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See article in its original context here on Theatre Press.

REVIEW: True Love Travels on a Gravel Road

See article in its original context here by Anne-Marie Peard.

Melbourne playwright Jane Miller is the first in a new series of chats about writing and what it’s like to be a writer. Before the opening night of her new play, she chats with Anne-Marie Peard and offers advice to emerging playwrights, which all begins with reading and seeing plays and theatre.

Miller’s second full-length play opens this week at fortyfive downstairs in Melbourne. True Love Travels on a Gravel Road, which is also the name of an Elvis Presley song, was a recipient of the R E Ross Trust Playwrights’ Script Development Award in 2011.

Described as a comedy about living the dream, it’s about Jake, who has been pegged as the town “tard” all of his life, but when he falls in love with Maggie anything seems possible and making Maggie’s dream of escaping to Graceland becomes his quest.

Miller’s plays have been produced around Australia and internationally, beginning in 2006 whenPerfect Stillness reached the finals of Short & Sweet in Melbourne where it won the People’s Choice award for Best Overall Production.

Her first full-length work, Happily Ever After, premiered in 2010 at La Mama with a sell-out season followed by a tour.

What made you want to write this play?
I was asked to write a piece for the National Theatre Drama School and started working on a few scenes. Unfortunately work commitments meant I couldn’t pursue the opportunity but I had written a scene between two guys on a street undertaking a business transaction with a dog barking continually and interrupting them. The rest of the play evolved from my curiosity about that transaction.

How long did it take you to write it/how many drafts?
I wrote the first scene in 2009 and finished the first draft in January 2011. I kept leaving it and coming back to it in between other projects but once I finished the complete first draft, I worked on it consistently through the readings and The R E Ross Trust Development process. We are rehearsing version 16.

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See article in its original context here by Kylie Northover for The Age.

When Jane Miller won the R.E. Ross Trust Playwrights’ Script Development Award in 2011, it was more than just a boost for an up-and-coming playwright – the 44-year-old had barely written a thing since her teenage years.

An ”early mid-life crisis” and a six-week CAE course changed all that.

”I hadn’t written for 18 years,” says Miller, whose play, True Love Travels on a Gravel Road, opens at fortyfivedownstairs next week. ”I had written a couple of high-school productions and then I just stopped – I didn’t write another thing,” Miller says.

Writing was always in the back of her mind as ”a dream”, but she ”got caught up in the idea of getting a job that was safe and buying a house, that sort of stuff”.

Miller works as a librarian at the University of Melbourne and says a few years ago, she suddenly thought, ”Oh, I was supposed to write.”

She enrolled in a six-week course run by Peter Murray ”and it completely reintroduced me to this thing that I had loved. I thought I’d just see if I still loved it.”

She wrote a short play, Perfect Stillness, for the Short and Sweet competition – an annual event in which entrants write 10-minute plays, many of which go on to be produced as full-length works – and won the people’s choice award.

”I’m really fortunate as that was the first play I wrote,” Miller says of the 2007 work.

”It then went on to have international productions. I’m just amazed by it.”

She’s written several short plays since, which have also been performed at Short and Sweet and the Melbourne Writers’ Theatre’s MelBorn festivals. In 2012, she made her debut at La Mama with her first full-length work, Happily Ever After.
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Published in the Stonnington Leader on 14 may 2013.

Article published in The Age, Saturday 11 May.

See article in its original context here by Anne-Marie on her blog, Sometimes Melbourne Theatre Talk.

Jane Miller is of my favourite Melbourne playwrights. She’s really only just started writing, but since first noticing her at Short and Sweet in 2007, she’s written a pile of terrific short plays and her first full length play, Happily Ever After, was one of my favourite productions in 2010.

The premiere production of her second full-length play opens at fortyfivedownstairs on Thursday (previews on Wednesday). True Love Travels on a Gravel Road, which is also the name of an Elvis Presley song, was a recipient of the R E Ross Trust Playwrights’ Script Development Award in 2011.

Described as a comedy about living the dream, it’s about Jake, who has been patronised and pegged as the town “tard” all of his life, but when he falls in love with Maggie anything seems possible and making Maggie’s dream of escaping to Graceland becomes his quest.

After the success of Happily Ever After, Jane’s again joined with Director Beng Oh and she says,”Beng challenges me in the best possible way – he is incredibly generous and open – and I trust his judgement as a director and dramaturge.”

