Asides – Page 8 – Greenroom

14 February, 201212 February, 2012

2011 Groundlings: the winners!

Here’s Greenroom’s annual touch of love on Valentine’s Day.

Warmest congratulations to the following winners of the 2011 Groundling Awards for Queensland Theatre.

Thank you to all those who nominated and those who voted in the second year of the state’s people’s choice awards.

Athough there are no shiny trophies, certificates, or galas where you can applaud and shout, ‘Hoorah!’ all nominees can all bask in the knowledge that your work is admired and respected by your audiences. Well done!

Greenroom will follow up soon with another post on some intriguing facts and figures we’ve gathered during the Groundlings nomination and voting process. Follow us on Twitter or Facebook to keep posted.

Thank you to Claire Christian, Youth Director Empire Theatre Toowoomba for her assistance in scrutinising the results.

2011 Groundling Awards

Outstanding Contribution by an Actor: Bryan Probets – body of Work including Edward Gant’s Amazing Feats of Loneliness (La Boite Theatre Company); Animal Farm (shake and stir theatre company) Pygmalion (QTC)

Outstanding Contribution by an Actress: Nelle Lee – Animal Farm (shake and stir theatre company)

Outstanding Contribution by a Director: Steven Mitchell Wright – The Hamlet Apocalypse (The Danger Ensemble/La Boite Indie)

Outstanding Contribution to Set Design: Josh McIntosh – body of work including Animal Farm (shake and stir theatre company)

Outstanding Contribution to Costume Design: Josh McIntosh – body of work including Aladdin (Harvest Rain Theatre Company) and Animal Farm (shake and stir theatre company)

Outstanding Contribution to Lighting Design: Ben Hughes – body of work including Orphans and Fractions (QTC) The Hamlet Apocalypse (The Danger Ensemble/La Boite Indie), and Studio Shorts (JUTE).

Outstanding Contribution to Sound Design or Composition: Guy Webster body of work including Water Wars (Umber Productions/La Boite Indie and Empire Theatre Projects Company), Animal Farm (shake and stir theatre company), and Ruben Guthrie (La Boite Theatre Company).

Outstanding Contribution to Multimedia Design: Dead Puppet Society with The Harbinger (Dead Puppet Society/La Boite Indie)

Outstanding Contribution to Innovative Theatre Practice: Steven Mitchell Wright & The Danger Ensemble for pushing performance and theatrical boundaries

Best New Play in an Inaugural Queensland Season: Animal Farm by George Orwell, adapted by Nick Skubij (shake and stir theatre company)

Best Production: The Hamlet Apocalypse – The Danger Ensemble/La Boite Indie

Best Musical Theatre Production: Cabaret – Zen Zen Zo

Best Co-Production: Edward Gant’s Amazing Feats of Loneliness – La Boite Theatre Company and STC

Outstanding Contribution to Queensland theatre: Tim O’Connor & Harvest Rain Theatre Company for the company’s contribution to the development of a sustainable independent theatre model (Brisbane)

8 February, 201213 February, 2012

World Theatre Festival: the first of the year for Brisbane

Brisbane’s World Theatre Festival is 3 years old this year. It’s back bigger than ever at the city’s (arguably) coolest arts venue, the Brisbane Powerhouse on the river at New Farm.

The earlier, cheekier acronym WTF! has gone, but the change of name is probably a good thing. The Festival has a different feel this year. It’s bigger – due to an injection in 2011 of support from the Grahame Wood Foundation and the Queensland Government (Arts Queensland and Events Queensland). The program is also more diverse and even more interesting in our opinion. If Artistic Director Andrew Ross has his way, then the bringing together of international and Australian artists in Brisbane will make for a terrific celebration. It will also kick off the 2012 theatre season in Brisbane.

Mr Ross told me he hopes that local artists will gain something that he gained in Perth in his formative years, ” … a sense of what is possible here and an occasional moment of recognition of our own uniqueness.” The Festival organisers believe it’s going to be a chance for the city to get involved in theatre and to see the world from a different angle.

Coming from Perth I saw and experienced the way the regular exposure to International theatre through the Perth Festival stimulated and influenced local theatre practice.

I hope World Theatre Festival draws from both of those personal experiences and creates a theatre festival that is right for the here and now.”

Between 16-26 February Brisbane will be able to take in some of the best independent theatre hand-picked by Ross and colleagues from Italy, Belarus, India, the US, Ireland, New Zealand and Australia, and join in forums and masterclasses. There’s also a new Festival Lounge with free live music and – wait for it – Wi Fi. Expect lots of social media comment. Twitter hashtag? #wtf2012 maybe?

I asked Andrew whether there was a binding theme to this year’s Festival. “I hope that the diversity of authentic voices amounts to a loose unity with diversity. This year, a level of social political engagement seems to pervade many of the works.”

And how does he choose what appears? How do you program a world theatre festival?

“Along with my colleagues I travel both within and outside of Australia. I am on the internet every day monitoring theatre in many parts of the world and constantly in discussions with other theatre producers. I then endeavour to choose work which represents many strands of contemporary practice. It is not a festival about any preferred theatre form or genre. I look at work and I listen for authentic voices and try to eschew work that is manufactured with the international market in mind.”

Now, that’s a job I’d like!

He goes on:

“I think one thing this year’s festival does well is provide everyone with something to suit their interests. Technology enthusiasts will love Il Pixel Rosso’s And the Birds Fell from the Sky – where two audience members wear video goggles and MP3 players and experience a completely different universe.

