim Minchin spoke to students about their careers and industry experience.

At the Graduation Ceremony, Sam Walsh AO spoke about his life in business at Rio Tinto and offered advice to the next generation of artistic practitioners. ‘You must learn to take charge and pursue with energy those things that will help you fulfil your goals. Nobody gets a career break just sitting back and waiting for some miracle to happen. You must create your own opportunities.’

The Hollywood Reporter looked at notable movies and TV credits that our graduates have appeared in. The list includes acting alumni in Winchester, Steve Jobs, Alien

Covenant, Thor: Ragnarok, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, Hacksaw Ridge, Brittania, Superman meets Batman, Berlin Syndrome, and Netflix series Orange is the New Black, Outlander, Narcos, Black Mirror, The Wrong Girl, Cleverman and Barry.

Our graduates have also appeared in leading theatre productions including The Book of Mormon, Muriel’s Wedding The Musical, Alice in Wonderland, Diving for Pearls, Three Sisters, Miracle City, Jasper Jones, The Wind in the Willows and Chimerica.

The world-class facilities were also a feature of the Reporter ranking, where in addition to its six dedicated performance venues, NIDA has continued to make improvements including a $14 million graduate school

housing purpose-built Directing, Design and Writing studios. The award-winning NIDA campus is equipped with state-ofthe-art facilities, including large-format digital screen technologies, and the Rodney Seaborn Library – one of Australia’s leading performing arts-based libraries with over 30,000 drama and theatre-related books and play scripts.

LEADING ARTISTS CHALLENGE NIDA STUDENTS TO DRIVE CHANGE IN THE ARTS

6 February 2018

The National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA) this week proudly welcomed its new and returning Bachelor of Fine Arts and VET students, joining its Master of Fine Arts students who began last week.

The energy was palpable throughout NIDA’s Nancy Fairfax Foyer as fresh faces and returning students arrived to begin the next stage of their performing arts training. NIDA Director/CEO Kate Cherry, who was celebrating the completion of her first full year at the helm of NIDA, reaffirmed her vision for the institute with an inspirational speech to all the students in the Parade Theatre.

‘I want you to think of yourselves as having arrived at NIDA because someone here believes that you have the possibility of being a peak performer. In order to perform at a top level, you need focus on resilience, core purpose and the ability to work in teams, while knowing yourself incredibly well as an individual,’ said Cherry.

‘We are so diverse,’ she continued. ‘We have a massive diversity of talent and skills. People from different parts of the world, different belief systems. We are just very lucky that we get to come from a whole lot of different thoughts, ideas and belief systems, because that is what makes us strong.’

Cherry was joined on stage by NIDA Board chair Jenny Bott AO and board member and award-winning Australian actor Sigrid Thornton, former Circus Oz director Mike Finch and head of NIDA’s student body, SCON, Bachelor of Fine Arts (Acting) year two student, Jazz Laker, as well as Donna Ingram, who welcomed the students to Bedegal land.

Finch had some timely and powerful words about diversity in the arts in Australia. ‘I challenge all of the women in the room to aspire to [top level] positions [in the arts],’ said Finch. ‘I challenge the men in the room to step aside and let the talented women have those positions and I challenge the white people in the room to make room for people of colour, and the straight people to make room for homosexual people.’

‘Work together and kindly with each other,’ continued Finch. ‘The world wants you to be in competition with each other, in a thing called “the industry”. The industry has 12 smoke stacks belching smoke and production lines where raw materials go in one end and sellable materials come out of the other. You’re not an industry, this is not an industry, you’re a community of people, of individual humans who all need to collaborate to survive.’

Finch implored students to think ‘about the bubbles that you’re in. The bubbles of designers, the bubbles of actors, the bubbles of technicians, the makers. And think about how you’re going to hop bubbles during this next three years. Think about how you’re going to work together as teams, because truly amazing things can happen when you get out of your own personal ghetto.’

From this week on, all the new students will become part of the nearly 60-year-old legacy of teachers, performers, designers, writers, producers and directors who have experienced NIDA. The students come from all over Australia with a wide range of experience in the performing and other arts.

Collaboration, diversity, integrity and resilience were consistent themes during the opening of Welcome Week.

Thornton discussed risk-taking and said that the perfect environment for that to happen is at NIDA. ‘Taking risks and failing in those risks will teach you another important lesson in resilience, which is one of the most important qualities an actor can have. You will find that out in your course at NIDA. And you’ll find it out even more keenly when you enter the wider world outside,’ she said.

‘Make work that makes the world better, make work that has heart, resist calling it industry, be open – say yes,’ said Finch. ‘You are the path to change in the arts, people in this room. Real success comes with the shine and good of others not just yourself,’ he concluded.

Photo: (L-R) Kate Cherry, Jenny Bott AO, Jazz Laker, Mike Finch, Sigrid Thornton. Photo: Lisa Maree Williams.

Photo: Kate Cherry welcomes all students to NIDA. Photo: Lisa Maree Williams.

