ENGLAND BY TIM CROUCH CO-PRESENTED WITH NATHAN BOOTH, MATT SEERY & METRO ARTS

19 - 29 APRIL 2017 Places and people blur. Brisbane, England, hotel, hospital, beyond. It’s a tour to the end of the world. NOTE FROM THE DIRECTOR ENGLAND by Tim Crouch is a playful, rebellious work. It’s mischievously difficult to define: a site-specific theatre work for galleries, comprised of two acts at either end of a stylistic spectrum. It gives no indication of set or lighting, no stage directions and no allocation of lines to specific characters or actors. It also refuses to ever let the number of characters match the number of performers ‘onstage’. In fact, it is clear on only one thing: that an audience and two performers meet one night in an art gallery. Here we are. With one foot firmly planted in the Metro Arts Gallery,ENGLAND steps through the very real (and beautiful) visual artworks around us, peering into the life of a dying woman on the other side of the world. The value of art and human life are pitched against each other, with the consequences yet to be seen. It has been a joy to navigate Tim’s endlessly rewarding script with Barbara, Steven and our staggeringly talented creative team, and to join Nathan Booth and Metro Arts in co-presenting this Queensland Premiere season. Thank you for joining us for this exhibition / this performance / this gallery tour through lives, across borders and beyond. We hope you enjoy.

TIM CROUCH Tim is an OBIE award-winning British playwright and theatre maker. He was an actor for many years before starting to write – and still performs in much of his work. His plays for adult audiences include My Arm (Prix Italia, 2004), ENGLAND – a play for galleries (Fringe First, Herald Angel and Total Theatre Award, 2007), An Oak Tree (OBIE, 2007), The Author (a Royal Court Theatre commission, winner of a Total Theatre award and the John Whiting Award, 2010), what happens to the hope at the end of the evening (Almeida, 2013) and Adler & Gibb (a Royal Court Theatre co-commission with the Center Theatre Group, LA, 2014). He has also written for younger audiences, including Shopping for Shoes (Brian Way Award for best young person’s play, 2007) and a series of five plays inspired by Shakespeare’s lesser characters – I, Shakespeare. I, Cinna (the poet) was commissioned and produced by the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) in 2012 and was nominated for the Writers Guild of Great Britain’s award for Best Play for Younger Audiences. I, Malvolio played at the New Victory Theatre on 42nd Street, NYC, in January 2013 and continues to tour extensively around the world. For the RSC Tim has edited and directed The Taming of the Shrew and King Lear – for young audiences. His production of King Lear played at the Park Avenue Armoury, NYC, in 2012 and was filmed for New York City’s Department of Education. Tim has worked as a writer on other projects including May for Probe dance company and Cadavre Exquis for the Dutch company Kassys, in collaboration with the Nature Theatre of Oklahoma and Nicole Beutler. Tim tours his work extensively - both nationally and internationally. Tim Crouch: Plays One is published by Oberon Books. Tim is currently under commission to the Unicorn Theatre, London. His latest show, The Complete Deaths is a collaboration with award winning group Spymonkey. It has just completed a tour of the UK. ENGLAND was first performed at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh in 2007. PERFORMERS BARBARA LOWING Barbara is the first Queensland graduate of The Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts (WAAPA). Since her graduation in 1986, she has worked all over Australia and internationally. She has performed with Queensland Theatre, the Melbourne Theatre Company, The Hole in the Wall Theatre Company, The State Theatre Company of South Australia, Griffin Theatre Company, St John’s Cathedral, Restaged Histories Project, La Boite, The Empire Theatre, The Queensland Arts Council, Dead Puppet Society, Shake and Stir Theatre Company, Ellen Belloo Productions, and The Performers Independent Theatre Company and has been affiliated with the Sydney Theatre Company. In 2007 Barbara won a Theatre Critics Matilda Award for Best Actress and two MEAA/ Equity awards for Best Actress and Best Ensemble Cast for Away, and a Goldie Award for Best Commercial Voice Over Artist, Queensland. Barbara won the Gold Matilda Award in 2013 for her body of work. Barbara has been Equity/MEAA member since 1987. STEVEN TANDY Steven Tandy has been a professional actor for over 40 years, graduating from NIDA in both Acting (1971) and Directing (1995). Steven’s Film and Television credits include the role of Tom Sullivan in the highly acclaimed Crawfords-produced series, The Sullivans (1976 to 1982) and his recent film and TV credits includeThe Family Law, Talking Back at Thunder, Secrets and Lies, Mabo, Sea Patrol, All the Rivers Run, Mortified, Misery Guts, Sons and Daughters, The Fremantle Conspiracy, Gettin’ Square, Girl Clock!, The Horseman, Jogs Trot, Hurricane Smith, Mercy Mission and Rough Diamonds. Some of his many Theatre credits include: Noises Off (Queensland Theatre & Melbourne Theatre Company 2017 / Ensemble Theatre 2002), Happy Days, Bastard Territory, Romeo and Juliet, An Oak Tree, Expresso Bongo, Juno and the Paycock, The National Health, Who Cares?, Love’s Labour’s Lost, 25 Down (Queensland Theatre). Amigos, Last Drinks (for which he received a Gold Matilda Award), James and Johnno, Summer Wonderland, The White Earth (La Boite). Cats, Guys and Dolls, Oklahoma!, Wizard of Oz, Jesus Christ Superstar, Aladdin (Harvest Rain Theatre Company).

