A select guide to Australian music theatre In Repertoire 2

I

Dear Reader

This guide takes you on a journey through contemporary Australian music theatre works that are currently available for touring. These and additional works in repertoire can all be found in the data base on pages 24 - 25 with contact addresses and other information.

A few significant works no longer in repertoire are mentioned in the overview essay on pages 22-23. Many more are documented in Arias, Recent Australian Music Theatre (Red House Editions, 1997). A sample listing of works in progress is reported on page 26. On the same page a basic set of references can be found. A longer list is available on the Australian Music Centre website http://www.amcoz.com.au/amc

The Editor

Editor Keith Gallasch Assistant Editors Kirsten Krauth, Virginia Baxter Design i2i design, Sydney

Cover photographs Left Arena Theatre Company, Eat Your Young, photo Jeff Busby Right Top Melbourne International Festival of the Arts, The Ghost Wife, photo Jeff Busby Right Bottom Queensland Theatre Company, The Sunshine Club, photo Rob MacColl All other photography credits page 27

Produced by RealTime for the Australia Council, the Federal Government’s arts funding and advisory body

Australia Council PO Box 788 Strawberry Hills NSW Australia 2012 61 2 9215 9000 fax 61 2 9215 9111 [email protected] http://www.ozco.gov.au

RealTime PO Box A2246 Sydney South NSW, Australia 1235 61 2 9283 2723 fax 61 2 9283 2724 [email protected] http://www.rtimearts.com.au/~opencity/

February 2000 ISBN 0 642 47222 X

With the assistance of the Australian Music Centre

music+installation+performance

performance+sound chamber theatre music the musical Council General Manager Jennifer Bott a verymoveableandtourablefeast. As thisguideindicates,there isawealthofmusictheatre inAustralia, touring. national andinternational phenomenon, encouragingactivityovermanyyearsandnowsupporting Federal andstateartsfundingbodiestoohaveplayedarole inthis to Archer’s Telstra AdelaideFestival2000program. years” (TheAge,November24,1999).Appropriately musictheatre iscentral could wellbecomethemostimportantartforminAustralianextten artists are investingtheirenergiesinthisform.”Shepredicts “(musictheatre) Australian-ness. There are somanyproductions; someofthemostinventive overseas producers starttolookatthistheywillseeaquintessential and characterofthissurgeactivityasdistinctlyAustralian:“Ithinkwhen Festivals, RobynArcher, herselfamusictheatre practitioner, seesthescale The widelytravelledArtisticDirector ofthe1998and2000Telstra not leastcomposersandperformers. thisactivityoffersIn turn newopportunitiesforawiderangeofartists, the concerthall,workingacross artforms,cultures and musicalgenres. generating newaudiences-young,old,urbanandregional, inandoutside performers oversome30years.Theirsustainedefforts are nowflowering, has beenthecreation ofAustraliancomposers,writers,directors and The proliferation ofinnovative,flexibleandeminentlytourablemusictheatre ROM andviatheinternet. mdTV project), onCD,andexperiencedaspartofthe‘newmedia’CD- works cannowbeheard onradioandtelevision(includingtheforthcoming an increasing numberofplays.Apartfrom liveperformance, musictheatre specific performance,andaspervasivemusicalscores andsounddesignin surprising ways-aschamberopera,themusical,installationorsite millennium appearstobeexponential,manifestingitselfinmanydifferent and The remarkable growth ofAustralianmusictheatre asweenterthenew Introduction 3 4

Chamber Made Opera

The Burrow company's most acclaimed works The dynamic performance The Two Executioners Alison Croggan has created a richly company Chamber Made Opera Incorporating highly original use of imagistic libretto, while Michael was established in 1988 by its Placed somewhere between visual theatre techniques, the opera Smetanin’s music is characterised present Artistic Director, Douglas the aesthetics of dadaism, is a monologue for Kafka in which by a forceful, sometimes abrasive, Horton, to investigate and extend existentialism, and film noir, other characters, both real and hyper-energetic rhythmic drive with the musical and theatrical The Two Executioners (libretto fictional, materialise as if from the roots as diverse as Stravinsky, ‘funk’, possibilities of contemporary music by Douglas Horton after the one writer’s imagination. In one of the Russian folk, hard rock and Xenakis. theatre. Chamber Made is now act play by Fernando Arrabal) internationally renowned, having is an extremely black comedy commissioned and produced of family life, reverberating with I don’t recall being so thirteen new Australian works, as political meaning. David well as works by non-Australian Chesworth’s compositional style artists, with over forty seasons sweeps aside preconceived impressed since (the first performed across four continents. expectations as he creates aural Its touring repertoire for 2000 will palettes, in turn minimalist, vibrant, time I saw) ’s include works in commission: mesmerising and even industrial. Motherland of the Foreign Son, Wupperthaler Tanztheater… a Vietnamese/French/Australian collaboration composed by France’s Dominique Probst with (The Burrow) text by Le Quy Duong; and Walkabout (based on the Nicholas The Australian Roeg film of the same name) written by Wesley Enoch. 5

Easily the most impressive and memorable piece of music theatre in 1994…(The Two Executioners) is a production in which all the elements...were fused into a deeply satisfying whole. The Independent Monthly In this lyrical fantasia upon the moral history of Australia, NORPA has commissioned a considerable and powerful new piece of music theatre, sophisticated yet confiding. (The Mercenary) The Australian 7

NORPA Nigel Jamieson Northern Rivers Performing Arts Inc. The Theft of Sita

The Mercenary Conceived and directed by acclaimed director Nigel Jamieson, In 19th century Italy, a murder pays this international collaboration the way for a man to set out with his brings together a remarkable family for a tropical utopia just north group of artists working on image of Australia. At the end of his life the projection and computer animation, murderer reflects on the killing, the including a shadow puppet master loss of his baby, the disastrous from Bali, Javanese photo utopia, prosperity in New Italy in journalists and Mambo's Reg northern New South Wales, and his Mombassa. Members of the slaughter of Aboriginals. Librettist innovative Australian Art Orchestra Janis Balodis says that the opera perform with virtuoso Balinese "acknowledges the courage and gamelan players to realise determination of migrants to triumph Paul Grabowksy's explosive A Green Room Music Production …Laquiem has the feel of in the face of hardships and that our musical score. maturity and completeness… history is one of dispossession by Laquiem The pairing of the sung voices the dispossessed." Projecting Indonesian shadow works powerfully...and the theatre onto giant screens, An amplified oratorio for spoken are a joy… The opera stars baritone Lyndon The Theft of Sita transposes voice, operatic voice, pop voice, worthy of return seasons. Terracini whose international career the Ramayana to contemporary violin, clarinets, saxophones, cello, RealTime includes the Peter Greenaway- Indonesia. It mirrors the classical percussion, harp, lighting and audio ROSA - A Horse story of the abduction of Sita with design. Kathleen Mary Fallon’s Drama. His powerful solo the pillage of modern Indonesia, poignant and pungent texts yield performance is directed by and the great battle at the end of songs and stories of pain, Teresa Crea, with the composer the Ramayana with the events dislocation and grief, chilling in their Paul Grabowsky conducting his leading to the overthrow of honesty. Andrée Greenwell has dynamic score. The striking set Soeharto. Produced by Performing placed these lamentations in design is by Eamon D'Arcy. Lines for the . musical settings traversing Premieres Telstra Adelaide Festival expansive timbral and emotional Based in Lismore in northern NSW, 2000. Melbourne International territory in a wry and dexterous NORPA provides regional audiences Festival of the Arts 2001. approach to the human voice. with an international arts program as well as commissioning new works.The Mercenary embarks on an Australian tour in 2000.

The story is told through 16 solo monologues exploiting Terracini’s towering ability to command a stage. Sydney Morning Herald 8

transmisi is a confronting and disturbing work, elusively successful in its conjunction of elements. ELISION The Australian contemporary music ensemble

(Inferno is) a kind of chamber symphony turned inside out and then melted like Salvador Dali's clocks. Courier Mail

transmisi Yuè Lìng Jié Led by Artistic Director Daryl Inferno Buckley, the ELISION contemporary transmisi is an installation-concert This ritual opera, with its music ensemble has developed Composed by John Rodgers, performance with live electronics participatory South-East Asian street innovative projects in contemporary Inferno is scored for thirteen and Wayang Kulit puppetry. festival atmosphere - Chinese opera, opera, site-specific installation, virtuoso musicians from the It's about the transmission of puppets, riddles and song contests, chamber performance, ELISION ensemble and involves information, ideas, traditions a karaoke session and a Daoist sex improvisation and electronic music. an extensive use of electronically (between cultures, but also within manual scene - presents the legend An extensive repertoire of works manipulated sound - an 'aural them), and the distortions and of the Moon Goddess in the context combining instruments from various cartography' of Dante's vision. misinterpretations which accompany of the Chinese Hungry Ghost Western and Asian traditions now Members of the ensemble take it. Wayang Kulit and music for Festival. The libretto is in English, exists and over a hundred and on the personalities of various electro-acoustic ensemble could Mandarin and Cantonese. Leading twenty new works have been denizens of hell and a visual be the strangest of bedfellows, Australian composer Liza Lim has premiered. ELISION has been landscape evokes the hellish but their interweavings are ramified created the score with a libretto extremely active internationally, images of Hieronymous Bosch by video, by oblique approaches to by prominent novelist Beth Yahp. mounting tours to Italy, Germany, with invented instruments such the sound and structure of gamelan, Telstra Adelaide Festival 2000 the United Kingdom, the as the 'ice-flute' and 'water- and by a sound-performance/image program. Netherlands, Norway, Austria, crotales'. Telstra Adelaide Festival installation. Belgium and South Korea. 2000 program. 9

Queensland Club, a place where white and black Theatre Company can meet and above all dance.