Kate Cherry has one very important job –she is the artistic director at WA’s premier theatre house, Black Swan State Theatre Company. BSSTC have just released their program for the 2013 season, and boy is it exciting. We think they’ve outdone themselves! High on the list is the WA premiere of Joanna Murray-Smith’s comedy Day One, A Hotel, Evening, directed by none other than Australian film legend Bruce Beresford. Wow! I also can’t wait to see the third new play by Tim Winton, Shrine, which will star acclaimed actor John Howard under the direction of Kate Cherry herself. We take some time to chat with Kate and find out what goes into preparing a season. I think Kate does such a fantastic job and is one of the most influential people working in the arts in Western Australia… I’m quite chuffed to be interviewing her! Claire.

Official job title: Artistic Director, Black Swan State Theatre Company

Summarise your career background and how you’ve come to where you are now:

My father was a theatre director, and my grandfather, aunts, uncle and sister were all scenic artists so you might say theatre is in my blood. I took the Australian equivalent of an honours degree at Bard College in New York in creative writing and a MFA in directing at UCLA. I have freelanced as a director in the US and Australia. I was the Associate Director at MTC and I have also worked in various universities here and in the States.

What is the best thing about your job?

Going into a rehearsal room with a play I am passionate about, with actors and creative

The Creative:

BLACK SWAN ARTISTIC DIRECTOR KATE CHERRY

October 16, 2012

who are equally passionate and bringing a story to life visually, emotionally through soundscape, creating what I see and hear when I read a script in collaboration with others. Being taken by surprise constantly by the ideas that collaborators have in response. I love being taken by surprise by a fresh, exciting idea.

At Black Swan you have just released your 2013 Season Program. What’s your top pick/s that we can look forward to next year?

Well, you are asking me to choose between my babies which is always hard. This year is a smorgasbord of great narratives. The classics speak for themselves. Death of a Salesman and The Importance of Being Earnest have engaged and astonished audiences around the world. The two contemporary works on the mainstage that will have profound dramatic impact are Shrine by Tim Winton starring John Howard. This play arose out of the countless little shrines we see by the side of the road all over regional Australia. When a man loses his son in a dreadful road accident, his road to salvation starts with a perplexing encounter at a roadside shrine. The second is Other Desert Cities. This is an extraordinary story about a young woman pursuing the truth when she is surrounded by fantasy makers.

Can you tell us a bit about how you compile a season? Who is involved, and how do you choose what’s included?

It’s exciting and complicated. I talk to other Artistic Directors because as the state flagship we need to have collaborations that reach across states and countries. I investigate what work is being done

interstate and overseas. I listen to ideas that patrons and artists have. I do a lot of reading. I think about what roles various artists are ready to play, and what productions would work in the Heath Ledger Theatre, I see who is available, but most of all I think about the audience. I can get as much feedback as possible, do as many risk assessments as necessary, collaborate with the General Manager and the Marketing Manager, as well as the Board, but at the end of the day, after a lot of hard analytical work done by a myriad of people, I make many of my decisions based on gut instinct. We also have to take into account the availability of rights. I am very keen for Black Swan to do a production of a particular American classic, but the world wide rights have been taken up for over a year. Once one idea about a play goes down the drain, we often have to rethink the season. We also keep a close eye on what theatre texts are in the school curriculum as that is our future audience.

Take us through a typical day of your work in the lead up to an Opening Night. There isn’t one really. I rehearse right up until we open for 6 days a week, and somewhere in there I try to squeeze in a visit to the hair dresser for opening night. Every show is different in its demands although new work is the most demanding. I try to spend some quality time with my son, and I thank my husband and friends a lot for their understanding and their support of our family unit. I love my job. I am always jazzed to be in the rehearsal room, and I am highly engaged about strategizing into the future, but I also need reflection time so that I continue to evolve as a director and leader.

What has been your proudest achievement?

I hope that is to come, but I am very proud of the fact that I have been able to work in a field I am passionate about, and that I have continued to evolve as a leader. I think in the last few years I have been exposed to brilliant business people, and I can see very clearly where our interests in creativity and collaboration intersect in ways that could make the future of theatre in WA very exciting.

Personally, I am very proud of being in the theatre and having maintained a relationship with my husband for over 20 years. Two artists in the same house can make for interesting times, but fortunately despite the fact that our careers and lives are in constant motion, (as is our 7 year-old boy) we share the same values.

Professionally, I have highlights in theatre and opera, but I am most proud of my role as Artistic Director of Black Swan. We have a great team, and we are very proud of our commitment to developing Australian work and Australian artists.

Which local artists/musicians/creatives do you admire?

I admire anyone who is prepared to place freedom of expression over material gain— very few artists in WA make money, but they recognize an imperative in themselves to communicate with their community through whatever art form they choose. I am always drawn to daring creatives who show us another way to look, listen or open our hearts.

The acclaimed author Christos Tsiolkas and UNSW academic and filmmaker Mary Zournazi are crafting a play that digs deeply into key challenges accompanying our ageing population.

Christos Tsiolkas and Mary Zournazi: “A play only really begins to breathe in rehearsals, in workshops with actors. We will be able to hear the world we have created.”

A simpatico moment over a casual meal sparked an artistic collaboration between Christos Tsiolkas and Mary Zournazi that has spanned more than seven years.

