Shame, shame, shame.

Robin Usher September 30, 2009

THE Melbourne Theatre Company has been accused of operating as a boys’ club because of the lack of opportunities for women in creative roles, especially directing.

A convener with the Australian women directors’ alliance, Melanie Beddie, wrote to the company in August complaining of ”an overwhelming downturn” in opportunities for Victorian women theatre directors in recent years.

She said this was in defiance of the equal opportunity policy of the company’s parent organisation, Melbourne University.

READ THE REST OF THE ARTICLE HERE.

Link: AUSTRALIAN WOMEN DIRECTORS ALLIANCE BLOG.

The installation is looking and feeling wonderful, and gosh doesn’t The Store Room foyer ever fill up quickly!

So thanks everyone for coming, for reading, for watching, for booking, for being here for this very special company of artists. We are – I am – most grateful, and am looking forward to each and every performance for the rest of the season.

The amount of love I feel for this work and its audiences is immense.

Tickets for the previews are still available, and we are offering all readers of TMTP’s blog 2-for-1 tickets to either preview (that’s Thursday 17th or Friday 18th September).

That’s right: two for the price of one preview! As in two tickets for only $15 dollars. Which rather makes tickets only $7.50 each. Stop it. No, you stop it.

This offer applies only to the previews: Thurs 17th and Fri 18th September. Both shows are at 7pm at The Store Room (which is Level 1, 131 Scotchmer Street, Fitzroy North – above the Parkview Hotel).

In order to redeem this offer, you must book through me (or us, rather, but it will probably be myself or Nick checking the email). The means by which this is done is to email: bookings (at) themelbournetownplayers (dot) com and put “Blog 2-for-1″ in the subject line. You’ll need to give us your name, phone number, the number of tickets you’ll be requiring, and which of the two nights you’d like to attend. And that’s it! Cheap tickets are yours.

Come on down to the previews, friends. I look forward to seeing you here.

ATTRACT/REPEL direct booking site: click here. Or call 9660 9666

Wowwowwow: I have just cancelled tomorrow’s rehearsal. We don’t need it. Not because the show couldn’t be ‘better’ (It could be, it couldn’t be). No, it’s got little to do with spit and polish. On the one hand there is only 50% of a cast available, but that isn’t usually an issue, given that NSC and I are getting really good at standing in, and while it’s not exactly the same, the motions that we’re going through are getting pretty good. On the other hand, we can always tweak bit and pieces here and there, but at this stage, that seems to me to be a slightly futile exercise where time could be much better spent resting, or stitching lace onto costumes.

I am really excited about this piece and it’s strange but it’s hard to define why. My feelings about it kind of defy explanation. I know the work is certainly very different from that which I had originally set out to make almost two years ago. It’s very much a product (’product’ being such a misleading word) of the performers’ generosity with their souls, and a testament to their strength. It is so much simpler than I ever imagined it would be. And the thing – it breaks my heart. I know it back to front and inside out, and although I always have a fairly strong idea of what topics of conversation flow into others, I am constantly shaken with the immediacy of its delivery – there is always this raw, beautiful surprise in the performers’ connection to their memories and their thoughts and theories that knocks me off my seat. It’s an odd, stumbling grace that is deeply, and uncomfortably affecting.

So, I am really happy with where the show is at the moment, which is odd. I’m usually running around at this stage stressing my head off about which scenes need working more than others, who still hasn’t learned that monologue properly, and how many tickets we haven’t sold.

Right now, I know that we have to begin to add technical elements into the piece quite quickly, and have a limited amount of time in which to do it. I have to tweak some blocking into transitions, and make sure that everyone is safe in whatever very low light they will end up having to negotiate their way around; I need to get a sound designer in the space and a sound design together and programmed in a matter of days, but you know, it’s more than halfway there in my mind.

Yes, I need people to buy tickets. I love it when people do. It’s a great thing, pre-sales. It’s a little bit of love that just keeps on being passed around. That’s my favourite way of thinking about ticket sales, anyway. I encourage everybody to do the same. Start sharing the love, here.

