Sport For Jove 2018 Season

Now in its eighth successful year, Sport for Jove Theatre’s 2018 season features the world premiere of two new Australian works and an iconic American classic, new partnerships with regional theatres, and their annual Summer Season, two classic productions performed outdoors over the Sydney summer.

OUTDOOR SPORT – SUMMER 2017/18

Measure For Measure
By William Shakespeare
Directed By Lizzie Schebesta

The Servant of Two Masters
By Carlo Goldoni
Adapted and Directed By Francesca Savige and George Banders

A riotously, raucous 9th Summer Festival about service, appetites and balancing acts - spanning the full reach of comedy - from Shakespeare's dark satirical Measure For Measure to Goldoni's Italian dish of laughs The Servant of Two Masters.

What rules your life? The law? Your conscience? Your instinct? Faith? Should we be ruled by justice or mercy? Should a government legislate your sex life, your morality? How do you responsibly answer the prompts of your deepest, darkest impulses and remain an upstanding moral citizen? Shakespeare may as well have written this play yesterday - an Elizabethan Orange Is The New Black meets A Handmaid's Tale - Measure For Measure pushes the genre of comedy to its darkest and most biting limits. A murky and morally ambiguous exploration of desire and power that will shock audiences with its contemporary voice, will make you laugh and make you think twice.

“Lizzie is one of the finest minds on Shakespeare’s writing that I have come across in 25 years of working on these plays,” said Festival Director, Damien Ryan. “She has extraordinary intuition with the language and the purpose of the writing, particularly seeing the plays in daring new light. I am extremely excited to have her directing for us this season, and to work on one of Shakespeare’s most surprising and subversive plays is an added treat for audiences who have enjoyed Lizzie’s remarkable work on stage at the Festival since its inception.”

Adapted from Carlo Goldoni’s mid 18th Century Italian comedy, The Servant of Two Masters is a feast of fun, following the story of an enterprising and perpetually hungry servant who endeavours to work for two masters in order to earn twice the meals! This new adaptation of The Servant of Two Masters retains the essence and hilarity of its 1700’s source, whilst honouring Goldoni’s own legacy of reform by bringing an immediacy to our contemporary audience.

“Francesca and George have been comic and dramatic stalwarts of our company and its outdoor season,” Ryan explained, “with a particularly extraordinary record of producing wonderful shows for young people every Christmas as part of our Second Age Project. I laughed myself silly at their terrific new adaptation of Goldoni’s irrepressible masterpiece and can’t wait for audiences to revel in their inventiveness and the chaos of this spectacular play. It will be a real festival treat.”

Botched marriages, dastardly disguises, cunning plots.... Men who are wildly unqualified for their jobs and unruly women pushed to the point of performing miracles. Join us this season for a feast of comedy - both light and dark - that will hopefully prove that out of chaos comes progress and satisfaction.

This season features George Zhao, Yalin Ozucelik, Adele Querol, Gabriel Fancourt, Aanisa Vylet, Samantha Ward, Shingo Usami, Meg Clarke, Andrew Hearle, Jess Loudon, Mackenzie Fearnley, Steph Kelly, Claudia Ware and Janine Watson.

Designer Sallyanne Facer   

Design Assistant Bronte Nicole

Sound Designer Tegan Nicholls

Lighting Designer Matt Cox

Stage Managers Rebecca Poulter and Steph Kelly

Vocal Coach Amy Hume

Fight Director Tim Dashwood

Festival Artistic Director Damien Ryan

Bella Vista Farm Park, Baulkham Hills
Dec 8th - Dec 30th

Everglades Garden, Leura
Jan 13th - Jan 28th

INDOOR SPORT – AUTUMN!

The River at the End of the Road

By Caleb Lewis

Produced by HotHouse Theatre and Sport For Jove

Inspired by the majestic Murray River, The River at the End of the Road is the culmination of a two-year collaboration between HotHouse and Sport for Jove. Written by Caleb Lewis and directed by Damien Ryan, The River is an epic ‘Huck Finn-style’ adventure … with a twist.

Flo and her dad live alone on the edge of the river. With Mum gone and Dad busy operating the ferry, Flo dreams of adventure, little dreaming how close it lies. Every twenty years when the river is at its lowest, a huge festival is held in the dry riverbed for a night and a day. Absent pets return home and families reunite, as the living and the lost come together for one last time.

