New Theatre: Season 2016 Launch
By: Jade Kops Nov. 30, 2015
Monday 30th November 2015, 7pm, New Theatre, Newtown NSW
New Theatre's 2016 Season line up continues the company's legacy of staging productions that will challenge ideas and discuss issues. Whilst works may have been originated in the past, they still hold relevance in the issues they cover such as the imbalance in the recognition of women's achievements, the ongoing struggle for Gender Parity in the Arts, and the global issue of Asylum seekers.
Since New theatre was established in 1932 as the Sydney Workers Art Club, the "Non Professional" theatre company has staged approximately 560 productions and is more "Independent" quality than "amateur" in the standard it delivers, drawing on a range of talent and experience from newcomers, recent drama school graduates and seasoned veterans of the industry. New Theatre remains a community based company, reliant on volunteers and audience support, but also plays a significant role in the wider performing arts industry by providing a start for new performers, directors, artists, technicians and playwrights. As with 2015's line up, the 2016 includes a work directed by a recent NIDA Directors' Course Graduate
Along with the 2016 Season Launch, New Theatre also paid tribute to the late Frank McNamara, who passed away in 2015. His widow, New Theatre Committee President Rosane McNamara has funded re-upholstery of the vintage first 4 rows of seating, originally sourced from the Capitol Theatre in Melbourne in his honour.
MEDIA RELEASE:
On Monday 30 November, in front of a packed house, Artistic Director Louise Fischer announced NewTheatre's exciting season for 2016.
New Theatre is presenting seven shows that range across comedy, drama and musical theatre, kicking off with a 1970's cult favourite making its Sydney debut for Mardi Gras (THE RITZ), followed by plays from Russia(THE CHERRY ORCHARD), America (THE HEIDI CHRONICLES), England (HOUSE OF GAMES) and Germany(MARAT/SADE), plus revivals of two contemporary Australian works (THAT EYE, THE SKY and SUMMER RAIN).
These 'big cast' plays, which include the Australian premiere of a new play by Richard Bean (One Man, Two Guvnors), cover some of the seminal political, social and theatrical movements of the 20th century, embracing everything from madcap farce to magic-realism to sexy noir-thriller.
We're fulfilling our brief to give both emerging and established artists - actors, directors, designers and technical crew - the chance to display their work, stretch their skills and have their talents seen and appreciated, priding ourselves on being a stepping-stone to working on the broader independent scene and the professional stages of Sydney.
The directorial team for 2016 includes Artistic Director Louise Fisher (MOTHER CLAP'S MOLLY HOUSE, HARVEST, ENRON) and Alice Livingstone (THE REAL THING, PRIVATES ON PARADE,TOP GIRLS), plus two set designers Barry French and David Marshall-Martin are going to be stretching their directorial wings. We welcome back David Burrowes (THE SCHOOL FOR SCANDAL) and present the New Theatre debuts of 2015 NIDA Directors' Course graduate Clemence Williams and experienced independent director Christopher Hurrell.
We're looking forward to seeing our loyal regulars in the house and welcoming new faces to enjoy the program in 2016. With something for everyone and all ages, it's going to be a spectacular year!
Here's the line-up of shows. Bookings now open at NEWTHEATRE.ORG.AU
(New Theatre Promotion Posters: Richard Hedger for New Theatre)
THE RITZ
9 FEBRUARY - 5 MARCH
Presented in association with the Sydney Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras Festival
BY TERRENCE MCNALLY
Director: David Marshall-Martin
"Stay out of the steam room. It gets pretty wild in there!"
On the run from his homicidal mobster brother-in-law, hapless middle-aged businessman Gaetano Proclo takes refuge in a seedy, steamy Manhattan bathhouse called 'The Ritz' - mistaking it for a hotel.
Amidst the amyl-nitrate-scented clouds he encounters chubby chasers, go-go boys, bumbling detectives, gay orgies and a Bette Midler wannabe with dreams of Broadway fame.
