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.
The Crushed team have asked a few of our
close friends to guest blog a response to our play (which is playing now!) Third
to pick up a pen, is Bollywood actor, singer, songwriter, and screenwriter Nicholas Brown. Like our female lead Kelly,
Nicholas left Australia many years ago. We asked him to muse on what’s it’s
like being an Aussie expat and to riff on the notion of homecoming…
‘Leaving Australia was one of the toughest decisions I’ve ever made.
It’s the build up that’s the hardest. The anxiety, the fear of the unknown,
losing all your personal and business connections and having to start over. You
feel like you’ve spent years getting to a certain point just to throw it all
away.
Once I got on the plane though, it all seemed like a distant memory. In
my new surroundings, all I could do was live in the present.
Most people leave because they’re fed up with things being safe, they’re
frustrated with their careers and need some sense of risk to catapult them out
of the comfortable numb. That was certainly the case for me. Leaving Australia
helped me find my inner electric boogaloo. Although, these days I need to
return home to find it!
I left Sydney in 2007 for Mumbai to pursue an acting career in
Bollywood. I had no idea what I was getting myself into or how I would cope. I
wasn’t sure when I would return, but when I did, I would’ve damn hell have got
my ‘Bolly’ on!
Being an ex-pat was a lot of fun. I was ‘exotified’ for being Aussie,
which was refreshing, because back home being exotic was a hindrance. I think
that’s starting to change…
I remember my first trip home after my initial Indian adventure.
I’d become used to being constantly visually, emotionally and spiritually
stimulated. India is such a fascinating country. Mumbai is constantly evolving.
Bollywood is booming and constant change is part of its psyche. One of the
basic tenets of the Hindu philosophy is that you need to destroy to create and
because of this, Mumbai is progressing at the speed of light! And so, I had
changed. I had grown. I had become accustomed to chaos and risk and I wanted to
bring some of that back home to my friends and family.
Of course, when I returned, the only thing that had changed were a few
restaurants on King St in Newtown.
There’s something about the Australian sense of humour, it’s so dry,
that it often glosses over what’s at its core – racism and jealousy. “Getting
too big for ya’ boots are ya?” The tall poppy syndrome is definitely something
you become more aware of when you return to Australia.
When I come home now, I internalise, because sharing my stories and
adventures often results in being labeled boastful.
I love Australia and am proud of being Australian, but I think we can be
so much more. If we don’t really look at ourselves, how can we move forward?
Despite two new prime ministers and the ridiculous cost of living, not
much has changed since I left. The nostalgic part of me is pleased by this, but
the revolutionary within wishes that we were more ephemeral.
India is steeped in religion, tradition and mythology, but still manages
to evolve. India evolves by embracing its history. I believe the only way
Australia can become an open-minded, free country is to look to our indigenous
past for guidance.
Maybe we could get rid of the Union Jack from our flag and replace it
with the Aboriginal flag?! And can we make Yothu Yindi's 'Treaty' our National
Anthem?’
Like what you're reading? You can learn more about
Nicholas’s projects past, present and future here:
The Crushed team have asked a few of our close friends
to guest blog a response to our upcoming play. Second to take the stand is
Dr Who expert, shark lover, former Senior
Producer/Programmer of ABC’s rage, former
Series Producer of Raw Comedy and
current Researcher for Kitchen Cabinet, Madeline
Palmer. Given her years asrage
programmer, we asked her to use her witty music knowledge for good and offer us
an interpretation of the popular Guns ‘n’ Roses music video: November Rain…
‘It’s a tale as old as time; love is only found before it is cruelly lost. It could happen to any of us, for it happened to Axl Rose in November Rain…
Axl sits on the edge of a four-postered bed lit by the most poignant blue moon in the history of love, poetry and lunacy. He seeks solace in a handful of pills washed down with whiskey, but no relief comes. Instead, he tosses and turns in a suspiciously large amount of silk bed sheets, as he dreams of summers past.
He dreams of the glorious hours wiled away lighting each other’s smokes in the basement of a bikie roadhouse, of the time Jesus himself shed a bloody tear for the beauty that was their love, of their resplendent wedding filled with the most magnificent collection of steampunks ever.
Ah, their wedding. Axl’s hair had been perfect all day. His fiancée’s face was demurely hidden behind a lace veil, while her wedding dress revealed a less demure amount of leg. Slash had been his best man. If only Axl had known...
Slash forgot the rings, of course, which should have immediately served as warning… Instead, Axl accepted a ring offered by his drummer, unaware that this small act would directly lead to Four Weddings And A Funeral and the mainstream infiltration of Wet Wet Wet.
