Annual Report 2019 Contents Vision Statement 3 History 4 Chair’s Report 5 Artistic Director’s Report 7 Producer’s Report 11 2019 Program 13 2019 Activities 23 Company Artists and Associates 27 Performance Statistics 2019 29 Financial Report 30 List of Performances 1972 – 2019 44 All School Bookings 2019 45 Acknowledgements 46 Patch Theatre Company acknowledges the traditional owners of Country throughout Australia upon whose land the company creates and performs, and pays its respect to their Elders past, present and future. Vision Statement Patch Theatre creates world-class theatre that celebrates big ideas – ideas that explore some of the world’s inexplicable questions from a child’s point of view. Our works explore the way that children see the world, acknowledging the relevance of their thinking with stories that promote imagination, wonder and discovery. Patch Theatre is dedicated to the creation, presentation and touring of high-quality theatre experiences for children, now extended to three to ten year olds and their families. 3 History Adelaide-based Patch Theatre is Australia’s flagship theatre company making work primarily for 4–8 year olds. The company has performed 109 new works to more than 1.85 million children and their families since its inception. For many, seeing a Patch production is a family tradition, with parents bringing their children and now their grandchildren to see its work, providing the company with a long and loyal audience base. The company was founded in 1972 by Morna Jones, a pioneer in Australian children’s television and theatre who believed that quality arts experiences were an essential part of childhood learning and development. Morna’s “Little Patch Theatre” provided enriching performing arts experiences for children and young people in South Australia. Following Morna’s death in 1982, Artistic Director Christine Anketell developed a relationship with the Adelaide Festival Centre Trust that saw the realisation of large-scale adaptions of children’s literature and the early genesis of Patch Theatre’s national profile. Throughout the 1990s and 2000s and under ZOOM the leadership of Artistic Director Dave Brown, the company evolved into a highly regarded national and international touring company with a newly crafted, world-class repertoire of diverse, vibrant and challenging theatre for young audiences. In 2015, after two decades as Artistic Director, Dave Brown stepped down and handed the creative reigns to Artistic Director Naomi Edwards. In her time at Patch, Naomi devised and directed two new works for the company, Yo Diddle Diddle in 2017 and Can You Hear Colour? in 2018, which premiered at the Adelaide Festival. In 2019, Patch began its very successful journey producing a reimagined style of design- rich theatrical experiences, expanding its family audiences with installation, promenade style works, while continuing to make its highly acclaimed in-theatre productions. 4 Chair’s Report I write, and this will be read, at a time of incomprehensible uncertainty and so it is a happy task to look back at 2019. In my previous report I commented that I could not wait for 2019 to begin. And it has turned out that my enthusiasm was well placed. Having settled in with the company, defined their creative vision and assembled a tiny but highly effective team, Artistic Director Geoff Cobham and Producer Teena Munn delivered the program they had promised – new, design-focussed, immersive theatre works together with the retention of repertoire favourites. In its 2019 program and in its four-year planning, Patch is creating and presenting just what young audiences now demand and is well placed at the forefront of children’s theatre. The facts and figures of our various undertakings appear elsewhere in this Annual Report, but what lies behind those facts and figures is an artistic program (which is after all our reason for being) Emily Loves to Bounce which in 2019 saw the entrancing Firefly Forest, an experience of wonder in the DreamBIG Festival; the creative development and presentation of light-magic and interactive ZOOM; the creative development of major new work The Lighthouse to the point of gaining the Major Festivals Initiative funding and a major commissioning grant from Arts SA; and the presentation and touring of two repertoire works Me & My Shadow and Emily Loves to Bounce – the latter touring to China, its success proving a very effective door opener for future Patch works, while Me & My Shadow was filmed and licensed to New York’s Juilliard School as a teaching tool. The extraordinary quality and quantity of Patch’s creativity in 2019 was freshly promoted through Patch’s new branding and logo; supported through enhanced involvement with schools and teachers; and sustained by a revitalised fundraising strategy and rigorous financial management. 