Courtney Boot

WE ONLY COME OUT AT NIGHT

There are a few things that Canberra does that the rest of the country takes notice of. Politics. Porn. The War Memorial. And Floriade. It’s become an institution as revered (and just as often pilloried) as Parliament House, and for the past few years, the annual flower show has amped up its tourista value with NightFest, a five-night after-dark extravaganza for young and old that’s currently in its third year.

Ian Hill of Australian Capital Tourism (the gents who run the whole shebang, dontcha know), explains that NightFest has “a very different feel,” from Floriade Vanilla, with “a bit of something for everybody.”

Of course, the festival is one of Canberra’s biggest tourist money spinners, so the focus isn’t exactly on avant-garde. Instead, the pitch is to attract overnight stays from interstate visitors, as well as about diversifying the festival’s crowd with younger types.

There’s night markets, “food and wine tastings, [...] live music, roving entertainers” and more, including displays, how-tos from local florists, films, and the full gamut of fire-twirlers and doodads that you’d expect from a massive, family-and-tourist-dollar-oriented fiesta del flora. 

One of the more intriguing additions to this year’s Floriade program is the Da Vinci Machines exhibition, which features exact replicas of more than 60 machines designed by the great Leonardo, including “amazing flying machines, nautical, hydraulic and architectural innovations, groundbreaking applications of civil engineering and war machines.” The exhibition will be open for NightFest patrons to peruse at their leisure.

In choosing the acts and entertainments for NightFest, Hill says that Australian Capital Tourism looked for “variety, and things that were a bit more interactive.”

“It’s a more dynamic mood that we’re trying to create.”

There are two main performance stages: the Carnival stage, which will feature stand-up comics such as Patrick McCullagh, Dave Thornton, Mr Quirk, Jacques the Cheeky French Waiter and the List Operators, and the Butterfly Lounge, which will be the go-to place for music during NightFest, with funk, reggae, and DJs spinning tunes for cocktail-drinkin’ types.

As far as films go, NightFest will be screening Twilight, Mamma Mia!, Up, Alice in Wonderland, and Filmtasia, a specially curated night of Aussie short films presented by the National Film and Sound Archives. And, if you’re bored watching Bella and Edward for the fortieth time, you can sidle over to the Garnier Dome (it’s a big green dome!) and get a complimentary facial.

Hill explains: “We were looking for things that complement each other, and bring something different to Floriade.”

Floriade NightFest runs from 22 to 26 September in Commonwealth Park. Tickets are for sale through Ticketek. For full details on the program and events, go to http://floriadeaustralia.com/nightfest

Underage House Party Play

“The initial desire was to put onstage a bong-making workshop,” says playwright David Finnigan in his best deadpan. “It became necessary to flesh out that image.”

Finnigan is talking about his latest work, Underage House Party Play, commissioned by the Street Theatre as one of two writing commissions (along with Aedan Whyatt’s The Back of Beyond) in 2010. The play, directed by Canberra stalwart Stephen Barker, follows five teenagers - meat for “the coming-of-age grinder” - on a journey through their last high-school rager, and plays at the Street Theatre from June 3 to 6.

The bones of the play came from Finnigan’s own time spent party-going during the “dirty end, the fag-end, of being a teenager.”

“I had a huge stockpile of dialogue from notes from parties when I was 16,” says Finnigan, but, he explains, “the aim was not to be a nostalgia exercise.”

“These characters are types,”

The five “archetypal characters”: a blonde girl, a smart girl, a stoner, a former geek, and a rich Christian. Not exactly The Breakfast Club - but not far off. In Underage House Party Play, however, they’re all played by the one actor, former Canberran Matthew Kelly.

“It’s very difficult to stand on a stage and talk to yourself and not feel silly,” says Kelly, a former Questacon performer working for the second time with director Stephen Barker.

“You need to overcome those clichés, to establish a convention early on that the audience understands. If the audience likes you, they’ll pretty much go with you,”

“It’s been great fun,” says Kelly, though some of the characters are harder to play than others.

