newsletter issue 2, 2008

Ten Questions | Sarah's Welcome | Creative Ensemble | Wanderlands |
Suitcase and the Storm | Other Stuff

Ten Questions with Lally Katz

What's love got to do with it?

I'm not sure yet.  But I'm hoping that it will become illuminated at some point.

Cat or Dog?

It changes depending on my mood.  Right now cat, but a week ago I liked dogs a lot better.

Full-fat or skinny milk?

Skinny milk.  But the last few mornings I have been eating my breakfast cereal and thinking how much better it tasted and wondering why.  And then when I put the milk back in the fridge this morning I realised it was full-cream.  I was sad and happy about it at the same time.

Neighbours or Home & Away?

Neighbours.  But I haven't really watched it since Charlene left.

Do you know the way to San Jose?

No, not at all.

Are you lonesome tonight?

Only very slightly.

What was your most embarrassing moment?

I've fainted at really inappropriate times throughout the years, this can be surprisingly embarrassing.

And your proudest moment?

I staying in a small shed, on a camping mat on the floor in Sydney last winter for a few weeks during a show I was rehearsing. I had the flu really bad and it wasn't getting better because the room was so cold and a draft came through under the door.  I was in rehearsals all day and re-writing at night and in the early morning and felt terrible.  I was also really broke.  But my proudest moment was making the bed on the floor each morning, really neatly.

What's the best piece of advice your mother gave you?

Both my parents have always told my brother and I to do what we love.  

Where did it all begin?

If you mean in terms of career, I guess when I used to make up plays with the neighbourhood kids in the cul-de-sacs I grew up in.  My whole career has always been playing pretend with different people.

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Artistic Director's Welcome!

Great changes are afoot. Have you dropped by the St Martins office lately? If not, you won’t have met Lulu, our newest member. Lulu can really only be described as a gloriously pink velour armchair. YES!! There are new couches people! Ready for your creative minds to congregate and make, discuss, dissect and develop the greatest art in the world. Oh, they are lovely our new couches….enough already about how much you liked the old grungy ones (!) 

If you want to make great theatre, you need to see great theatre (as often as possible I think). Recently, a group of St Martins tutors, members and staff went to see a spectacular performance at The Arts Centre by French company Compagnie Phillipe Genty. The show, called Land’s End was a beautiful mix of theatrical illusion, puppetry, giant plastic spheres and contemporary dance. Make sure you are signed up to receive our Loop email, or check our facebook site regularly to stay in the know about opportunities to see the best theatre Melbourne has to offer.

Speaking of great theatre, the Melbourne Fringe Festival is just around the corner, and an impressive list of current and past St Martins members are involved in the festival with a mind blowing mix of new and adapted performance work. Want to know more about what to see….shoot me an email anytime….

Sarah

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Creative Ensemble

Well, my reader, I am speaking to you now with an air of confident resolve. You are currently ‘the reader’, and with that I lift my head with beaming joy that I now think of myself, even if only for fleeting moments, as a writer. The Creative Ensemble of 2008 has given me perspective that only a well spent time slot over the course of 6 months can bring. Things are different now, oh yes. 
St Martins, as you well know, is a wonderful place, and the creative ensemble is a relatively young, polite beast whose personnel is growing in breadth and depth each year. This is mainly due to the buzz generated by members of its endless worth, which is on an exponential incline each year as a direct result of its curator, Lucy Angel.

With each new batch of artists Lucy handpicks from those auditioned, she is a year the wiser and can nurture a young writer into excellence with her growing experience. She is also now qualified in Laban/Bartenieff movement analysis (LMA) after studying in the United States. This approach is just one of the many forms of devising and creating theatre she has freely shared with our class over the duration of the course. All the ensemble members have grown immensely with this, I’m sure. It has undoubtedly given me the tools I need to have created the piece for HATCHED that I have. It’s an exciting and haunting task, and I know that I would never have been able to do it without the wisdom obtained from doing the Creative Ensemble this year. Thankyou reader, for doing your job well and I hope that if you are between the ages of 17 and 25 and keen to be the writer too, you will jump on board next year.

