Adelaide’s State Theatre Company (STC) will play on stages across South Australia, around the country and, for the first time ever, in London in its 2016 season. The 10 show season, announced today, will include 6 co-productions, reaffirming the Company’s position as a major player in the national theatre sphere and nurturing a new relationship with leading UK company, Frantic Assembly.
The new relationship has been 2 years in the making and comes to fruition in London with the world premiere of Things I Know To Be True, a new work by leading Australian playwright Andrew Bovell. “The 2016 Season is one of our strongest yet.” says Artistic Director Geordie Brookman.
“It retains the Company’s commitment to new Australian writing and our South Australian artists as well as bringing some of the best of the best from around the country to create work right here in Adelaide.”
The 2016 season sees State Theatre work with some of Australia’s leading artists including Gold Logie award-winning actress Lisa McCune, who will make her STC debut in Machu Picchu. The play, directed by Brookman, tells the story of two mid-life civil engineers whose lives are changed after one is badly injured in a horrifying car accident. It explores mindfulness, altruism and the challenge of staying true to oneself.
Machu Picchu builds on an already strong relationship with Australia’s largest theatre company as a brand new Australian play that will be co-produced with Sydney Theatre Company. Sue Smith’s perceptive new work opens in Sydney before transferring to the Dunstan Playhouse for its Adelaide season.
Catherine McClements will also return to STC in The Events directed by Clare Watson. The season opener, and a co-production with Belvoir and Malthouse Theatre, it was written in response to the 2011 Norway murders committed by Anders Breivik. The play follows a community’s search for compassion, peace and understanding in the wake of the unthinkable violence. The Events will feature as part of the Adelaide Festival before returning to Sydney for a Belvoir season and on to Melbourne to close its Australian tour at Malthouse.
The critically acclaimed Paul Capsis will also return to STC in Rumpelstiltskin. A co-production with Windmill theatre, it takes on the famous fairy-tale with the addition of Windmill’s unique style, inventive music and extravagant performance.
State Theatre Company local favourite’s Paul Blackwell and Nathan O’Keefe will grace the stage in Moliere’s Taruffe, directed by Chris Drummond and co-produced by Brink. First performed in 1664, the classic comedy combines adultery, betrayal, seduction, lies and deceit with the precisely organised chaos of farce.
STC will also partner with Queensland’s La Boite Theatre Company for the first time to bring New York playwright Young Jean Lee’s razor sharp Straight White Men to the Australian stage for its national premiere. Directed by Nescha Jelk it tells the story of the widowed Ed, and his three middle aged sons, who, after welcoming them home at Christmas, finds himself exploring identity, privilege and the real value of being a ‘straight white man’.
Brookman goes on to say that “the diversity and depth of our local theatre sector is something we love to celebrate, and we’re delighted that in 2016 we’ll get to play with a number of South Australia’s best and brightest companies.”
STC will also collaborate closely with Country Arts SA to tour both The Red Cross Letters and its Education production Gorgon to regional South Australia.
In the last three years, Adelaide’s State Theatre Company has become a major player on the national theatre scene, regularly exporting its productions around the country, co-producing with companies interstate and touring within regional South Australia.
“Not only do co-productions bring new energy to creative collaborations, they also provide fantastic opportunities for South Australian artists to strut their stuff on the national stage and very significantly extends periods of employment for our fine cohort of actors, directors, and designers” says CEO and Producer, Rob Brookman.
State Theatre Company productions have, in the last few years, played in every State and Territory in Australia as well as on Broadway.
More information about the season and a sneak peek of the shows is now available on the STC website at statetheatrecompany.com.au
2016 State Theatre Company Season
25 Feb to 5 Mar – The Events by David Greig
13 Apr to 1 May – Machu Picchu by Sue Smith
3 May to 7 May – Gorgon by Elena Carapetis (State Ed Show)
13 May to 4 Jun – Things I Know To Be True by Andrew Bovell
1 Jul to 23 Jul – Straight White Men by Young Jean Lee
3 Aug to 6 Aug – The Red Cross Letters Devised by Verity Laughton (State Extra)
19 Aug to 11 Sep – The 39 Steps Adapted by Patrick Barlow
8 Sep to 30 Sep – Red Sky Morning by Tom Holloway (State Umbrella)
11 Oct to 30 Oct – Rumpelstiltskin by Rosemary Myers & Julianne O’Brien
4 Nov to 20 Nov – Tartuffe by Moliere
Paul Rodda
Adapted from a media release
Yesterday, James D Smith was acclaimed as one of Australia's most promising emerging artists.
