Melbourne Theatre Company's Cybec Electric Readings Returns

Melbourne Theatre Company's annual play reading series, Cybec Electric, returns from Thursday 1 March - Saturday 3 March at Southbank Theatre, The Lawler with new writing from eight of Australia's most promising playwrights.

An exceptional group of writers has been selected to present their work including Alberto Di Troia, Declan Furber Gillick, Dan Giovannoni, Anchuli Felicia King, Samah Sabawi, Natesha Somasundaram, Kylie Trounson and Katy Warner.

Two full plays and two sets of excerpts of works-in-development will be performed as public, semi-staged readings, giving each playwright the opportunity to work with a director, dramaturg and actors to develop and showcase their writing with the critical ingredient of live theatre: an audience.

The series opens with Cybec Scenes 1 on Thursday 1 March. K by Katy Warner sees a childcare entrepreneur blindsided by a violent break-in at one of her childcare centres; Happy Ending by Kylie Trounson interweaves the lives of four women following the murder of a young man outside a Melbourne brothel; and The Great Emu War by Declan Furber Gillick presents a dreamtime resistance allegory that fires a bullet into the heart of this country's culture wars.

On Friday 2 March audiences will be treated to Cybec Scenes 2, with Natesha Somasundaram's viciously witty take on modern middle-class family values in Burning Man; Alberto Di Troia's American road-trip along the holy sites of Britney Spears' 2007 breakdown in Truly, Madly, Britney; and Dan Giovannoni's The Body, a pitch-black comedy about nationalism, war and how to gut a chook.

Throughout the series there will be two readings of full-length plays: Them by Samah Sabawi, about a young couple and their baby in a city under siege, and Slaughterhouse by Anchuli Felicia King - a collection of five interconnected monologues on technocracy, office politics and the ethics of consumption.

Cybec Electric curator and MTC Literary Director Chris Mead said, 'This year's Cybec Electric plays are ferocious, delicious and thrillingly ambitious. Interrogative in style and theme, often wickedly funny, these plays take a sharp-eyed look at today, and our world well into the future. Cybec Electric is a terrific chance to see restless, alert and provocative new plays by Melbourne's best young dramatists.'

Cybec Electric forms part of MTC's ongoing commitment to the development of new Australian writing and is only possible due to the support of Roger Riordan AM and The Cybec Foundation.

Playwright Biographies

Alberto Di Troia
Alberto is a Melbourne based playwright and filmmaker and a graduate of the Bachelor of Fine Arts (Film & Television) and Master of Writing For Performance at the Victorian College of the Arts, where he was awarded the Lionel Gell Foundation Scholarship, The Orloff Family Charitable Trust Scholarship and the Erwin Rado Memorial Prize For Excellence. His short film Blood Trust has played festivals both nationally and internationally, as has his short-film editing work. As a playwright, he has been produced independently in Melbourne and Adelaide, and in 2016 his short play Coast was produced as part of Australian Theatre For Young People's show All Good Things and later adapted for ABC Radio National. He was a 2016 ATYP Fresh Ink mentee, and has been published by Currency Press and Voiceworks.

Dan Giovannoni
Dan plays include Merciless Gods (adapted from the book by Christos Tsiolkas for Little Ones Theatre), Jurassica (Red Stitch), Bambert's Book of Lost Stories (Barking Gecko Theatre Company), Turbine (Malthouse Theatre) and Cut Snake (Arthur). In 2016, he won a Green Room Award for Jurassica (New Writing for the Australian Stage) and Bambert's Book of Lost Stories won a Helpmann Award (Best Presentation for Children). Plays in development include House and Little Prince, Big Prince (further collaborations with Bambert director Luke Kerridge), and Mad as a Cute Snake with Amelia Evans. He is currently under commission from Arena Theatre Company (Air Race) and is a winner of a Mike Walsh Fellowship, 2016. Dan is currently a NEXT STAGE Writer-in-Residence at MTC.

Declan Furber Gillick
Declan is an intercultural Arrernte (First Nations) writer, performance artist, storyteller and musician from Alice Springs, Australia. While studying Law and Philosophy he worked as a Cultural Competency Educator, an Aboriginal Legal Support Officer and an Outdoor Educator. Declan completed a draft of his first play, The Great Emu War, as part of The Victorian College of The Arts' Masters of Writing for Performance in 2017. His work is concerned with the strengths of First Nations communities, as well as the internal and intercultural political difficulties that these communities face the world over. Declan's other projects for 2018 include The Unspeakable War, an international collaborative spoken word show with poet and performance artist Arielle Cottingham, and Frankie Bedlam and The Wellness Cult, a soundscape and storytelling collaboration with Aboriginal Jaadwa musician/producer James Howard.

