Griffin Theatre Company 2012 Season

Griffin Theatre Company has announced the plays in its 2012 Main and Independent Seasons – some things old, some things new – bound together, according to artistic director Sam Strong, by a strong sense of urgency and immediacy.

“We’ve created a very diverse and eclectic range of experiences that will make for some very different nights in the theatre,” says Strong. “We’re guiding the audience’s journey through the whole year: through experiences that are joyous, through experiences that are challenging, through experiences that are hilarious, through experiences that are incredibly topical and provocative. One of the reasons I’m really proud of the season is that it carries that variety and it’s great to experience the season as a whole.

“But the other thing that’s important is that what unifies all of those shows is quality of storytelling and quality of acting. One thing that we’re very keen to do is consolidate Griffin as the place that you come to see the best acting in Sydney in an intimate, participatory environment. And we’re not ashamed of claiming that.”

Oh yes, and the Stables café that Strong hinted at last year around this time? It’s finally happening.

“That is one of the greatest gifts that you can receive as the artistic director of a company: the ability to create a physical hub for artists. We’ve been trying to do that a bit more with Griffringe and Jam and Toast and all those sorts of things. But the chance to have people there during the day and during the night on our Wi-Fi talking about art is incredibly and profoundly exciting.”

MAIN SEASON

A powerful, dangerous, visceral descent into the darker parts of our city and our selves. Twenty-one years ago, they were lining the streets to see the original Griffin production of The Boys. Since then, it’s become a classic of the Australian stage and screen (winning along its way an AWGIE and four AFI Awards). Following the success of his sold-out production of Speaking in Tongues, artistic director Sam Strong reimagines another Griffin classic for a new generation and the Sydney Festival.

After the resounding success of Speaking in Tongues in 2011, directed by Strong, the return of The Boys marks another restaging of a classic from the Griffin canon to, according to Strong, “interrogate what it means now.”

“It occupies this amazing position in Griffin folklore,” says Strong. “People who have seen the original production will talk in quite an amazing level of detail about it and just how much it affected them.

“For me, The Boys is all about an experience in the theatre – it’s about what that play does to you. It is dangerous, visceral and powerful. To be forced into that intimate space with those characters was an unforgettable experience 21 years ago, and we want to make it an unforgettable experience again. It’s a play you can’t capture in words. You’ve got to come and see it.

"For me, it's all about what that play does to you. It is dangerous, visceral and powerful. To be forced into that intimate space with those characters was an unforgettable experience 21 years ago, and we want to make it an unforgettable experience again. It's a play you can't capture in words. You've got to come and see it."

The casting of Josh McConville in the role that launched David Wenham’s career – the psychopathic Brett Sprague – is also crucial. McConville’s now booming career began at Griffin, earning the Sydney Theatre Award for Best Newcomer for his energetic, vital performances in The Call and Strange Attractor in 2009. “Josh grew up at Griffin and had his first gigs straight out of NIDA with the company, so it’s nice to get him back,” says Strong. “Josh’s career is poised at that moment – no pressure to Josh – where he can absolutely monster that role.

“One of the things that excites me most about The Boys is that it’s such an acting challenge. The work I tend to respond to is very difficult and challenging for actors and The Boys is no exception. It’s an actors’ piece, and a great vehicle for not just one but an entire ensemble of great actors.”

Being part of the Sydney Festival is also great news for Griffin. “We’re incredibly thrilled,” says Strong. “To have the Sydney Festival in our venue is really wonderful.”

The Story of Mary MacLane by Herself
Written by Bojana Novakovic after the writings of Mary MacLane
Directed by Tanya Goldberg
Starring Andrew Baylor, Bojana Novakovic, Tim Rogers, Dan Witton
Presented in association with Malthouse Theatre, Merrigong Theatre Company and Performing Lines

Promiscuous prophet or philandering fool? Mary MacLane is a woman you’d be mad not to meet. More than one hundred years ago, The Story of Mary MacLane set America aflame. A shocking confessional from a 19-year-old girl who refused to succumb to the corset-bound prudery of her age, Bojana Novakovic brings Mary’s writings to the stage in a bold and magical ‘monologue for two’ with original music composed and performed by Tim Rogers of You Am I fame.

According to Strong, The Story of Mary MacLane is a piece of theatre built around the compelling combination of its two lead performers: Bojana Novakovic (you may have seen her in Edge of Darkness or M. Night Shyamalan’s Devil) and You Am I’s Tim Rogers. “It’s a great vehicle for two incredibly captivating and charismatic performers to own the Griffin space.

“But it also engages with what is simultaneously historical and contemporary content. It resurrects what is described as the greatest genius you never heard of – a radical early-20th century feminist called Mary MacLane – and it takes her writings and drags them to the 21st century via Bojana and via contemporary ideas of celebrity and attention-seeking. It’s a wonderful mash-up between this incredibly fascinating historical figure and a very contemporary form. That form is both a really playful one but interwoven with music and songs.”