The Sunshine Club Commissioned by the Queensland Theatre Company, book, lyrics Frank, an Aboriginal serviceman, and direction are by Wesley Enoch, comes home from World War II to music by John Rodgers. The find that although the wider world premiere season included Cairns, may have changed, not much is Townsville, Mackay and Brisbane, different for him. Harassed by and subsequently the launching of police, barred from pubs and the 's forbidden from dancing with his 2000 season. childhood friend, Rose - the white minister's daughter - Frank decides to take action. With his friends and family he sets up The Sunshine

Deborah Cheetham

White Baptist Abba Fan

This is the story of a gay, Aboriginal opera singer, Deborah Cheetham, and her journey towards identity and fulfilment in the face of enormous personal challenges. Before she became an opera singer she was a 'white Baptist Abba fan'. Taken as an infant from her mother, she was raised in a religious, white, middle class home. Accompanied onstage by four musicians, Cheetham sings classic opera arias as her intimate story unfolds with irony and wit. Commisioned by the Olympics for The Festival of the Dreaming, 1997, and produced by Performing Lines, its many seasons have included the Christchurch Arts Festival and the Edge, Auckland (New Zealand), and sellout houses for the Zuercher Theater Spektakel, Zurich in 1999. …with a heart and a brain, a compelling, important take on the musical. ...with bitter irony, seldom Sydney Morning Herald sentimental, her witty torrent of words fascinate the audience. Solothurner Zeitung, Zurich

Gannon Fox Productions by Max Lambert. The production is directed by Gale Edwards and The Boy from Oz features an outstanding performance in the lead role by This highly successful musical is Todd McKenney. The work based on the life of singer- premiered in Sydney in 1997 and is songwriter Peter Allen and his still performing to rave reviews and journey from a country pub in standing ovations around Australia. Tenterfield, Australia to New York's Radio City Music Hall. It features The Boy from Oz is a true state of the art design and a cast musical in spirit and flesh ... of thirty three. The Boy from Oz is leaves audiences gasping for co-produced by Australian Ben breath on a wondrous high. Gannon and London and Broadway Sydney Morning Herald producer Robert Fox. The libretto is by Nick Enright, songs and lyrics by Peter Allen, the music supervised theaterMalpertuis Richard Murphet's acclaimed of the four actors are Australian, & Mob Productions 1988 play breaks down the the remaining cast and crew being idealised image of romantic love. Belgian. Produced in Belgium in Slow Love The music, composed and 1999, Slow Love toured for six performed by Stevie Wishart, weeks through the Low Countries. In hundreds of tiny, fragmented combines French medieval love Telstra Adelaide Festival 2000. vignettes, bordered by rapid fire songs, torch song fragments blackouts, the relationships and dub grooves swimming The live soundscape from between two men and two women in a cinematic mix. Stevie Wishart guides you, are played out within a perspex seduces you, and deceives you. house. In a new multimedia Slow Love is an Australian-Belgian Slow Love is addictive. production directed by Boris Kelly, co-production. Director, writer, De Morgen, Brussels composer, audio designer and one 11

Music Theatre Sydney

Night and Dreams - The Death of Sigmund Freud

From award-winning composer and librettist Margaret Morgan comes a music theatre work for tenor voice and multi-track tape at once dark and funny, focussing on the exiled Freud as he contemplates his death. The audience is invited to become the great man's psychoanalyst. Night and Dreams has been written for , one of the great contributors to the development of Australian music theatre. Premieres Telstra Adelaide Festival 2000.

Iphis

An opera in six scenes loosely based on Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Iphis is a tale of a dysfunctional family, blind faith, control, rebellion and transformation. With the vibrant and eclectic music of composer Elena Kats-Chernin and the witty Condanza beauty of a passionate life and libretto of Richard Toop, Iphis is a of baroque music within a testimony to laughter as a survival Barbara/O contemporary context. mechanism for our times. Telstra Adelaide Festival 2000. Combining the music of Barbara Iphis tweaked the nose of its Strozzi, a contemporary of Elena Kats-Chernin is one of audience. It is unmissable. Monteverdi, and Elena Kats- Australia’s most successful The Australian Chernin, with the choreography composers and has already of Michaela Isabel Fünfhausen, premiered two music theatre works, Since the restructuring of the this German-Australian Matricide: The Musical (Chamber company in 1997 Music Theatre collaboration tracks Strozzi’s life Made Opera) and Iphis (Music Sydney has forged its way to and work, drawing a line from Theatre Sydney). Barbara/O is become a leader in the production, Renaissance Venice to today and directed by Ann-Christin Rommen. presentation and promotion of allowing us to discover the great contemporary chamber opera and music theatre. 12

The opera Project

The Romantic Trilogy

Three related in a single epic evening:The Berlioz - Our Vampires Ourselves, an outrageous outing of operatic sensationalism, vampiric obsession and explicit homoeroticism; Tristan, the transgressive heroine (Isolde) in an unexpectedly hysterical rehearsal with the ‘feminized’ hero (Tristan); and The Terror of Tosca, the exhilaration of fear, the wild, speeding events of an opera within an opera, jealousy, passion, dishonesty and song. Music from Berlioz, Wagner and Puccini, Peter Wells and Nigel Kellaway, scripts by Nigel Kellaway and Keith Gallasch.

Founded in 1997, The opera Project is committed to the development of a powerful ensemble of experienced artists. It pursues a contemporary theatrical practice that examines a breadth of cultural heritage in theatre, music, literature and dance - unashamedly focusing on the body of the performer, the voice and all its fleshy representations. Touring repertoire also includes Choux Choux Baguette Remembers and This Most Wicked Body (Telstra Adelaide Festival 1998 ).

How triumphant! Informed, provocative, funny, oozing with exquisite music and unorthodox sexuality. The purity of this work, its intelligence and physical daring set it apart. (The Berlioz) Sydney Morning Herald 13

deckchair theatre Arena Theatre Company

Kate ‘n' Shiner Eat Your Young

Ernest ‘Shiner’ Ryan was a well Eat Your Young is a futuristic action loved figure in Fremantle, Western adventure where kids certified Australia. There wasn’t a lock he uncontrollable are fitted with neural couldn’t open. His lover, Kate Leigh, implants and their good behaviour nicknamed the Snow Queen for her rewarded with simulated reality – a cocaine dealings, was a legendary lush dreamscape in a music-driven crime figure of the 20s and 30s. In show realised with giant robotic REM Theatre this play with music, Shiner is screens, stop frame animation released from jail in 1944, an old and surround sound installation. toteMMusic man and all for leading the quiet life until Kate turns up again and they From 1996 to 1998, Arena A young city dweller is introduced decide to tie the knot. But can the unleashed a series of multimedia to the spirit and dances of her bent go straight? Written by leading performances entitled The people by the visit of the Kangaroo Australian playwright John Romeril anthroPOP Trilogy. Under the artistic Man. toteMMusic explores the with through-written music by directorship of Rosemary Myers, balance between traditional and award winning composer Irine Vela. the productions Autopsy, and contemporary Australian society. Panacea explored the intersection The work premiered at the Lucerne The Fremantle-based deckchair between performance and popular International Music Festival followed theatre is a leader in the culture. Autopsy toured extensively by performances at the Flanders commissioning of widely-performed throughout North America. In 1999 Festival, Ghent and the Zuiderpers innovative works which accurately Arena was the first Australian Huis, Antwerp. Spotlight Program, reflect the cultural diversity of the company to be awarded the 4th Australian Performing Arts Australian people. Music has played prestigous ASSITEJ International Market. a key role in many of deckchair's Honorary President's Award. Telstra works, including Emma, Sappho Adelaide Festival 2000. The performers are drawn from the Sings the Blues, Waterfront Women Torres Strait in the north, through and in their association with (Autopsy is) intensely sensual Tennant Creek in the Central Desert, Kavisah Mazzella and the Italian and packed with urgency and to Western Australia. REM integrates Women's Choir. ideas. the performing arts into a vibrant The Georgia Straight (Canada) cross-cultural, cross-artform theatre, deckchair’s production does not dealing simply with concepts and simply breathe life into history. attitudes that both children and It spits in its eye and laughs. adults relate to and understand. The Gazette

It's richly textured theatre: an integration of gesture, movement, image and music, sometimes melodic, often strange, raw and compelling. Sydney Morning Herald 14

Despite its brevity, The Ghost Wife is one of the most important additions to Australian opera in years. The whole enterprise is a model of its kind. Sydney Morning Herald

...edgy contemporary score... a dramatic tour de force... London Financial Times

Melbourne International acclaimed poets, Dorothy Porter, Festival of the Arts based on the turn-of-the-century short story The Chosen Vessel by The Ghost Wife Barbara Baynton. Set designer Stephen Curtis and sound designer The Ghost Wife is a brutal story of Neil McLachlan collaborated to a woman living in the outback late create the unique instruments built last century. Left alone for weeks into the set to be played by singers on end in a tiny slab hut with her and musicians conducted by infant child, she is forced to . Commissioned by confront her own fears and the real the Melbourne International Festival dangers lurking in the Australian of the Arts for a world premiere bush. A terrifying tale of rape and season in Melbourne 1999. Telstra murder and a poignant reminder Adelaide Festival 2000 program of the complete strangeness of the and 2001 program. Australian landscape to European settlers late last century.