As Axl slid the ring onto his bride’s finger, joy flooded his most manly heart. Slash looked on, his jealously burning as fiercely as the cigarette he inexplicably smoked during the entire ceremony. As Axl and his bride shared one of the most tonguiest of kisses of all time, Slash could no longer bear to watch, (I know how you feel buddy), and he charged out of the chapel. For he could not continue to hide his terrible secret – his greatest love was none other than Axl’s leggy bride.
How does one handle such torment? By removing his shirt, standing in a desert as barren as his life, and ripping out one of the most EPIC GUITAR SOLOS OF ALL TIME.
The wails of Slash’s instrument drew helicopters from far and wide for they could not but bear witness to his spread-eagled expression of pain.
And far away, the other side of the church presumably, (for some reason not in the desert and not even the same church), the bride and groom were ushered to their wedding car, rice raining upon them and the bride looking wistfully off into the distance. (Perhaps for her secret lover Slash?)
Ever the entertainer, Slash shredded for long enough to bridge the annoying gap between wedding and reception, giving the guests something other to do rather than wait in a nearby pub trying to make conversation with someone’s aunt.
The wedding party reconvened at a Tuscan villa, (no doubt close to the desert church), for champagne, cake, blue velvet, saxophones and more smoking. The bride and groom looked happy. All was as it should be. Even Slash appeared to have been somewhat relieved of the burden of his secret love.
Their joy was however, as all joy is, ultimately fleeting. The dark clouds rolled over and rain poured down on their special day. This was portentous and tragic and not at all ironic in any sense whatsoever. To escape the deluge, a waiter leapt over the table and their fragile wedding cake collapsed in a way that is not portentous, tragic or at all ironic. The spilled wine flowed like blood.
In the months to come, Axl would dwell on this moment, (he had endless hours to fill), and it is better to think of a wedding day than what came after. The day he would return to that same church with his wife lying in a coffin, her face split with a mirror - apparently common with death by gunshot wound to the head, (and nothing to do with the movie Face Off).
Axl would look to the heavens. His heart would cry out. A dozen violins would play for his sorrows (literally). You know what I said earlier about Slash’s guitar solo being the most epic guitar solo of all time? That was until now. Right now. For Slash is also heartbroken and wracked with guilt about his forbidden love. He leaps on to the piano in front of the screaming masses at the concert I’ve neglected to mention until now, and his guitar screams with grief as Axl pounds the keys in rage.
As red roses lie across his dead bride's coffin, Axl remembers her wedding bouquet, and looks to the sky as another storm rages above him and within his heart.
Because, as he might have sung but didn’t, ‘Nothing lasts forever, except November Rain.’
Like what you're reading? You can follow Madeline
Palmer on twitter: @msmaddiep
Like what you're hearing? Then book your tickets to
Crushed!
The Crushed team have asked a few of our close friends to guest blog a response to our upcoming play. First up is Independent Theatre's Superstar: writer, director, producer and all-round-creativity-facilitator Augusta Supple. We asked her to respond to Crushed's tag line: BITTER SWEET SIXTEEN...
'There wasn’t much that was sweet when I was sixteen.
Living in a small coastal town in the banana belt of NSW, there was little that linked me to the outside world. TV was limited to 4 channels, (I was secretly obsessed with Paul Reiser from Mad About You), and I was glued to Helen Razer's voice and song choice on Triple J like a grommet clings to his surf board. While my face was buried in suspiciously pristine ancient history text-books with the vain hope that education would set me free from the shit hole I was trapped in. It was the 90s. The dawn of the information age. The Gulf War. The Chechen War. The Bosnian War. Kosovo. Australia was having a recession it had to have. Bill Clinton played the sax and his sperm was found on a dress owned by a woman he did NOT have sexual relations with. Kurt Cobain had moaned his way through gritted teeth and a floppy fringe, then blew a hole in his head.
Sixteen for many was not so sweet. It was the age of pregnancy, the school certificate, apprenticeships and expulsion. Sixteen was my year of joining a punk band, writing abusive songs, the obligatory occasional social binge drinking, studying Hamlet, unrequited love affairs with boys who listened to Tool and Pink Floyd, memorizing slabs of T.S Eliot - all while topping my class and dreaming of my emancipated adult life. I dreamed of a bright future where I didn’t have to ever, EVER confront the boring, dull, flat unprofitable world I was forced to grow up in.
