Riverside Theatres Celebrates Birthday Like No Other in HELLO, GOODBYE, AND HAPPY BIRTHDAY

A birthday party like no other will be celebrated at Riverside Theatres when the multi-award winning festival hit, Hello, Goodbye & Happy Birthday, takes to the stage from 27 to 29 July as part of a national tour.

Hello, Goodbye & Happy Birthday celebrates two milestone birthdays - 18 and 80 - two major transition points of adult life. One represents untold potential; the other, the accumulation of a lifetime of experiences. Scripted from intimate real-life conversations with people either side of these milestones, Hello, Goodbye & Happy Birthday is a powerful new work from Roslyn Oades & Collaborators.

Playful and affecting in equal measure, the show sees Oades continue her unique 'headphone verbatim' documentary theatre technique - previously seen in the Belvoir/Sydney Festival hit I'm Your Man and Stories of Love & Hate (Urban Theatre Projects/Sydney Theatre Co) - to create immediate and vivid performances.

The source material for Hello, Goodbye & Happy Birthday is the result of extensive interviews with seniors over the age of 80, followed by a similar process with groups of 18-year-olds. Immersed in the communal environments of both aged-care facilities and high schools - Oades set out to explore the threshold of teens into adulthood, as well as independent adults into aged-care dependency. She also crashed as many 18th, 80th, 90th and 100th birthday parties as possible!

Over a two-year period, 80 people participated in long-form audio interviews for the project. In a process not dissimilar to that of a documentary filmmaker, Oades then drew from this enormous catalogue of recordings to construct what she calls the show's 'audio-script'.

"Rather than reciting memorised lines, the actors wear headphones and speak aloud my carefully edited audio interviews word-for-word - including every inflection, cough, stumble, breath and overlap," Oades explains.

The result is remarkable - actors play across ages, genders and ethnicities to create a snapshot of life, complete with all the quirks, pauses and belly laughs that make humans so fascinating and unique.

A warm, funny and deeply human production, Hello, Goodbye & Happy Birthday is a must-see production at Riverside Theatres this July.

A Performing Lines' Road Work initiative, supported by the Australia Council for the Arts and Creative Victoria.

When: 7.30pm on Thursday 27th July, 11am (plus Q&A) and 7.30pm on Friday 28th July, 2.15pm and 7.30pm on Saturday 29th July

Location: Riverside Theatres - Corner Church and Market Streets, Parramatta

Tickets: Adult $42, Concession $37, Under 30's $28
Transaction fees: phone $4.60, web $3.60 and counter $2.60. Discounts available for Riverside Theatres' Members.

Bookings: www.riversideparramatta.com.au or from the Box Office (02) 8839 3399

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