VISUAL ARTISTS AMELIA K FULTON Amelia Kate Fulton, is a visual artist based in Brisbane who predominantly uses two techniques with her artwork; line art using ink and water colour and pointillism. Amelia has exhibited with RAW Artists, Zion Lutheran Community, Vena Cava and numerous market places and is a part of The Brisbane Collective, The Arthouse Collective and is the founder of The Average Soul’s Guide to Osteophobia; an initiative to raise awareness about mental illness in Brisbane through art and photography. Amelia’s work revolves around two main themes; intricacy and simplicity. She has always been fascinated by the natural world. Amelia grew up with a father who made sure that she would take note of the details and intricacies of the nature by teaching her to look for the smallest but most wonderful and often unexpected characteristics of all things; the texture of a leaf, the surprises a seedpod holds, and the depth of detail in a feather. Thus, much of her work focuses on flora, fauna, the moon or the human body. Amelia’s works explore these intricacies, delving into the tiny, harmonious, perfect details that join to create a whole, perfect form. BRIGID HOLT Brigid Holt is an artist who has had little exposure but kept a gravity of work in her disposal for many years. She is now based in Brisbane not actively in the art field at current although has been building her portfolio rapidly for some time in hope for future exhibition. Brigid’s works do not consist of distinct concepts and are not inspired by social or political statements so they may at times seem as though they have less meaning, though they do hold a great gravity to herself. These pieces are reflections and reactions to/of people and circumstance within relationships Brigid has had throughout her time so far. Each have no detailed or analytical explanation, only one describing the events and emotions that surrounded its conception. It is her hope that these do not seek praise but offer comfort and relationship to a viewer, getting from it a connection for a time they had similarly. This can allow them to accept or reject the work depending on their personal attachment or aesthetic opinion. This work hopes not to demand attention to skill but attention to feeling and essence of person hopefully making people feel a little more understood or alternatively understanding in their experiences. DANA LAWRIE Dana Lawrie is an emerging artist based in Brisbane. Her practice sits within expanded notions of self-portraiture, using repetitive and transformative processes to negotiate a relationship between permanence and impermanence. Her work embraces an anxious optimism, towards both life and death, while situating the self-portrait as a product of excessive inward reflection—one that sets out to reconcile but ultimately makes light of, or evades, a deeper meditation on mortality. Further to this, rather than resist the notion of the pointless or shallow interrogation of transience, Dana’s practice embraces and builds on the subtle humour that might be found in the struggle between hopeful and hopeless. CHARLIE MYERS Charlie Myers is a budding Brisbane visual artist, specialising in mixed media paintings. ‘Pink’ and ‘Blue’ incorporate water colour, ink, charcoal and paint onto found recycled papers. The works play with the ideas of contrast and juxtaposition with tone, as well as with grid shapes versus organic lines. The works were commissioned in 2015 for a private collection and are on loan for the England exhibition. Myers is a formally untrained artist, he dabbled in the QUT visual art