Black Swan Celebrates 25 Years With Season 2016
Black Swan State Theatre Company has announced its 25th anniversary season, revealing the hidden places and secret spaces of where they make their work, celebrate theirr past and look to the future. The 2016 Season will deliver three world premieres, five new Australian plays, three WA premieres, two co-productions, a French classic, a modern German classic, a multi-award winning American play and three Malcolm Robertson award-winning plays.
The year begins in the Black Swan Lab with LOADED: A Double Bill of New Plays featuring Gita Bezard’s Girl Shut Your Mouth and Will O’Mahony’sTonsils + Tweezers.The first main stage production is an iconic Australian mystery in Picnic at Hanging Rock, a Malthouse Theatre co-production directed by Matthew Lutton, followed by theWA Premiere of Angels in America by Tony Kushner; then it’s back into the Lab for the tragic, true tale of Julia Pastrana in A Perfect Specimen by Nathaniel Moncrieff.
The season continues with Black Swan’s first international collaboration with the National Theatre of China, in Brecht’s The Caucasian Chalk Circle, an epic work directed by Wang Xiaoying bringing together Chinese and Australian Indigenous cultures. Just in time for the US presidential elections, Black Swan will stage the Australian premiere of the political satire Clinton: the Musical, an Off-Broadway success penned by Australian brothers Pauland Michael Hodge. A co-production with Queensland Theatre Company follows, in the farcicalAustralianadaptation by Justin Fleming of Moliere’sTartuffe.
“Artists lit the spark that become Black Swan State Theatre Company, creating a force that the entrepreneurial spirit of Western Australia embraced and celebrated,” says Artistic Director Kate Cherry (pictured above: Photographer: Robert Frith).
“Black Swan grew to become Western Australia’s state theatre company. Thanks to Founding Chair, Janet Holmes à Court AC, our two most recent Chairs, Sam Walsh AO and Mark Barnaba AM and two General Managers, Shane Colquhoun and Natalie Jenkins, Black Swan has come of age in the magnificent State Theatre Centre of WA. Thanks to the sheer tenacious creativity of our artists we have continued to grow in ambition and theatricality, and thanks to our wonderful audiences we have flourished.
“The inspiration for the establishment of Black Swan Theatre Company was Andrew Ross’ visionary production of Bran Nue Dae by Jimmy Chi. The theatrical genius and sheer pioneering audacity of that work was recognized by Will Queckett, Duncan Ord and Janet Holmes à Court. They came together with Ross to form a company that would support such visionary Western Australian work.
“Now, 25 years later, the flame of theatrical possibilities still sparkles.
“The Heath Ledger Theatre builds on artistic pathways that are years in the making. The Studio Underground gives us glimpses of future possibilities. The 2016 Season reveals the hidden places and secret spaces where we make our work. I hope you will join us on these journeys.”
The Productions
Main Stage - Heath Ledger Theatre
Picnic at Hanging Rock
By Tom Wright, adapted from Joan Lindsay’s novel.
Co-production with Malthouse Theatre
Director: Matthew Lutton.
Cast includes Harriet Gordon-Anderson, Arielle Gray, Amber McMahon, Elizabeth Nabbenand Nikki Shiels
1 – 17 April
Australia, 1900. An ancient land becomes the site of an impossible mystery. A group of schoolgirls and their teachers venture out into the sundrenched landscape, only for four of their number to disappear forever.
The subsequent investigation creates more questions than answers. One of the girls is found with no memory of what happened to her or her classmates, another succumbs to hysteria for no apparent reason. Those close to the missing girls begin to meet with unfortunate ends and it becomes clear thatthis is no ordinary disappearance.'
Image: Arielle Gray and Harriet Gordon-Anderson. Photographer: Robert Frith
Angels in America
Part One: Millennium Approaches
By Tony Kushner
Director: Kate Cherry.
Cast includes Adam Booth, Stuart Halusz, Felicity McKay, Jo Morris, Will O’Mahony, Kenneth Ransom, Toni Scanlon and John Stanton.
28 May –19 June
Set in 1985 New York City, this ground- breaking drama follows Prior Walter, a young gay man diagnosed with AIDS and abandoned by his lover. Desperate and alone, he is visited in a dream by an angel that brands him a prophet and tasks him with saving humanity from themselves.
As if this wasn’t a big enough burden, Walter must navigate a minefield of the fantastic and the mundane, including Mormons, a communist hating homophobic lawyer and a drug-addicted housewife, as well as his ownfeelings of abandonment and disenchantment.
Image: Felicty McKay. Photographer: Robert Frith
The Caucasian Chalk Circle
By Bertolt Brecht.Translated by Ralph Manheim, with song lyrics translated by Clint Bracknell.