As for Rogers’s role, it’s not a case of there merely being a band in the corner. “That’s the beauty of it,” says artistic director Sam Strong. “Tim is acting and performing in the work as well. A live band is onstage but is completely interwoven into the piece. Tim plays a musician within the piece that has this wonderful, sparkling and very prickly repartee with Mary. It’s going to be a lot of fun.”

The production, which opens as part of Melbourne’s Malthouse Theatre 2011 season in November, also represents a graduation from Griffin’s Independent Season to its Main Season. Director Tanya Goldberg and Ride On Theatre’s 2010 production Way to Heaven was an indie smash-hit. (Here's what we said about it.)

Angela’s Kitchen
Written by Paul Capsis and Julian Meyrick (with associate writer Hilary Bell)
Directed by Julian Meyrick
Starring Paul Capsis

Paul Capsis’s evocative and beautifully staged piece of autobiographical theatre was the sell-out smash hit of 2010. Now, Griffin welcome Paul and Angela’s Kitchen back to the Stables before heading off on a national tour. If you missed it the first time or simply want to see it all again, this is your chance to join the hordes of people who fell in love with Angela and her family in 2010.

A portrait of one man’s relationship with his grandmother and the story of an entire generation of post-war migration, Angela’s Kitchen touched Griffin audiences like no other production in recent years. Time Out has it on very good authority that, such was the emotional impact ofthe show, Griffin’s front-of-house staff had to keep boxes of tissues at the ready at the Stables Theatre for audience members moved to tears during the performance. (Here's what we said at the time in our five-star review.)

Now it’s back by popular demand. “We were inundated with people who responded to that show so glowingly that we felt like it had another life in Sydney,” says Strong. “In that mix of shows, it’s a real delight as artistic director to present a work that’s so generous of spirit and warm of heart. It’s very simple in its storytelling but very effective, and it’s a lovely heart-warming story and night in the theatre.

Angela will also be taking her kitchen around the country next year on a national tour.

A Hoax
Written by Rick Viede
Directed by Lee Lewis
With Shari Sebbens
A Griffin Theatre Company and La Boite Theatre Company co-production

Inspired by the recent spate of fabricated ‘misery memoirs’, the 2011 Griffin Award-winning play A Hoax is a vicious satire on the politics of identity, modern celebrity and the peddling of abuse culture. With its wickedly irreverent humour, A Hoax will make you gasp with delight and despair in the same breath.

It’s exceptionally rare that a Griffin Award-winning play hits the stage immediately – but, according to Strong, A Hoax “demanded to be programmed”.

Playwright Rick Viede (a two-time Griffin Award winner in fact) has “one of the naughtiest and most devilish turns of phrase going around,” says Strong. “A Hoax is wickedly hilarious and delightfully dirty, but it also a very serious interrogation of the exploitation of abuse stories. It’s a play that’s very provocative in its content and asks searching questions about identity and the demands of celebrity.”

Strong is loathe to call it an ‘important’ play. "It certainly isn’t earnest or precious," says Strong, "but it does tackle identity politics in a way that is completely fresh and unique.”

Between Two Waves
By Ian Meadows
Directed by Sam Strong
Starring Maeve Dermody and Ian Meadows

An urgent and searching new play about the most pressing issue of our times, Between Two Waves asks an anxious, warming world: how do we find happiness in the face of an uncertain future? A politically charged relationship drama set against a climate change backdrop, Between Two Waves is the first play to be produced out of the Griffin Studio, by one of the most exciting new voices in the country.

As Strong puts it: “When you know the world is fucked, how do you bring a child into that world?

“Between Two Waves confronts an incredibly topical, important world issue – climate change – through the medium of a very personal and beautifully drawn relationship,” says Strong.

It’s a piece very close to Strong’s heart – he sees climate change as the most important issue facing the world today. Strong has also worked with Ian Meadows on Between Two Waves as a film script. “It’s a very imaginatively lavish work, with all these amazing dystopian visions,” Strong says. “One of the things that Ian had to confront bringing that into the theatre is how to realise these amazing nightmare sequences about the end of the world.”

Well, as director, that’s your problem, isn’t it?

“It is my problem,” Strong laughs. “It has some meaty directorial challenges. But Ian has done the bulk of the work for me. And it’s a chance to work with actors like him and Maeve. If you’re casting a relationship drama you can’t really go past Maeve Dermody and Ian Meadows – it’s a great combination.”

 

INDEPENDENT SEASON

Griffin’s five-strong Main Season will be interspersed with four works in its Independent Season: Enda Walsh’s The New Electric Ballroom, lyrical Irish blarney at its best directed by directorial supremo Kate Gaul; Vanessa Bates’s dessert-filled take on modern life Porn.Cake directed by Shannon Murphy; Elise Hearst’s The Sea Project, a beachside mystery directed by Paige Rattray; and, wrapping up 2012, Rapid Write – a bold new project headed by English director Tim Roseman that will tackle exactly whatever it is that is topical and newsworthy in Sydney in late 2012.

For a limited time you can subscribe to Griffin’s Main Season for $140, or sign up for all nine Main and Independent shows for $220. Flexible subscription packages will be released at the end of September. For more about the 2012 Season and the company’s other ventures, visit Griffin Theatre Company.

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