The award-winning author and the academic and filmmaker met at a Greek authors’ event 20 years ago where Tsiolkas was discussing the work that would become Dead Europe.

Tsiolkas is known for his raw depiction of the Australian psyche, from the disenfranchised anger and sexualised violence of youth in Loaded to his vampiric exploration of antiSemitism in Dead Europe and the hypocrisy of middle-class Australia in the international bestseller The Slap.

Zournazi was struck by the power and sensitivity of his writing and they stayed in touch.

“He really does capture families and dysfunction really, really well. But also, in a very tender way – he’s a very tender writer, I think,” the associate professor says.

‘He really does capture families and dysfunction really, really well. But also, in a very tender way – he’s a very tender writer.’

DRAMATIC EXPLORATION OF DEMENTIA GIVES VOICE TO FAMILY DILEMMAS

Kay Harrison, 13 Sep 2018

Years later, Zournazi, whose research in social sciences aligns closely with creative practice, discussed with Tsiolkas ideas for a play on family and dementia and the ethics of care. Tsiolkas was interested in the effect of inheritance on family. The ideas married well.

“I think the questions and complications around family are always fascinating and can often provide strong material for drama,” Tsiolkas says.

“The struggles that families go through with dementia is something that we are increasingly enduring as we live longer.”

They began exploring characters and situations in 2011, meeting in Melbourne and Sydney and, when their schedules allowed, for week-long workshops in the quiet of Tsiolkas’ house at Narooma in the Southern Highlands.

“Originally, we would write separately and come back together and talk about who the characters were and how they were sitting, but eventually we started writing together,” Zournazi says.

“The plot built slowly and it’s still developing. The first draft is quite different to the third.”

The play centres on Augie, a father with dementia, and his relationship with his carer, as well as issues of care, responsibility and inheritance that arise within his family.

‘A play only really begins to breathe in rehearsals, in workshops with actors. We will be able to hear the world we have created.’

Augie’s voice is “quite powerful, quite strong. It’s actually the motor behind the play,” Zournazi says.

“By making the parental figure in the play [the one] with dementia we were able to add further complexity to what we were doing,” Tsiolkas says.

Augie’s dialogue is fragmented and poetic, based on Tsiolkas and Zournazi’s real-life observations of people with the disease.

“He speaks in his own language which is his language. But it’s the language of dementia, it’s the language of memory as well,” Zournazi says.

“We have to see how that will translate with an actor, whether it does work efficiently, but I think it will. I think it should.”

Actor Lex Marinos, a UNSW alumnus, is reading the role of Augie in a workshop of the play at NIDA Theatre running from September 11 to 15, with Camilla Ah Kin reading the role of his carer, Yuli. The workshop is exploring different elements of the three drafts under the dramaturgy of acclaimed Australian playwright and screenwriter Stephen Sewell (The Boys, True Love and Chaos, and Chopper), with senior NIDA acting students Emma Kew, Yerin Ha and Timothy Walker reading the supporting roles.

Timothy Walker, Christos Tsiolkas and Mary Zournazi at the workshop.

“We’ve been the actors, now we actually have to have other people embody the roles so we can start to see the characters, start to see the language, and what’s working and not working,” Zournazi says.

“A play only really begins to breathe in rehearsals, in workshops with actors. We will be able to hear the world we have created,” says Tsiolkas.

The collaboration is a less of a departure from Zournazi’s previous work than it might first appear. The play’s themes of identity, memory and storytelling are intrinsic to her research.

“I’ve been thinking a lot and working a lot on ideas of what memory is and how it functions,” she says.

“But also, questions of care – how do we care for people with dementia as well and what are the issues at stake?”

In 2014, she published Inventing Peace – A Dialogue on Perception with filmmaker Wim Wenders, the culmination of nearly a decade of conversations on the nature of peace and how we imagine it.

In 2015, she explored issues of care in her award-winning documentary Dogs of Democracy on the stray dogs of Athens and the people who took care of them during the austerity measures in Greece following the global financial crisis.

The creative expression of philosophical issues and social criticism has increasingly become a focus in her research and teaching at UNSW School of Social Sciences.

“Even though Dogs is nonfiction, the form and the medium allow a certain play,” she says.

The collaboration with Tsiolkas constitutes her first foray into fiction and she is conscious of the inherent risk involved.

“I think every time we write something, it’s almost like a potential failure,” she says. However, the experience of working with Tsiolkas – a recognised master of the form –and developing a shared creative language has been both inspiring and affirming.

“Having similar experiences in terms of our background has really helped. It gave us an intuitive sense of how the characters might respond.”

Both Tsiolkas and Zournazi were born in Australia to Greek immigrants. Equally, the family in the play, while not specifically Greek, has a migrant background.

Zournazi sees a creative advantage in employing the power of fiction to convey complex ideas.

“[Fiction] speaks to the heart, it speaks to people’s whole self, rather than just part of them – the intellect or this or that – it can craft something that you cannot always craft intellectually,” she says.

The workshop, supported by Kate Cherry at NIDA, will lay the groundwork for the next draft of the play.