I feared the future school reunion hoping I could forever avoid it… and earnestly hoped by the time it rolled around that I had made something of my life. Something. Anything better than the here and now. At my local high school, kids wearing an improvised uniform sucked smoke from juice bottles and grinned through red eyes at their future. Flannelette shirts flapped as teens set fire to bins. Grunge was born. I dressed in my grandfather’s clothes and listened patiently as boys my age fumbled around with Metallica riffs on nylon string guitars. River Phoenix died and girls at my school attempted suicide. We were lectured on AIDS ad nauseum and spent long afternoons rolling condoms onto bananas, whilst the cooler kids were practicing the real thing in the scrubland that surrounded my school. It all felt pointless really. Skinny girls with no opinions got the boys, then had scrag fights on the school bus. Their earrings ripped out of ears. Blood. Torn singlet tops. Swearing. The boys would look on with dull eyes and not dare intervene. I sat quietly and wrote letters to people I had met who went to 'other' schools. Inevitably, someone’s cool parents let us have a party at their place. I’d sit planning my future escape and watch as others had fun: Passion pop and Jim Beam. Malibu and Coke. Bongs. Magic mushrooms. Teens gnawing sloppily at each other's faces, having a casual vomit, a micro-sleep, then continuing. At some stage a posse would form and we’d go on ‘missions’ stealing street signs or garden gnomes from unsuspecting homes. We ventured into the banana fields and sang Nirvana songs to keep each other awake. Lying on the ground on deserted country roads under the stars, we soaked up the warmth from the black bitumen and raged over arguments about reality and perception (teenage philosophy a plenty.) We knew it was all empty, all pointless – the universe too big, the world uncaring. Everything had been thought of before, everything had all been said before. We knew poverty could not and would not be ended by Bono or any other aging rock star who chose to wear rose-coloured sunglasses. It wasn’t sweet. It was bitter. Flash forward 16 years. At the start new millennium the school reunion is unavoidable. It’s not a phyisical thing – it’s the casual surprise of a Facebook 'friend' request… sometimes from someone who has changed their name and judging by their photo has either regressed thirty years or had a baby. Although I’m a world away from a drunken pash in the banana fields, the sting of school remains: the pointlessness, the feeling of being trapped in a shit hole, the dreams I had, the pressure I felt, the boys I loved, the friends I had. I watch the film clips, sing along to Hole or Pearl Jam. Yet the memory is not bitter. Not at all. It’s sweet.'
In case you missed Melita as 'Artist of the Week' on Griffin Theatre Company's blog last week, here's the repost:
What are you working on currently?
I’ve just handed in the locked down script
for my play Crushed, which starts
rehearsal on Monday. I had the luxury of a month of staggered script workshops
with the cast, director and dramatrug. We workshopped each scene on the floor,
questioned relationship and action lines, rewrote chewy dialogue and sharpened
the turning points. The actors start rehearsal knowing that any further changes
are going to be super slight. How awesome is that for an independent
production?
Who, or what, inspires you to create?
Well, I love my country.
Call me unfashionable or just plain downright weird, but I really love this
country! I don’t have a Southern Cross tatt, I hate sport, and I’ve never
gambled, but there’s an essential part of me that feels such a strong
connection to this place, to our stories. I started writing for theatre because
I felt a strong pull to tell the many stories of this beautiful, fraught and
complex country that I am so proud to call my home.
What was the most interesting thing you saw recently?
I’m a bit obsessed with Brene Brown at the
moment. I recently caught her TED talk and it still hasn’t left me. Brene’s a research
professor who studies vulnerability and shame. ‘Only when we are brave enough
to explore the darkness will we discover the infinite power of our light.’ I’m
writing a new play called Goodnight Moon
and in that context, her work reaffirms much about the human condition. It’s charged
me to want to write flawed, vulnerable and very confused characters!
What is the best piece of advice that you've been given?
Margot Nash, my screenwriting mentor at UTS,
said to me, ‘Don’t listen too much.’ She was talking about listening to
feedback. Feedback can get in the way. I’ve learnt this the hard way! Ultimately,
I’ve learnt to trust my own impulses and tell the story my heart wants to tell.
I think of what Margot said every time I go into a script workshop.
Who, past or present, would you like to share a meal with and why?
Berthe Morisot. She was a French Impressionist
painter. I saw quite a few of her paintings when I was living in Paris. Berthe
was good friends with Manet and also sat for him. In those paintings, there’s a
delicious unspoken relationship that plays out between Berthe, the sitter, and
Manet, the artist. (I might be writing about this)… They were both married, but
I totally reckon they did it. I’d ask her if they did it. And if she has a good
recipe for homemade pate.
Day 1 of rehearsals as part of our Queen Street Studios Performing Arts Residency, and here's what our leading lady Lucy Miller has to say!
'Great rehearsal today! Hours of vibrant talk, chats, flirting, laughing, chilli chicken at the pub, questions, some answers, good answers, no answers, epiphanies, brain freezes, skull fucks, chewing gum, singing, 'Who's better Madonna or Cindy?' A few renditions of Nirvana, 'shut up ya big shut up', ciggies, Freudian slips, trapped souls, horns locking, childish recriminations followed by adult hindsight, star gazing, 'Jelly Kelly', Sweet Child of Mine...