Beng says that Jane “has a brilliant ear for dialogue – the laughter in this work arises from the choices, situations and language of the characters. She doesn’t dwell on their misery but you glimpse it and it grounds the comedy.”
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See article in its original context here on Beat Magaine.

Multi-award-winning playwright Patricia Cornelius returns with her newest production, Savages, at fortyfivedownstairs this month. Known for her three-dimensional characters and astute knowledge of the human psych; Savages illustrates the story of two close mates discovering their identity. Director Susie Dee worked closely with Cornelius to create the sharp, somewhat callous, rhythm of Savages, bringing life to taboo subjects of misogyny, gender identity and sexuality.

Savages will be performed at fortyfivedownstairs from Friday August 16 – Sunday September 8. Tickets are available through fortyfivedownstairs.

See article in its original context here by K.E Weber on Theatre People.

Following two years of development, 15 Minutes from Anywhere will present the premiere of a refreshingly new Australian comedy drama – True Love Travels on a Gravel Road written by award-winning playwright Jane Miller and directed by Beng Oh.

Impressively, the work is a winning 2011 script from the R.E. Ross Trust Playwrights’ Script Development Awards. It is set in rural Australia and is about ordinary people who go to extraordinary lengths in pursuit of a dream without regard to the consequences. Director Oh has been involved with the project for two years. He first directed a reading at La Mama in March 2011 and has been with it every step of the way since then through readings, workshops, discussions, casting, grant applications etc. “We’ve gathered a great group of actors together for the production as well as an fantastic creative team,” he says. “I’ve got a lot invested in the work and I think it’s going to be quite emotional come opening night.”

He and playwright Miller have been creative collaborators for over six years but this is their first foray into producing. 15 Minutes from Anywhere is the banner under which both are co-producing this work. Oh first became aware of the new Miller script when he was directing her first full-length play, Happily Ever After. “I read it and loved it,” Oh says. “The play is funny, it has wonderful characters and great language. Jane writes for performance. Her texts look simple on the page but they come alive in the hands of good actors and affords them ample opportunities to play and to make the part their own. It’s a joy to behold. True Love Travels on a Gravel Road is a comedy with a moving narrative and I still love watching it in rehearsals.”

Oh admits that Miller is his closest collaborator. “It wasn’t something that we necessarily planned, it’s just turned out that way,” he states. “We first met in 2006; I directed a production of her award-winning short play, Perfect Stillness, in 2007; and it’s naturally gone on from there. I directed Jane’s first full length play, Happily Ever After at La Mama in 2010. We had a successful season and subsequently toured the play in 2011. In the middle of rehearsals for Happily Ever After Jane mentioned that she was working on a new play and asked me if I would like to read it, which started our collaboration on True Love Travels on a Gravel Road.”

“Jane and I are really in sync. I don’t know if it’s because we’re the same age. We’ve got different backgrounds but we get on very well. I think it’s because we respect each other’s work. I wouldn’t tell Jane how to write and she wouldn’t tell me how to direct but we’re not averse to making offers to each other. I think it boils down to trust. We trust each other.”
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See article in its original context here by Lucy Graham for Weekend Notes.

Misogyny has been big news in Australia this year, and theatre lovers can take it further with the World Premiere of Savages in Melbourne this winter.

Staged in one of Melbourne’s most intriguing theatre spaces, fortyfivedownstairs, Savages a dynamic play by award winning playwright Patricia Cornelius, pulls no punches as it explores the dark side of mateship.

Savages tells the story of four male friends whose holiday is soured by anger, bitterness and life’s disappointments. It is billed as ‘a cautionary tale about a group of ordinary mates who don’t really know themselves or what they can become – it is a tough look at masculinity and misogyny’.

Patricia [Cornelius] is unafraid to tackle subjects that are taboo or difficult,’ says director Susie Dee. ‘She is a deep thinker who wears her heart on her sleeve and speaks her mind with candour and fluidity.’

And Dee should know. She and Cornelius have been collaborating since the 1980s in projects with the Melbourne Workers Theatre, The Berry Man at Hothouse Theatre (2010) and Green Room awards winner Taxi for the Big West Festival (2011).

The cast features Mark Tregonning (The UFO Show – Uncle Semolina), Lyall Brooks (Urban Display Suite – High Performance Company), James O’Connell (Danny and the Deep Blue Sea), and Luke Elliot (The Lower Depths – fortyfivedownstairs).