Composed by Jonathan Mills and directed by Adam Cook, this chamber opera features a libretto by one of Australia's most

doppio-para//elo Julian Ferraretto and vocalist Libby O'Donovan from Adelaide's acid funk The Last Child band Brewed. Premieres Telstra ( of the Swallows) Adelaide Festival 2000.

In an intimate journal a woman doppio-parallelo is a nationally attempts to communicate all that she recognised contemporary knows to the last child of the performance company with a 16- millennium. This mixed-genre year track record for quality and performance is a fusion of dialogue, innovation, and an acknowledged song, music and visual imagery, from leader for its work in the area of a text by Linda Marie Walker, directed cultural diversity. by Teresa Crea, in an installation by James Coulter and with sound design by Claudio Pompili, featuring 15

Maximum Legroom

Acceptable Behaviour

Contrasting the formality of Corelli's La Folia with the physical and mental forms of delay that constitute work avoidance, Acceptable Behaviour heightens and transforms the everyday into a physical and acoustic score. Vitalstatistix

Maximum Legroom is a music My Vicious Angel theatre performance company creating original performance works A trapeze artist hospitalised with Vitalstatistix National Women's by exploring the physicality of a broken back is visited by her Theatre is based at Port Adelaide, sound and the musical quality of demonic twin who died in a house . The 16 year-old movement and text. It grew out fire when they were children. Live company's creation and production of music theatre works created in piano accordion and baritone of exciting new work by Australian 1998 for both the Adelaide Festival saxophone evoke the circus, fire, women playwrights and artists places and the Barossa Music Festival. the creaking of ships, heartbeats, it at the forefront of contemporary sea shanties and tangos in a Australian theatre practice. Jo Dudley and Cathy Adamek's seductive and haunting entwining creative inventiveness are a of soundscape, music and words, ...(r)anging from free-form new constant and unpredictable written and composed by Christine jazz riffs to melancholy sea delight...they and their Evans and directed by Rosalbe shanties, from frenetic tangos team...create a rhythmic Clemente. Revived for the Telstra to Napoleonic ballads, the music landscape infused with wit Adelaide Festival 2000 after infuses the production with a and humour. critically applauded 1998-99 current of feeling that is Adelaide Advertiser Adelaide and Sydney seasons. indivisible from the text. Spotlight program, 4th Australian The Adelaide Review Performing Arts Market. 16 a tour de force of contemporary audio art…A masterpiece. The Alberta New Music & Arts Review (Canada)

The Song Company

Quito

Focussing on the life and death of a The Song Company, directed by young East Timorese man suffering Roland Peelman, is one of the most from schizophrenia, Quito is a work original and stylistically versatile for six singers, tape and CD-ROM- vocal ensembles in the world. driven projections. Francisco This international touring company Baptista Pires, nicknamed ‘Quito’, performs vocal music from the 12th fled Dili prior to the 1975 century to the present day, has an Indonesian invasion and was found impressive list of commissions here hanging in 1990 at Royal Darwin and overseas, and a commitment Hospital. Quito's brief life stands as to innovative contemporary music a metaphor for the tragedy of his theatre, including in its repertoire homeland. Book and music by The Sinking of the Rainbow Warrior Martin Wesley-Smith, book and by Colin Bright and Amanda Stewart. lyrics by Peter Wesley-Smith. The kind of committed or engaged art so rarely encountered. Sydney Morning Herald 17

Graeme Leak Stella

The Art of Noises Liquid Days & Dark Nights

A collection of polished gems from Exploring an intense and sustained Leak's repertoire of solo works, world of hovering, suspended with comic and serious elements, passions interleaved with moments composed and improvised music, of visual and emotional reflection, movement, intelligent text and world this work for voices, flutes, tin rhythm influences, all delivered with whistle, piano, harmonium, hand aplomb, even when he's swallowed bells, body percussion and dance a microphone. Somewhere between features the music of Taverner, a show and a concert, with music Glass, Gubaidulina, Gorecki, for amplified office worker, marimba, Australian composer string cans, voice and feet. Spotlight and the choreography of Csaba Linsey Pollak Spotlight Program, 4th Australian Program, 4th Australian Performing Buday. Premiered at the Barossa Performing Arts Market. Adelaide Arts Market. Music Festival and toured to the The Art of Food Fringe 2000. South Pacific in 1999, the work With a background in percussion, tours nationally in 2000. A solo music theatre work devised, Linsey Pollak is an instrument Graeme Leak has a unique style composed and performed by maker, recording artist, cultural which brings together unlikely and Stella was formed in early 1999 as Linsey Pollak. In the hands of the community coordinator, and disparate elements (such as a performance vehicle for a group eccentric and hilarious Ivan frequent musician-in-residence invented, found and traditional of Adelaide-based independent everything becomes musical - across Australia. instruments, voice and text, women artists: soprano Tessa Miller, carrots, potatoes, satay sticks, movement and audio technology) flautist Louise Dellit, pianist Fiona meat cleavers and even an electric ...one of Australia's most to make surprising music which is Corston, and dancer Simi Roche. drill that transforms a carrot into a brilliant and underrated characterised by a sense of humour clarinet. This is a world of depth, composer/musicians. and joy. beauty and energy, non-verbal and He is wildly innovative... digitally layered on the spot from Courier Mail, Brisbane Graeme Leak has toured his solo the sounds of food and utensils. pieces to the USA, Japan and around Australia.

Leak is a fine, laconic comedian, and his music theatre creations are founded on the music in his environment... The Australian 18

Aphids

Ricefields

Already performed in Australia, Japan and France, Ricefields is an installation/performance curated by composer and Artistic Director David Young with visual artists Raffaele Marcellino Sarah Pirrie and Rosemary Joy. Reflecting on the landscapes and The Remedy soundscapes of contemporary rural and urban Japan, Ricefields is a This Commedia dell'Arte inspired sensory encounter that blurs the opera was composed by Raffaele boundaries between notation and Marcellino to a libretto by improvisation, electro-acoustic Marguerite Bunce from a story in sound and lighting design, music Boccacio's Decameron. Giallo, an and visual art. idiot, inherits $500 and his friends decide to trick him out of his ...memorable imagery money. With the collaboration of a Theatre of Image Director-designer Kim Carpenter's and sounds... corrupt doctor, Giallo is convinced Opera Australia Theatre of Image is a company Brisbane Courier Mail that he is pregnant. He blames his noted for its cross-art form wife because 'she likes to be on Grandma’s Shoes creations, superb design and ...a seductively reflective top', uses his money to buy a its appeal to young and adult experience. remedy prepared by the corrupt A musical adventure suitable for audiences. The composer is RealTime doctor and chaos ensues. children 5 - 12 years and family who created the audiences. Based on Libby score for 1914 for The Australian The Melbourne-based Aphids Marcellino's innovative works Hathorn’s book, a little girl steps Ballet, and composed the opera produces projects and events in include the score for The Sydney into Grandma’s shoes and embarks Love Burns. The librettist is contemporary music performance, Front's provocative Don Juan on a fantastical journey to find her popular children’s fiction writer cross-artform collaboration and (1992). The Remedy was premiered grandmother, keeper of wonderful Libby Hathorn (Way Home, community arts. in Sydney in 1989 by the Sydney stories. Puppetry and computer- Kate Greenaway Medal). Metropolitan Opera (now Music aided animation combine to create Theatre Sydney) and produced by illusions of fantastic travel. a genuine feeling of specialness the Tasmanian Conservatorium of Performed by six singers, three and enchantment … essential for Music in 1999. dancer-puppeteers and a twelve children’s theatre piece orchestra. Produced in The Australian ...an extroverted work collaboration with Opera Australia. ...brightly modern and apt. Premiered in Sydney, January 2000. The Mercury, Hobart 19

Opera Australia

The Summer of the Seventeenth Doll

In this adaptation of Ray Lawler's classic Australian play from the 50s, librettist Peter Goldsworthy, composer and director Richard Wherrett capture the pathos and frustration of Barney and Roo, two ageing sugar cane cutters trying to make sense of their lives and their relationships with Olive and Pearl, the women they regularly stay with each year in the city. Premiered in 1996 and revived in 1999, the work has been broadcast nationally on ABC-TV.

