| Attract/Repel | The Melbourne Town Players |
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The Store Room presents
Attract/Repel
A new not-play by The Melbourne Town Players
The Melbourne Town Players’ Attract/Repel is a visually and aurally stunning new work that takes no prisoners as it peels back the layers of perception, misconception and how we see the world.
In the second work by Melbourne’s most fearless new theatre company, director Ming-Zhu Hii (Sandwiches, Two, Y.) goes beyond the pale, taking the audience on a raw, honest and deeply insightful journey into racial identification, discrimination, and the darkness and light inherent in Australia’s many-cultured society.
Attract/Repel is a multifaceted experience that speaks to us personally and as a society. Using a fluid and telling combination of sound, live lighting manipulation, movement and text, Attract/Repel, pushes artistic and thematic boundaries, averts the politically correct, and asks the questions that we have all been afraid of for far too long.
Choreographed movement, in repsonse to the extraordinary lighting and sound, explores the potency of colour as an expression of the internal worlds of the attractive and the repellant; the attracted and the repelled.
The verbal component of the piece amounts to what can only be described as an interrogation. What begins as an entertaining and seemingly benign question and answer sequence onstage, slowly but inexorably turns the interrogator’s light on us all, and takes an unflinching look at who we are, how we really behave, and what it means to be an Australian. Central to the work is the not-so-rhetorical question, “How racist are you?”
“We are living in a period of extreme racial unrest, cultural intolerance, and racially motivated violence, while the population of our country has never been more diverse.” says creator Ming-Zhu Hii.
Attract/Repel is uncomfortable and mesmerising viewing. The actors, all extraordinary theatre-makers in their own right, give some of most courageous performances ever seen on Melbourne’s stages. Their journey over the one hour piece is often hilarious, heart-breaking and ultimately hopeful. The lighting design, music, sound, set and costumes come together to produce a work that is beautiful, punctuated with wit and humour, and truly disturbing.
If we scratch beneath the surface, if we face ourselves, our behaviour and our use of language honestly, we might just see something we would rather not. But as difficult as this recognition is, Attract/Repel gives us the opportunity to face it openly and honestly. This astonishingly generous production provides real catharsis, leaving the audience filled with hope and light, and deeply moved by the truths it exposes about otherness and similarity; about you and me; us and them.
The Melbourne Town Players’ Attract/Repel is essential viewing for all Australians.
Attract/Repel is the fourth production in the 2009 Store Room Presents season. Re-invented and re-invigorated, under the artistic direction of Todd MacDonald, The Store Room is Melbourne’s most exciting independent theatre venue, presenting the best new works from local theatre-makers and fostering a new breed of artist.
Attract/Repel is presented as a part of the 2009 Melbourne Fringe Festival.
Attract/Repel is supported by The Store Room, Full Tilt Creative
Development, and The Auspicious Arts Incubator.
Featuring Jing-Xuan Chan (City Homicide), Fanny Hanusin (Serial Blogger, Bogan Pride), Georgina Naidu (Playing for Charlie, Seachange) and Terry Yeboah (Antigone, The Pain and the Itch)
Writer/Director Ming-Zhu Hii (Sandwiches, Two, Y.)
Producer Shalini Nair
Lighting Design (inspired by Dan Flavin) Damien McLean
Lighting Concept Support Rachel Burke
Music Composition Yusuke Akai
Sound Design Russell Goldsmith (Exit The King, Optimism)
Set and Costumes Naomi Wong (Mr. Kolpert )
Dramaturgy Melanie Beddie (Branch, Ghosts, Sinners)
Venue: The Store Room (above The Parkview Hotel) Level 1, 131 Scotchmer Street, Fitzroy North, Melway 30 B12
Previews: 16th,17th and 18th September 2009
Season: 19th September – 10th October 2009
Times: Tuesday – Sunday at 7pm (approx 60 min. running time)
Tickets: Full $30 / Conc. $20 / Group (8+) $20
Individual tickets on-sale from 1 September 2009
www.melbournefringe.com.au / (03) 9660 9666
For group pre-sale bookings, email
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