Savages will run from 16th August – 8th September 2013. Early bird ticket prices are available for performance between 20th and 30th August, and may be purchased now and until 5th of June: $40 Adult, $35 Concession and Groups of 6.
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See article in its original context here by Hannah Bambra for Melbourne Review.

Without pretence or forcefulness, Sydney’s Gallery 9 are creating an inter-state art scene.

For years Gallery 9 has promoted the work of Melbourne artists in their Darlinghurst exhibition space. To continue the exchange, the gallery is bringing the recent works of their acclaimed Sydney-based painters down to show at fortyfivedownstairs in Melbourne.

“This is a collection of wonderful artists with a broader appeal than the city that they live in,” says Will Sturrock, manager at Gallery 9.

The gallery happily acknowledges that a shared time and medium are the only elements that tie these artists together. Sturrock and his team have purposely avoided curating the collection and named it simply and honestly, Contemporary Painting. The result is an approachable, eclectic exhibition without a forcibly woven thread between the abstract and figurative paintings of the six artists who are on display.

The exhibition comes from an interesting standpoint as the work of each post-modern painter seems to resonate with one or many twentieth century painting styles. Julian Hooper, Tonee Messiah and Simon Blau create semi-abstract pieces, their gestural brush strokes and opaque shapes occasionally bleeding into classic fine art forms and figures.
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See article in its original context here by Dylan Rainforth for Art Guide.

Yunuen Pérez and Sissy M. Reyes

Production designer Yunuen Pérez and cinematographer Sissy M. Reyes were friends in Mexico City before they moved to Melbourne and Sydney, respectively, around four years ago. While Pérez established herself in Melbourne’s independent theatre scene and Reyes worked in television they nurtured a project where they would have what Pérez calls “full directorship”. The results are the twelve powerful images on show in Mex-tli, Mexican Goddesses.

“We were looking,” Pérez says, “at indigenous cultures back in Mexico: the Aztecs, Mixtecs and many other different and ancient indigenous communities. We were very attracted to these storytellings and histories because we have a mix of that in Mexico: every single Mexican is part-indigenous and part-European.”

It’s no accident the show is called Mexican Goddesses. “The concept is strong female characters, dignified women who, regardless of the activities they are doing, are very powerful women.” Pérez says it was important for the duo to present empowered female archetypes, in defiance of what she sees as stereotypical depictions of “the Mexican macho man and the submissive woman beside him”.
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See article in its original context here by Nina Bertok for The Melbourne Review.

TRUE LOVE TRAVELS ON A GRAVEL ROAD

When in pursuit of an extraordinary dream, some people disregard any possible consequences.

That’s the concept award-winning playwright Jane Miller is bringing to the Melbourne stages with her comedy-drama, True Love Travels On A Gravel Road. Set in regional Australia, Miller’s new work explores the tragedy of broken dreams alongside the freedom of choice through a cast of colourful (and relatable) characters.

According to the playwright, it all began with the characters themselves – long before a concrete plot was conceived.

“That’s the kind of writer I am, really,” Miller states. “I always know the characters long before I know what I’m trying to say with the story. The plot for True Love Travels On A Gravel Road came out of an idea that I had of these two guys sitting on a street in some little town. I pictured them doing a business transaction and the whole time there is a dog that keeps barking… And that’s basically where the whole play evolved from! I started thinking to myself, ‘Why are they doing this business transaction, what’s it leading up to, what’s the impact going to be?’ After that, all the details of the story came flooding in.”

Next came the main characters of the story – Jake and Maggie. Although Miller claims all of them are completely fictional, the playwright admits that there are elements of her within each one of the characters. Much like musicians tend to describe their songs, Miller says all of the play’s characters are her “babies”.

“There is one incident in the play that happens between two characters, which was inspired by something similar to a real-life happening that my mother told me about, but that’s as close as it gets,” she insists. “I truly relate to all of them, it’s like picking your favourite child. It’s interesting how I am much more forgiving of my characters and the things they do – no matter how wrong they may be – than I am of real people I know. You can learn a lot about yourself through your own writing. If a real person did something similar to one of the characters, I would say, ‘Oh, that’s really strange’ or, ‘Oh, that’s unacceptable’, but when it’s people that you invent, you feel bonded to them.”