The Eighth Wonder

Few stories have stirred the Australian psyche as much as the dramas surrounding the design and building of the Sydney Opera Opera Australia is Australia's OzOpera rhythms, the opera follows the House. For some it represented flagship opera company, presenting murderous career of an American colossal creation against all odds; major works of the opera repertoire Love Burns killer couple on their way to the for others, bitter failure as artistic and commissioning new Australian electric chair. temperament collided with works. Based in Sydney and Written by playwright and novelist bureaucracy. At the metaphorical Melbourne, the company tours to , composed by The OzOpera wing of Opera heart of this large scale work by other capital cities, with selected Graeme Koehne, and directed Australia tours classic works to Dennis Watkins (librettist) and Alan works available on CD and video. by , the work was urban and regional areas, develops John (composer) is the sacrifice of premiered in 1992 by the Seymour works commissioned by Opera a hero in order that a society may Group for the Adelaide Festival. Australia, and is a key partner in achieve its ends. The aspirations of A new production by Armfield was the innovative mdTV music theatre an emerging society struggling to mounted in 1998 by OzOpera for project. discover its identity are also the Melbourne International Festival explored. The triumph of Utzon's of the Arts. Effectively employing Opera House is that it exists. The deadpan texts and dance hall tragedy is that it wasn't allowed to be true to itself. Commissioned by The Australian Opera with the assistance of the , directed by Neil Armfield, the work premiered in 1995, was shown nationally on ABC-TV and will be revived in 2000.

Not since ' have I seen a modern opera that connected so strongly with its audience. Sydney Morning Herald 20

(To Traverse Water) must be seen to be believed…it demands your surrender and deserves it. The Australian

Calculated Risks Opera Productions

The Last Supper

Explores the hidden myths and rituals associated with the common dinner table. A cook sings, tells stories about working in chicken factories, cooks a meal for her audience accompanied by a piano accordion dance band and a three part choir acting as waiters. The work combines original music with tangos, polkas, baroque, renaissance and circus music, arrangements of Jerome Kern songs and African pop music into a smorgasbord of music, food, dance and comedy.

Formed in 1990, Calculated Risks Opera Productions (Artistic Director, the composer Richard Vella) blurs the boundaries between opera, cabaret and popular performance styles. Relying on collaboration IHOS Opera MIKROVION IHOS is dedicated to creating between the creators, each work is large scale innovative works a new exploration of the dynamics Days and Nights with Christ Seeks to develop a broader social and installations that challenge between music, performers, the context for current HIV/AIDS research conventional definitions of opera. theatrical space and audience. A large-scale work dealing with and examine the microscopic world Founded in Hobart, in Also in repertoire is Bodysongs: the imagery associated with the of the virus in relation to the 1990 by Constantine Koukias The Fatman Tour. schizophrenic condition. technology and perception of the and Werner Ihlenfeld, IHOS Opera human body and illness. presents contemporary opera The atmosphere is intimate, …provocative…exhilarating…a which blends voice, dance and even enchanting with the cast truly memorable coup de théâtre. The Divine Kiss sound with visual design, sometimes moving through the Opera Opera installation art and technology, audience, whispering a special Uses images associated with the producing unique multicultural, message to a lucky few...It is a To Traverse Water Seven Saving Virtues to explore multilingual, multi-artform music most pleasant evening of music the concept of perfection and is theatre. With his collaborators, theatre. Depicts a Greek woman’s journey specifically designed to showcase the Constantine Koukias conceives, Herald Sun to her new homeland, Australia, talents of performers with disabilities. composes and directs. exploring the immigrant’s cultural displacement. 21

Crying in Public Places

Skin

All that you are, all you have achieved, suffered, enjoyed, avoided, consumed, endured or overcome is recorded in your body, transcribed on your flesh. Skin uncovers the terrible vulnerabilities which determine the choices directing a life, with irreverent and exuberant physicality. Premieres Telstra Adelaide Festival 2000. Spotlight program, 4th Australian Performing Arts Market.

Crying in Public Places is Jane Bayly, Anni Davey, Maude Davey and Karen Hadfield, four of ’s most respected performers and theatre makers. Also in repertoire is the a capella- driven JUMP! which premiered in Melbourne in 1995 and has been acclaimed wherever it has played, receiving 5 star reviews at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, 1997, and selling out in Madrid in 1999.

…passionate, intelligent and extremely entertaining… Triple F Magazine, UK 22

Australian music theatre: there has been strong competition Aphids are embarking on an Broadstock, Martin Friedel, Richard an introduction for funds, and, until recently, limited Australian-Danish collaboration Meale, Gordon Kerry, Gillian critical acknowledgment, rare in their new work, Maps. Whitehead, Brian Howard, Michael There is an explosion of music documentation and very few works Whiticker, Andrew Schultz and theatre activity in Australia. The touring nationally. Even so, the Although the written history of Julian Yu. works take many forms and occur output has been considerable. contemporary Australian music in sometimes surprising locations. A key supporting role has been theatre has barely been embarked Another important and sustaining Contemporary music theatre takes and continues to be played by the on, it is clear that there has been strain in Australian music theatre chamber opera in new directions, Australia Council and the state a steady and intensive growth of culture is exemplified in the work of engages with new media and the government arts bodies in providing activity in the form since the early , a concert artist, arts visual arts in installations, includes funds for commissions and seventies. Arias (Red House, 1997), festival director and collaborator on innovative musicals and through- productions. From 1989-91 the John Jenkins and Rainer Linz’ music theatre projects reaching scored stage plays for adults and Australian Music Centre invaluable guide to companies and back 30 years in Australia and young people, theatricalises the commissioned a set of significant the works created since the mid overseas. Her work has included concert, transforms grand opera, one act operas still in various 80s, is a history of struggle, of performances in The Seven Deadly and looks set to reach a growing repertoires. The Rio Tinto strong entrances and brisk exits, Sins (1974) and The Threepenny audience through television, radio, Corporation has recently begun but, most of all, tenacious Opera (1975, 1999); solo works national and international touring. commissioning music theatre commitment. There are other like A Star is Torn (1979); the Cafe works. Arts festivals are turning histories to be addressed, like that Fledermaus cabaret (1990); and As well, music theatre has become their attention to the form. Now the of New Opera South Australia collaborations like See Ya Next an attractive site not just for prophets are talking up Australian (1972-77), one of the earlier starting Century (1993) with composers, composers and librettists, but music theatre as the next great points for Australian music theatre, choreographers and designers. for artists of all kinds intrigued export to the world after the under the direction of its Archer’s high profile and widely by its expressive and collaborative successes of Australian Indigenous administrator Justin Macdonnell travelled productions have meant possibilities. While composers art, Australian novels and films, (see Elizabeth Silsbury, “From that a line of musical theatre continue to play a central role, and circus and physical theatre. Three’s Company to Der Ring Des possibilities, often with a strong choreographers, visual artists, Nibelungen”, program, Wagner, political dimension, has been designers and others have International collaborations are also The Ring Cycle, State Opera of kept open. become key collaborators in the opening up new possibilities for South Australia, 1998). In a brief, conceptualising and execution Australian music theatre, as rich period, alongside Janacek, The musical in Australia has had an of the works rather than playing illustrated by the German company Brecht-Weill and Stravinsky, the interesting and particular history, illustrative or supportive roles. Condanza’s Barbara/O for the company performed works by one similar to the struggle for music This means that the role of librettist Telstra Adelaide Festival 2000, Australians Larry Sitsky, James theatre to make its mark, but with is not always as significant as it a work scored by Australian Pemberthy and Margaret greater popular expectations. Just once was. However, notable composer Elena Kats-Chernin. Sutherland, and commissioned as it had been argued in the 60s Australian writers continue to Chamber Made Opera have toured works from Sitsky and George that Australians were best at participate actively in music theatre, overseas extensively and their Dreyfus. documentaries and should leave now with greater opportunities for artistic director, Douglas Horton, feature filmmaking alone, so has experimentation. As for composers, has been working with the Because this publication details the musical been repeatedly there are few in Australia who have Antwerp-based Transparent works currently in repertoire, and is declared as not indigenous to not tried their hand at music theatre chamber opera company. Belgium’s not a history, many composers who Australian culture. How ironic then and there are many with works in theaterMalpertuis have collaborated have contributed to this rich and that best known and most widely repertoire and in progress. with Australia’s Mob Productions to challenging history don’t appear on seen Australian musicals have been present Melbourne writer Richard these pages. A few will be found in Jimmy Chi’s Bran Nue Dae (1990) What I casually term an ‘explosion’ Murphet’s Slow Love with music by Works in Progress (page 26) or in and Corrugation Road (1996) is, of course, the product of Stevie Wishart (already a well the data base which includes more with their Indigenous creators inspiration and hard work from known artist in Europe) in Belgium works in repertoire (pages 24-5). and performers—and white Australian artists over thirty years and at the Adelaide Festival. Add to With only a few exceptions, most of collaborators from Perth’s Black building towards this moment this the fact that a number of these notable Australian composers Swan Theatre Company. Then when music theatre has ‘suddenly’ companies—The Song Company, are still active in music theatre, came The Boy from Oz, a musical become highly visible, the subject Arena Theatre Company, ELISION indicating the widespread biography of the life of Australian of conferences and newspaper and Aphids—already tour commitment to the form: Larry singer-songwriter Peter Allen. articles, histories, arts festival and internationally and the potential for Sitsky, , Moya Premiered in 1995, it is now touring corporate commissionings, and the export of Australian music Henderson, Barry Conyngham, capital cities. The latest musical to critical acclaim. For many years theatre looks even greater. In 2000 Ross Edwards, Brenton win widespread approval, writer- 23

