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GRIFFIN THEATRE COMPANY PRESENTS THE TURQUOISE ELEPHANT STEPHEN CARLETON BY STEPHEN CARLETON 14 OCTOBER-26 NOVEMBER E Production Sponsor Meet Augusta Macquarie: Her Excellency, patron of the arts, X formidable matriarch, environmental vandal. THE T D TURQUOISE Inside her triple-glazed compound, Augusta shields herself from the catastrophic elements, bathing in THE TURQUOISE ELEPHANT the classics and campaigning for the reinstatement of global reliance on fossil fuels. Outside, the world lurches from one environmental cataclysm to the next. ELEPHANT N Meanwhile, her sister, Olympia, thinks the best way to save endangered species is to eat them. Their niece, Basra, is intent on making a difference – but how? Can you save the world one blog at a time? F C Stephen Carleton’s shockingly black, black, black political farce won the 2015 Griffin Award. R T It’s urgent, contemporary and perilously close to being real. Director Gale Edwards brings her magic and wry insight to the world premiere of this very funny, clever and wicked new work. O S T CURRENCY PRESS GRIFFIN THEATRE COMPANY PRESENTS THE TURQUOISE ELEPHANT BY STEPHEN CARLETON 14 OCTOBER-26 NOVEMBER Director Gale Edwards Set Designer Brian Thomson Costume Designer Emma Vine Lighting and AV Designer Verity Hampson Sound Designer Jeremy Silver Associate Lighting Designer Daniel Barber Stage Manager Karina McKenzie Videographer Xanon Murphy With Catherine Davies, Maggie Dence, Julian Garner, Belinda Giblin, Olivia Rose, iOTA SBW STABLES THEATRE 14 OCTOBER - 26 NOVEMBER Production Sponsor Government Partners Griffin acknowledges the generosity of the Seaborn, Broughton and Walford Foundation in allowing it the use of the SBW Stables Theatre rent free, less outgoings, since 1986. The first play I ever went to see was Ionesco’s Rhinoceros. I was 12 or 13 years old, and won tickets to the Darwin Theatre Group production over the radio. That experience opened up a new world for me; I was transfixed. I remember being terrified by the noise of the stampeding rhinoceroses; and enthralled by the idea that they could operate as an image for bully-boys, for the gullible throngs being turned into fascists, seduced into truly horrid ideology by peer pressure and self-preservation. That seminal theatre experience politicised me in a quiet, slow burn kind of way. I didn’t even know until then that I had opinions about fascists and PLAYWRIGHT’S NOTE gullible throngs! The Turquoise Elephant pays obvious homage to Ionesco. Absurdism captures the sense of exasperation I feel about our economic and political classes’ ridiculous denialism about climate change. Every time you think things can’t get any more ludicrous, another catastrophe occurs – a longer drought, a bigger bushfire, a wilder super storm cell – and rather than galvanising us into action, we just seem to do more and more nothing. We do nothing on a grander and grander scale. And what, the play asks us, is there to be done? Who should do it? I wrote the first draft of the play in the lead-up to the Paris Agreement on Climate Change in 2015, spurred on tonally by the malodourous denialism wafting out of the Murdoch press at the time. I was worried that we’d somehow missed the boat by programming the play after the lead-up to that event. Well, another year on, and not only has the urgency not gone away, but now we find ourselves with a federal Senate peppered with conspiracy theorists and anti-climate science nutters running with their whacky ideologies as formal policy! Similar backlashes are occurring in political circles globally. We’re back firmly in the sort of political cycle of illogic, mendacity and chaos that spurred Ionesco and his contemporaries to find Absurdist voice in the first place. It would make me very happy if The Turquoise Elephant got inside the head of another 12 or 13 year old and provided them with the sort of seminal theatrical experience that Rhinoceros provided me. I need to believe that laughter is the right weapon to take on the ideology of the powers that be right now. Nothing else seems to be working. Stephen Carleton Writer DIRECTOR’S Encouraging Australian writing is central to the development of our Australian culture and our NOTE creative, political and social voice. Griffin Theatre Company has historically been the home and incubator of new Australian works and, as such, is vital to the future of the arts scene in this city – and in this country. So, it was an honour to be asked by Lee Lewis to participate in the development of a project for this writer-based company. Stephen’s play, The Turquoise Elephant, is important for two reasons: it deals with what is arguably the primary threat to life as we know it – in this city, in this country and in the world – and secondly, because it does so through a style of high comedy writing that owes its lineage to Absurdism (the works of Dario Fo and Ionesco’s Rhinoceros in particular). In both these instances, it