Today he truly emerges, leaping into a coveted blockbuster role.
Showbiz supremo John Frost, who knows more than a thing or two about investing in top talent, has announced Smith as a new cast elevation in Dirty Dancing for its October opening in Adelaide.
For Adelaide audiences, this is particularly pleasing since they remember Smith very fondly for his Fringe concerts at the Promethean, not to mention headlining with Pete Murray and The Whitlams at the Fringe 2013 closing concert.
He is one those for whom success has been a steady path, assured by diligent honing of the skills in broad and constant showbiz experience. He came from a musical family wherein his father taught him guitar early on. He went on to gain a degree in musical performance from the Ballarat Arts Academy.
He's made all the right moves, working wherever work was to be found, showing his discipline with long stage seasons as in four years playing Boq in the hit musical Wicked as it toured the world. He's sung Carols by Candlelight concerts in front of massive open-air crowds. He has entertained the champagne-sippers on cruise ships. He sung clubs, bars and backing. He's been where the work has been.
He has been touring with Dirty Dancing as Mark Vincent's understudy in the role of Billy Kostecki for some time and now, just as in all the showbiz dream-come-true stories, the understudy door opens and he is granted the prized role.
While Smith's training encompassed operatic singing, he has become known in the pop/indie genre. Very different from that of his predecessor in the role, Smith's voice is of a lovely light tenor character with some very beautiful and unusual resonances. Bert Newton has been quoted describing it as "a magnificent voice which reaches out and touches all emotions" while the Promethean's David Grice swooned: "Quite simply his is the best male voice I have ever heard. I was sitting there not actually believing I was hearing what I was."
Dirty Dancing showcases that special voice with two of the best songs in the show - The Time of My Life and The Still of the Night.
The season commences in Adelaide on October 2 at the Festival Theatre.
Samela Harris
When: 2 Oct to 1 Nov
Where: Festival Theatre
Bookings: bass.net.au
Harold Minear has shocked the theatre world with news of his resignation as Publicity Officer of St Jude's Players.
The man is only 87 years old, for heaven's sake. He will be a hard act to follow.
Harold Minear must have been the most senior publicist in the business. He's been at it for 10 years and directing, writing and being on the company committee for 50. He has been an institution not only at St Jude's but in the country's theatre world.
If it were not for medical advice, one imagines he would have gone on producing with the media releases, phone outreach, photo calls and promotional charm.
Of course, he has had an advantage in that slippery world of publicity. He is a singularly popular, nay, beloved thespian - respected in all quarters. He is recipient of an Adelaide Critics Circle Lifetime Achievement Award among many accolades. Even overworked and evasive media people feel happy, perhaps even honoured, every time they hear from him.
He has been the great jewel in the crown of St Jude's these many long years.
He reveals that a publicity committee will be looking after things in his lieu until the next St Jude's AGM next year.
And he is far from out of the game. As a Life Member of St Jude's, he says he will be involved with the company whenever possible.
Naturally, his last press release is as professional as his first, ensuring that the proper contact information is passed on; phone, email and, of course, St Jude's website: www.stjudesplayers.asn.au
All power and good spirit to a good publicist and thespian role model.
Samela Harris
Indonesian contributions open and close the 2015 OzAsia Festival.
One of Australia’s closest neighbours is gifting us with 20 works involving more than 100 artists over the opening weekend alone, in a festival with 41 events, five world premieres and 15 Australian premieres.
This will be the biggest showcase of arts presented from Indonesia in Australia, giving Australian’s the all-too-rare opportunity to experience “the contemporary side of Indonesia,” said OzAsia Artistic Director Joseph Mitchell.
Highlights include: The Streets, by Teater Garasi, directed by Yudi Ahmad Tadjudin. The Space Theatre will be transformed into a busy Indonesian street where audience members are immersed in the performance occurring around them.
Eko Supriyanto’s Cry Jailolo from North Maluku is a contemporary dance work, which gives expression to the famed underwater world of Jailolo Bay, East Indonesia.
On a more serious note, Papermoon Puppet Theatre’s Mwathirilka delves into Indonesia’s dark days involving the 1965 – 66 anti communist purges, blending puppetry and multimedia.
Indofest, on the closing weekend, has long been associated with OzAsia Festival. The Australian-Indonesian Association of South Australia will gather together a series of traditional dance, games and live music experiences along with traditional food on North Terrace across the Migration Museum, SA Museum, SA Library and Art Gallery of South Australia.