But when Flo fails to find her mother and the river starts to rise, she and a newfound friend strike out for the opposite shore, looking for answers - as her desperate father searches for a way to bring her safely home.

The River at the End of the Road is a rare large-scale production developed for Albury-Wodonga audiences, bringing together six actors from the professional company of Sport for Jove, and HotHouse’s own Studio Ensemble.

The River at the End of the Road

Produced by HotHouse Theatre and Sport For Jove

By Caleb Lewis

Directed by Damien Ryan

Featuring Stacey Duckworth, Gabriel Fancourt, Mark Lee, Drew Livingstone, Amy Usherwood and the HotHouse Studio Ensemble

Hot House Theatre, Albury

March 9th - 17th

INDOOR SPORT – EDUCATION SEASON!

The Tempest, Macbeth and A Midsummer Night's Dream

By William Shakespeare

New for 2018, Sport For Jove is opening its Education Season productions for General Public audiences; one Saturday evening performance only of some of Sport For Jove's productions of William Shakespeare's most iconic plays.

The Tempest

Riverside Theatres Parramatta

May 19 – 7.30pm

York Theatre, Seymour Centre

May 26 – 7.30pm

A Midsummer Night's Dream
York Theatre, Seymour Centre

June 9 – 7.30pm

Riverside Theatres Parramatta

June 16 – 7.30pm

Macbeth

Riverside Theatres Parramatta 

June 23 – 7.30pm

York Theatre, Seymour Centre

July 7 – 7.30pm

INDOOR SPORT - WINTER!

Moby Dick

By Orson Welles

An adaptation of the novel by Herman Melville

Directed by Adam Cook

“Call me Ishmael…” - so begins one of the defining tales of human literature, Herman Melville’s 1851 novel, Moby Dick, a work of overwhelming imagination about the great struggle to defeat the nothingness – the whiteness -  the encroaching terror of why we are alive, what is our faith worth, how do we perceive the world? Aboard the hauntingly atmospheric ship, the Pequod, we get the world in little, a social commentary, an extraordinary adventure and a paean to the sea and its most powerful fish, to whaling lore and legend.

For those who have not read Moby Dick in years or have never wet their feet, it is an example of the very greatest poetry ever put to paper – exquisitely playful, funny, barbaric, soul-shunting and desperate. To see it on stage is a miracle of theatricality, the power of the spoken word, and the skill of the actor – an adventure where poetry is the captain and all of us the ocean. Director Adam Cook brings Orson Welles adaptation of Moby Dick to the stage for Sport for Jove in 2018.

Moby Dick

By Orson Welles

An adaptation of the novel by Herman Melville

Directedby Adam Cook

Reginald Theatre, Seymour Centre

August 9 – 25, 2018

INDOOR SPORT - SPRING!

Ear to the Edge of Time

by Alana Valentine

Directed by Nadia Tass

When a poet writes a contentious verse about the work of a contemporary radio astronomer he sends her into a life-changing crisis about the role of teamwork in 21st Century science. Ear to the Edge of Time is the result of extended conversations, interviews and observations of radio astronomers working specifically in the field of neutron star physics both in Australia and Internationally. The central action of the play is the discovery of a unique double pulsar system but the drama is about a deeply reluctant gender activist, the culture of contemporary science and the nature of collaborative discovery. The physics reflected in the play - the description of what pulsars are and how they spin, what is inside them and what they tell us about the science of the universe - is both fascinating and provocative, opening a window into the world of space and time as a metaphor for the relationship of art and science.

Nadia Tass is steering the vast vision of this new play.

A World Premiere, Ear to the Edge of Time is the product of an extraordinary odyssey of discovery and exploration for Australian playwright, Alana Valentine. The play is the winner of the fifth STAGE International Script Competition and was developed and supported, in part, through the University of California, Santa Barbara’s STAGE project and Professional Artists Lab (Nancy Kawalek, Director) and the California NanoSystems Institute. STAGE is a competition for the best play in the world about science or technology, and EAR TO THE EDGE OF TIME was the winner from 200 entries from 19 countries in 2012.

Ear to the Edge of Time

by Alana Valentine

Directed by Nadia Tass

Reginald Theatre, Seymour Centre

Oct 11th to 27th

Photographer: Zelko Nedic