| This Is Good Advice | Welcome Stranger |
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The protection of children is a priority. Your house is a potential war zone for a child: the corners of tables, chip pans, and the stairs – particularly the stairs – are all potential sources of harm. A car, just like a home, just like an orchard, just like a zip, is a minefield for a child. Don’t let your child burn. Even on a hazy day it might still burn.
- Advice to Iraqi Women, Martin Crimp
After the success of their 2007 season of Villanus (‘...a profoundly intriguing work’ RealTime), daring new theatre company Welcome Stranger returns to Trades Hall with a compelling double bill of short works. Along for the ride is Because of Ghosts’ Reuben Stanton (‘This is beautiful, rewarding stuff’ The Age) to create an unmissable night of theatre.
One of Caryl Churchill’s most stylistically challenging texts, This is a Chair defies the traditional boundaries of theatre. Churchill looks at the political through the eyes of the personal, awakening the audience to the deeply intimate nature of political tension. This is a Chair is a series of surreal scenarios, named after the political headline they seek to excavate; for example, the UK and China’s diplomatic position on Hong Kong is unpicked through an argument about fidelity between Tom and Leo. Churchill’s scenarios theatricalise French surrealist René Magritte’s artistic conceit Ceci n'est pas une pipe (This is not a pipe), at once contradicting and demanding comparison to the reality they label.
The work is paired with Martin Crimp’s powerful and engaging Advice to Iraqi Women. A scathing satirical attack on modern society, Advice to Iraqi Women asks an important question: how can we begin to extol advice upon a society in which we have created terror and danger?
Who would worry about the UV rays in their backyard over the potential threat of their child dying in an ambushed bus? Advice to Iraqi Women is a short play of massive impact. More than an agit-prop comment on the Iraqi war, Crimp’s play is sharp satire of our own society.
Praise for This is A Chair
‘Churchill, who constantly reinvents dramatic form, has come up with something compelling and strange, an intimate revue about the increasing surreality of modern life.’ - The Guardian
Praise for Advice to Iraqi Women
‘... A perfect example of how resonance is achieved by indirection and metaphor.’ - Aleks Sierz, Performing Arts Journal
Welcome Stranger
Welcome Stranger have been quietly beavering away at theatre since their debut work The End of Civil Twilight drew acclaim in 2002. The work won the Development Award at the inaugural Malthouse Theatre 3D Fest, leading to a successful stand alone season. They followed this with two seasons of Martin Crimp’s Attempts on Her Life (2004) and an adaptation of an Ursula LeGuin story in Towards Omelas (2006). More recently, in 2007, they raised eyebrows and critics pens with the self-devised work Villanus.
Praise for Welcome Stranger :
‘...well worth a look for anyone interested in the livelier edges of Melbourne theatre.’ - Alison Croggon, Theatre Notes
‘... this one-man show doesn’t so much explore evil as creep up on it from behind, dagger in hand.’ - Cameron Woodhead, The Age
‘...a profoundly intriguing work.’ - John Bailey, RealTime
‘[A] refreshing approach to staging and direction ... excellent performances... An innovative production.’ - Stage Left
Welcome Stranger presents
"this is good advice"
This is a Chair by Caryl Churchill
Advice to Iraqi Women by Martin Crimp
Directed by Lauren Barnes
Music by Reuben Stanton (Because of Ghosts)
Featuring: Michael Finney (History Boys, MTC) and Kristy Barnes-Cullen (Summer Heights High, ABC)
Venue: New Ballroom, Trades Hall | (cnr Lygon & Victoria St)
Dates: 30/1 – 10/2
Times: Wed – Sun 8pm
Tickets: $17 full, $12 concession
9782 2625
www.welcomestranger.org
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Thursday, 08 January 2009
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