Media Release April 2012

Belvoir presents Strange Interlude Written by after EUGENE O’NEILL Director SIMON STONE Set Designer ROBERT COUSINS Costume Designer MEL PAGE DAMIEN COOPER Composer & Sound Designer STEFAN GREGORY

With AKOS ARMONT NICHOLAS BAKOPOULIS-COOKE EMILY BARCLAY CALLUM McMANIS KRIS McQUADE ANTHONY PHELAN TOBY TRUSLOVE

BELVOIR ST THEATRE | UPSTAIRS 5 MAY – 17 JUNE An experimental from the 1920s may not be the most obvious choice for inclusion in Belvoir’s strikingly contemporary season, but in the hands of Simon Stone theatre-goers will know to expect a radical interpretation of Eugene O’Neill’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play.

In the vein of Stone’s The Wild Duck, a sell-out at both Belvoir and ’s , Strange Interlude will be completely rewritten. Strange Interlude is one of the few modern plays to use soliloquy interwoven with the dialogue, revealing the characters’ inner thoughts; this technique will be maintained in the rewrite.

Twenty-year-old Nina Leeds (Emily Barclay) has lost the love of her life in the war. Overcome with grief, she quits university, falls out with her father and moves away from home. What follows is an epic and compelling narrative that spans 25 years in Nina’s life, but the story is compressed into a series of heightened, life altering moments. The significance of each of these moments is revealed as the page-turning story unravels.

The cast assembled for this production is truly stellar, with the luminous Emily Barclay as Nina and Mitchell Butel, Toby Schmitz and Toby Truslove as three men in her life, each vying for her attention and affection in his own way. Schmitz is joined by Wild Duck co-stars Eloise Mignon and Anthony Phelan. Fresh from her touching portrayal of Milova in Neighbourhood Watch, Kris McQuade rounds out this stunningly talented cast.

Strange Interlude offers a touching insight into the minutiae of our daily worries, joys and hopes, set against the vast backdrop of life’s irreversible decisions and the fickle hand of fate.

For media information contact publicist Elly Michelle Clough [email protected] | + 61 (0)2 8396 6242 | 0407 163 921

Media Release April 2012

NOTES FOR EDITORS SEASON INFORMATION Dates 5 May – 17 June 2012 Previews Saturday 5 & Sunday 6 May 2012 Opening night Wednesday 9 May 2012 Times Tuesday 6.30pm | Wednesday to Friday 8pm | Saturday 2pm & 8pm | Sunday 5pm Tickets Full $62 | Seniors (excluding Fri/Sat evenings) $52 | Concession $42 Venue Belvoir St Theatre | 25 Belvoir St, Surry Hills Bookings 02 9699 3444 or www.belvoir.com.au

BELVOIR INFORMATION The name of our company is Belvoir, not the Belvoir, Belvoir Theatre or Belvoir Theatre Company. Belvoir St Theatre is our venue.

BIOGRAPHIES SIMON STONE Writer & Director Simon is a graduate of the Victorian College of the Arts. In 2007 he founded the independent ensemble The Hayloft Project. For Hayloft he co-wrote and directed Thyestes, which was commissioned by and originally produced at Malthouse Theatre (winner of 2010 for Best Production, Best Adaptation and Best Ensemble), co- wrote and directed The Only Child (with B Sharp, winner of Theatre Award for Best Independent Production), adapted and directed The Suicide, Spring Awakening (both with B Sharp) and , was one third of the multi- director project 3xSisters, and directed Rita Kalnejais’ B.C. In 2009 Simon directed The Promise for Belvoir and in 2011 he became the company’s Resident Director. In his first year in the role, Simon wrote and directed The Wild Duck after Ibsen (winner of three 2011 , including Best Play; winner of four 2011 , including Best Production and Best Direction) and directed Neighbourhood Watch (four 2011 Sydney Theatre Award nominations, including Best Production). For and Malthouse Theatre, Simon co-translated and directed Baal (winner of two 2011 Sydney Theatre Awards). This year, Simon has again directed Thyestes for Belvoir. As an actor, Simon performed in Belvoir’s 2007 production of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and appeared in the films Jindabyne, Kokoda, Balibo, Blame and Eye of the Storm. Simon was the 2008 recipient of the biennial George Fairfax Memorial Award. Later in 2012, Simon will be directing Death of a Salesman for Belvoir, as well as co-writing and directing a stage version of Ingmar Bergman’s film Face to Face for Sydney Theatre Company.

