‘STAGE ONE’ is an initiative of the Theatre Arts course at Curtin University. Now in its 5th year, it offers Western Australian playwrights the opportunity to write and premiere a new play. It is then produced at the Blue Room Theatre, providing undergraduates with the acting and technical experience of working and exploring a new work.

Previous Curtin students, who have benefited from this perfect opportunity, include Frances O’Connor, Mandy McElhinney, Kate Atkinson, Clare Hooper, Kate Mulvany and Jess De Gouw.

This 70-minute dark unsettling play, with touches of black comedy, can be seen at The Blue Room Theatre, Perth Cultural Centre, Northbridge until Saturday 10^th December. Please check the performance times.

Alexander Gerrans set of Patrick Howe’s design, is a very convincing garage and store room. There are several very good weather and woodland effects. Lizzie Howard had some unusual and difficult props to acquire. The costume supervisors were Taylor Burtenshaw and Gemma Wilkie, who created realistic gore damaged clothes.

Joe Lui mentored both Noah Bateman with his realistic soundscape, and Kane Scriven’s wonderful mood lighting.

Stage Management ran smoothly thanks to Sally Davies and her deputy, Jack Wilson.

The whole production was overseen by Stephen Carr and Karen Cook.

The scene is today in the region of the NSW Blue Mountains.

     In the mountainous countryside is a Body Farm, this is where people who have left their bodies to science are left lying around in different soils and fluids so that pathologists can gather information on how quickly bodies decompose in different circumstances.

     When Anton died, his family found that he had left his body to the Farm; his sister (Jess Nyanda Moyle) is devastated that he did not have a proper funeral. One day at university, a girl with an angelic face and a nervous smile (Caitlin McFeat) approaches the sister, and gabbling away asks if she would like to join her church.

     In a nearby garage, owned by the aunt and uncle of #2 (Bianca Roose), is a group known as ‘The Family of the Book’ – who, for anonymity reasons, prefer to use numbers rather than names. Dressed in white forensic overalls are two threatening men #3 and #4 (Frazer Shepherdson, Sam Ireland). After painstaking planning, they have kidnapped the Body Farm’s caretaker (Ming Yang Lim) in order to gain access.

       A slightly dozy member of the group, #6 (Anna Lindstedt) arrives wearing non-standard ‘Family’ clothing. With her is the leader, #1 (Declan Brown) who, knowing that it won’t be long before the police arrive, decides to quickly move in on the Farm.

       After such planning and with God on their side, what could possibly go wrong?

The director and guiding light of this highly original play, is the multi award-winning actor and writer, Will O’Mahony; who on this occasion is assisted in the directing by Chelsea Gibson. The play has superbly observed and richly written characters. The action starts with humour and slowly works up to a gripping climax, followed by a scene that had the whole audience squirming.

The actors each knew their part in the story’s colourful jigsaw. Many very different parts working in perfect harmony. One small suggestion, when there is a great deal of shouting, either lower the voices down an octave, or speak more slowly – even in the wildest argument – as some of the diction was lost.

Adroit direction of a terrific script, involving an interesting set of characters and backed by clever technical skills. Strongly recommended, you will not have seen a play like this before.

In her youth, Churchill started writing with feminist or Brechtian themes, but in her later years has swung around to the more surreal and ‘open writing’ approach.

This 95-minute collection of vignettes, produced by Theatre Arts at Curtin, can be seen at Hayman Theatre Upstairs, in building 102, Curtin University, Kent Street, Bentley. The parking in Carpark B13 is free after 5.00 pm. The performances are nightly at 7.00 pm until the 5^th March at the low-ticket price of $15.

The set was designed by Sally Phipps with input from Amy Tamati, and built by the Hayman stalwart, Ian Stewart. Sally has built a low-level stage, with three sides of plain white flats, allowing the audience to spy effectively in private, into the white box. There are three flush, white doors leading into the box. Half a dozen, 60 cms white wooden cubes symbolised such diverse objects as ‘hedgehogs’ and ‘cinema seats’. Dylan Dorotich and Sally Davies managed the stage.

Maddy Mullins conceived the massive selection of costumes. With the show being so fast moving, one wonders how the characters managed to change in time for their next appearance. I suspect that the assistant stage managers (Jack Bengough, Paris Fields, Ellen Parfrey) were also acting as dressers for the cast.

Lighting and projection designer, George Ashforth had a myriad of well thought out lighting combinations. He employed under floor lights and colourful lasers, as well as the normal LEDs. George also provided difficult to obtain videos, and projection slides. Monique Bertolini operated the lighting flawlessly. Ryan Hunt’s audio design was excellent.

With 57 different ‘Acts’, some lasting a couple of minutes and others as short as even ten seconds, I will simply list the hard working and impressive actors, who had roughly 10 parts each.

 

Lauren Beeton

Declan Brown

Eloise Carter

Chelsea Gibson

Anna Lindstedt

Holly Mason

Nelson Mondlane

Jess Nyanda Moyle.

Director Teresa Izzard and her assistant director Becca Jackson were faced with a cliff face to tackle in presenting this play. The playwright has not created any characters, names and often, even the gender is not mentioned. There are no direction instructions, nor hints on how to approach the extremely varied topics – just dialogue. Subjects like sex – it had to be there – along with torture, children’s problems, marriage and anti-vivisection are all included in the three-score topics. The director had to invent the scenarios and then encourage the cast to add any of their own experiences to the story threads. This major challenge was proficiently conquered with the whole cast giving the numerous characters instant and recognisable personalities.

The show went at a tremendous pace, with only two or three of the stories not working (the writer perhaps being a little too adventurous). A very enjoyable night at the theatre, with something a little offbeat. It is always pleasant to see a team trying something new.