Snapshots of Brisbane Theatre 2009-2014
Further details from Fractal Theatre’s Facebook PageAUSTRALIAN PREMIERE of Steven Berkoff’s THE SECRET LOVE LIFE OF OPHELIA
With Mary Eggleston as Ophelia – and Eugene Gilfedder as Hamlet.
Directed by Brenna Lee-Cooney
WARNING: EXPLICIT EROTIC POETRY – 16+
PERFORMANCE TIMES: MONDAY – SATURDAY 7.30PM; SUNDAY – 5PM
OPENING NIGHT 6TH AUGUST
9 performances only: 7TH – 15TH AUGUST.
La Boite Theatre Company opened submissions this week for its 2011 indie season.
With two productions thus far into the 2010 season (Blackbird and The Bitterling) and two to follow later this year, La Boite’s inaugural indie project has provided a catalyst for the many independent groups and individual artists in the city. La Boite Indie’s stated aims – to nurture a more sustainable independent theatre culture in Brisbane, to build audiences in Brisbane generally, to enable closer ties between independent practice and La Boite, and to help create outstanding, contemporary works for theatre seems to be on track so far.
La Boite Indie was hands-down one of the best theatrical experiences of my professional life. We had the opportunity, freedom and support to create passionately and make bold, uncompromising choices.Sven Swenson
La Boite Indie is a curated season of four independent theatre productions, each lasting three weeks. La Boite welcomes applications from across the independent sector – and will again transform its theatre into an intimate 95-seat black box for Indie 2011. La Boite will also commit to providing financial, technical, marketing and artistic support to the selected companies.
David Berthold, La Boite’s artistic director is passionate himself about the idea: “The independent sector is made up mostly of emerging artists coming together to create work in small spaces with few resources. Cultivating this talent and finding ways of increasing reasources is fundamental to theatre’s ecology.
This area of work is a crucible for new ideas and helps keep the artform authentic to the times. David Berthold
Companies and artists wishing to submit a work for indie 2011 can find full details and conditions for entry on la Boite’s website. The closing date for submissions is Tuesday 17 august 2010 at 5pm – that’s a little over 17 days from today! Mark your calendars and get going.
Guest post by Zane Trow 
The second Australian Theatre Forum will be held from Monday 19th to Wednesday 21st September 2011 at Brisbane Powerhouse during the Brisbane Festival. A steering committee has been formed, and will be “announced soon.”
This little snippet appears on the Theatre Network Victoria E-News site for June and there is also this elsewhere on the same site.
This’ll give you, dear reader, some background on the Theatre Forum itself and a recent “workshop” held towards planning for the 2011 event.
The first thing to emerge on the list of goals for 2011 is:
So my first question is, “Who, from the Independent sector, is going to be on the steering committee”?
And my second question is, “Who from Brisbane is going to be on the steering committee”?
Who from the Independent sector is going to be on the steering committee and who from Brisbane is going to be on the steering committee?
Both seem to me to be reasonable questions, as certainly the planning “workshop” (Towards an Australian Theatre Forum 2011, Tuesday 23 February 2010, Adelaide Festival Centre) seems to me to have been run by the usual suspects, with certainly no Brisbane representation that I can see. I may have missed the Brisbane people in attendance; I may also have missed those same Brisbane people calling for a wide input into the event by seeking opinions from us all so that when they sit on a national, Australia Council-funded forum they can speak about Brisbane theatre from a position of strength and support. Continue reading “Wake Up Call: Australian Theatre Forum – Brisbane 19-21 September 2011”
Check further details on company websitesOpening:
The Seven Stages of Grieving by Wesley Enoch and Deborah Mailman. An education production Dir Rosalba Clemente for Queensland Theatre Company. Bille Brown Studio (from Tuesday)
Shadowlands by William Nicholson Crossbow Productions at Brisbane Powerhouse Visy Theatre (from Thursday)
Continuing:
The Clean House by Sarah Ruhl Dir Kate Cherry for Queensland Theatre Company, Cremorne Theatre, QPAC
I Love You Bro’ by Adam J Cass Dir David Berthold for La Boite Theatre at the Roundhouse
Brenna-Lee Cooney is telling me about the plans she has for the revivified Fractal Theatre, now based in Ipswich. After some years of child-raising, teaching, a self-imposed break from theatre-creation and urged, she tells me with a snort, by her now grown-up children to ‘do something with your life,’ she’s energised and ready to tackle afresh one of the most challenging tasks any theatre maker has – that of producing and directing (and choreographing) a show from the ground up. I sense Brenna-Lee is not one to do things at half-pace and, as she speaks, my pen rushes to keep up.
Like most who’ve not done a day’s study of physics in their lives I’m interested to hear why ‘Fractal’ for a theatre company? I do know a bit about the relationship between physics and fractals, having read Gary Zukav’s wonderful ‘The Dancing Wu Li Masters‘ many years ago; it’s still one of my favourite science books. But why ‘fractal’ for theatre, I ask? It turns out that it’s all about patterns. ‘I’m interested in the ever-repeating patterns of nature and history and pattern repetition in movement and music and, of course, in the poetry of text,’ Brenna-Lee explains.
She and Fractal have always been interested in creating theatre that blurs the boundaries between the forms, and Steven Berkoff‘s The Secret Love Life of Ophelia, which opens next month in its Australian premiere, continues the tradition begun when Fractal started in 1989. At the time Brenna-Lee was studying at UQ; ‘Richard Fotheringham, then my lecturer, threw me the keys to the Avalon (theatre) and told me to do something over the Christmas break,’ she recalls. She did, and a production of Lysistrata emerged. A series of productions – some epic, some small, and all innovative followed over the years. There were classical Greek works, including a Butoh-inspired Oresteia led by Lynn Bradley, Ibsen’s Peer Gynt supported by the Norwegian Community, Wedekind’s Lulu, all with enormous casts. Continue reading “Fractal Theatre is Back! Brenna-Lee Cooney (Interview 9)”