5 Chair’s Report (continued) We value highly the interest, enthusiasm and wise counsel of our minister the Hon John Gardner MP, Minister for Education and together with the practical support of ‘our man in Education’ David Ensor. I wish to record my personal gratitude to each member of the Patch Theatre Company Board. Between them they have a formidable bank of skills, and individually they give generously of their time and wisdom. And the ‘tiny team’ mentioned above continues to amaze: to The Lighthouse Geoff Cobham, Teena Munn, Penny Camens, Michelle Delaney, Mirella Innocente and Krystle Aunger, I give credit collectively and individually for Patch’s critical success and financial stability. Further, they completed the major task of delivering the company’s application for Australia Council funding for 2021–2024 together with the four-year creative and financial plan integral to the application. I thank them all for their belief in Patch, their hard work and their good humour. Such is their skill that we have been able to restructure Patch’s internal systems, including storage and rehearsal spaces, making savings that can be applied to new work. And as I happily and regularly acknowledge, without the public and private support we so gratefully receive, we would not exist. We are proud that our State Government through Carclew and Department for Education and the Federal Government through the Australia Council acknowledged our worth with substantial grants in 2019; the James and Diana Ramsay Foundation continues to support our new work, regional touring and to build the capacity of our company; and Hither & Yon wines helped us to celebrate our successes. And of course, our amazing private donors, sharing our commitment to give young people and their families (in 2019 a total of 38,747 children) the very best of creative experiences. Janet Worth Chair 6 Artistic Director’s Report 2019 has been an extraordinary year. I am pleased to report we have met or exceeded all of our ambitious goals. We discovered at DreamBIG that our belief in presenting abstract art to children was well founded, with the response to Firefly Forest being overwhelmingly positive. In fact, throughout the year, my contact with children made me more confident in the ability of young people to absorb, process and add to an abstract art experience. I am still happily exploring what our new form of theatre for young people is. However, it can definitely be described as participatory, immersive, tactile. It certainly allows our audience to have agency in the experience, engage in many different ways and provide their own narrative. There are no passive audience members in our shows and few words in our work, which encourages audience dialogue. I love to sit amongst the audience and hear the constant chat, which is always about the show, as they provide theory after theory of what is happening onstage, how it is happening and what will happen next. There are as many stories here as there are audience members. We are definitely sparking their imaginations, creating wonder, connecting with their inner engineers and providing new jumping off points for further inquiry at home and in the classroom. To prepare for our national tour of our repertory piece Me & My Shadow, we employed the original Directors Dave Brown and Roz Hervey to rehearse two young actors into the performing roles. We also redesigned the technical elements to enable the show to have a more efficient bump in. I went to Alice Springs for the first leg of the tour and as well as getting to experience their amazingly diverse audience, I also oversaw the installation of our pre-show foyer work, Glow. It was very rewarding to watch children play with light and shadow as well as experience the magic of the show onstage. Emily Loves to Bounce 7 Artistic Director’s Report (continued) ZOOM We also licensed one of Patch’s classic works, Mr McGee and the Biting Flea to Capital E National Theatre, Wellington for a 13 week New Zealand tour, employing Tim Overton to cast and direct the show as well as advising on production and set elements and overseeing the production of a new score by a local composer. Our first new show, ZOOM was created collectively by a team of like-minded creatives, with a large range of experience, from old hands like Dave Brown to newcomers like Temeka Lawlor. They were carefully “curated” by me, but this was an example of true collaboration. I am very grateful for the generosity of all the artists involved, especially as I was a first-time director. The interactive elements of the show, stretching these as far as we did, were challenging with such a tricky concept of giving actual agency to a large group of people who are trapped in their seats – however, we succeeded. We will continue to finesse the experience to ensure that the audience continue to feel they are controlling parts of the show and that the other character in the show is light itself.