That's right, we're on the final countdown! There are only FIVE shows left for Crushed. Put on your favourite 80s band tee, swill away on a Tooheys and get your tickets quick. And remember, tomorrow night is Pay What You Can Tuesday where you can pick up a super cheap ticket for only $10.
Erin Thomas' family are extremely proud of their daughter and sister and the blazing talent that embodied all her work. They have asked that this Saturday night's performance of Crushed be dedicated to Erin, not only so her talent can be seen and heard, but also as a night where her friends can seek comfort in each other and celebrate having known such a remarkable woman.
Come and see Crushed at the New Theatre, 542 King Street, Newtown at 8pm on Saturday 2 June 2012. Or please join us after the show in the foyer at 9.30pm to raise a glass to Erin and her creative life. We will ensure there's some Ryan Adams on high rotation.
The Crushed team have asked a few of our close friends to guest blog a response to our play. Our final guest blogger was slated to be posted last Monday. The post was written by the gorgeous, talented, creative, writer and Crushed dramaturg Erin Thomas, who unexpectedly passed away on Sunday the 27th of May. Her family and friends have requested that we go ahead and post her blog as planned. Erin was excited about writing this piece and sent me a multiple emails full of ideas and scribblings. The last time I saw her, she delighted in showing me photos of her sixteen-year-old self. She particularly loved the one of her in her torn jeans and cherry red docs reading Crime and Punishment (I think… I was too busy enjoying the image of her reading European literature in the middle of the bush.) Erin’s blog is a response to the themes in the play of growing up in the country, (Erin was from Tamworth), and having a place like the scablands to hang out in as a teenager…
‘I was
dragged kicking and screaming to the school dance. It was at the local All Boys
Agricultural School and my girlfriends were desperate to go.
I was
a little dubious as I knew some of the boys from the Agricultural School…
Actually, I was convinced it was going to be awful and that there would most
likely be some minor sexual harassment on the dance floor.
And
then we walked in… There were hay bales placed in decorative piles, the boys
were wearing school uniforms and worse, worst of all, country music was
playing.
That
was the beginning and the end of our indoor group socialising. From then on in
– we took it outside.
Cut to
later that year…
I’m at
a ‘house’ party, (and by house I mean I am standing in a paddock). I am
standing around with the same boys from said Agricultural School and the
potential for minor sexual harassment has now crossed over into reality.
There
is nothing quite so romantic as getting felt up in a paddock behind a cow shed
while the temperature hits an extreme high of four degrees.
When
people think of growing up in the country, I am sure they imagine horse riding,
milking cows and breathing a lot of fresh air, but for me, I look back and
think of riding illegally in cars, getting drunk in paddocks, smoking weed in
public parks and sleeping in (or getting felt up behind) shearing sheds.
For
someone who grew up ‘in town,’ I sure did spend a lot of time in the great
outdoors (well… paddocks). We camped without a tent, lay by fires, wrapped ourselves
up in sleeping bags or sat around drinking goon when we’d told our parents we’d
gone to the movies.
During
Year 12, my entire year camped out on the Sports Captain’s paddock. Think
ninety teenagers, several utes, a few tents, bolts of tarpaulin and me trying desperately
to keep warm in a sleeping bag on the wet ground.
Even
though we constantly complained that living in the country was boring and there
was nothing to do, we entertained ourselves by wandering through the bush or
sitting by campfires watching shooting stars or kissing that cute boy we
fancied.
Despite
all that time spent freezing my proverbial off in paddocks, I wouldn’t trade
any of it. Paddocks became something of a place for us, our place. A place to
explore, to conquer, to escape into…
On 23 May 2012, Melita Rowston was a guest blogger on Griffin Artist Card. She wrote it for Erin.
Without the turg, there’s too much drama.
Workshops, rehearsal
processes…. For some writers, they are the stuff of nightmares. I’ve always
been a little nervous and a lot excited just before a workshop or rehearsal
process commences. I love working with actors and I love hearing my words come
to life. Although, sometimes I have not loved anyone very much after a workshop
– especially when the actors and director have pummelled my words into a former
shadow of themselves.
Over the years, I’ve learnt how
to come out of this process unscathed, and wildly happy with the results. So,
here’s my Writer’s List of Ingredients for a Great Rehearsal Process. Or
something like that.