Anchuli Felicia King
Felicia is a multidisciplinary artist of Thai-Australian descent who works primarily in live theatre. Her areas of interest include emerging technologies, 2D animation, VFX and projection design, music production and writing for performance. As a playwright, Felicia is interested in linguistic hybrids, digital cultures and issues of global urgency. She is a member of Ensemble Studio Theatre's Youngblood Group, Roundabout's Space Jam Program and Ars Nova's Play Group. Currently based in New York, Felicia has worked with a wide range of companies including Punchdrunk, The Builders Association, PlayCo, 3LD Arts & Technology Center, Roundabout Theater, 59E59, Ars Nova, the Obie Awards, Ensemble Studio Theater and Red Bull Theater. Awards include Bridge Initiative Finalist, Red Bull Short Play Festival Finalist, PWA National Script Workshop Winner, Columbia @ Roundabout Winner. In 2017, Felicia is working as the Associate Artistic Director at 3LD Art & Technology Center.

Samah Sabawi
Samah is an award winning playwright, author and poet. Her critically acclaimed play Tales of a City by the Sea was selected for the 2016 VCE Drama playlist, won two Drama Victoria awards for Best New Australian Publication and Best Performance for VCE, and was nominated for Best Independent Production at the Green Room Awards. Sabawi co-edited the ground-breaking anthology Double Exposure: Plays of the Jewish and Palestinian Diasporas, winner of the Canadian 2017 biennial Patrick O'Neill Award for Best Play Anthology. She co-authored I Remember My Name: Poetry by Samah Sabawi, Ramzy Baroud, Jehan Bseiso, winner of the prestigious 2016 Palestine Book Awards. Samah Sabawi is a PhD candidate at Victoria University, where she has been awarded an Australian Postgraduate Research Scholarship.

Natesha Somasundaram
Described as 'puerile, offensive and mind-bendingly smart', Natesha writes viciously funny stories that are sometimes sad and often weird. Natesha has previously developed work with Playwriting Australia and has had work presented at the 2016 National Play Festival, 2016 Melbourne Fringe Festival, and has performed as an actor at the 2015 Melbourne International Comedy Festival. Her 2017 play Jeremy and Lucas Buy a f-ing House sold out at La Mama Explorations and will be presented at the 2018 Melbourne International Comedy Festival. Natesha is currently a NEXT STAGE Writer-in-Residence at MTC.

Kylie Trounson
Kylie has worked as a playwright, actor and lawyer. Kylie's plays have been developed through Playwriting Australia's National Script Workshop and National Play Festival, Sydney Theatre Company's Rough Drafts and Melbourne Theatre Company's Cybec Electric. Her work includes The Waiting Room, which premiered at MTC in 2015 and was nominated for an AWGIE award for Best Play. Other plays include The Man with the September Face (Arts Centre Victoria/Full Tilt), The Lost Story of the Magdalene Asylum (Green Room Award winner for Best Site Specific Work), Love Letters (Victorian Arts Centre), Hotel and Uninvited Guests at the Melbourne Fringe Festival. In 2010/11 she was Writer in Residence at Red Stitch and wrote Merman, which was shortlisted for the 2011 Patrick White Playwright's Award. Kylie is also developing new television dramas with Matchbox Pictures and Easy Tiger. She is currently a NEXT STAGE Writer-in-Residence at MTC.

Katy Warner
Katy is a Melbourne-based playwright and graduate of the Victorian College of the Arts (Master of Writing for Performance). Her plays have been presented across Australia, New Zealand, and in Edinburgh as part of Festival Fringe. She is an AWGIE winner (Best Children's Theatre for Reasons to Stay Inside), recipient of the Melbourne Fringe Award for Best Emerging Writer (These are the isolate) and Green Room Award nominee for Best New Writing (A Prudent Man). Her play, nest, recently made the long list of Theatre503's Playwriting Award and will have its debut at London's Vault Festival with Small Truth Theatre in early 2018. Other plays include Paper Doll, Spencer, and Dropped. Katy is a part of the INK program with Red Stitch Theatre and is working on a new full-length play for the company. Katy is currently writing her debut novel, Regime, which will be published by Black Inc. Books in February 2019.

mtc.com.au/cybec

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