COVER1:2 IF YOU’RE GOING TO TELL PEOPLE THE TRUTH, YOU’D BETTER MAKE THEM LAUGH. OTHERWISE THEy’LL KILL YOU. GEORGE BERNARD SHAW 2 2012 Season BURIED ciTY I’M YOUR MAN THYESTES BABYTEETH EVERY BREATH FOOD STRANGE INTERLUDE OLD MAN DEATH OF A SALESMAN CONVERSATION PIECE PRIVATE LIVES MEDEA BEAUTIFUL ONE DAY DON’T TAKE YOUR LOVE TO TOWN THE THEATRE IS THE ONLY INSTITUTION IN THE WORLD WHICH HAS BEEN DYING FOR FOUR THOUSAND YEARS AND HAS NEVER SUCCUMBED. JOHN STEINBECK 4 Contents Ralph’s Message 6 CARRIAGEWORKS Thyestes 10 UPstairs Buried City 12 Babyteeth 14 Every Breath 16 Strange Interlude 18 Death of a Salesman 20 Conversation Piece 22 Private Lives 24 Beautiful One Day 26 DowNstairs I’m Your Man 30 Food 32 Old Man 34 Medea 36 Don’t Take Your Love to Town 38 Sunday Forum 40 Subscribe 41 Belvoir Loyalty Program & 30-Down Club 43 How to Book 44 Prizes for Early Subscribers 46 Single Tickets 47 General Information 48 Thank You 52 2012 Season Calendar 54 Subscription Booking Form Dear Friends, When I sat down to write a note for our shows virtually sold out to subscribers season book at this time last year, I really before they went on sale to the general had no idea what lay ahead of us. To tell public, and others just after they had the truth we were making it up as we opened. Hopefully you’ll all like our 2012 went along – programming the season Season just as much. If so, buying a by gut instinct, bluffing our way through. subscription may be the only way to Now, as I write, we have just passed guarantee that you’ll get a chance to the halfway point in that first season. see our shows. Already six shows have come and gone, So, to 2012. We’ve kept our recipe and two more are currently playing. I intact: a mix of new plays by exciting cannot tell you how pleasurable it is to local playwrights and classic plays see a production come to life, to watch re-imagined by the best and most something that began as an idea in the original directors we could find. I’m mind of a playwright or a director be excited about each and every one played out by living breathing people on of the 14 projects. Programming a one of our stages. season is a ruthless process: we gather But it is also sad; theatre is the most ideas and dreams from dozens of the ephemeral of art forms, and those country’s finest theatre-makers and then six shows are now just memories begin the painful process of culling that living in the minds of those of us who list down to fit into the time and space were lucky enough to see them. I’ll that we have in the year. Some beautiful never forget Ewen Leslie’s devastating ideas end up on the cutting room realisation that Hedvig is not his natural floor, but what remains, the season we daughter in Simon Stone’s beautiful The present to you here in this book, are the Wild Duck. Or Emily Barclay’s breakfast most thrilling, the most original, and the of vodka and cornflakes in Benedict most exciting projects that we could Andrews’ The Seagull. Or Robyn find. All bundled up into a delicious Nevin’s extraordinary embodiment of season, just for your dining pleasure. Ana in Lally Katz’s touching and original See you at the theatre, I hope. Neighbourhood Watch. But unlike a great film or a beautiful painting there Ralph Myers is no way of revisiting those moments. ARTISTIC DIRECTOR They were the fleeting confluence of those particular actors on that particular PS. I must add one thank you: led by stage saying those particular lines at my partner-in-crime General Manager that particular time. Like life, theatre Brenna Hobson is the most dedicated, must be enjoyed in the moment, passionate and hardworking team because there is no going back. imaginable. You may not see them on I’m enormously pleased that audiences stage, but what you do see certainly have responded so enthusiastically to would never happen without them. the 2011 Season so far. Several of our Thanks, team. 66 7 RALPH 8 upSTaiRS THYESTES 15 JANUARy – 19 FEBRUARY AT CARRIAGEWORKS It is the most infamous of all the ancients groundbreaking – gentle, disturbing, – the story of the deposed king whose funny, beautiful and chilling in 90 minutes. sons were slaughtered and served to Sydney Festival and Belvoir head to him by his brother in a feast. CarriageWorks with this dangerously smart excavation of our ancient urges The Hayloft Project stunned audiences towards love and destruction. with this brilliant re-imagining at Melbourne’s Malthouse Theatre in 2010. Thyestes contains nudity, strong sexual Their starting point: THESE MYTHS ARE themes, violent references and very REAL. The action of the show, much like coarse language. It is not recommended our lives, takes place in the banalities and for people under 18. ordinarinesses between atrocities. A masterpiece of writing, a triumph Featuring three extraordinary of staging, and a sublime act of performances, the result is truly performance. The Age Co-Written & Directed by SIMON STONE after SENECA Co-Writers THOMAS HENNING, CHRIS RYAN, MARK WINTER Set & Costume Designer CLAUDE MARCOS Composer & Sound Designer STEFAN GREGORY Lighting Designer GOVIN RUBEN Dramaturg ANNE-LOUISE SARKS With THOMAS HENNING, CHRIS RYAN, MARK WINTER Presented by Belvoir and Sydney Festival in association with CarriageWorks. Originally created by THE HAYLOFT PROJECT. A Malthouse Melbourne Commission. This production will be staged at CarriageWorks, not Belvoir St Theatre. 