The process for the writer is
about listening. Constantly listening. And reading. Reading between the lines,
reading body language, reading motivations, reading gesture. It doesn’t matter
what the overlying structure of the rehearsal process is – in the case of Crushed – four weeks of intermittent
script workshops, then four weeks of actor rehearsal, what matters for the
writer, is being constantly present in the room, reading and listening and definitely
not speaking.
Speaking.
I stopped speaking during the
rehearsals and workshops a long time ago. I found that the more I spoke, the
more destructive I was being to the process. The more I defended my choices or
explained the meaning behind a line or a scene, the less benefit I was gaining
from the expertise in the room.
Listening.
Why does a sentence sound
chewy? Why is a scene falling flat? Why is a joke not playing? Simply listening
to the dialogue, the actor’s inhale and exhale of breath, the words that are
emphasised, laboured over or underplayed is the first step. Listening to the
type of questions the actors and director are asking of you and the comments
they are making, the next.
Reading.
Reading the actor’s body
language while they deliver lines, ask questions and make comments is the third
important step. Is it the text that is the problem? Or is it a gap in the
actors knowledge about the subject matter of the scene they are reading, ie:
they don’t know much about astrology so all the technical terms are falling
flat. Is it that the actor doesn’t want to come across as a ‘bad’ character, so
all their feedback is about twisting that character into someone likeable? Does
the actor want more lines, a bigger role? Is an actor saying something,
anything, just so they look like they are contributing?
And the director, is the
director’s feedback more about driving the text into the directorial vision
they wish to impose on the play? Is there is a problem elsewhere in the scene,
and the director’s instinct is right, but they are articulating the wrong
source of the problem?
Is everyone just tired? And
of course, are they just plain right?
The elephant at the table.
It is an absolute necessity to
have a dramaturg at the table. Now, this comes back to all that listening and
reading and not speaking stuff. It’s tiring work. It is like rocket
science. Especially when a cast of three and a director may all have different
ideas about a scene and are all getting rather passionate about vocalising them.
Who do you listen to without
listening too much? Should you take a hatchet to the lot? Who’s speaking for
you?
The dramaturg. They speak for
you. They back you. They fight for you. They’re your AD, your PA.
They don’t have a directorial vision or a line count running through their
heads. They’re not looking at the play through the eyes of one character or the
shades of ‘shall we turn this scene into a pre-recorded animation?’
They are looking at the
words, the overall shape, the drive, the relationship and action lines, everyone
at the table, and the writer.
Sometimes a writer can be
overwhelmed by too much feedback. Sometimes a writer listens too much or loses
contact with their intuition. Sometimes a writer gets a little lost.
Often undervalued and
ignored, the dramaturg will become the player you will be oh-so relieved to
have beside you, holding your metaphorical hand, a spare pencil and eraser
always close by. They are the ones who will calm the room and suggest an
altogether different solution - perhaps a perfect word to round off a final
scene…
Do yourself a favour and go
out and get one today.
Lucy Miller plays the
lead Kelly in Melita Rowston's CRUSHED. Pic Ian Barry
Spared
from extinction, of being snuffed out after a solo season, The Spare Room, one
of the great innovations of Sydney’s independent theatre scene, rewards its
reprieve with the staging of CRUSHED.
At the beginning of the play, the
audience is plunged, albeit briefly, into sudden darkness. In the following 80
minutes, we venture into some very dark places, thankfully brought to light with
a blow torch wit and bravura.
We meet Kelly, recently returned from
Prague where she is a dealer in bric-a-brac. She is back in born and bred
Postcode 2477 because evidence of a two decade old murder has been unearthed.
The victim was her bestie, Sunny Girl Susie, a sweet sixteen, missing believed
slaughtered.
Kelly, once known as Jelly Kelly, has slimmed down and
adopted a semblance of European sophistication. She is reunited with two blokes
who knew Susie, and because they all knew her, they are implicated in her
disappearance. Guilt by association!
Suspicion sticks like shit on an
eggshell and impacts on this trio whose shared experience of Susie binds them in
a web of secrets, deceits and desires.
Dazza has a distrust of DNA
evidence, a mistrust born of the shambles of the Chamberlain case among other
miscarriages of justice littering the local legal landscape. The discovery of
Susie’s t-shirt drives Dazza dizzy with connotations of Azaria’s matinee jacket
and the finger of flawed forensics pointing to his complicity in Susie’s
disappearance.