Then his wife tracks him down and jumps to the wrong conclusions about his sexual orientation.
This madcap farce, written at the height of the gay sexual revolution before AIDS changed the world, offers a glimpse of a lifestyle both hedonistic and celebratory, when anything seemed possible.
The Ritz marked Terrence McNally's Broadway breakthrough and was subsequently adapted into a romp of a movie that quickly earned cult status.
If you loved the film, you'll adore the play!
"I laughed a lot and who should ask for anything more" The New York Times
THAT EYE, THE SKY
15 MARCH - 16 APRIL
ADAPTED BY JUSTIN MONJO AND RICHARD ROXBURGH, FROM THE NOVEL BY TIM WINTON
Director: David Burrowes
"God's everywhere Ort. In everything. The trees, the ground, the water. Everything stinks of God, reeks of him."
In the Western Australian town of Subiaco, 13-year-old Ort Flack is coming to terms with terrible changes in his world.
Long ago, his parents 'dropped out' to follow a hippie lifestyle. Now his father lies paralysed in a coma, his older sister is consumed by hate, his grandma exists in a fog of dementia and his once-carefree mother can't cope.
For Ort, the struggle to understand the world around him draws him towards the supernatural. Lonely, frightened, loving unconditionally and full of optimism, he becomes obsessed with the belief that somewhere 'up there' someone or something watches over them all, controlling their destiny, and that his father can be cured.
Then one day a mysterious stranger appears and bewitches them all.
Tim Winton's novel about a young boy's experiences of love, loss, faith and family has been adapted into an evocative piece of theatrical magic-realism embracing the author's rich colloquial language and infused with humour, spirituality and humanity.
"Every vivid experience comes from your adolescence" The Turning by Tim Winton
THE CHERRY ORCHARD
26 APRIL - 28 MAY
BY ANTON CHEKHOV, ADAPTED BY DAVID MAMET
Director: Clemence Williams
"The Orchard will either be sold or not sold. The causes of it are long in the past."
An aristocratic family, on the brink of financial ruin, must come to terms with the sale of their land to an upstart developer and the loss of their beloved cherry orchard, the finest in the district.
For Lubya Ranevskaya, her brother, her daughters and their servants, losing the house and land will mean ending an existence which no longer holds any happiness but for which they still desperately yearn.
Chekhov's masterful tragicomedy, rich in observation of human nature, takes the post-Revolutionary rise of the serfs to the middle class and the demise of the nobility as a metaphor for the decay of Russian society and the futility of clinging to the past.
In David Mamet's bold adaptation, characterised by his distinctive sardonic tone, edgy rapid-fire dialogue and manipulative characters, we come to see the play in totally new and surprising ways through an audacious exposition of frustrated sexuality. Ranevskaya is a clever woman made ridiculous by love for a scoundrel, while her daughters are attracted to men who are incapable of commitment.
In the end, as the axe falls, reality bites for all concerned.
"Blows a gust of fresh air into the old play" The Sentinel
THE HEIDI CHRONICLES
7 JUNE - 9 JULY
BY WENDY WASSERSTEIN
Director: Alice Livingstone
"Why should some well-educated woman waste her life making you and your children tuna-fish sandwiches?"
A coming-of-age story that charts the evolution of the 'baby boomer' generation who rebelled in the 1960s, became the 'me-generation' of the 1970s and embraced 'greed is good' in the 1980s.
Across three decades and four cities, Heidi and her friends - male and female, gay and straight -search for political, professional and personal fulfilment as youthful idealism sours, careers surge, relationships break down and biological clocks start ticking.
Inspired by Kennedy, disillusioned by Nixon and corrupted by Reagan, in the end they come to realize that the fight for what you believe can only take you so far and that liberation lies in being true to yourself.