 “I’m playing young girls, and I don’t want to make fun of them,” says Kelly. “It’s very difficult to create a character [and] make her sincere, and not make her a stereotype of a teenage girl,”

Kelly – now living in Melbourne and working on writing, directing, and performing his own comedy – has helped to workshop the play, in conjunction with Barker and Finnigan, as part of the Street’s focus on creating opportunities for new work that “reflects a Canberra sensibility,” says Street Theatre Artistic Director Caroline Stacey.

“There was some testing of the waters,” explains Finnigan of the workshop process. “What crowd can we draw, and what things can we touch on that no-one else is going to hack at? […] How far can this go? Caroline said: ‘quite frankly, it hasn’t gone far enough’. So… a condom is getting lost,”

Where, you ask? Well. You’ll have to see the play.

“I think that what the Street Theatre is doing in creating this season is great,” says Kelly, “giving Canberra artists a chance to get their shows performed.”

Finnigan agrees: “It’s a kick-arse thing that Caroline has done. I’m hugely appreciative,”

Underage House Party Play performs at Street Two from Thursday June 3 to Sunday June 6. www.thestreet.org.au

Love Cupboard

Live-In Lover

Courtney Boot

“What if you loved someone so much you were willing to give up the rest of the world and live in a cupboard just to be with them?” This is the question posed both rhetorically and literally in Emma Gibson’s new play Love Cupboard, launching the 2010 Made in Canberra season at the Street Theatre this month.

“The idea came to me late at night when I was half-watching TV and thought a subtitle said ‘Love Cupboard’,” explains Gibson. “It didn’t, but I thought it was such an interesting title I had to write it down.”

The play centres on Warren (Scott Cummings), and his 12-years-younger, claustrophilic girlfriend Annabel (Hanna Cormick). Annabel’s parents disapprove of her dating a man so much older and order her to break up with Warren. Infatuated, immature and desperate, Annabel does the opposite – she moves into his cupboard.

There are echoes of the story of Queensland teen Natasha Ryan, who ‘disappeared’ for several years and was the subject of an extended police investigation, only to be discovered living in her boyfriend’s walk-in-wardrobe. For Gibson, though, the bizarre reality of the story is underlined by the symbolic opportunities it opens.

“It’s both a physical cupboard and a metaphor for how people can become trapped,” explains Gibson. “People can choose to trap themselves in a situation.”

In this case, both sides are trapped – Annabel by her immaturity, and by the fantasy life she plays out during her lonely days in the cupboard, and Warren by his complicity in Annabel’s decision.

The play is receiving its ‘premiere’ performance launching the Street Theatre’s 2010 Made in Canberra season, a performance opportunity in which Gibson is proud to be involved. “It’s really exciting,” says Gibson. “It really does bring interesting and exciting works to the stage. Having the support from the Street Theatre means we can realize our vision.”

No mean feat, given the difficulties of staging new work in a field of tough professional competition. “It’s really hard to get a start,” says Gibson. “There’s only one David Williamson.”

“It’s rare to find really solid support behind you from a theatre organization. I think it has a really positive impact on the local theatre scene.”

Although this is its official debut, Love Cupboard is now several years (and rewrites) old. Gibson worked with dramaturg Peter Matheson at the Street, and took the play to the World Interplay young playwrights festival in Cairns in 2009, workshopping it into shape with the help of international mentors. “It’s amazing how much the script has changed and it continues to surprise me,” says Gibson. “It’s a lot darker. I hope people will be surprised by it.”

Love Cupboard opens at the Street as part of Made in Canberra on Thursday April 29, running to Sunday May 2.

Hell Hath No Fury

Feminist icon or filicidal monster, MEDEA is a figure who continues to awe and baffle audiences more than two thousand years after Euripides first adapted the myth for the Attic stage. This year, papermoon’s Cathie Clelland has adapted Medea for a 21st century audience, with a new translation and a new angle: three Medeas.