DAVID PEAKE

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Wanderlands

When I got the letter that said I was in Wanderlands I was beyond excited. I spent that afternoon running up and down the stairs of my house and singing Wannabe into a hair brush. Oh yeah! I was ecstatic. But apart from being on a happy high, I was nervous. I had no idea what to expect. I’ve done a lot of plays; all of them very straight forward (learn your lines, practice a million times, perform to an audience consisting of your Mum and 20 other people).
The first rehearsal was so much fun. I’d never met such amazing, cool, talented people. My first major Wanderlands memory is Sarah (Austin) telling us that before we would develop our characters, we would develop our imagination. That’s when I knew that this was the play for me. Each rehearsal was like play time. Hours upon hours of impulse work and ‘school of fish’ would drive most people around the bend, but I couldn’t get enough of it! We did so many awesome things during the rehearsal period. Who could forget the slammin’ jammin’ seasons, rehearsing scenes in the style of a musical and eating enough boost bars and red sour straps to feed a small country for a month.
Wanderlands had the most spectacular set. At first it didn’t seem like much but by god did it look good! My favourite thing about the set was playing a giant shadow puppet using the fabric sheets that hung down from the ceiling (you had to be there). The final result was phenomenal, huge! Like a nuclear explosion we blew everyone away. If it was just 30 or so people or a full house the performances were astonishing and very professional.
I am not exaggerating when I say that the cast of Wanderlands consisted of the most talented young actors in Melbourne (if any of you are reading this, hi guys!). Each night was more fun than the last. Oh, how sad we were when it was all over… I actually cried. I would like to give my thanks to Jess our stage manager, Alisa our assistant director, Nic our wonderful writer, the lovely and charismatic Sarah for putting up with us and the entire crew who helped Wanderlands to be such a big success. In conclusion, Wanderlands was one of the most difficult, extraordinary, inspirational, best things that I have ever done.

ALICE TOVEY

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Suitcase and the Storm

The brief was to write a play for 16 young actors. The theme; the relationship between façade and substance. The working title; Brain Dead.

Meg Courtney, Alia Vryens and I have been working with dramaturge Petra Kalive since early March this year piecing together the world of the Suitcase and the Storm. Each week Petra would bring a different exercise to the group. We started out with brainstorming, word associations, poetry, generative thought exercises, 5-minute scenes and workshopping. We wrote haiku’s about rain and scenes in response to pictures and music.

Gradually, a picture began to emerge; the picture of a miserable, hollow-souled circus in the outback and a trio of storytellers who turn up out of nowhere. A few weeks ago, the play was given a name; ‘The Suitcase and the Storm’.

The scenes that we wrote early on covered a lot of ground; an old woman didn’t say a word as she waited for someone to return, two girls sat locked together in a birdcage, and three little boys argued over who’s lunch was better. To my astonishment, many of these scenes made it into the Suitcase - characters and context changed, but the heart of the scenes remained the same.

The Suitcase and the Storm
The Suitcase and the Storm is a story about the masks we wear, the stories we tell and the traps we fall in to. What happens when the façade crumbles and you discover there is nothing underneath? Don’t fret – it’s as funny and entertaining as it is challenging!

The marvellous thing is that our characters have developed lives of their own. As we build a world around them, they grow into themselves. The more we explore our story, the more it twists and turns and evolves. It’s been very enjoyable to be a part of.

Debbie Zukerman

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Oh... and another thing!

In other news, the St Martins Playwriting Competition was a raging success. We received a record number of entries this year – a grand total of 65 scripts! Entries came from every state in Australia – we even received a few from the local youth arts community in Darwin, NT! Currently the scripts are being read by assessors and winners should be announced by October 10.

We have some very high-profile assessors involved with the competition this year such as Maryanne Lynch (Dramaturge in Residence, Malthouse Theatre), David Ryding (Director, Emerging Writers’ Festival), Brett Adam (Director/Dramaturge) and Lally Katz (Playwright). The playwrights who entered are certainly getting their words under the noses of some of the industries most important practitioners!

The lengths of the plays received differed enormously, with our shortest script being just 3 pages and our longest a whopping 120 pages!

It’s an exciting time here at St Martins – we’re all chomping at the bit with anticipation – stay tuned for the announcement next month!

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