BRINK Receives RISE Funding and Premieres THE BRIDGE OF SAN LUIS REY in 2021

It was announced by the Federal Arts Minister the Hon Paul Fletcher MP that Adelaide-based Brink Productions would be the recipient of $416,114 in Restart Investment to Sustain and Expand (RISE) Funding. Brink is one of five local companies who have received funding which will allow them to create six new theatre works to premiere in SA and tour nationally from 2021 through to 2024.

Artistic Director Chris Drummond says "It has long been a dream of Brink's to be able to support more South Australian artists and theatre-makers realise their own visions. Thanks to RISE, Brink can now bridge a gap in the South Australian theatre ecology and work with more of our talented artists to co-create, co-produce and tour extraordinary new theatre works to audiences around the state and the country. Moreover, it gives Brink a solid foundation from which to permanently evolve as a company, fostering even more of SA's brilliant artists, helping them transform their powerful ideas into living theatrical reality."

Also in 2021 Brink will present the World Premiere of The Bridge of San Luis Rey after having to postpone the original season slated for July 2020 because of COVID-19.

The Bridge of San Luis Rey is a thrilling reimagining for the stage of Thornton Wilder's 1927 Pulitzer-winning novel and will run from 16 - 31 July, 2021 in the Space Theatre, Adelaide Festival Centre. The Bridge Of San Luis Rey is in association with and co-commissioned by the Adelaide Festival Centre's Adelaide Guitar Festival for their 2021 program and is part of the State Theatre Company's 2021 Stateside season.

Adapted for the stage by Phillip Kavanagh and directed by Chris Drummond, The Bridge Of San Luis Rey is a work of contemporary performance with Brink Productions bringing their unique theatricality to a daisy chain of stories and coincidence that leads five strangers to meet their fate.

It's 18th century Peru. An ancient Incan rope bridge collapses sending five strangers plummeting to their deaths and unleashing a fabulist's tale of conspiracy, seduction and betrayal. Creating an allegorical world outside his own time and place, Wilder set his intertwining stories in the mystical and imagined city of Lima. And just as his novel is anchored in the theatre, so the theatre anchors Brink's adaptation.

In an extraordinary act of theatrical shamanism, the incomparable Paul Capsis inhabits the role of Camila Perichole, the greatest actress of her age; a formidable woman of intense charisma, soaring ambition and prodigious appetites, she draws the audience into our epic narrative, ultimately revealing her own heartbreaking story.

The Perichole is a role written for Capsis. The Perichole performs for the crowd night after night; they know her and love her. This tone infuses his performance with a wicked sense of humour, the complicity and mutual affection between audience and performer showcasing one of Australia's most mercurial talents.

Joining Capsis on stage, inside Jonathan Oxlade's magical deconstructed 18th century world is Australia's acclaimed guitarist Slava Grigoryan and Irish guitarist Manus Noble, one of the UK's leading classical guitarists. Together they bring their breathtaking virtuosity to infuse the world with the heat and sweat of Latin American music, transporting us across oceans and time and into a communion with the Fates.

Tickets are on sale now through BASS 131 246 or www.bass.net.au.

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