Medea is a “stranger in a strange land” says Clelland, “alienated and isolated” in the civilised Greek world.  Medea is married to Jason after his shenanigans with the golden fleece, but when they travel to Corinth he leaves her to marry Glauce, the daughter of the king. Seeking vengeance for Jason’s betrayal, Medea poisons Glauce and then murders her own children.

The three Medeas will be played by Canberra actresses Jordan Best, Lexi Sekuless, and Helen Brajkovic. The psychological division implied by the trifurcation of Medea is superbly appropriate, because she does, indeed, have three faces: super-powerful witch, tragic mother, and scorned woman.

“What makes a woman do such an extreme thing?” asks Clelland of Medea’s filicide. “Once we got the… three parts of her, it became clearer.”

Sekuless plays the “conciliatory Medea”, Best plays the “impulsive, passionate” side and Brajkovic plays the clever, manipulative angle, though “they’re all dangerous women,” says Clelland.

While Medea is often taken as a feminist text in its portrayal of a powerful woman isolated by patriarchal society, “a thoroughly feminist reading doesn’t work,” argues Clelland. Although audiences empathise with her plight, the horror of her actions results in a withdrawal of sympathy.

“She talks about how difficult it is for a woman to be a stranger,” says Sekuless, “but in the end you can’t feel for her at all.”
Instead, Clelland has tried to explore the three-fold nature of Medea and to present the story for a 21st century audience. An accomplished designer, Clelland has created a prison-like set to background Medea’s exclusion from ‘civilisation’.

“It’s very cold and industrial,” says Clelland. “I tried to get a feel of hardness, (the idea that) this is not her home,” says Clelland. To set this off, the traditional Greek chorus has been transformed into a team of journalists who highlight the probing xenophobia that surrounds Medea – and, indeed, the outsiders of our own society.

What makes Medea so compelling is that she is a woman scorned by the man she loves and driven to desperation by her exclusion from the world – and yet at the same time she is a monster, a horrific image of passion so extreme that it will stop at nothing. Medea may be a figure of feminine power, but as Clelland points out, she is also “a threat to the powers of reason”.
And that’s a scary thing.

Papermoon’s Medea will play at the ANU Arts Centre from August 20 to 30. Tickets through Teatro Vivaldi on 02 6257 2718.

Women Of Manhattan

Actor-director-producer Melissa Georgiou was training at NIDA when a tutor told her about a character she'd be perfect for, in a play by American writer John Patrick Shanley. Georgiou had never read the play before and searched high and low until she found the script: WOMEN OF MANHATTAN.

"When I read it I absolutely fell in love with it," says Georgiou - so much so that she decided to produce, direct, and star in it herself.

Women of Manhattan, playing at the Courtyard Studio til July 12, centres on three women - Judy, Rhonda Louise, and Billie - trying to make it in New York. Their careers are going great guns but their "emotional lives are a wreck," explains Georgiou.

"In a series of sharply written, subtly revealing scenes, their situations change. The three are hopeful about better times ahead, but also painfully aware that the brittle, competitive Manhattan lifestyle disappoints as quickly as it rewards."

Judy (Georgiou) has been "overtaken by cynicism" from meeting dud man after dud man. Rhonda Louise (Nicole Nesbitt-Allan) suffers from self-esteem issues. Meanwhile, the "very dramatic" Billie (Melissa Twidale), dissatisfied with the smooth contentment of married life, decides to import some drama - to "stir the pot just because it needs to be stirred," jokes Georgiou.

And if that situation sounds at all familiar to modern telly audiences, Georgiou is quick to point out the analogue.

"Basically it's very similar to Sex and the City," she says, "except there's no sex or nudity!"

The script was written in 1986, but Georgiou has updated it to 2009 - partly for the clothes. Like Sex and the City, Georgiou has tried to make the play's fashion "a talking point,"

"Everyone looks very glamorous!"