“Where We Once Belonged, a Samoan coming-of-age story told by New Zealand’s Pacific Institute of Performing Arts graduates will have musical theatre fans enthralled with its authentic Pacific singing and dancing entwined with serious drama.

“Drama enthusiasts will love Ibsen’s The Lady from The Sea, reimagined with spectacular visuals by India’s Abhinaya Theatre Company in a new collaboration with Brisbane band Topology.

“And anyone who saw Belarus Free Theatre’s visit in 2009 will need to see their new show Discover Love – a beautiful love story and a hard look at political ‘disappearances’ around the world.”

Also heading to Brisbane are Italy’s Motus Theatre with their stripped back version of Sophocles Antigone in Too Late! (Antigone) Contest #2 and the Rude Mechanics from Texas, US. who bring the most dangerous approach to acting back from the 70s in The Method Gun.

Australia is represented by Brisbane Indie champions The Escapists with Elephant Gun – an inventive and clever play using puppets, dance and projections. Team Mess blurs the line between reality and fantasy in This Is It! , a show where the audience take on the role as the press at a movie launch – complete with probing questions on how the movie This Is It! was made.

In addition to these shows World Theatre Festival 2012 presents Scratch – six new works in development by Australian artists where audiences can see how theatre comes to life.

Audiences are also encouraged to take part in industry masterclasses, have their opinions heard during the In Conversation discussion series and relax in the Festival Lounge. It will be open all hours with free live music, and will be the perfect place to relax between shows, discuss what you’ve just seen or meet with friends during the festival.

And, if you’ve read this far (and we thank you for it) watch out for a Greenroom give away in the next few days courtesy of the Powerhouse and the World Theatre Festival. It’s a free day-long, masterclass with the Rude Mechanics from Texas. You’d like that, right? You need to be available on Saturday 25th February.

To find out more you need to follow us on Twitter or Facebook. We’re social that way.

29 December, 2011

Greenroom’s Top Posts in 2011

If ever we were in doubt – and we’re not – that reviews are the hottest posts here, the stats for the most-read articles on Greenroom in the past 12 months prove the case.

Apart from the home page – which would have included reviews plus latest posts – here are the top 5 individual post-reads in 2011:



Review: Edward Gant’s Amazing Feats of Loneliness – La Boite & Sydney Theatre Company @ The Roundhouse	1,403
Review: Julius Caesar – La Boite Theatre	1,222
Review: Faustus – Queensland Theatre Company & Bell Shakespeare @ Brisbane Powerhouse	1,059
Review: boy girl wall – La Boite Theatre & The Escapists	1,017
Review: The Removalists – Queensland Theatre Company at Bille Brown Studio	1,017

Can we just add a ‘thank-you’ for your reading loyalty. We look forward to growing Greenroom’s readership in what will be our third year of operation in 2012.

28 December, 201129 December, 2011

Who’s Who on Greenroom?

a phone / telephone book / directory — Image via Wikipedia

Greenroom exists to curate and converse on professional theatre in Queensland. As part of our curating ‘service’ we list companies, organisations and other theatre agencies on our Companies and other groups page.

Some groups have asked to be listed here. Others are just there because we think it’s a good thing to have a comprehensive directory on the site.

We’re currently doing an audit of this page. If you have changed your site details or now have a new or updated Facebook page, please let us know via the Contact link, and we’ll fix things. We can also put a link to your Twitter page if you’d like that as well.

What we’d like in return is a link from your place to Greenroom or to our Facebook page where you could even like us. That would be sweet.

By the way, just a tip – if you have several Facebook presences – you might want to redirect your former followers and friends to your current page – if you haven’t already.

Thanks.

21 December, 2011

2011 Groundlings: categories sorted …

Firstly, thanks to those who wrote, tweeted or talked about the categories for the 2011 Groundling Awards and sent in their suggestions.

If you’re a regular here you will recall that we asked for suggestions for 2011. As a result, we have tweaked one existing category, added 5 and lost 3. There are now 14 categories instead of 12 as in 2010.

Here are the new categories:

Outstanding contribution by an Actress
Outstanding contribution to Multimedia Design
Outstanding Contribution to Innovative Theatre Practice
Best Musical Theatre Production
Outstanding Contribution to Queensland theatre

We tweaked the sound design category to read

Outstanding Contribution to Sound Design and/or Composition (makes sense – thanks Sydney Theatre Awards)

And took out

Best Community Outreach Program by any Company or Group (confusion from some: What did it mean?)
Best Use of Social Media by any theatre or group (everyone is getting good at this. Hoorah!)
Outstanding Contribution to the Independent Theatre Sector (why separate the indies from the others … on reflection it seemed a bit patronising)

Notice there is no discrimination between the independent sector and the full-time/subsidised companies – what some persist in calling mainstage for some odd reason, but we’ll go with the flow. It’s everyone and all in. By the way, ‘Outstanding contribution to … ‘ can relate to a single project/performance, or be for a body of work across the year.

So, here are the categories for the 2011 Groundling Awards.

You can nominate up to three of your favourites in one or more of the above categories starting on 1st January.

Look for this button which will appear on Greenroom on 1st January. It will be hot linked to the nominations page and be ready to go. The nomination and voting procedure will also be outlined. So start getting your lists together.

Image: State Library of Queensland Commons Collection

Category: Asides