Director: Dr Wang Xiaoying
Cast includes Caitlin Beresford-Ord, Adam Booth, Kylie Farmer, Luke Hewitt,Geoff Kelso, Hayley McElhinney, Lynette Narkle, Kenneth Ransom, Katya Shevtsov, Steve Turner and Alison van Reeken.
30 July - 14 August
Black Swan in collaboration with the National Theatre of China present a rare opportunity to see an epic work reinterpreted for the modern day.
The Caucasian Chalk Circle (based on an old Chinese fable The Circle of Chalk) is Black Swan’s first international collaboration. The play famously begins with a village debate about land ownership, which shifts to reveal a story about justice – following the peasant girl Grusha, who rescues the Governor’s infant son as she flees across a war-torn country in search of safety.
Set against the backdrop of a tumultuous civil war, The Caucasian Chalk Circle is an engaging parable about motherhood,ownership and identity.
Image: Hayley McElhinney, Caitlin Beresford-Ord and Kylie Farmer. Photographer: Robert Frith
Clinton: The Musical
Book by Paul Hodge and Michael Hodge. Music by Paul Hodge.
Director: Adam Mitchell.
Cast includes Matt Dyktynski, Brendan Hanson and Megan Kozak.
27 August – 11 September
Bill Clinton is one of America’s most influential and divisive presidents. On the one hand: educated, charismatic and extremely popular. On the other: reckless, fun and decidedly unprofessional. Clinton: The Musical explores this duality with two actors playing both sides of Clinton as he navigates his tumultuous career, alongside his ever-faithful wife Hillary.
"WJ", the wholesome, intelligent one, and "Billy", the randy, charming one attempt to resolve a range of domestic issues including, yes, "that" infamous incident with a particular bright-eyed, bushy-tailed White House intern...
Image: Matt Dyktynski. Photographer: Robert Frith.
Tartuffe (The Hypocrite)
By Moliere – a new version by Justin Fleming.
Director: Kate Cherry
Cast includes Jenny Davis, Darren Gilshenan, Hugh Parker, Alison van Reeken, Steve Turner and Alex Williams.
Co-production with Queensland Theatre Company
22 October – 6 November
Moliere's classic 17th Century satire, with Australian vernacular and subversive wit.
Orgon is a wealthy man attempting to come to terms with middle age. Fortunately for him, and much to the dismay of his family, he meets Tartuffe – a supposed man of the cloth. Though everyone else can see Tartuffe for the fraud he really is, Orgon becomes obsessed with him, and it isn’t long before Orgon won’t make a decision without him.
The relationship initially appears to be harmless, however when Orgon begins promising his possessions, his home, even his daughter to Tartuffe, Orgon’s family resolves to exposeTartuffe for the swindler he is.
Image: Alison van Reeken, Darren Gilshenan and Alex Williams. Photographer: Robert Frith
Black Swan Lab - Studio Underground
LOADED: A Double Bill of New Plays
Girl Shut Your Mouth by Gita Bezard and Tonsils + Tweezers by Will O’Mahony
14 Jan - 7 Feb 2015
Girl Shut Your Mouth
Director: Jeffrey Jay Fowler
Cast: Shalom Brune-Franklin, Brittany Morel, Stephanie Panozzo andJessica Patterson.
Katie is going to a place where people are friendly, the drinks are minty and no one tells you how to live your life. Her friends, Mia and Grace, wracked with jealousy, resolve to join Katie on her journey. The only problem is the price of admission.
Tonsils and Tweezers
Director: Will O’Mahony
Cast: Dacre Montgomery-Harvey, Lincoln Vickery, Megan Wilding and Hoa Xuande
Tonsils and Tweezers are best friends, have been since high school. All that changes on the day of their 10 year high school reunion,when Tweezers reveals that he has a sure fire plan to make sure no one talks about “what they’ve been up to...”
Image: Hoa Xuande and Lincoln Vickery. Photographer: Robert Frith
A Perfect Specimen
By Nathaniel Moncrieff
Director: Stuart Halusz
Cast includes Adriane Daff, Rebecca Davis, Luke Hewitt, Greg McNeill and Igor Sas
30 June – 17 July
World Premiere
Behold the dying days of the travelling freak show and the true story of its star attraction: Julia Pastrana, the ape-woman.
Theodore Lent is a calculating businessman on the cutting edge of one of America’s most popular exports: the travelling freak show. When his wife (and star attraction) Julia falls pregnant, Theo couldn’t be happier. What could be better than two stars for the price of one?
However, dark clouds are forming in Theo’s immediate future, as he begins taking steps toward the decision that will cost him hisfriends, his sanity, and perhaps even his life...
Image: Luke Hewitt and Adriane Daff. Photographer Robert Frith
Subscribe to our E-Newsletter, buy our latest print edition or find a Performing Arts book at Book Nook.