True Love Travels On A Gravel Road tells the story of Jake – pegged the town “tard” all his life – who falls in love with Maggie – a girl also “out of step” with the community – with whom he wants to run away to Graceland, of all places. Jake and Maggie’s plans to escape the small rural town and get away from the locals – including Maggie’s straight-talking mother, philosopher Richard, and Jake’s boss and boss’ wife – turn into a near-obsession which sees the play explore the extent to which some people will go in pursuit of their own happiness.
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In our guest post series, we invite alumni, staff and current students to reflect on their time with the VCA. A Mexican born Costume and Set Designer, Yunuen Pérez arrived in Australia in 2007 to study a Postgraduate Diploma in Production at the VCA. She was happy to find the college resembled a friendly artists´ community, where creativity was just as important as hard work.

There were only two students in the year I enrolled, so the attention of the teachers was closely focused on our personal and professional development. Their theoretical and practical projects were meticulously researched, and as a result were always rewarding and prepared me for the professional environment. The personalised training was of a high standard, allowing me to develop into a more disciplined and committed professional, and I was encouraged to always present pre-eminent outcomes.

I had the opportunity to collaborate with students from diverse disciplines and backgrounds, providing me with a multidisciplinary approach to any performing art practice. After graduation, I worked with many classmates on their own projects allowing me to feel part of the wider artistic community of the VCA and Melbourne. This confidence and training enabled me to start my career as a freelance Costume and Set Designer.

In 2011, I began working with cinematographer Sissy M Reyes, the result of the collaboration beingMex-tli, Mexican Goddesses, an exhibition at fortyfivedownstairs that reflects our own artistic practices, together with an emphasis on cross-cultural aesthetics and the power of the image.
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All images by Sarah Walker.

See article in its original context here on by Brendan McCallum for Aussie Theatre.

In the lead up to the opening of Cruising Paradise — tales by Sam Shepardon 25 April, Aussie Theatre’s Brendan McCallum managed to catch up with director Terence O’Connell for a chat.

For a man who has had so much on his plate over the last few months, accomplished director Terence O’Connell (two hundred plus shows under his belt and counting) sounds remarkably relaxed.

In addition to Empire, a circus theatre show playing on the roof of Crown Casino, and a production of Neil Simon’s musicalThey’re Playing Our Song currently touring the country, Terence has somehow found the time to adapt for the stage the short fiction of one of modern theatre’s heavyweights, Sam Shepard.

Best known here in Australia as the author of plays such as True West and A Lie of the Mind, Shepard is in fact an engine of cross-discipline creativity, much admired by O’Connell.

“Sam’s a short story writer, and a musician and a cowboy – Sam’s got it all… he’s one of my great heroes,” says Terence during a break in rehearsals for Cruising Paradise — tales by Sam Shepardopening at fortyfivedownstairs on April 25^th – a venue which, given its subterranean locale and battered, austere bones, should prove a fitting venue for the vaguely gothic underworld of Shepard’s writing.

“It’s a fantastic venue. The show is set in a sort of bar or beer barn out in the middle of nowhere and it’s performed in front of a massive backdrop of a tattered poster of the Western Bad Day at Blackrock… so it looks surreal. It’s going to be great at fortyfivedownstairs.”
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See article in its original context here by Sophia Sourris for Spanish Australia.

Yunuen Pérez and Sissy M. Reyes have joined creative forces to produce their first exhibition together, titled ‘Mex-tli, Mexican Goddesses’, a series of superbly crafted photographs drawing on historical Indigenous practices and aesthetics celebrating resilient women rarely acknowledged in both local and global societies.
Multi-talented Yunuen Pérez, a costume and production designer living in Melbourne and Sydney based cinematographer, Sissy M. Reyes, not only conceptualise, produce and fund their visual art exhibition, but they also feature as the central characters in their photographs. The portrayals are so convincing that they could be mistaken as a series of film stills presenting scenes from a detailed narrative. Due to their artistic backgrounds, it is no surprise that their images have a cinematic and theatrical quality. As passionate and compelling as the women depicted in the photographs, Reyes and Pérez both work on a variety of creative projects in their chosen fields. Although they have been working separately in Australia for six years, this is the first time they have had the opportunity to collaborate together to showcase their skills and unique aesthetic heralded from their Mexican upbringing.

Originally meeting at university in Puebla, Mexico in 2002, it was only when Pérez and Reyes both realised they were going to Australia did they begin to recognise the connection between their creative practices, influences and common visual language. Concerned with the way Mexican culture was being portrayed in Australia and driven by their own struggles trying to live in this country, they began to develop the idea of imagery embracing Indigenous dress cleverly constructing portraits of Mexican women in the Australian landscape. Combined with their fascination for the Aztec period of Mexican history, the pair immersed themselves in a year’s worth of research before producing photographs inspired by Toltec and Mexica ceremonies.
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See article in its original context here by Byron Bache for Crikey.