Chinese, Japanese and Korean works, some involving Australian collaboration, offer even broader stylistic cultural experiences very much aimed at contemporary issues, such as Chinese theatre director Meng Jinghui’s première of Amber. This love story charged with multimedia, rock and dance explores not just love, loss and innocence but the disturbing commercialisation of sex in China.
Extremes of consumer society and disposable culture are grist to the mill of Miss Revolutionary Idol Berserker, a staple of Europe’s contemporary theatre festival scene. The part pop concert, theatre work hybrid makes its Australian premiere for OzAsia Festival.
Spectra, dance collaboration between Japanese and Australian artists was commissioned by OzAsia Festival, involving dancers from Japan and Australia’s Dancenorth. Blending Australian contemporary dance with Japanese butoh collective Batik’s style, Australian choreographer Kyle Page, formerly of Australian Dance Theatre, looks to explore the universal nature of causality; how one thing leads to another.
Finally the Moon Lantern Festival, much beloved by South Australian families, returns on Sunday 27 September, featuring the largest lantern ever created for a Moon Lantern Festival, a 36 person long Hong Kong Dragon.
This Oz Asia Festival truly has something for everyone. The program can be found online at adelaidefestivalcentre.com.au/ozasia-festival.
David O’Brien
When: 4 Sept to 4 Oct
Where: Various venues
Bookings: 131 246 or bass.net.au
Number 17 Cherry Tree Lane will make its home on the Arts Theatre stage from the 2nd of July, and Bert will be there to show you around.
It is the well known story of Mary Poppins that arrives on Adelaide’s chilly winter winds, but for the uninitiated it will be nothing like a live production of the 1964 Disney film.
“The show on stage is very different to the movie” says Brendan Cooney, who plays Bert in the Matt Byrne Media production. “There are a lot more characters in there” he says.
“It has a lot more depth to it”.
The amateur rights to the show became available in October last year and this production will be a South Australian premiere. Getting the rights to present the show was “an incredible honour” says Producer/Director Matt Byrne.
“We have a record five-week season to cope with expected demand as the professional production never made it to Adelaide”.
The show features Lauren Potter in the title role of Mary.
“Lauren has spent her childhood following Mary Poppins, so it is basically a dream role for her to have” explains Cooney, “She’s very good at it, and has the character down very well.”
The stage production is more closely based on the original stories by P.L Travers, but includes much of the films award winning music by the Sherman brothers. The stage musicals creator, Cameron Mackintosh, virtually had to beg Travers for the rights to create the show, and was eventually only allowed to do so under very strict conditions.
All of the favourites are in there like Spoonful Of Sugar, Chim Chim Cher-ee, Let’s Go Fly A Kite, Jolly Holiday, Feed The Birds and Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.
The big musical number is Step In Time which features Bert, Mary, Jane, Michael and the Sweeps. “We’ve spent a lot of time on that number… and at the moment it feels good” says Cooney.
“Once we get in the theatre we will be able to set it a lot better”
Bert is not the deepest of characters, but he is key to moving the story along. “I’ve been doing a bit of work, really concentrating on it” says Cooney. “Lots of people have said to me. ‘Oh, I watched that lots as a kid’ and I think geez, we better be good!”
For Cooney and Byrne acting is incredibly important in this production, “I’d love to make it more an actor’s role and not just a singer and dancer” says Cooney.
The cast features James McCluskey-Garcia and Ellonye Keniry as George and Winifred Banks, and Shalani Wood and Sebastien Skubala as their children Jane and Michael.
“There are a lot of older characters – people are going to come along and say ‘Wow! I didn’t realise there were that many good roles in this show’” says Cooney.
“Penni Hamilton-Smith is amazing” as the long-suffering cook, Mrs Brill and “Megan (Humphries) blows you away as Ms Andrew” Cooney explains. “The audience will just be in awe of what she does”.
The cast also features Callum Byrne, Chris Bussey, Neville Phillis, Maggie Wood, Russell Ford, Margaret Davis, Sean Hilton, Rikki DeJesus, Nikki Yiannoullou, Anthony Butler and a wonderful ensemble of fine Adelaide performers.
With Musical Direction from Gordon Coombes and Choreography by Sue Pole, Mary Poppins will play at the Arts Theatre from July 2 to 18 and at Elizabeth’s Shedley Theatre from July 23 to August 1.
As Bert is heard to say to Mr Banks in A Man Has Dreams, “Life’s a rum go, Guv’nor”… but one is sure this show won’t be!
Paul Rodda
When: 2 Jul to 23 Aug
Where: Arts Theatre & Shedley Theatre
Bookings: mattbyrnemedia.com.au, 8262 4906 or bass.net.au