AKOS ARMONT Gordon Akos has appeared in As You Like It for Belvoir. His other theatre credits include The LoveBirds ( Fringe Festival); A Midsummers Night’s Dream, Tooth of Crime (Arts Radar); Spring Awakening (Sydney Theatre Company); The Web (Black Swan State Theatre Company); The Kid (Griffin Theatre Company). His television credits include , Rescue Special Ops, Panic at Rock Island, , The Strip and The Pacific. His film credits include Andy X. Akos received a Sydney Theatre Award nomination for Best Newcomer for his role in The Kid.

EMILY BARCLAY Nina Leeds Emily has appeared in , That Face and Gethsemane for Belvoir; The Importance of Being Ernest (Melbourne Theatre Company); and This is Our Youth (Sydney House/David Binder/Eric Schnall/Jayne Baron Sherman). Her film credits include Love Birds, Lou, Legends of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole, Prime Mover, Suburban Mayhem and In My Father’s Den. Her television credits include Lowdown, Piece of My Heart and The Silence. Emily received a British Independent Film Award for Most Promising Newcomer and a Screen Award for Best Actor for In My Father’s Den, an Australian Film Institute Award and Inside Film Best Actress Award for Suburban Mayhem, and Logie and AFI Award nominations for her role in The Silence.

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MITCHELL BUTEL Charles Marsden Mitchell has appeared in The Adventures of Snugglepot and Cuddlepie, The Laramie Project, A View from the Bridge and Dead Heart for Belvoir. His other theatre credits include Meow Meow's Little Match Girl (Malthouse/); A Life in Three Acts (Sydney Festival); Summer Rain, Harbour, The Republic of Myopia, Mourning Becomes Electra, Tartuffe, Two Weeks with the Queen, Dead White Males, The Café Latte Kid, Summer of the Aliens, Six Degrees of Separation (Sydney Theatre Company); The Grenade, The Madwoman of Chaillot, Tomfoolery, , Piaf (Melbourne Theatre Company); Stones in his Pockets, The Venetian Twins (Queensland Theatre Company); (); Unidentified Human Remains and the True Nature of Love (State Theatre Company of South ); Laughter on the 23rd Floor (); Mad, Bad and Spooky (Theatre of Image); Blue Remembered Hills (O’Punsky’s); Boeing Boeing (Dainty/New Theatricals); and Woyzeck (Malthouse). Music theatre credits include (Arts Asia Pacific); The Mikado (); (Silo Theatre, NZ); , Sugar, Little Me, Oklahoma, (); Dusty (Dusty Productions); (Gordon Frost/SEL); Grease, Saturday Night Fever, Little Shop of Horrors (David Atkins Enterprises); Elegies (The NIDA Company); and Bernadette Peters in Concert (). Mitchell has appeared in three solo cabaret shows: Mitchell Butel’s Excellent Adventure, And Now for the Weather and Killing Time. Feature film credits include Gettin’ Square, The Bank, Strange Fits of Passion, Dark City, Virtual Nightmare and Two Hands. TV credits include Rake, Stephen King’s Nightmares and Dreamscapes, MDA, Grass Roots, Wildside, , All Saints, Twisted Tales, Close Ups, Bordertown and GP. Mitchell received Helpmann Awards for The Venetian Twins and Avenue Q, Helpmann nominations for Little Me, Summer Rain and The Republic of Myopia, Green Room Awards for Hair and Piaf, Green Room nominations for The Mikado, Avenue Q, Little Me and Oklahoma and AFI nominations for Gettin’ Square and Strange Fits of Passion. Mitchell is Vice President of Actors Equity and has been a proud member since 1988.

DAMIEN COOPER Lighting Designer Damien works internationally across theatre, opera and dance. His designs for Belvoir include Summer of the Seventeenth Doll, Neighbourhood Watch, The Seagull, Gethsemane, Keating!, Toy Symphony, Peribanez, Stuff Happens, The Chairs, The Spook, In Our Name, The Underpants, The Ham Funeral and Exit the King (including the Broadway production with and Susan Sarandon). His other theatre credits include Pygmalion, Bloodland, Edward Gant’s Amazing Feats of Loneliness, Zebra!, Blood Wedding, The Women of Troy, The Great, Riflemind, The Art of War, Ying Tong, The Lost Echo, Fat Pig, A Hard God, The Cherry Orchard, Summer Rain, Metamorphosis, Boy Gets Girl, Julius Caesar, Far Away, Bed, Thyestes, Morph, The Shape of Things, These People, King Lear (Sydney Theatre Company); (GFO); and Shane Warne the Musical (Token Productions). For opera, Damien’s designs include Cosi, Peter Grimes, Alcina, The Magic Flute, Death in Venice (Opera Australia); Aida (Opera Australia/West Australian Opera); A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Chorus! (Houston Grand Opera). His designs for dance include The Narrative of Nothing, Romeo and Juliet, Swan Lake, Firebird, The Silver Rose (Australian Ballet); The Director’s Cut, Grand, Some Rooms, Shades of Gray, Ellipse, Air and Other Invisible Forces, Body of Work, Mythologia (Sydney Dance Company); Tivoli (Australian Ballet/Sydney Dance Company); Mortal Engine (), Of Earth and Sky and Mathinna (Bangarra Dance Theatre); Be Your Self and Birdbrain (Australian Dance Theatre). For lighting design, Damien has won three Sydney Theatre Awards and a Green Room Award.