director Wesley Enoch and (The Dybbuk, Es Brent, Levad, about aboriginal deaths in custody, He declared, with not a little irony composer John Rodgers’ The 1991-93) briefly invigorated music The Sinking of the Rainbow Warrior that “(w)hat was not realised until Sunshine Club (1999), is another theatre with a complex interplay of is about imperialism and nuclear the late 70s was that there could collaboration on an Indigenous musical and theatrical forms and weaponry in our region, Bran Nue be a living operatic culture based subject. Commissioned and Kosky went on to direct Larry Dae and The Sunshine Club are on rapid obsolescence.” Griffiths produced by the Queensland Sitsky and Gwen Harwood’s three about the trials and hopes of bemoaned the phenomenon where Theatre Company it seems and a half hour The Golem (1995) Aboriginal people. In 1995, a group works were only revived by the destined for a long life. for Opera Australia. Conductors like of young artists of non-English company that commissioned and Roland Peelman, Mark Summerbell speaking background created the premiered them, and that “the The effort to develop the Australian and Richard Gill, and singers, like community-based spectacle notion of making a permanent musical for over a decade has been Gerald English, Lyndon Terracini, HipHopera in Sydney’s western addition to the repertory has considerable, involving NIDA (the Annette Tesoriero and Helen suburbs. A popular, commercial become so unthinkable as no National Institute of Dramatic Art) Noonan have also played key roles musical, The Boy from Oz, longer to be a matter of attention.” and musical, opera and theatre in their willingness to test the limits celebrates the life of a gay The result: “the almost unavoidable director ; Cameron of the form. performer. futility of opera - the hopelessness Macintosh and The Sydney Theatre of creating lasting value...” Until Company; and various individuals Paralleling developments in the Classic plays and novels are the mid-90s this was not an including Dennis Watkins and the visual arts, site has become an adapted as music theatre works, uncommon sentiment in Australia, playwright Nick Enright (in increasingly important element in famous people’s lives are among composers in particular. numerous ventures and roles, a range of music theatre works. dramatised, and there is an However, the increasing number including script writer for The Boy Among other sites, the ELISION avoidance of conventional of artists committed to working in from Oz and script adviser on The Ensemble have mounted works in historicising; writer and librettist music theatre, the diversification of Sunshine Club). WAAPA (Western a deserted Brisbane Powerhouse Louis Nowra once famously the form, the determination to keep Australian Academy of the (transmisi, 1999) and a Perth declared himself “not interested in works in repertoire (as evident in Performing Arts) has contributed railway yard (Opening of the Mouth, the flyblown carcass of schoolbook these pages), the greater by consistently producing skilled 1997). Chamber Made Opera’s The Australian history of famous events opportunities for national and performers for the musical. The Cars That Ate Paris (1992, inspired and persons.” Recent works, like international touring, and for Australian musical now seems a by the Australian film by Peter Weir) Julian Yu’s Fresh Ghosts, Liza Lim international collaboration, are real possibility. was performed in a motor vehicle and Beth Yahp’s Yue Jing Lie, and all cause for optimism. repair shop. Directed by Nigel Dominique Probst and Le Quy A large number of works detailed Kellaway for The Song Company, Duong’s forthcoming Motherland Keith Gallasch on these pages are chamber The Sinking of the Rainbow Warrior of the Foreign Son are indicative operas, but more as a matter (1997) was viewed from the of an Australia engaging culturally of scale than of convention. forecourt-wharf of Sydney’s with Asia. Indigenous artists and The influence of contemporary National Maritime Museum, with communities are also celebrating performance modes on music performers appearing on huge this relationship. One of the theatre and the opening out of the naval vessels—and in and out highlights of the 1999 Darwin term opera since the 70s is evident of the water. In Ricefields (1999), Festival was Trepang, an in new approaches to narrative, Aphids used sculptural objects Indigenous opera celebrating the to stage imagery, to performance that created the performing space, three hundred years of trade and techniques and audience-performer as well as doubling as scores and cultural exchange between relationships. Since its inception in instruments. Macassan seafarers and the Yolgnu 1988, Chamber Made Opera’s style people of Arnhemland in northern has been rigorously adventurous The topics embraced by Australian Australia. and non-realist, as has Nigel music theatre are richly varied, Kellaway’s provocative The opera however certain themes and An explosion of activity and a burst Project in Sydney (since 1996). concerns are recurrent. Despite of enthusiasm are not always Tasmania’s IHOS Opera (formed in occasional backlashes in favour of signals of real success. Giving the 1990) stages large scale operatic a mono-dimensional Anglo-Celtic works long lives and sustaining the multi-media works often on culture, Australians increasingly companies and artists that create wharves and in warehouses where acknowledge the complexities of a them are big challenges. Writing in huge depth of perspective and multicultural society coexisting with Britain in Modern Music and After projections can engage large an Indigenous one. Music theatre (Oxford, 1995), Paul Griffiths was audiences. Director ’s reflects and drives these not optimistic about the longevity Gilgul Jewish Theatre Company concerns—Black River (1989) is of most new music theatre works. 24

company/artist work premiere composer writer producer contact tel +61 fax + 61 email/website post documentation of this a archival production p promotional c commercial

Aphids Ricefields 9/98 David Young Aphids David Young 3 9593 6363 3 9593 6363 [email protected] 26 Acland St Video ap, CD ap, Score a, www.bigfoot.com/~aphids St Kilda VIC 3182 Photos ap

Arena Theatre Company Autopsy 6/96 Hugh Covill, Julianne O’Brien, Arena Theatre Company Katherine Crawford-Gray 3 9329 6266 3 9329 0366 [email protected] PO Box 179 Video p, CD c, Score a Rosemary Myer, Rosemary Myer North Melbourne VIC 3051 Script a, Photos p Bruce Gladwin

Arena Theatre Company Schnorky the 10/96 Frank Wood Sue-Ann Post, Arena Theatre Company Katherine Crawford-Gray 3 9329 6266 3 9329 0366 [email protected] PO Box 179 Video p, CD p, Score a Wave Puncher (after Jeff Raglus) North Melbourne VIC 3051 Script a, Photos p

Arena Theatre Company Mass 8/97 Hugh Covill, Julianne O’Brien, Arena Theatre Company Katherine Crawford-Gray 3 9329 6266 3 9329 0366 [email protected] PO Box 179 Video ap, CD p, Score a Rosemary Myer, Rosemary Myer, North Melbourne VIC 3051 Script a, Photos p Bruce Gladwin Bruce Gladwin

Arena Theatre Company Panacea 10/98 Hugh Covill Julianne O’Brien, Arena Theatre Company Katherine Crawford-Gray 3 9329 6266 3 9329 0366 [email protected] PO Box 179 Video pc, CD pc, Score a David Carlin North Melbourne VIC 3051 Script a, Photos p

Arena Theatre Company Oblong 4/99 Hugh Covill, Bruce Gladwin, Arena Theatre Company Katherine Crawford-Gray 3 9329 6266 3 9329 0366 [email protected] PO Box 179 Video p, CD pc, Score a Bruce Gladwin, Rosemary Myer North Melbourne VIC 3051 Script a, Photos p Rosemary Myer

Arena Theatre Company Eat Your Young 3/00 Hugh Covill Julianne O’Brien, Arena Theatre Company Katherine Crawford-Gray 3 9329 6266 3 9329 0366 [email protected] PO Box 179 Video p, Score a, Script a, (after Rosemary Myer) North Melbourne VIC 3051 Photos p

Calculated Risks Tales of Love 6/90 Richard Vella John Baylis, Calculated Risks Richard Vella 2 95693069 2 9569 6668 [email protected] PO Box N83 Video p, CD p, Score p Opera Productions Nigel Kellaway, Grosvenor Place Sydney 2000 Script p, Photos p Annette Tesoriero, Richard Vella

Calculated Risks Volcano and Vision 10/90 Rainer Linz Paul Green Calculated Risks Richard Vella 2 95693069 2 9569 6668 [email protected] PO Box N83 Video a, CD a, Score a Opera Productions Grosvenor Place Sydney 2000 Script a, Photos a

Calculated Risks The Last Supper 12/93 Richard Vella Richard Vella, Calculated Risks Richard Vella 2 95693069 2 9569 6668 [email protected] PO Box N83 Video p, CD p, Score p Opera Productions Mary Sitarenos, Grosvenor Place Sydney 2000 Script p, Photos p Robert Draffin

Calculated Risks Bodysongs: 9/98 Richard Vella Humphrey Bower Calculated Risks Richard Vella 2 95693069 2 9569 6668 [email protected] PO Box N83 Video c, CD c, Score c Opera Productions The Fatman Tour Grosvenor Place Sydney 2000 Script c, Photos c