Wendy Wasserstein's funny, touching, insightful elegy for her own lost generation and their often fraught relationship with feminism broke new ground in the presentation of women's stories on stage and won the 1989 Tony Award for Best Play and Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
"To have a play on Broadway about the change that a woman goes through in her life...this is a revolution in itself." Gloria Steinem
HOUSE OF GAMES
9 AUGUST - 10 SEPTEMBER
BASED ON THE SCREENPLAY BY DAVID MAMET, STAGE VERSION BY RICHARD BEAN
Director: Louise Fischer
"This is a confidence game, not because you give me your confidence, but because I give you mine."
Psychoanalyst Margaret Ford, the author of a best-seller on compulsive behaviour, compromises her professional reputation when she offers to help one of her patients settle his gambling debts.
Drawn into the seedy world of Chicago poker clubs and seduced by a charismatic hustler, Margaret starts out on what she thinks is an academic study but finds herself caught up in complex and dangerous con.
Playwright Richard Bean (One Man, Two Guvnors, Harvest) has taken the cult film written and directed by David Mamet, which won the Best Film and Best Screenplay awards at the 1987 Venice Film Festival, and created a taut, funny and sexy noir-thriller about obsession and the lengths we go to get what we desire.
New Theatre is excited to be presenting this Australian premiere.
"A deliciously theatrical reinvention" Variety
MARAT/SADE
4 OCTOBER - 5 NOVEMBER
BY PETER WEISS, TRANSLATED BY GEOFFREY SKELTON
MUSIC BY RICHARD PEASLEE, POEMS TRANSLATED BY ADRIAN MITCHELL
Director: Barry French
"We want our rights and we don't care how/ We want our revolution NOW"
The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade, commonly known as Marat/Sade, shook the theatre world to its core when it premiered in the 1960s.
Set in 1808 in the bath hall of a French provincial asylum where the Marquis de Sade often performed plays with the inmates during his imprisonment, this play-within-a-play presents a re-enactment of the brutal murder of revolutionary firebrand Marat by the demented partisan and fellow revolutionary Charlotte Corday.
Peter Weiss embraced the theatrical devices of pioneers such as Artaud and Brecht to present a bawdy, bloody, unrelenting political parable, pitting Marat's socialist philosophy of equality and freedom from oppression against Sade's rampant anarchic individualism, questioning class struggle and asking where true revolution lies: by changing society or changing the individual?
The first English production was directed by Peter Brook for the Royal Shakespeare Company. It was radical, it was avant-garde and it changed British theatre forever.
"A kick in the balls" Peter Brook
SUMMER RAIN
15 NOVEMBER - 17 DECEMBER
BOOK AND LYRICS BY NICK ENRIGHT, MUSIC BY TERENCE CLARKE
Director: Christopher Hurrell
"Year after year the game's not worth a cracker/Then the moon changes colour and the sky lights up"
Christmas Eve, 1945. Harold Slocum, proprietor of Slocum's Travelling Family Tent Show, has a love of the horses, an intimate relationship with bookies and no money to pay his troupe.
After the performers walk out, the Slocum family finds itself in the drought-blighted NSW outback town of Turnaround Creek. Deciding to put on a show, they muster the enthusiasm of the townsfolk, despite the hostility shown by local publican Barry Doyle, who remembers the last time Harold was in town, 16 years previously.
Then the drought breaks and the Slocums are stranded. Over nine days of rain, dormant memories of an illicit affair resurface and emotions run high, new life is breathed into the town, love blossoms and a feeling of rejuvenation and optimism for the future after the long years of war, beings to take hold.
Nick Enright and Terence Clarke's charming musical celebrates the vaudeville troupes which travelled outback Australia in the 1930s and 40s and the tight-knit rural communities they entertained.
With a delightful score referencing both Hollywood and Australian musical traditions, and a light-hearted, laconic script, Summer Rain is the perfect way to end the year.
"Marvellously entertaining" Sydney Morning Herald
542 King Street Newtown NSW
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