The new Melbourne production of Stephen Sondheim’s Assassins has its problems, but with a stellar cast and faultless material it’s still worth a look.

To most Australians, Taft is a hairspray and not a president. All but the broadest strokes of American political history are a blank for most of us, so a show about the strange assortment of people who’ve attempted to assassinate American presidents is a vastly different animal here than it is on its native turf. Assassins, Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman’s misfit musical opened last night at fortyfivedownstairs, and like the assassins it condemns and celebrates, it hurtles towards its goals with varying degrees of success.

Assassins doesn’t really have a narrative — its events happen over a span of 166 years. We go from John Wilkes Booth, the disgruntled actor who shot Abraham Lincoln in 1865, all the way through to John Hinckley, Jr, who shot Ronald Reagan to impress a teenage Jodie Foster.

Weidman’s book sparkles like it was written yesterday, but the showpiece here really is Sondheim’s score. Twenty-three years after its off-Broadway debut, it still packs a mean punch. Arguably his only pop song, the killer love duet “Unworthy of Your Love” — sung by John Hinkley, Jr and Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme not to each other but to the objects of their affection: Jodie Foster and Charles Manson — is twice as heartbreaking and three times as fascinating as anything Stephen Schwartz has turned out. Nick Simpson-Deeks as The Balladeer — who has possibly the prettiest voice in musical theatre — gets the best material in the show, sharing The Ballad of Booth and The Ballad of Guiteau with the respective assassins, and busts out his masterful acting chops in his eleven-o-clock transformation into Lee Harvey Oswald.
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See article in its original context here by Kate Herbert for Herald Sun.

The killers of American Presidents may seem unlikely and macabre characters for a musical, but Stephen Sondheim, noted for his unusual themes, depicts this motley collection of nutters in his revue-style musical Assassins.

Assassins, with Sondheim’s eclectic music and lyrics and a witty book by John Weidman, is an old-style, musical revue set in a fairground where the proprietor of a shooting gallery provides the would-be assassins with guns.

This production, by new company Watch This, captures the bizarre nature of the characters and the wry humour, political satire and moral commentary of the script, but the quality of the singing and acting is uneven.

In a compelling, abstract world, killers from different time periods collide, sing about their obsessions, explain their motives through monologues, scenes and songs, including the poignant November 22, 1963, in which people recall where they were when Kennedy was shot.

Sondheim’s idiosyncratic songs straddle a range of styles and periods, but all bear his signature style and ironic tones.

Nick Simpson-Deeks, with his bright, clear, expressive vocal tones, provides the strongest all-round performance, playing the Balladeer who narrates the story, giving a sympathetic, nuanced portrayal of the repressed Lee Harvey Oswald.
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See article in its original context here by Rebecca Harkins-Cross for The Age.

Reviewer rating:

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

Stephen Sondheim
fortyfivedownstairs
Until April 21

Staging an independent musical is not an easy affair, when you’re up against budgets of the likes of last year’s A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, the most recent Stephen Sondheim musical to play in Melbourne.

Director Tyran Parke has done remarkably well with this production of Sondheim’s lesser-known Assassins, first staged off-Broadway in 1990 and locally by the Melbourne Theatre Company in 1995.

In the wake of the Sandy Hook massacre and consequent debates over gun control, its themes are eerily apposite. This revue-style musical reimagines the assassins who have targeted American presidents, from Lincoln’s infamous slayer, John Wilkes Booth, to the forgotten ones who missed their target.

Assassins questions the flipside of the American character – how the God-given right to the American Dream can turn murderously sour; why the lost, the downtrodden or the delusional will express their frustrations with firearms when they don’t win the prize.

This production requires a large ensemble, and here their ranges vary considerably. Nadine Garner is a joy as Sara Jane Moore, a scatterbrained, droll and screechy housewife who attempted to assassinate Gerald Ford. Shane Nagle, Aaron Tsindos and Nick Simpson-Deeks also put in good performances.

A few bung notes early on are soon smoothed out – though some questionable accents endure – and the final numbers are brilliantly realised.

This is social critique with high kicks and harmonies.

See article in its original context here by Bradley Storer for Theatre Press.