Chamber Made Opera The Fall of the 8/90 Arthur Yorinks Chamber Made Opera Gabrielle Baker, 3 9329 7422 3 9329 7434 [email protected] PO Box 302 Video a, Score a, Script a, House of Usher Vivia Hickman North Melbourne VIC 3051 Photos ap

Chamber Made Opera Greek 6/91 Mark-Anthony Steven Berkoff Chamber Made Opera Gabrielle Baker, 3 9329 7422 3 9329 7434 [email protected] PO Box 302 Video a, Score a, Script a, Turnage Vivia Hickman North Melbourne VIC 3051 Photos ap

Chamber Made Opera Sweet Death 10/91 Andrée Greenwell Abe Pogos Chamber Made Opera Gabrielle Baker, 3 9329 7422 3 9329 7434 [email protected] PO Box 302 Video a, Score a, Script a, Vivia Hickman North Melbourne VIC 3051 Photos ap

Chamber Made Opera The Cars That 7/92 Ensemble Devised Ensemble Devised Chamber Made Opera Gabrielle Baker, 3 9329 7422 3 9329 7434 [email protected] PO Box 302 Video a, Score a, Script a, Ate Paris (after Peter Weir) Vivia Hickman North Melbourne VIC 3051 Photos ap

Chamber Made Opera Lacuna 10/92 David Chesworth Douglas Horton Chamber Made Opera Gabrielle Baker, 3 9329 7422 3 9329 7434 [email protected] PO Box 302 Video a, Script a, Photos ap Vivia Hickman North Melbourne VIC 3051

Chamber Made Opera Medea 4/93 Gordon Kerry Justin Macdonnell Chamber Made Opera Gabrielle Baker, 3 9329 7422 3 9329 7434 [email protected] PO Box 302 Video a, Script a, Photos ap (after Seneca) Vivia Hickman North Melbourne VIC 3051

Chamber Made Opera Improvement: 9/93 Robert Ashley Robert Ashley Chamber Made Opera Gabrielle Baker, 3 9329 7422 3 9329 7434 [email protected] PO Box 302 Video a, Script a, Photos ap Don Leaves Linda Vivia Hickman North Melbourne VIC 3051

Chamber Made Opera The Two Executioners 8/94 David Chesworth Douglas Horton Chamber Made Opera Gabrielle Baker, 3 9329 7422 3 9329 7434 [email protected] PO Box 302 Video a, Score a, Script a, (after Fernando Arrabal) Vivia Hickman North Melbourne VIC 3051 Photos ap

Chamber Made Opera The Burrow 8/95 Michael Smetanin Alison Croggan Chamber Made Opera Gabrielle Baker, 3 9329 7422 3 9329 7434 [email protected] PO Box 302 Video a, Script a, Photos ap Vivia Hickman North Melbourne VIC 3051

Chamber Made Opera Fresh Ghosts 11/97 Julian Yu Glen Perry Chamber Made Opera Gabrielle Baker, 3 9329 7422 3 9329 7434 [email protected] PO Box 302 Video a, Score a, Script a, (after Lu Xun) Vivia Hickman North Melbourne VIC 3051 Photos ap

Chamber Made Opera Dr Ferris Will 11/98 Stephen Ingham Douglas Horton Chamber Made Opera Gabrielle Baker, 3 9329 7422 3 9329 7434 [email protected] PO Box 302 Video a, Score a, Script a, See You Now Vivia Hickman North Melbourne VIC 3051 Photos ap

Chamber Made Opera The Heiress 11/98 Donald Hollier Donald Hollier Chamber Made Opera Gabrielle Baker, 3 9329 7422 3 9329 7434 [email protected] PO Box 302 Video a, Score a, Script a, Vivia Hickman North Melbourne VIC 3051 Photos ap

Chamber Made Opera Matricide the Musical 11/98 Elena Kats-Chernin Kathleen Mary Fallon Chamber Made Opera Gabrielle Baker, 3 9329 7422 3 9329 7434 [email protected] PO Box 302 Video a, Score a, Script a, Vivia Hickman North Melbourne VIC 3051 Photos ap

Chamber Made Opera Eight Songs for 11/99 Peter Maxwell- Randolph Stow Chamber Made Opera Gabrielle Baker, 3 9329 7422 3 9329 7434 [email protected] PO Box 302 Score a, Script a, Photos ap a Mad King Davies Vivia Hickman North Melbourne VIC 3051

Deborah Cheetham White Baptist 9/97 Various Deborah Cheetham Performing Lines Wendy Blacklock 2 9319 0066 2 9318 2186 [email protected] 6/245 Chalmers St, Redfern 2016 Video a, Photos ap Abba Fan

Condanza (Germany) Barbara/O 3/00 Barbara Strozzi, Condanza Ann-Christin Rommen 49 221 321883 [email protected] c/o Art & Stage Photos p Elena Kats-Chernin mob [email protected] Sedanstrasse 8 D-79089 49172 2442655 Freiburg Germany

Crying in Public Places JUMP! 3/95 Crying in Public Crying in Public Crying in Public Maude Davey 3 9417 4570 3 9417 4570 [email protected] PO Box 267 Video ap,CDpc, Script ap Places Places Places http://home.vicnet.net.au/ Northcote VIC 3070 ~kcrying/

Crying in Public Places Skin 3/00 Crying in Public Crying in Public Crying in Public Maude Davey 3 9417 4570 3 9417 4570 [email protected] PO Box 267 Video a, CD pc, Script a, Places Places Places http://home.vicnet.net.au/ Northcote VIC 3070 Photos p ~kcrying/

deckchair theatre Kate ‘n’ Shiner 2/98 Irine Vela John Romeril deckchair theatre David Gerrand 8 9430 4771 8 9335 4210 [email protected] PO Box 130 Video ap, Tape a, Score a Fremantle WA 6959 Script a, Photos p

Doppio-Para//elo The Last Child 3/00 Claudio Pompili Linda Marie Walker Doppio-Para//elo Serafina Maria Maiorano 8 8231 0070 8 8211 7323 [email protected] PO Box 8077 Script a, Photos p www.doppio-parallelo.on.net Station Arcade SA 5000

ELISION transmisi 9/99 Richard Barrett ELISION Daryl Buckley 7 3365 7314 7 3365 7491 [email protected] ELISION CD-ROM p, Photos p contemporary music www.elision.org.au School of Music ensemble University of Queensland QLD 4072 25

company/artist work premiere composer writer producer contact tel +61 fax + 61 email/website post documentation of this a archival production p promotional c commercial

ELISION Inferno 2/00 John Rodgers ELISION Daryl Buckley 7 3365 7314 7 3365 7491 [email protected] ELISION CD p, Score p, Photos p contemporary music www.elision.org.au School of Music ensemble University of Queensland QLD 4072

ELISION Yuè Lìng Jié 3/00 Liza Lim Beth Yahp ELISION Daryl Buckley 7 3365 7314 7 3365 7491 [email protected] ELISION Score pc contemporary music www.elision.org.au School of Music ensemble University of Queensland QLD 4072

Gannon-Fox Productions The Boy from Oz 3/95 Peter Allen Nick Enright Gannon-Fox Productions Ben Gannon - - - PO Box 3320 Photos p Tamarama NSW 2026

Green Room Music Laquiem 5/99 Andrée Greenwell Kathleen Mary Fallon Green Room Music Andrée Greenwell 2 9358 4647 [email protected] 1/96 Elizabeth Bay Rd Video p, CD c, Score a Productions Elizabeth Bay NSW 2011 Script a, Photos a

IHOS Opera Days and Nights 9/90 Constantine Koukias Various texts IHOS Opera Constantine Koukias 3 6231 2219 3 6231 2219 [email protected] GPO Box 629 Video ap, Score a, Script a, with Christ Hobart TAS 7001 Photos ap

IHOS Opera To Traverse Water 11/92 Constantine Koukias Various texts IHOS Opera Constantine Koukias 3 6231 2219 3 6231 2219 [email protected] GPO Box 629 Video ap, CD apc, Score a Hobart TAS 7001 Script a, Photos ap

IHOS Opera MIKROVION 11/94 Constantine Koukias Various texts IHOS Opera Constantine Koukias 3 6231 2219 3 6231 2219 [email protected] GPO Box 629 Video ap, Score a, Script a, Hobart TAS 7001 Photos ap

IHOS Opera The Divine Kiss 9/98 Constantine Koukias Various texts Access Arts Queensland, Constantine Koukias 3 6231 2219 3 6231 2219 [email protected] GPO Box 629 Video ap, Score a, Script a, The Brisbane Festival, Hobart TAS 7001 Photos ap IHOS Opera

Graeme Leak The Art of Noises 12/93 Graeme Leak Graeme Leak Graeme Leak Graeme Leak 3 9486 6150 3 9486 6150 [email protected] 5 Westfield St Northcote VIC 3070 Video p, Photos a

Raffaele Marcellino The Remedy 9/99 Raffaele Marcellino Marguerite Bunce Tasmanian Raffaele Marcellino 3 6244 4694 3 6226 7333 [email protected] 43 Carawa St., Video p, CD p, Score c Conservatorium of Music Mornington TAS 7018

