Right - Julie Forsyth in Happy Days
The Company B 2009 Season, launched last night at Belvoir St Theatre, is an intrepid journey that will, over 12 months, take audiences across countries, decades, cultures and circumstances. Convergence of the time-honoured and the new, the youthful and seasoned, the close-to-home and far-away is the foundation for a Season that travels over half a century and gathers stories from seven countries, including Belarus, the Netherlands, Iraq and Australia.
The 2009 Season, comprising nine productions, celebrates universality and freedom; of speech, choice, youth, sexuality, imagination, art and, in a 30th anniversary production of an Australian classic, it celebrates Australia’s Indigenous heart.
Four hot young directors take to the Upstairs stage for the first time – Rachel McDonald, Geordie Brookman, Simon Stone and Wayne Blair – and they stand rightly and properly alongside established theatre stalwarts Neil Armfield, David Hare, Michael Kantor and Wesley Enoch.
Of Company B’s 2009 season, Artistic Director Neil Armfield says, “Running thorough our Season is an examination of the world we have created. It begs the question: what gets passed on? How do the young negotiate the hope they carry in their hearts?”
Opening the Season as part of the 2009 Sydney Festival is the Belarus Free Theatre’s Being Harold Pinter. This wild and anarchic work comprises extracts from Pinter’s plays and his Nobel Prize speech, transformed into a harrowing account of artistic and political repression. In Belarus, company members have been evicted beaten and arrested for their work. At Belvoir St Theatre however, they’re going to be very much at home and we’re delighted to be offering them a safe and open forum in which to perform. This will be a split season in January which will also include an Arts and Censorship discussion on 8 January.
Also in the Sydney Festival, from 17 – 27 January, is the brainchild of Russian concert pianist Mikhail Rudy, The Pianist, based on the memoirs of Wladyslaw Szpilman that became an Oscar-winning film in 2002.
Created by Mikhail Rudy, The Pianist is a duet – part-concert, part-play – for two Szpilmans: Rudy himself on piano and a solo actor recounting the story. One of Australia’s finest young opera directors, Rachel McDonald, will be at the helm.
In 2005, 30-something molecular scientist Hassan Abdulrazzak queued with hundreds of fellow emigres in London to vote in Iraq’s first post-Hussein elections. When that great hope went belly-up, Abdulrazzak wrote his first play, Baghdad Wedding, opening at Belvoir St Theatre on 7 February. Theatre young guns, director Geordie Brookman and actor Hazem Shammas, will be recreating this sexy, funny and thrilling play about Iraq as we never get to see it.
On 28 March, Wesley Enoch and Kerry Walker will be mucking it up for a special 30th anniversary, Company B and Melbourne Theatre Company co-production of Dorothy Hewett’s full-throated glorification of our dark side, The Man from Mukinupin.
Shakespearean in spirit yet all-Australian in setting, The Man from Mukinupin is plucked from the dry and dusty regions of the West. Bursting with sunlight and song, reveling in darkness, peopled with a rabble of broken-down vaudevillians, lingerie salesmen and war heroes, this is truly one of Australia’s great musical theatre creations.
Hot on the heels of an Australian classic comes a spanking new Australian work as Brendan Cowell, Toby Schmitz and Wayne Blair – three of Australia’s finest young theatre artists – join forces once again to create a shining, fresh production of Brendan’s latest tour de force, Ruben Guthrie.
When Company B Associate Artist Wayne directed Toby as Ruben in the Downstairs Theatre in 2008 the show sold out before it even opened. Brendan Cowell’s newest work is a brutally honest comedy that examines the Australian habit of binge drinking. We’re very much looking forward to getting the boys back together.
Since Simon Stone was last in the Upstairs theatre, performing in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? in 2007, he has been blazing a path as a director in Melbourne. Now, Simon brings three of Australia’s finest young actors together for a special unearthing of Alexei Arbuzov’s classic play, The Promise, opening 11 July.
In a dilapidated apartment in Leningrad, in the middle of one of the longest and most destructive battles in human history, two teenage boys fall in love with the same girl. Passionate, terrible and wonderful, The Promise is a rediscovered masterpiece of the twentieth century.
On 29 August, Director Neil Armfield reignites his artistic friendship with one of the world’s great dramatists, David Hare, following his acclaimed productions of Hare’s Stuff Happens, The Judas Kiss and My Zinc Bed.
The characters in David’s newest work, Gethsemane, have been likened to the cabinet and confidants of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. David Hare himself says he’s never written a play like it. Company B warmly welcomes actor Paula Arundell back to the Upstairs stage for this dazzling comedy about democracy’s dark night of the soul.
In November Malthouse’s Artistic Director and Company B prodigal son Michael Kantor directs Samuel Beckett’s theatrical masterpiece, Happy Days.
Winnie’s half-buried in a mound of earth. The sun beats down stronger every day and she has a revolver in her handbag in case it all gets too much. The brilliant Julie Forsyth is up to her neck in this Beckett opus.
Finally, Australian playwright Richard Tulloch’s adaptation of a Dutch children’s book takes us to a world where little things matter and love beats fear any day. It’s The Book of Everything. In the spirit of The Small Poppies, Neil Armfield puts on his shorts and pulls up his knee-length socks again for this co-production with Kim Carpenter’s Theatre of Image, which will be designed by Kim.
Featuring nine-year old Thomas, Jesus (played by Cloudstreet and The Pillowman’s Dan Wylie), angels, the Bottombiter and a beautiful girl with a leather leg, Guus Kuijer’s magnificently humble story, starring cute-as-a-button Matt Whittet, grabs your heart and challenges your mind, no matter how old you are.
To receive a free copy of the Company B 2009 Season Book, call 1800 777 405.
