The actors have taken their curtain call, the house lights have gone up and the audience have left their seats. Exeunt, right?
Not if Sydney’s top theatre companies have anything to do with it. Belvoir, Griffin and Sydney Theatre Company are giving theatregoers new reasons to stick around.
Visitors to Griffin’s SBW Stables Theatre in Kings Cross can regularly enjoy mini-art exhibitions in the theatre foyer where the Adam Cullen portraits (of the men who inspired Gordon Graham’s play The Boys) currently on the walls will soon make way for the work of photographer Deborah Paauwe to coincide with the new indie production New Electric Ballroom.
Those seeing a show at STC’s Wharf Theatres can partake in games of pool or table tennis, or, on select Friday evenings, enjoy the free Wharf Sessions concert series. Come late March, they can hang out at the STC bar – a big hit with the punters this past Sydney Festival.
Recently, the Belvoir brains trust realised they were sitting on a perfect space for post-show events: the foyer. Even more importantly, they noticed they had an audience. “There’s a captive audience that lingers in the foyer after Belvoir shows on a Sunday night,” says Tommy Murphy, the company’s playwright-in-residence. “So we thought, how can we make use of them? How can we capture them with something else?”
The answer is B Street. Every Sunday evening for five weeks, Belvoir’s theatre foyer will host a free ‘theatrical soap opera’. Written by Murphy with playwright-performers Rita Kalnejais and Charlie Garber, B Street follows the ongoing dramas in the lives of a colourful bunch of close-knit characters: an old woman with perpetual life disorder, a memory champ, a retired racehorse who’s seen better days, and an inventor who has mysteriously disappeared…
“It takes inspiration from Australian soap opera,” says Murphy. At different times B Street will feel like Wandin Valley (A Country Practice), Cooper’s Crossing (The Flying Doctors) and Erinsborough (Neighbours). “But, as well as that, it takes inspiration from Greek tragedies and even plays that have been on the Belvoir stage. At times it feels a little like Neighbourhood Watch or Thyestes.”
B Street will also have the obligatory dance episode in Week 3. “There was going to be a Christmas episode,” says Murphy.
And an episode where they all go on vacation?
“Yes, they all go to Hawaii or the Grand Canyon.”
The series is directed by Belvoir’s resident director Simon Stone, with songs (including obligatory catchy theme song) composed by Belvoir’s resident noisenik Stefan Gregory.
For Murphy – whose work you’re more likely to see on Australia’s main stages – the challenge of B Street is making a show that will complement the jovial, drink-in-hand, post-theatre mood on a Sunday afternoon. “It has to be done with quite a lot of precision. We’ll learn a lot. And it’s the kind of thing that, if we get it right, could have a longer life.”
Prolonging the thrill and excitement of a night at the theatre: that can only be a good thing, Murphy says. “I just like that that sort of thing is happening here at Belvoir. Every space is an opportunity to create something, to create a performance. It seems to be the right way to use a theatre company.”
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