October 2001 2001 Next Wave Fest'va I Brooklyn PhilHarmontc Denise Green, For Merce 2000 BAM Next Wave Festival sponsor: PHiliP MORRIS ~lAGf8lll COMPANIES INC- Brooklyn Academy of Music Bruce C. Ratner Chairman of the Board Alan H. Fishman Chairman, Campaign for BAM Karen Brooks Hopkins President Joseph V. Melillo Executive Producer presents Cloudstreet Company B Belvoir / Black Swan Theatre Approximate BAM Harvey Lichtenstein Theater running time: Oct 2-6, 2001 at 6:30pm 5 hours with one Oct 7 at 2pm 45 minute meal break and one Adapted by Nick Enright and Justin Monjo 20 minute From the novel by Tim Winton intermission Directed by Neil Armfield Set design Robert Cousins Costume design Tess Schofield Lighti ng design Mark Howett Composer lain Grandage Sound design Gavin Tempany Choreography Kate Champion Assistant director Anatoly Frusin Assistant designer/costume supervisor Georgina 'Babs' Yabsley American stage manager Kim A. Beringer Next Wave Down Under is presented in partnership with the Australia Council for the Arts, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade through the Australia International Cultural Council, and the Australian Film Commission. Support is provided by The Australian Consulate-General. Qantas Airways is the official airline for Next Wave Down Under. Opening night support is provided by Jacob's Creek Wines and Wyndham Estate Wines. Cloudstreet is presented with the financial support of the Australia Council and Queensland government. This presentation of Cloudstreet is supported by the Commonwealth through the Cultural Development The actors in Programme of the Department of Communications, Information Cloudstreet are Technology and the Arts. National and international tour produced by Arts appearing with the Projects Australia. The world premiere of this production was staged with permission of Actors' the support of the1998 Sydney Festival and the 1998 Festival of Perth Equity Association. and was assisted through the Major Festivals' initiative of the Australia The American stage manager is a mem­ Council, the Australian Government's arts and funding advisory body. ber of Actors' Equity Association. BAM thanks Theatre Development Fund for its support of this production. 25 Performers Sam Pickles/Mr. Wentworth Roy Billing Black man/American pilot Wayne Blair Hattie LambNeronica/Merle/Pansy Mullet Anna Brockway Chub Pickles/Doctor/Angry father/Fred Blunt/Sarge Andrew Crabbe Lester Lamb/Lawyer John Gaden Rose Pickles Claire Jones Oriel Lamb/Mrs. Tisborne Gillian Jones Lon Lamb/Wogga McBride/Headley John Leary Red Lamb/Barmaid/Darleen/Anthea/Mrs. Clay Eliza Logan Elaine Lamb/Lucy Wentworth/Meredith Rebecca Massey Ted Pickles/Gerry Clay!Toby Raven Travis McMahon Dolly Pickles/AI ma Kris McQuade Quick Lamb Christopher Pitman Fish Lamb Daniel Wyllie Musician Matthew Hoy Additional Production manager Heather Clarke production Company manager Miranda Jacques credits Stage manager Mary Macrae Deputy stage manager Brigid Collaery Deputy stage manager Juliette Kingcott Head electrician Peter Herbert Head mechanist Byron Shaw. Mechanist Phil McNaughton Production photographer Heidrun Lohr Adaptors' Note from Nick Enright and Justin Monjo The idea for this play began with Justin Monjo, who had adapted another Winton novel, That Eye the Sky, with Richard Roxburgh for a Sydney production in 1994, which subsequently toured Australia. Justin invited Nick Enright to work on this adaptation, on which we embarked in 1996. We had much help and encouragement at every stage of the process. Neil Armfield and his cre­ ative team were our constant and generous collaborators; indeed the design and staging approach evolved in tandem with the text, before, during, and after a two-week workshop in May 1997, in which we also drew on the advice and participation of a remarkable company of actors, some of whom later formed the nucleus of the original cast. From this workshop emerged the present three-act shape of the piece, and the characters' use of third-person narration as a kind of matrix for this wide-ranging twenty-year story. We did further rewriting during the first rehearsal period (November/December 1997). The book was a constant presence in rehearsal (indeed there seemed to be a well-thumbed copy under every actor's chair!). It was not only the source of nearly all the words spoken on the stage; it offered a view of human relations and of the life of our country which informed the process of making this play. The present text incorporates new cuts and changes made for the 1999 and 2001 tours. Sydney audiences who saw the original season will notice significant revisions to the third act. We thank all those who have worked with us at every stage and acknowledge the help of Douglas Hedge, who made an exhaustive synopsis of the book and assisted us through the early stages of adaptation. Tim