1010 MARK BURIED CITY 6 JANUARY – 5 FEBRUARY Belvoir and the acclaimed Urban make new lives on old land. Director Theatre Projects (UTP) have joined Alicia Talbot’s investigation of real-time forces for this big-picture show about a action and filmic panorama continues city and society redefining itself. in this special collaboration between Belvoir and Bankstown-based UTP. Late one night in the gutted façade of The work is being made in consultation a building primed for redevelopment, with the Construction, Forestry, Mining a group of security workers, labourers, and Energy Union (CFMEU) and their and a local teenager find themselves Retired Members Association, African haunting the same territory. One by one Women Australia Inc and Gadigal they rule a line in the sand, and by dawn Information Service Aboriginal Corporation. they’re set for a showdown over who builds the future and who gets to own it. The troubadour of Redfern-Waterloo Perry Keyes makes his theatrical debut Buried City is an ambitious new work in this surprising show about the about ever-changing cities like, well, kindness of strangers and the brutality Sydney – where waves of immigrants of old friends. By RAIMONDO Cortese Original Concept & Director ALICIA TALBOT Set Designer MIRABELLE WOUTERS Singer-Songwriter PERRY KEYES Sound Designer PAUL PRESTIPINO Choreographer KathY COGILL UTP Executive Producer MICHELLE KOTEVSKI Community Liaison ANNIE WINTER Co-Devisors & Performers VALERIE BERRY, PERRY KEYES, COLIN MOODY, EFFIE NKRUMAH, HAZEM SHAMMAS, MEYNE WYatt A co-production with Urban Theatre Projects and Sydney Festival. This work was first developed through a commission from Harbourfront Centre, Toronto, Canada. 1212 PERRY BABYTEETH 11 FEBRUARY – 18 MARCH Time for a comedy – a mad, gorgeous, the humdrum world around us and bittersweet comedy about how good it sees something radically alive. Dogs, is not to be dead yet. Paganini, figs, an eight-year-old Vietnamese violin prodigy, morphine, A group of more or less ordinary clear skies and a Latvian immigrant are Sydneysiders go about their lives: Anna amongst the magnificent conflagration makes toast, Henry dresses for work, of ingredients which make up this Milla catches the train to school, Moses wonderful, funny play. Written specially deals drugs – that kind of thing. But for Belvoir, its theme is what Rita calls hovering above this unholy parade of the violent sweetness of life. life is the sobering fact that Milla will die before her 17th birthday. Eamon Flack (The End, As You Like It) directs a play of unexpected brilliance Rita Kalnejais is a young playwright about that very old and almost of uncommon genius. She looks at forgotten quality of life: grace. By RITA KALNEJAIS Director EAMON FLACK Set Designer ROBERT COUSINS Costume Designer ALICE BABIDGE Lighting Designer NIKLAS PAJANTI With EAMON FARREN, GREG STONE 1414 EAMON EVERY BREATH 24 MARCH – 29 APRIL No-one would doubt that Benedict guard, Chris. He spends long hours, Andrews has a vivid imagination. As day and night, by the pool, watching. a director he has taken some of our One by one, in their private universes most revered classics and turned them of plate glass and good food, each on their heads. The Seagull, Measure family member is drawn to Chris. for Measure, Who’s Afraid of Virginia A dangerous game of fantasy and Woolf? and Sydney Theatre Company’s privilege begins. The War of the Roses and The Season Every Breath is an extraordinary debut at Sarsparilla thrilled and scandalised written by a theatre-maker at the top of audiences with their audacity, clarity and his game. Darkly funny, sweetly eerie, theatrical chutzpah. Now Andrews has and strangely familiar, this is about what turned his hand to playwriting. happens when prosperity gives us the A family under threat – from what, we licence to see the world as we want don’t know – hires a young security to see it. Written & Directed by BENEDICT ANDREWS Set & Costume Designer ALICE BABIDGE With ELOISE MIGNON, DYLAN YOUNG 1616 ELOISE STRANGE INTERLUDE 5 MAY – 17 JUNE Three decades before he wrote Long marriage with Sam Evans, then begins Day’s Journey into Night, Eugene O’Neill a 15-year affair with his best friend wrote a sprawling and adventurous Ned Darrell.