Jason is now a lecturer in paleontology at the local
university. His profession is quite ironic now that his own buried past is being
dug up and examined, an archaeology of heart ache, an unfulfilled future
relegated to the reliquary of his present.
Melita Rowston’s script
shows a rich facility of language, clearly defined character creation and
narrative arc. Her exploration of the lost child scenario – the stolen, the
taken, the abducted, the disappeared– is as well executed as the best in our
dramatic dreaming.
An assured grasp of comic irony fuels the play which
blasts along with ballistic pace and precision, targeting the tragedy with a
trajectory of jocularity that is robust and ribald.
This production,
deftly directed by Lucinda Gleeson, is powered by high octane performances by
Lucy Miller, Sean Barker and Jeremy Waters.
Miller is marvellous as
Kelly, a kinetic energiser confronting cultural cringe, emotional closure and a
life changing decision. Barker bull terriers his way through Dazza, a dazzling
display of the dichotomy of openness and simmering volatility, playful as a
puppy, dangerous as a rabid.
Water’s laid back academic belies the
below-the-surface sense of guilt and shame that has shadowed him since Susie’s
disappearance.
Eliza McLean’s simple set of transparent screens serves
as stylistic metaphor for the thinly veiled veneer of ‘everything is fine’ and
allows for smooth scene changes.
A bold and emphatic production of a
very polished play, CRUSHED is a provocative and poignant entertainment that
sets the bar high for The Spare Room’s second season. Kudos to Chester
Productions and New Theatre.
Lucinda Gleeson’s production of Melita
Rowston's CRUSHED opened at the New Theatre, 542 King Street, Newtown on Friday
18th May and runs until Saturday 9th June, 2012.
Melita Rowston began writing plays at art school. “I actually started out as a painter,” she tells me. “I went to the Victorian College of the Arts, and started hanging out with actors and seeing a lot of plays; I wanted to tell stories in my paintings, but I realised I could tell better, more detailed stories if I put them on stage.” Over a decade later, Rowston has carved out a reputation for writing theatre with a distinctly Australian voice – and Crushed, playing at New Theatre this month, is no exception.
Crushed is set in a fictional NSW bayside town, up past the Northern Beaches. It’s 1998, and Susie, the most popular girl in school, is having her 16th birthday. To celebrate, a group of high-school friends have gathered in the scrublands on the side of town – “You know, where you go and listen to rock music and drink warm beer,” says Rowston. That night, Susie is abducted from her bed and never found.
Fast-forward 22 years, and workmen excavating the same scrubland uncover the Poison T-shirt Susie was last seen wearing – slashed and covered in blood. The ensuing criminal investigation brings three friends – her best friend, her boyfriend and the town rebel – back together, to confront their memories of a night they’d hoped to leave buried in their adolescence forever. “It’s what I call a high-school reunion from hell,” Rowston quips.
It’s a story inspired by Rowston’s own experiences growing up in a small town on the Victorian coast. “Where I grew up, a little girl was abducted from her bed in the middle of the night and never found. I was a toddler at the time, and it was literally two blocks away – my mum still talks about it,” she says. As she researched the story, however, Rowston quickly realised that the ‘missing child’ theme runs a rich vein through Australian history and culture. “In the 1980s, we had the highest rate of child abduction in the world,” she tells me.
Rowston says the biggest challenge with Crushed was constructing a believable narrative arc. “I think the struggle was the suspense plot – the murder mystery – because it’s so detailed with the clues and the evidence. It was that struggle of making it believable and telling the characters’ relationship stories as well,” she explains. In the end, she drew heavily from her own past to create her characters. “They’re all really angry, but I love them; and the lead is a mixture of a couple of girls I went to high-school with, who I’m still friends with on Facebook”.
Ahead of the production at New Theatre, Rowston handed over her story to director Lucinda Gleeson, with whom she bonded over the play’s social milieu. “Lucinda calls herself a Canberra bogan, and grew up in a more Canberra-like town,” Rowston explains, “and she’s really connected with [Crushed], because just before we got into rehearsals, she started reconnecting with her high-school friends as well. She’s just like, ‘This is too close to home, I know these people; I know this world’. So that’s been really great.”
On her hopes for the upcoming production, Rowston says, “I like it when people have extreme reactions to my work. I’ve gotten to the point where I know that could also include extreme hate, but yeah… feeling something really resonant is what matters.”
