Horrific Acts for Charity Pics

Brendan Maclean














Pearl Tan, Deborah Thomson













Helen Tonkin, Deborah Thomson, Katrina Rautenberg













Andrew Duvall













Oleg Pupovac














Brendan Maclean













Odd socks














Brendan Maclean, Oleg Pupovac


































Deborah Thomson

Photography: Bob Seary

Horrific Acts for Charity

by Ben Ellis
featuring:
Andrew Duvall, Brendan Maclean, Oleg Pupovac, Katrina Rautenberg, Pearl Tan, Deborah Thomson, Helen Tonkin

Directed by James Beach

Lighting Design:
Spiros Hristos
Lighting Operator:
Elizabeth Lowe
Sound Operator:
Michael Bridges
Production Manager:
Paul Appleby

Produced by New Theatre, 22-25 July, 2009 as part of New Directions

The tsunami was a wonderful opportunity to show not just the US government, but the heart of the American people, and I think it has paid great dividends for us.

~ Condoleezza Rice, Jan 2005, during the US Senate hearing confirming her as Secretary of State to George W. Bush

In one of the most desolate inland camps on the southern coast of Sri Lanka, I met a young mother named Renuka, arrestingly beautiful even in rags [...] Her youngest child, a girl, was six months old, born two days after the tsunami. Renuka had summoned superhuman strength to grab both of her boys and run, nine months pregnant and in water up to her neck, away from the wave. Yet after this extraordinary feat of survival, she and her family were now quietly going hungry on a parched piece of land in the middle of nowhere. A couple of canoes, donated by a well-meaning NGO, made a pitiful sight: three kilometers from the water, and with not even a bicycle for transportation, they were little more than a cruel reminder of a former life. She asked us to carry a message to everyone who was trying to help the tsunami survivors. "If you have something for me," she said, "put it in my hand."

~ Naomi Klein, from Blanking the Beach: "The Second Tsunami", The Shock Doctrine, 2007.

We understood the power of a tsunami, and now Australia has its own capacity to detect these tsunami events and so the country is much better prepared in the event that we do have another tsunami.

~ Peter Garret, Federal Minister for the Environment, Heritage and the Arts on opening a Tsunami Detection Centre in Melbourne, October 31, 2008 (n.b. Australia shares part of its network established to monitor tsunami activity with Indonesia)

Why has Kevin Rudd gone to Indonesia? Is it to order more asylum seekers?

~ Susie Colvin, Bilgola Plateau, July 8, 2009, Letters, The Daily Telegraph

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKUZuv6_bus
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g15sZ_d2WUY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6P3fCDQVMI

Directed by James Beach

As Bees In Honey Drown Pics

Garth Holcombe, Berynn Schwerdt, Annaliese Szota














Lucy Miller, Garth Holcombe



















Lucy Miller, Garth Holcombe, Berynn Schwerdt













Emma Wood, Garth Holcombe, Berynn Schwerdt, Annaliese Szota













Garth Holcombe, James Lugton
















Lucy Miller












Garth Holcome (foreground), Annaliese Szota, Berynn Schwerdt, James Lugton, Emma Wood.














Emma Wood, Berynn Schwerdt














Garth Holcombe













Annaliese Szota, Garth Holcombe, Emma Wood.

Photography: Tom Evangelidis

As Bees in Honey Drown

by Douglas Carter Beane

featuring:
Lucy Miller,
Garth Holcombe,
James Lugton,
Berynn Schwerdt,
Annaliese Szota,
Emma Wood

Directed by James Beach

Set & Costume Design: James Browne
Lighting Design: Sophie Kurylowicz
Sound Design: Caitlin Porter
Production Manager: Micah Johnson
Stage Manager: Heidi Lupprian
Producer: Anna Sampson for Darlinghurst Theatre as part of the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras Festival, February 6 to March 7, 2009.

"the stage is not merely the meeting-place of all the arts, but is also the return of art to life."

Oscar Wilde said that. I say it too.

Douglas Carter Beane has given us a new take on timeless themes, allowing the creative people listed here the licence to explore how and where our practical circumstances and inventive spirits inform, challenge, inspire and amuse each other.

