Mockingbird Theatre to Present QUILLS, 2-15 August

The Victorian premier of Doug Wright's Obie Award-winning play Quills - a provocative and daring study of sexuality and madness. What happens when the lunatics rule the asylum! Season: August 2 - August 15, 2014

Mockingbird Theatre Company Members Adam Ward and Andrea McCannon feature in the Victorian premiere of Doug Wright's titillating journey into the salacious life and sadistically twisted mind of the notorious sexual libertine, Donatien Alphonse François de Sade, better known as the Marquis de Sade. Quills is directed by award-winning Mockingbird Theatre Artistic Director Chris Baldock and assisted by Soren Jensen, and opens at Arts House, Meat Market, on Saturday August 2, 2014 at 8pm.

It is 1814 in the lunatic asylum Charenton where the French aristocrat, philosopher, writer and pornographer, the Marquis de Sade, is passing time by wielding his quill. A prolific and eloquent writer, de Sade spent more than 32 years of his life incarcerated in various prisons and asylums and it was within the prisons that de Sade began the career that would become his legacy. Sadism is as synonymous with his name as the themes of sadomasochism, paedophilia, incest, sexual perversity, overt eroticism and torture are to his writings. Works such as Justine, or the Misfortunes of Virtue; Juliette; The 120 Days of Sodom; and Philosophy in the Bedroom challenge perceptions of sexuality, religion, law, age, and gender. With all the theatricality and grotesqueries of the Theatre of the Grand Guignol, Quills is a high velocity and wickedly funny ride into a twisted mind.

"Mockingbird Theatre is very excited to be staging the Victorian premier of Quills. It is a play that is, without a doubt, not for the faint- hearted. Doug Wright tackles the imagined final days in the life of the Marquis de Sade with all the aberrant and degenerate vigour that is usually assigned to de Sade himself," says Director and Company Artistic Director Chris Baldock. "This makes for a highly provocative, violent, perverse and controversial story that is simultaneously charged with thought-provoking philosophical tirades about the nature of man. Censorship vs. Art. Pornography vs. Sex. Sanity vs. Insanity. Religion vs. Atheism. Humanity vs. Inhumanity. Man vs. Man - such are the debates that run rampant within the work. Such are the opportunities for enquiring minds to ponder. Quills is grand, theatrical and wickedly satisfying. It will penetrate the watcher to the very core - enter if you dare!"

Chris Baldock is a highly respected director and actor in the Melbourne theatre scene. He directed the acclaimed production of The Laramie Project at Chapel off Chapel which won the 2005 Victorian Green Room Award for Best Independent Production. He revived the production in 2012 to critical acclaim as the inaugural production for his own company, Mockingbird Theatre. He also received critical praise for his productions of Love! Valour! Compassion! for Midsumma, Burning starring Logie Award-winner Libby Tanner and the Australian premiere of Shining City for Hoy Polloy. Chris has also directed Mockingbird Theatre's critically acclaimed productions - Blue/Orange, How I Learned To Drive, Equus, Kiss of the Spiderwoman and The Temperamentals.

Doug Wright is an American playwright, librettist, and screenwriter. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2004 and the Tony Award for Best Play for I Am My Own Wife. Other works include Dinosaurs, The Stonewater Rapture, Watbanaland, Interrogating the Nude and Unwrap Your Candy along with musicals The Little Mermaid, Grey Gardens, Buzzsaw Berkeley, Hands on a Hardbody and the film, Quills. Doug Wright lives in New York City with his husband, singer/songwriter David Clement

Directed by Chris Baldock
When: Preview: Friday 1 August 2014 at 8pm
Opening Night: Saturday 2 August at 8pm
Tuesday 5 August - Saturday 9 August at 8pm
Sunday 10 August at 5pm
Tuesday 12 August - Friday 15 August at 8pm

Where: Arts House, Meat Market, 5 Blackwood Street, North Melbourne.
Public Transportation: Tram 59 - MELWAY 2B 49

Tickets: EARLY BIRD SPECIAL: $20 all tix. (Preview $15) Available until June 15th.
After June 15th: $30.00 Full / $25.00 Concession, Groups of 10 or more. (+ Booking Fee) Preview Friday August 1 $20.00

Cast: Adrian Carr, Adam Ward, Dylan Watson, Lauren Murtagh, Andrea McCannon, Jordan Armstrong, Andi Snelling, Madeline Anderson, Jennifer Ashley, Isabelle Bertoli, Natasha Broadstock, Sam Browne, Carmen Cara, Alan Chambers, Jayden Chivers, Emma Conley, Colin Donald, Genevieve Donaldson, Josephine Eberhard, Graeme Flynn, Sahara Folan, Taylor James, Daniel Klemens, Jai Luke, Aimee Sanderson, Ariel Simone, Gareth Trew, Zak Zavod, Kaska Zielinski