sits in a unique category of Australian works. It’s brave and wacky writing with a knockout punch. As always, Griffin provided the development time and resources for the text to take some major twists and turns from its original form. The enjoyable and dynamic collaboration with Stephen and the first workshop cast, as well as the final show cast, has been integral to the journey. Stephen took the script from strength to strength over the past ten months. What has emerged is a better play – an inspiration that Australian writing can be as diversified and challenging as our international counterparts in both style and content. Gale Edwards Director Stephen Carleton Playwright Stephen Carleton’s portfolio of work, including plays, political cabarets and musicals, has been widely produced across Australia. His previous credits as playwright include: for JUTE Theatre Company and Knock-em-Down Theatre: Bastard Territory, which was shortlisted for the 2012 Queensland Premier’s Drama Award and the 2010 Patrick White Playwrights’ Award (under the title 1975) and went on to be produced by Queensland Theatre Company in 2016; and for Queensland Theatre Company: Constance Drinkwater and the Final Days of Somerset, for which Stephen received the 2004/5 Patrick White Playwrights’ Award, the New York New Dramatists’ Award, a Queensland Premier’s Drama Award shortlisting, and an AWGIE shortlisting. Stephen is Co-Artistic Director of (and playwright and producer for) Knock-em-Down Theatre (KeDT) in the Northern Territory, with whom he has toured his plays across the north of Australia since 2004. Stephen is also a Senior Lecturer at the University of Queensland, where he teaches courses in playwriting and dramaturgy, Australian drama, and theatre history, and is the 2016 co-Chair of the National Playwrights Committee of the Australian Writers’ Guild with Mary Anne Butler. Gale Edwards Director Gale has been directing all genres of theatre and opera nationally and internationally for over 30 years. She has won numerous awards for her directing, including two Sydney Theatre Critics Circle Awards, two Helpmann Awards, two Mo Awards and a Centenary Medal from the Federal Government for Outstanding Contribution to Australian Society through the Arts. She has worked on Broadway and The West End and multiple times with at the Royal Shakespeare Company and various Shakespeare Companies around America. She has won an International Emmy Award for her filmed production of Jesus Christ Superstar. She has directed at almost all State Theatre Companies in Australia and commercially for Andrew Lloyd Webber and Cameron Mackintosh. This is her directing debut at Griffin. Brian Thomson Set Designer Brian has been active in Australian design for more than three decades, and his work is highly acclaimed both here and overseas. Nationally, his design credits include: Keating!, Shane Warne The Musical and Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, which has since had productions on Broadway, London’s West End and the Norwegian Epic cruise ship. He also received the 2012 Helpmann Award for Opera Australia’s La Traviata, the first Handa Opera on Sydney Harbour. Internationally, Brian’s design works include: the original London productions of Jesus Christ Superstar and The Rocky Horror Show; Dame Edna’s Glorious Goodbye, Barry Humphries’ farewell US tour; Hugh Jackman’s Broadway to Oz on the Norwegian Epic cruise ship; The King and I on Broadway, for which he received a Tony award; and the operas Billy Budd, Bliss, La Bohème, Carmen, Death in Venice, The Eighth Wonder, Sweeney Todd and Voss. He was Production Designer for the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games, Melbourne’s Commonwealth Games Closing Ceremonies and the cult classic film The Rocky Horror Picture Show. In 2005, he received an Order of Australia, AM for his services to the Arts. Emma Vine Costume Designer Emma is a theatre and film designer whose theatre credits include, as Set and Costume Designer: for ATYP: The Voices Project: All Good Things; for Brisbane Festival: Klutz; for NIDA and Carriageworks: Choreography; for Seymour Centre: Credeaux Canvas; for Sydney Opera House: The Waiting Room and Water Angel. As Set Designer, for the Hayes Theatre: Heathers: The Musical, which also had seasons at Sydney Opera House, Queensland Performing Arts Centre, and Arts Centre Melbourne. As Costume Designer: for NIDA: Kandahar Gate; for Sport for Jove: Three Sisters. Verity Hampson Lighting and Audiovisual Designer Verity’s previous theatre credits for Griffin include: Angela’s Kitchen, Beached, The Bleeding Tree, The Boys, The Bull, The Moon and the Coronet of Stars, The Floating World and The Literati. She is a NIDA graduate with over ten years’ experience as a lighting and projection designer. She has designed for over one hundred theatre productions working with some of Australia’s most talented directors and choreographers.

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