Winton showed us around Perth, then left us to our work. We thank him not only for his astonishing novel but also for trusting us to do our best by it. 26 While we were preparing for the original production of Cloudstreet in 1998, Tim Winton took us around a number of stretches on the Swan River near Fremantle that had been important to him as a child growing up, and that he was wanting to pass on as an experience to his children. He told us how Cloudstreet had begun out of an impulse he'd had, before leaving Australia some years ago to take up residency overseas, to visit all the places around the river and Perth that were sacred to the history of his family-places that confirmed his identity because of the family stories that stayed alive there. They were nearly all gone, Tim said. Knocked down, rebuilt, dug up, concreted over, eradicated. "We're going to have nothing to pass on to our children but the sky," Tim said. "No sense of place or the growing inherited sense of culture that gathers around a city or a particular physical environment. The memory is being lost, and without that memory there is uIti mately no civiIization." Why is it that in Australia places often don't even last half a generation before they get rubbed out and started again? What is this insecurity? Are we so fearful of the past that we keep breaking it up and covering it over? I wrote these notes the morning that the Senate met to discuss the government's new "Wik" legislation. They all seemed hellbent on eradicating the "insecurity" of Native Title: white Australians seem to be asking (wen, demanding) that black Australians forget their culture as well. They'll throw money at them hoping they will just go away rather than sit down and talk about a solution that looks after everyone, the land especially. What I love about Cloudstreet is the generosity of its embrace, its spirit of inclusion and its sense of the accidents of love that create life and ·make us who we· are. The big old house at No. 1 Cloud Street is Australia perhaps, and Tim's story, if we're open to it, is a kind of map for the future. In the four years of Cloudstreet's development and performance, a number of artists and technicians have lived and worked within its walls, and the show now bears the imprint of many hands. Beyond the current family, I want to thank David Wenham, Paul Blackwell, Irma Woods, David Field, Leith Taylor, John Moore, and Anna Borgehsi from the original workshop, and Adam Quinn, Cait Ryan, Zoe Backes, Toni Glynn, Gerard McLaughlin, Simon Lyndon, Max Cullen, Judi Farr, Julie Forsyth, Steve Rodgers, Stephen Hawker, Sam Hawker, Matt Weston, Katrina Pickering, Shane Phillips, Stephanie Blake, Lee Standeven, MattCawse, Lisa Webb, Desrae Ngatai, Damon Herriman, and many other friends and supporters in Australia and around the world. -Neil Armfield 27 ~ALbo'c ~l\LboL....--- __ Tim Winton (writer), one of Australia's most pop­ Uncle Vanya, Death and the Maiden (Sydney ular and exciting writers, was born in Perth in Theatre Company); Love Burns (Seymour Group); 1960. The author of eighteen books, including six Angels in America Parts I and II, A Cheery Soul novels and two short story collections, his literary (Melbourne Theatre Company); Billy Budd (Welsh reputation was established early when his first National Opera/Opera Australia/Canadian Opera); novel, An Open Swimmer, was joint winner of the The Demon (Bregenz Festival Austria, Zurich 1981 AustralianNogaI Award. His second novel, Opera); The Prisoner (English National Opera); Shallows, won the Miles Franklin Award in 1984, The Marriage of Figaro (Welsh National Opera). and his third book, Scission, a collection of short For Opera Australia Armfield has directed stories, won the West Australian Premier's Prize in Whitsunday, Tristan and Isolde, Kf1tya Kabanovf1, 1985. The Eighth Wonder, The Makropulos Case, The Turn of the Screw, The Cunning Little Vixen, and Cloudstreet, Winton's fifth novel, was a huge liter­ Jenufa. Television: Edens Lost and Naked: Stories ary and commercial success. A bestseller since its of Men (Coral Island and The Fisherman's Wake). publication in 1991, Cloudstreet's awards include Film: Twelfth Night and The Castanet Club. the 1991 Deo Gloria award (U.K.), and in 1992 the Miles Franklin Award and the National Book Armfield won the Sydney Theatre Critics Circle Council Banjo Award. Cloudstreet was adapted for Award for Best Director (Glengarry Glen Ross and the stage by Nick Enright and Justin Monjo and Uncle Vanya); Best Director and Production played to sell-out houses at both the Sydney and (Ghosts, Hamlet); Best Production (The Diary of a Perth Festivals in 1998. Winton's new novel Dirt Madman, The Tempest); the Major Award for Music will be published in November 2001 in Significant Contribution to Sydney Theatre, 1989; Australia and in Europe and the U.S.