In the original script Judy, Rhonda Louise, and Billie are Yankee, but Georgiou has transformed the women into Aussies. "I wanted it to be very relatable to Canberra audiences," says Georgiou.  "I thought I could do that better if I made it about Australian women and their journey, being in the big smoke,"

"I think it's not just for theatre-goers," says Georgiou, adding that the play has been "attracting a lot of people who are interested in relationships,"

It's the kind of night at the theatre good for groups of women, who can "go out for cocktails after" to discuss the play.

Women - and men, Georgiou argues - can leave the theatre thinking, "'Oh, I can relate to that character' and walk away with something new that might help them in the dating world,"

Women of Manhattan plays at the Courtyard Studio, CTC, until Sunday July 12, showing at 8pm and on Sunday at 2pm. Tix $20 thru Canberra Ticketing - call 6275 2700 or visit the CTC website at www.canberratheatre.org.au

Latin! Or Tobacco and Boys

It’s a special type of person that loves English comedian, writer, actor, and blogger Stephen Fry. They’re the kind of person that gets slightly cream-bun-sticky at the thought of puns and double entendres, the kind of person that titters at the mention of bottoms and salivates at the thought of rugger blues. Luckily for Everyman Theatre, who are performing Fry’s Latin! Or Tobacco and Boys at the Courtyard Studio this fortnight, you don’t need to be this kind of person to enjoy Stephen Fry’s divinely razorish wit. I sat down with director Jarrad West, actor Duncan Driver, and producer Duncan Ley to talk about Fry, theatre, and Chelsea buns.

Latin! is (oddly, for a man who seems so quintessentially theatrical) Fry’s only true play. “He’s done scripts and books for musicals,” says West, “but he hasn’t really written that many plays. I think this is his only ‘play’ play.”
“He did a version of Cinderella for the Old Vic years ago,” says Driver.

“But haven’t we all?” quips Ley.

It seems an appropriate play for the Everyman men; men who relish wit and wordplay and slightly dirty jokes. The play centres on two prep school masters (prep school, for the embryo Fry fan, is the “school where you go before you go to public school,” explains West): a young prep Latin teacher played by Driver, and a senior master played by veteran Canberra thesp Oliver Baudert, who are both trying to wrest control of the school from the dying headmaster. The younger teacher is engaged to the headmaster’s daughter and will inherit the school, but the senior master uncovers a dirty little secret. “The senior master has discovered that the younger teacher is having ‘extra Latin lessons’ with one of his thirteen year old students… and so decides to blackmail him.”

In order to give the audience the essential claustrophobic public school experience, West hopes to stage the play as if it were located in a classroom, with the audience sitting in desks. “I’m interested in different concepts of staging,” says West, “not the usual thing of having the stage in a box.” Including the audience in this way carries its own dangers, of course. “[I have] to talk directly to the audience, pick people in the audience, and that can be quite confronting,” says Driver. Ley agrees. “There is that tension of alienating the audience; by attempting to include them you can almost do the opposite.”

“At least as headmaster I don’t have to be nice to them,” jokes Driver.

The other tension is, of course, the material itself. West explains that when it was staged at the Edinburgh Fringe there were “protests and letters” complaining about the performance of material that “glorifies and endorses paedophilia”. “Well of course, it doesn’t,” says West. But the fine line that Fry treads, between humour and offence, is precisely what makes his writing so enjoyable. “There is a delightful element of risk,” says Ley. “You read the script and you go, this is extraordinarily funny, but we could get hounded out of town at the same time – and that’s rather wonderful.”

Everyman Theatre presents Stephen Fry’s Latin! or Tobacco and Boys at the Courtyard Studio, Canberra Theatre Centre, from June 18 – 27 @ 8pm.  Tix $20/$15.  Book through Canberra Ticketing on 6275 2700 or on the CTC website at www.canberratheatre.org.au.