ROBERT COUSINS Set Designer For Belvoir, Robert has designed sets for Babyteeth, Cloudstreet, Page 8, As You Like It, Twelfth Night, Aliwa, Waiting for Godot, The Threepenny Opera, Gulpilil, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?. His other design credits include Julius Caesar, The Season at Sarsaparilla, Art of War, The Serpent’s Teeth, The War of the Roses (Sydney Theatre Company); The Eternity Man (Almeida Theatre, London); Shades of Gray (Sydney Dance Company); and Night Letters (State Theatre Company of South Australia). His set and costumes credits include Kafka’s Metamorphosis, Fat Pig (Sydney Theatre Company); House Among the Stars, The Merchant of Venice, Drowning in My Ocean of You (State Theatre Company of South Australia); The Dreamed Life (Comeout01); and The Duckshooter (Brink Productions). For film, Robert was production designer on Candy, directed by , Romulus, My Father, directed by , and Balibo, directed by Robert Connolly. Recently, Robert wrote and edited 25 Belvoir Street, a history of the first 25 years of theatre at Belvoir. He is currently designing a production of Wagner’s Ring Cycle to be presented by Opera Australia in 2013.

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STEFAN GREGORY Composer & Sound Designer Stefan is an associate artist at Belvoir, and has been composer and sound designer of Belvoir’s productions of Thyestes, As You Like It, Neighbourhood Watch (in which he also played the chemist), The Seagull, The Wild Duck, Measure for Measure and That Face. He also composed and performed in The War of the Roses and Frankenstein (Sydney Theatre Company). Other recent credits include Infinity: There is Definitely a Prince Involved ( Ballet); Baal (Malthouse Theatre/Sydney Theatre Company); The Suicide, B.C. (The Hayloft Project); Silent Disco, The Call (Griffin Theatre Company); A Midsummer Night’s Dream (B Sharp/Bob Presents/Arts Radar); King Lear, Hamlet and Othello (Bell Shakespeare Company). Stefan was nominated for a Sydney Theatre Award for Best Score or for Measure for Measure, nominated for a Helpmann Award for Baal, and nominated for a Green Room Award for Thyestes. His work with the band Faker has earned him a gold album, a platinum single and several ARIA nominations.

KRIS McQUADE Mrs Evans Kris graduated from NIDA in 1971 and has an extensive list of credits in theatre, film and television. For Belvoir Kris has performed in Neighbourhood Watch, Love Me Tender (Belvoir/Griffin Theatre Company/Thin Ice), Cloudstreet, The Threepenny Opera, Our Lady of Sligo and The Adventures of Snugglepot and Cuddlepie (Belvoir/Windmill Performing Arts). Other theatre credits include Mourning Becomes Electra (Sydney Theatre Company); The Odyssey (Malthouse Theatre); and When the Rain Stops Falling (Brink Productions). Her feature film appearances include December Boys, Ned Kelly, Mullet and Better Than Sex. Television appearances include , My Place, Hell Has Harbour Views, The Farm, The Circuit, Home and Away and All Saints. Kris has appeared in two series of Super Nova (Fox World/UK TV/BBC2), for which she received an AFI Award nomination for Best Performance in Comedy TV.

ELOISE MIGNON Madeline Arnold Previously for Belvoir, Eloise has appeared in Every Breath and The Wild Duck. Other stage credits include Return to Earth (Melbourne Theatre Company); The Grenade (Melbourne Theatre Company/Sydney Theatre Company); In a Dark Dark House (Red Stitch Theatre Company); Rubeville (Black Lung Theatre and Whaling Firm); The Jaundice Table, As I Like You, The Desert and Entrails (Oubykh Theatre). For television Eloise has been a regular in , Silversun, The Legacy of the Silver Shadow and had a guest role in . She also appeared in the feature film Three Blind Mice.