Maximum Legroom Acceptable Behaviour 9/99 Corelli, de Mey, Reckless Moments Barry Plews 8 8232 3990 8 8232 1886 [email protected] PO Box 7162 Hutt St Video ap, CD c, Script a, Kern, Revel & 0412 484 430 www.reckless.on.net Adelaide SA 5000 Photos ap Gordon

Melbourne International The Ghost Wife 10/99 Jonathan Mills Dorothy Porter Melbourne International Kay Jamieson 3 9662 4242 3 9663 4141 k.jamieson@melbourne PO Box 10 Photos p Festival of the Arts Festival of the Arts festival.com.au Flinders Lane www.melbournefestival. Melbourne VIC 8009 com.au

Mob Productions (Australia) Slow Love 9/99 Stevie Wishart Richard Murphet Sam Bogaerts Boris Kelly (0)418 475 675 (0)418 475 675 [email protected] PO Box 801 Video a, CD c, Script a, theaterMalpertuis (Belgium) Narrabeen NSW 2101 Photos ap

Music Theatre Sydney Iphis 12/97 Elena Kats-Chernin Richard Toop Music Theatre Sydney Macdonnell Promotions 2 9310 3716 2 9699 9099 [email protected] 9 Telopea St Video apc, Tape ap, www.nmn.org.au Redfern NSW 2016 Score ap, Script ap, /theatre.htm Photos ap

Music Theatre Sydney Night and Dreams - 3/00 Andrew Ford Margaret Morgan Music Theatre Sydney Macdonnell Promotions 2 9310 3716 2 9699 9099 [email protected] 9 Telopea St CD p, Score p, Script p, The Death of www.nmn.org.au Redfern NSW 2016 Photos p Sigmund Freud /theatre.htm

NORPA The Mercenary 10/99 Paul Grabowsky Janis Balodis Northern Rivers Liz Fraser 2 6622 0300 2 6622 3175 [email protected] PO Box 225 Video a, Score a, Script a, Performing Arts Inc www.norpa.org.au Lismore NSW 2480 Photos p

Opera Australia The Eighth Wonder 10/95 Alan John Dennis Watkins Opera Australia John Moulton 2 9699 1099 2 9699 3184 [email protected] PO Box 291 Score a, Script a, Photos a www.opera-australia.org.au Strawberry Hills NSW 2012

Opera Australia The Summer of the 10/96 Richard Mills Peter Goldsworthy Opera Australia John Moulton 2 9699 1099 2 9699 3184 [email protected] PO Box 291 Score a, Script a, Photos a Seventeenth Doll (after Ray Lawler) www.opera-australia.org.au Strawberry Hills NSW 2012

OzOpera (Opera Australia) Love Burns 10/98 Graeme Koehne Louis Nowra OzOpera Lindy Hume 3 9685 3777 3 9686 1441 [email protected] PO Box 389 Score a, Script a, Photos a Belvoir Company B www.opera-australia.org.au South Melbourne VIC 3205

The opera Project Inc. Choux Choux 6/93 Various Nigel Kellaway, The opera Project Inc. Nigel Kellaway 2 9516 3762 2 9516 3762 72 Margaret St Video ap, Score a, Photos ap Baguette Remembers Annette Tesoriero Newtown NSW 2042

The opera Project The Romantic Trilogy 97-99 Berlioz, Wells; Keith Gallasch, The opera Project Inc. Nigel Kellaway 2 9516 3762 2 9516 3762 72 Margaret St Video ap, Score a, Script a, Wagner, Lizst; Nigel Kellaway Newtown NSW 2042 Photos ap Puccini, Kellaway

The opera Project This Most Wicked 3/98 Beethoven Nigel Kellaway, The opera Project Inc. Nigel Kellaway 2 9516 3762 2 9516 3762 72 Margaret St Video ap, Score a, Script a, Body Various texts Newtown NSW 2042 Photos ap

Performing Lines The Theft of Sita 3/00 Paul Grabowsky Nigel Jamieson Performing Lines for Wendy Blacklock 2 9319 0066 2 9318 2186 [email protected] Suite 6/245 Chalmers St and collaborators Adelaide Festival www.performinglines.org.au Redfern NSW 2016

Linsey Pollak The Art of Food 9/97 Linsey Pollak Performing Lines Wendy Blacklock 2 9319 0066 2 9318 2186 [email protected] Suite 6/245 Chalmers St Video ap, Photos ap Redfern NSW 2016

Queensland The Sunshine Club 11/99 John Rodgers Wesley Enoch Queensland Sue Hunt 7 3840 7000 7 3840 7040 [email protected] PO Box 3310 Video a, Score a, Script a, Theatre Company Theatre Company South Brisbane 4101 Photos p

REM Theatre Frozen Girl 6/99 Felicity Fox Roger Rynd Marguerite Pepper Marguerite Pepper 2 9699 2111 2 9699 9405 [email protected] 9 Telopea St Video p, Photos p Productions www.mpproductions.com.au Redfern NSW 2016

REM Theatre toteMMusic 8/99 Mark Atkins, The company Marguerite Pepper Marguerite Pepper 2 9699 2111 2 9699 9405 [email protected] 9 Telopea St Video p, Photos p Daniel O'Shea, Productions www.mpproductions.com.au Redfern NSW 2016 Les Daniel

The Song Company The Sinking of the 1/97 Colin Bright Amanda Stewart The Song Company Eugene Ragghianti 2 9351 7939 2 9692 8581 [email protected] Seymour Centre, PO Box 553 CD p, Photos p, Score a, Rainbow Warrior www.songcompany.com.au Broadway NSW 2007 Script a

The Song Company Quito 11/98 Martin Wesley-Smith Peter Wesley-Smith The Song Company Eugene Ragghianti 2 9351 7939 2 9692 8581 [email protected] Seymour Centre, PO Box 553 CD apc, CD-ROM ap, www.songcompany.com.au Broadway NSW 2007 Score a, Script ap

Stella Liquid Days & 10/99 Taverner, Glass, Reckless Moments Barry Plews 8 8232 3990 8 8232 1886 [email protected] PO Box 7162 Hutt St Video ap, CD c, Photos ap Dark Nights Edwards, Gubaidulina, 0412 484 430 www.reckless.on.net Adelaide SA 5000 Gorecki

Theatre of Image Grandma’s Shoes 1/00 Graeme Koehne Libby Hathorn Theatre of Image Neil Hunt 2 9360 4734 2 9360 6256 [email protected] 4 Clifton Reserve Video a, Score a, Photos a Opera Australia www.theatreofimage. Surry Hills NSW 2010 citysearch.com.au

Vitalstatistix My Vicious Angel 7/1998 Christine Evans Christine Evans Vitalstatistix National Catherine Fitzgerald 8 8447 6211 8 8447 7577 [email protected] PO Box 459 Video apc, Score a, Script a, Women’s Theatre Port Adelaide SA 5015 Photos ap 26