I think we need to run the show a couple of times, but there is time and time and time for that (actually, there are exactly three times where that can happen, so we’re in good shape). And apart from that, I’m champing at the bit, really. Oh, sure there are technical issues to be resolved, the floor needs painting again, I have to buy some thick chalk, and render a bit of video, but in spirit, I’m drinking a pre-show shiraz on opening, right now. I don’t think it’s possible to get over-excited about your own show, and hey – I know I’m going to fall head-first into a reality-check any second now, but I’m happy to revel in this moment of thrilled anticipation for as long as it lasts. I know it isn’t ‘perfect’ (and it ‘never’ will be…), but perfection is deeply subjective, and ‘perfect’ was never what we were after, anyway. On the flip-side, this piece is perfect in whatever form it takes, and from its performance, I couldn’t ask for more.

I think that if I were to see this show as an audience member who knew little to nothing about the work, I would walk away deeply excited and invigorated. Not just due to the content, but artistically the very rough, but quiet delicacy of the work is really something I haven’t seen around for a while, perhaps ever. And that has very little to do with me (my hand, that is) – it’s how the performers have responded to the lighting, have responded to the stimulus topics, have responded to the images I’ve thrown at them. I am working with a very unique group of artists who are helping to make a piece of theatre of which I am already very proud.

or copy:

http://www.melbournefringe.com.au/fringe-festival/show/attract-repel-by-the-melbourne-town-players

into your browser (website up and running @ full capacity!)

Tickets for Attract/Repel go on sale today. Yes. That’s right, today. Tuesday 1st September, 2009. This is a wonderful, glorious thing and we encourage you all to book away with gusto!

The Fringe Booking Line: (03) 9660 9666

The Fringe Booking Website: http://www.melbournefringe.com.au/ (encountering a bit of traffic at the moment, but should be running smooth-as-silk shortly, when I’ll post a direct link to A/R.

We hope you’re well and happy.

With lots of love,

The Melbourne Town Players.

Perhaps small consolations under the circumstances, but given the cancellation, the company of Attract/Repel have been able to begin slowly moving its rehearsals and technical experiments into the space a little earlier. A wonderful thing, process-wise, given that scheduling has dictated that times in which all actors can be in the same space at once are few and very far between. (I am getting tired of co-op, it is so very hard on everyone. Would that I could pay the world to create their work.)

I am going down to the space as soon as I finish writing this, to play for a while on my own in the lights and with the sound. We have reached a point now where I am having to shape over all, and allow the performers to take supreme responsibility for finding moments of connection and context within the work for themselves.

It is hard working without a script. Certainly not impossible, and in some ways, very liberating. But hard nonetheless. There is a certain faith that you have to put in the moment of focus amongst the team – that the work will flow if you give it enough space. That the concentration of energy and perfect combination of differing perspectives will intersect to form that intangible point of magic that is the truth – the pure creative act. That might sound like a lot of mumbo jumbo to some, but I would argue that in order to make work (and believe in the purity of its creation), you have to throw yourself into the darkened fray of a messy, complicated, and yes, at times quite magical process.

The reality of what this work is, is starting to unfold to me now. And it isn’t the spin we’ve been spit-polishing. It isn’t the politics we’re peddling. It isn’t our place in the fierce and terrible competition of the God-knows how many hundred other shows at the Fringe. It isn’t about public profile, glitz, glam, heroism, martyrdom, righteousness, suffering, or salvation. It’s about simple little human moments. Frailty, complicated, unanswerable questions; the acknowledgement of fear; confusion in the face of a thing which should be easily understood. It’s about the difficulty of transitioning from one moment into the next, from one mind-set to another, from a feeling of oppression to a sense of release. It’s about reluctant dualities – converse emotions that exist simultaneously, continuously, relentlessly. It’s very ugly and very beautiful at once. And I think that that’s okay.