MEL PAGE Costume Designer Since graduating from the Victorian College of the Arts, Mel’s designs include As You Like It, The Promise (Belvoir); The Suicide, The Only Child, Spring Awakening (B Sharp/The Hayloft Project); Les Liaisons Dangereuses, Pygmalion (Sydney Theatre Company); Baal (Malthouse Theatre/Sydney Theatre Company); Vs. Macbeth (The Border Project/Sydney Theatre Company); The Nest (The Hayloft Project); The Apocalypse Bear Trilogy (Stuck Pigs Squealing/Melbourne Theatre Company/Melbourne International Arts Festival); Spicks and Specktacular (ABC/Token Events); and Noye’s Fludde (Victorian Opera). In 2010, Mel created an instillation for Visible City, a keynote project of the Melbourne Fringe Festival.

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ANTHONY PHELAN Professor Henry Leeds Anthony has previously appeared in The Wild Duck, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Caretaker, The Laramie Project and Lost Lagoon for Belvoir. His other theatre credits include Uncle Vanya (including Washington DC tour), Julius Caesar, Holy Day, The Tempest, The Three Sisters, Fireface, Seneca’s Oedipus, The Herbal Bed, Mourning Becomes Electra, Blackrock, Coriolanus, Antony and Cleopatra (Sydney Theatre Company); Summer of the Seventeenth Doll (Melbourne Theatre Company); King Lear (Bell Shakespeare); The White Earth, Mirandolina, Occupations, The Runaway Man, The Legend of King O’Malley, Dickinson, Venetian Twins, Angel City, The Queensland Game (La Boite Theatre Company); Strangers in Between, Marvellous Boy, The Simple Truth, Wolf Lullaby (Griffin Theatre Company); Female of the Species, The Shaughraun, Fuente Ovenjuna, A Cheery Soul, The Game of Love and Chance, Essington Lewis: I Am Work, A Month in the Country, Top Silk, The Recruiting Officer, Hard Times, Life of Galileo (Queensland Theatre Company); The Popular Mechanicals, Too Young For Ghosts, Design For Living, Private Lives, True West (TN! Theatre Company); The Mikado and Gilgamesh (Grin&Tonic). His television credits include Spirited, Top of the Lake (NZ), , Two Twisted, , Home and Away, White Collar Blue, Postcard Bandit, All Saints, Backberner, 13 Gantry Row, Big Sky, Murder Call and Water Rats. For film he has appeared in X, Griff the Invisible, Nim’s Island, Acolytes, The Black Balloon, Happy Feet, Dark Love Story, Danny Deckchair, Star Wars Episode II, Babe: Pig in the City, Heaven’s Burning, Jack Bukowski – Death is Blue and Redheads. He has also appeared in the short films Mongrel’s Creed, Katoomba, The Mechanicals, Grammar School, Great Falls and A Parachute Falling in Siberia for which he was awarded Best Actor at the 2010 Toronto Short Film Festival. For The Wild Duck, Anthony won both the 2011 Helpmann Award for Best Male Actor in a Supporting Role in a Play and the 2011 Sydney Theatre Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role of a Mainstage Production.

TOBY SCHMITZ Edmund Darrell Toby graduated from NIDA in 1999. He acts, writes and directs for theatre, film and television. For Belvoir he has appeared in The Wild Duck, Measure for Measure and Ruben Guthrie. His other theatre credits include The Lonesome West (B Sharp/Arts Asia Pacific); Ruben Guthrie (B Sharp/murri fulla films); dreamalittledreamalittle (B Sharp); Much Ado About Nothing (Bell Shakespeare); The Importance of Being Earnest (Melbourne Theatre Company); Hamlet (La Boite Theatre Company); Travesties, Rabbit, The Great, Self Esteem, Major Barbara, Hanging Man, The School for Scandal, The Great Man (Sydney Theatre Company); The Emperor of Sydney, The Marvellous Boy, The Woman with Dog’s Eyes (Griffin Theatre Company); Cunt Pi, Fifteen and then some, One Thumb Out and Men (Tamarama Rock Surfers). Toby’s film credits are Griff the Invisible, Three Blind Mice, Somersault, The Rage in Placid Lake, Solo, Emulsion, and for television Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries, Crownies, Wild Boys, Cleo, Underbelly – The Man that Got Away, The Jesters, City Homicide, The Cooks, The Heartbreak Tour, White Collar Blue, Home and Away, Fat Cow Motel, Water Rats, The Pacific and McLeod’s Daughters.

TOBY TRUSLOVE Sam Evans Toby has appeared in many theatrical productions, including playing Troilus in Bell Shakespeare’s production of Troilus & Cressida. He is a familiar face on TV, seen most recently in Laid, Outland, Tangle, The Librarians, Thank God You’re Here, Sleuth 101, McLeod’s Daughters, All Saints, Crash Palace, Some Say Love and the upcoming The Strange Calls. His film credits include I Love You Too, Squid, Smoking Will Kill You and Scumbus. Toby has also performed in, written and directed numerous seasons for the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, the Adelaide Fringe Festival and the .

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