Works in Progress director Jan Ritsema and British writer The three CD set of Larry Sitsky’s The and premiered at the 1997 Festival of Aphids’ major new work for 2000 is Paul Mayersberg; David Young and Golem (librettist Gwen Harwood) from Sydney) about the French bombing of Maps, with composers David Young Louise Curham will collaborate with the Opera Australia performances is to be a Greenpeace nuclear-testing protest and Juliana Hodkinson (Denmark-UK) company on an installation-based launched by the ABC in 2000. Sitsky is vessel; and Vanunu (1994), produced working with provocative theatre performance, Lacrimae Rerum, for mid- planning a new opera based on Xavier and composed by Robert Iolini and designer Louise Beck from Denmark’s 2001; and Martin Wesley-Smith is at Herbert’s classic Australian novel, David Nerlich, about Mordechai Operanord. work on The Chimera (working title) for Capricornia, with poet Andrew Taylor Vanunu’s exposure of Israel’s six singers, CD-ROM, live computer as librettist. production of nuclear weapons and his Raffaele Marcellino is working on audio processing and live and prepared consequent imprisonment. These works The Flight of Les Darcy, a “physical video, for a performance about genetic In 1998, Andrea rieniets made can be heard at the Australian Music opera” with a libretto by Robert engineering. a trip to sub-Antarctica as a guest Centre library in The Rocks, Sydney. Jarman, to be workshopped by Music of the Australian National Antarctic Theatre Sydney in 2000. Pukamani Michael Smetanin (creator of the Research Expeditions. The trip inspired From ABC Radio Drama recent (working title), composed by Michael music for Howard Barker’s play The a contemporary popular song cycle and broadcasts include The Anatomy Atherton and Matthew Doyle in Ecstatic Bible for the 2000 Telstra soundscape planned to be performed Lesson of Dr Ruysch (text and lyrics collaboration with the Tiwi people of Adelaide Festival) is composing Gaugin as Holiday in Antarctica by the singer Hilary Bell, composer Sarah de Jong) Bathhurst Island, will be premiered by to a libretto by Alison Croggan for adrift in a sea of multi-layered projected about an obsessive scientific mind at the same company in November 2000. Chamber Made Opera. Michael is images. rieniets is in concert in the work in 17th century Europe, and also one of the mdTV contributors, Telstra Adelaide Festival 2000 presenting Testimony (composer, the saxophonist Physical theatre company Rock’n’Roll working with David Freeman on some of the songs from the cycle. Sandy Evans, text by jazz poet Yusef Circus will premiere Sonata for Ten Floating. As well as Gaugin, Komunyakaa), a work about Charlie Hands in 2000 with Tamara Anna Chamber Made Opera’s commissions In 2000, Gretchen Miller will be Parker, featuring over thirty of Cislowska, a leading young for production in 2000-1 include presenting a staged version of her work Australia’s finest jazz musicians and Australian concert pianist (who records Motherland of the Foreign Son Inland, originally broadcast on ABC a guest appearance by Kurt Elling. with Chandos and ABC Classics). (composer Dominique Probst, Classic FM’s The Listening Room. The piano sometimes provides the librettist Le Quy Duong) about a References score for the physical action, is French businessman and his Australian Music theatre on television Books sometimes a participant and is wife haunted by Vietnam’s blood- mdTV is a unique project, creating Arias, recent Australian music theatre, sometimes under attack. drenched past; The Hive (composer music drama for television and aiming John Jenkins and Rainer Linz, Matthew Hindson, text by Sam to generate new audiences for the Red House Editions, Andrew Schultz (Black River) writes Sejavka) about the British poet Rupert form. Two hundred and seventy Footscray, Victoria, Australia, 1997 from London that Going Into Shadows, Brooke; Walkabout (text by Wesley submissions were received, fifteen his new three act opera to a libretto by Enoch), based on Nicholas Roeg’s film; short-listed and finally four proposals Australia, exploring the musical Julianne Schultz will be presented by and a dance-opera The Tsar Saltan, were selected. The collaborators landscape, edited by Caitlin Rowley, the Guildhall Opera School, London in composed by Elena Kats-Chernin include leading composers and popular Australian Music Centre, June 2001. to a text by Pushkin and produced musicians, prominent writers and Sydney, New South Wales, 1998 in collaboration with choreographer performers: One Night the Moon (writer In northern Queensland Michael . John Romeril, composer/musical Journals Whiticker is creating music and text director Mairead Hannan, composer- Sounds Australian, no.15, 1987, for Bone Map with performance artists ’s Fahrenheit 451 performer Paul Kelly, composer Kev Music Theatre, edited by Richard Vella Rebecca Youdell and Russell Milledge. has had a recent season in Helsinki. Carmody); The Widower (based on the Sounds Australian, no. 49, 1997, Bone Map will be presented in Cairns, He’s currently working on score and poems of Les Murray; writer-performer Words and Music, edited by Townsville and Brisbane between libretto for a chamber opera based Lyndon Terracini; composer Elena Keith Gallasch May and September 2000. on H. Rider Haggard’s She to be Kats-Chernin; director Paul Cox); Opera opera, Australasia’s independent For 2001, Whiticker is composing premiered at the Port Fairy Festival, Floating (composer Michael monthly newspaper of the musical Aspirations/Inspirations with librettist Victoria in 2000. Smetanin, director David Freeman); theatre, edited by David Gyger Michael Beresford-Plummer. Double Head (writers Daniel McNulty, RealTime, Australia’s innovative arts Two works commissioned by Opera Paul Healy, George Merryman; bi-monthly, editors Keith Gallasch, Composer Colin Bright and director Australia have been in development composer-director Andrew Lancaster; Virginia Baxter Nigel Kellaway are developing a new with OzOpera. Cosmonaut (composer composer Antony Partos; original work on sexual taboos about Queer David Chesworth, librettist Tony story Supersonic). mdTV is a Websites and Gay sex juxtaposed with the MacGregor, director/dramaturg collaboration between OzOpera, Australian Music Centre: morality of violence—war as morally Michael Kantor) portrays “a poetic, ABC TV Arts and Entertainment, http://www.amcoz.com.au and socially acceptable. metaphysial relationship between a MusicArtsDance Films (best known for RealTime: doomed Soviet Russian Cosmonaut their award-winning 1993 opera film http://www.rtimearts.com./~opencity/ Richard Vella’s work-in-progress for literally floating through space, and a Black River) and the Australia Council. New Music Network: Calculated Risks Opera is Pulp Cities, space-obsessed girl isolated in her http://www.nmn.org.au a site-specific whodunnit which suburban bedroom.” The second Music theatre on radio capitalises on inherent narratives commission, (composer On ABC Classic FM’s innovative provided by the architecture and Richard Mills, librettist Peter program The Listening Room, cityscape of the city it is being performed Goldsworthy) “is based on the true works broadcast that extend the in. Richard is also planning a revised sequence of events which followed possibilities of music theatre include version of Tales of Love for late 2000. the wreck of a Dutch ship off the composer-producer-violinist Jon Western Australian coast four centuries Rose’s The Long-Suffering Anna The Song Company’s projected works ago...(and an eventual descent into) Magdalena (1997) about Bach’s wife; include, for the end of 2000, Liber de cannibalism and moral oblivion.” composer Colin Bright and librettist Ludo, an international collaboration Batavia will be performed in concert Amanda Stewart’s The Sinking of the about gambling from Australian at the 2001 Melbourne International Rainbow Warrior (1999, performed by composer Mary Finsterer, Dutch Festival of the Arts. the Song Company and austraLYSIS 27

Funding, Production Arts Festivals & Events commission, deckchair theatre - Australia Council, Ministry for the Arts; Opera Australia - & Management Credits Australia Council, Performing Lines; ArtsWA; Arena - Arts Victoria, Australia Commonwealth Government through The Boy from Oz - Gannon-Fox Council, The City of Melbourne; Department of Communication, Chamber Made Opera - Australia Productions; theaterMalpertuis/MOB Melbourne International Festival Information Technology and the Arts, Council, Arts Victoria; NORPA - Productions, Slow Love - of the Arts, The Ghost Wife - and NSW Ministry for the Arts, Arts Australia Council, NSW Ministry for the Department of Culture of the Flemish Melbourne, Adelaide and Sydney Victoria; OzOpera - as for Opera Arts; The Theft of Sita - Australia community, Provincial Council of West Festivals, Australia Council*; doppio- Australia; IHOS Opera - Arts Tasmania, Council*, Adelaide & Melbourne Flanders, the City of Tielt; Music para//elo - Arts SA, Australia Council; Australia Council; Calculated Risks Festivals, Performing Lines; Laquiem, Theatre Sydney - Australia Council, Vitalstatistix - Arts SA, Australia Opera - Australia Council; Crying in Australia Council; ELISION, NSW Ministry for the Arts; Night and Council; The Song Company - Public Places - Australian National The Inferno - Arts Queensland, Dreams, Australia Council*, Macdonell Australia Council, NSW Ministry for the Playwrights Conference, Arts Victoria’s Australia Council, 2000 Adelaide Promotions; Condanza, Barbara O - Arts; Maximum Legroom - Arts SA, Research & Development Cubed Festival; ELISION, Yue Ling Jie, The Hebbel Theatre Berlin, Schauspiel Reckless Moments Pty Ltd; Graeme Program. Adelaide and Melbourne Festivals, Bonn and Festspielhaus Hellerau Leak - Australia Council, Arts Victoria; Arts Queensland, Australia Council*; Dresden; The opera Project - Linsey Pollak, Performing Lines; *This project has been assisted Queensland Theatre Company - Australia Council; REM Theatre - Aphids, City of Melbourne, Australia by the Australia Council, through the Australia Council, Arts Queensland; Australia Council, NSW Ministry for the Council; Theatre of Image - Opera Commonwealth Government’s Major White Baptist Abba Fan - Olympics Arts, Marguerite Pepper Productions; Australia, Australia Council, NSW Festivals Initiative.

Photography credits

Page Work Photographer

4 The Burrow Ponch Hawkes 5 The Two Executioners Ponch Hawkes 6-7 The Mercenary Graham Batterbury 7 Laquiem Justine Kerrigan 8 transmisi Andrea Higgins 9 The Sunshine Club Rob MacColl White Baptist Abba Fan Tracey Schramm 10 Slow Love Steven Massart 11 Night & Dreams Tracey Schramm 12 The Romatic Trilogy Heidrun Löhr 13 ToteMMusic Miki-nobu Komatsu Kate’n’Shiner Ashley de Prazer Eat Your Young Jeff Busby 14 The Ghost Wife Jeff Busby The Last Child Jesse Reynolds 15 Acceptable Behaviour Joanna Majchrowski My Vicious Angel Rosey Boehm 16 Quito Original image Steve Cox Computer manipulation Kia Mistilis The Song Company Dean Golja 17 The Art of Noises Tracey Schramm Liquid Days & Dark Nights Barry Plews The Art of Food Jenny Pollak 18 Grandma’s Shoes Branco Gaica Ricefields David Young 19 Love Burns Jeff Busby 20 The Divine Kiss Rob MacColl The Last Supper Lyn Pool 21 Skin Ponch Hawkes 28

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