disciplines of art practice and art history, but believes art school is the death of good art. DAMIEN PASQUALE There is nothing tentative about the work of Damien Pasquale. Using rugged but controlled brush strokes, Pasquale explores gestural movement and architectural structures in his layered compositions. Delivering vibrant collisions of abstract expressionism with bold architectural concepts, Pasquale draws you into a world where everyday objects inspire monochromic formations that burst from the seams with exploding texture, vivid colour and iridescence. With a nod to luminaries Willem de Kooning, Jack Tworkov and particularly Franz Kline, his bold monochromatic paintings pay homage to the origins of abstract expressionism in that their essence is the spontaneous nature of their creation. These are works that celebrate the action painters of the past with their textural inconsistencies, brush movements and visible records of the artistic process, but also look towards contemporaries such as Pierre Soulages, whose mastery of black pigment is fundamental to his practice. (Written by Carrie McCarthy) CREATIVES Nathan Booth Erin Handford Creative Producer Stage Manager Matt Seery Todd MacDonald Director Directorial Mentor Maddie Nixon Luke Monsour (Bulimba Studios) Dramaturg Photographer Melina Wightman Sean Dowling Dramaturg Designer Schae Featuring artworks by Sound Designer Amelia K Fulton, Brigid Holt, Dana Lawrie, Charlie Myers, Isabella Hall and Damien Pasquale. Sound Designer MAJOR SUPPORTERS Anonymous, Aaron Cupples, Adam and Tania Seery, David Berthold, Gietzel/Halton Family, Matthew Higgins and Wesley Enoch. A donation was also made in memory of Carol Burns. POZIBLE SUPPORTERS Amanda, Bella and Baxter Seery, Darryn Swaby, David and Nicholas Morton-Paine, Emma Healy, Gabby Gregory, Gwilym Temple, Jack Harris, Jade Ellis, Jo Thomas, Jonathan O’Brien, Kristen Maloney, Matthew Dear & Candice Holyoak, Morton Family, Nathan Sibthorpe, Nicholas Seery, Patrick Hayes, Sophie Bannister, Steve Hall and Kim B, Thomas Bartsch, Timothy Brown, Todd MacDonlad, Tom Markiewicz, Tracey-Lee Nicholas and Will Kelly. THANK YOU Jo Thomas, Kate Usher, Amy-Clare McCarthy, Emmaly Langridge and all at Metro Arts, Todd MacDonald, Katherine Hoepper and Jess Ralph and all at La Boite Theatre Company, Shari Irwin, Samantha French and all at Queensland Theatre, Sean Dowling, Luke Monsour (Bulimba Studios), Sandra Gattenhof, Emma Joenpolvi, Ben Hughes, Jess Carstens-Donnelly and Aleea Monsour. Jo Thomas Creative Director

Jess Murphy Business Director

Kate Usher Associate Producer

Emmaly Langridge Communications Manager

Shani Gould Programming and Marketing Coordinator metroarts.com.au Find us on Facebook and Instagram

Metro Arts acknowledges the traditional custodians of Brisbane, the Turrbal and Jagera people and their unique relationship with their ancestral country. We pay respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Elders, and recognise their strength, wisdom and creativity.

Cover image by Luke Monsour and Sean Dowling. Inside images by [email protected]

ENGLAND by Tim Crouch is a part of Metro Arts’ LCL Program, a platform for local artists to present contemporary theatre. Metro Arts is supported by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body. Metro Arts and ENGLAND by Tim Crouch are supported by the Queensland Government through Arts Queensland, part of the Department of the Premier and Cabinet. Metro Arts is proudly supported by Brisbane City Council. This project was supported by Queensland Theatre through the provision of in-kind venues.