I was born just days before the brave hearts of the first Sydney Mardi Gras were arrested for their criminal yearnings and so it is with a mixture of immense pride and thankless impatience that I present work for Mardi Gras Festival. While a comedy, this play has nurtured rogue thinking that has long accompanied any idea of sexuality I personally entertain: without eschewing sexual identity, mightn't we harbour a romantic identity, which the world in its cynicism ignores? Politics aside, is Gay/Straight in the end more important than True/Free?

With urbandictionary.com offering such tongue-where-it-ought-to-be labels as homoflexible and heterogenerous, might we not soon find the rainbow has yet more colours to it?

But enough with the soapbox, already.

It is with joie de vivre and a dry wit that we present tonight's performance.

Caution: Agressive Birds

Starring Marika Aubrey

Directed by James Beach

Written by Erin Thomas
Musical Director Geoff Castles

20-21 November, 2008, Roxbury Hotel, Glebe

photography: Mikaela Burstow

Poster Girl Pics

Shannon Dooley, Simon Corfield
















Fayssal Bazzi, Lawrence Coy
















Sam Haft, Susie Lindeman















Shannon Dooley, Andrew Lees



















Marika Aubrey, Fayssal Bazzi, Susie Lindeman















Lucinda Gleeson

Poster Girl

by Van Badham

featuring:

Shannon Dooley
Andrew Lees
Simon Corfield
Susie Lindeman
Fayssal Bazzi
Sam Haft
Lucinda Gleeson
Marika Aubrey
Lawrence Coy (filmed)

Directed by James Beach

Set & Costume Design: Phillippa Welfare
Lighting Design: Sophie Kurylowicz
Sound: Amy Wilson
Video: Anthony Beach
Production Manager: Toby Knyvett
Stage Management: Jimmy Andrews

Produced by Gemeinschaft Dogs and Platform 19 in association with Tamarama Rock Surfers at the Old Fitzroy Hotel Theatre, 6 June to 12 July, 2008.

The Diver

by Melita Rowston

Starring Duncan Fellows
Directed by James Beach

presented by Platform 19 at the 2008 Short & Sweet Gala Final
York Theatre, Seymour Centre, Saturday 23rd February

Awards:
Best Actor Duncan Fellows

Best Independent Theatre Company Platform 19

White Russian Pics

Genevieve Mooy













Emma Palmer













Genevieve Mooy















Emma Palmer, Genevieve Mooy













Genevieve Mooy













Genevieve Mooy, Sean Barker

White Russian

by Joseph Goodrich







featuring:
Genevieve Mooy
Emma Palmer
Sean Barker

Directed by James Beach
Set & Costume Design by Colleen Reeks
Movement Johanna Puglisi
Lighting Design by Joshua Emanuel
Sound Design Isabella Kerdijk
Stage Manager Holly Woollard
Head Electrician Jennifer Slattery
Set Supervisor Sam Mezups
Costume Supervisor Anne Kwok
Properties Supervisor Georgina Buchanan

Deputy Stage Manager Caitlin Porter
Lighting Asst/Op Jack Audas Preston
Sound Operator Lauren Tulloh

Lighting Supervisor Verity Hampton
Sound Supervisor Robin McCarthy
SM Supervisor Juliette Kingcott

Presented by NIDA as part of 7 New Exposures 07 at the Parade Theatres, 28 November - 1 December 2007

We are ground to dust between the millstones of terror and anti-terror - Anna Politkovskaya, 2004

Life is dangerous! We risk immolation when we step out the door - Joseph Goodrich, 2004

Where are we now in 2007? In Russia we understand a nouveau-Stalinism is flourishing; in America the Presidency may well be shared between two families for as many as 28 years; here, we emerge from the neo-Menzies era.

Josephs Goodrich's enigmatic anachronisms ask us to recognise the relationship between one time and another: are these people post-war White Russian émigrés or post-9/11 New York socialites in aristocratic drag? Perhaps they are purer still, figures of light and shade - hostile to definition - stepping out of the frame of a Fellini film or falling from the pages of Gide.

Like them, are we not sentimental, nostalgic, envious, grieving? And like them, are we not stuck for words - for beliefs - when neither our conspicuously flawed society, nor certainly its declared fundamentalist enemies offer anything resembling true freedom? Do we change, or do we cling to what we know?

To be, or not to be?

- James Beach