A Friday Round-Up from Catherine

Very, very proud to report that some of our own are being rewarded for their hard work in the form of peer assessment from the AWG. Noelle and Donna picked up AWGIE Awards for their ABC Radio Drama  (Original and Adaptation) Plays. Also Vanessa was short-listed for the Kit Denton Disfellowship from what I've been told was a high number of submissions - subversion rules! Not only that but her terrific play Porn.Cake was nominated for Best Play so that ROCKS!

Personally I've been in that timeless zone of writing the 3rd draft of a 90 minute work. I feel it's close but the play is at the incremental stage, examining each moment intently, doubting and questioning and I won't really know what I have until I have the flesh and blood of actors blowing the breath into it...

All of which leads me to the reading of my new play 'gifted' at the Arts Platform and what a blast of energy it was, organised and cast by Augusta Supple. It was so wonderful for me to have the sensation of it for the very first time and the actors were excellent, totally invested in each moment and really allowed me to see things I hadn't before and work out where the 'hotspots' are and need attention. So generous especially for everyone to come out on a freezing cold evil wind of a day. Thank you.
http://augustasupple.com/
http://www.theartsplatform.com/the-arts-platform-2/

Finally I have had two paintings selected for the Great Unknown, a curated exhibition at Artsite Gallery in Camperdown from this Saturday 1st Sept to the 16th Sept so do get along if you having an ART impulse of a day!
http://2012.sydneyfringe.com/event/visual-arts/great-unknown-exhibition-2012

Congratulations & Loose Gravel ...

Huge congratulations from 7-ON to Lee Lewis who has just been appointed Artistic Director of the Griffin Theatre Company.

I’m in Brisbane at the moment—this is Noëlle, BTW—and in case you are too, I’m presenting a version of my performance essay Loose Gravel—a poetics this Thursday 30 August at 4:00 pm at the Geoffrey Rush Drama Studio, University of Queensland St Lucia campus. The piece lasts just over half and hour and it’s free, no need to book.

Here’s some info about the piece:

Loose Gravel—a poetics is about gravel and its kin. About ripping stuff out of the ground, and the language that moves in to fill up the gap. It’s a funny and philosophical performance essay about uncertainty as a defining feature of contemporary life. About the materials of the imagination, and the pitfalls and rich disorder of being an associative thinker. It’s about crap places, and growing up in a crap place whose best-known exports are Cliff Richard, Victoria Beckham—and yes, gravel.

The Splinter: On Collaborating

It’s a proud moment for a new parent when the baby takes its first steps across the stage. It was born the moment you wrote ‘End of Play’ on your first draft. And then it gets cuddled and fed and coaxed (and chastised) in the rehearsal room. But it doesn’t stand on its own two feet until the lights come up and it greets the world.

The Splinter has been the most painless play I’ve ever written: it emerged quickly and almost fully formed, borne from idea to final draft by its own energy. I’ve made changes – there have been several drafts – but minor ones. Conversely, it proved challenging in the rehearsal room: there are two very distinct worlds at play, the lines of which become increasingly blurred. The psychology is complex, but the text is sparse. The visual language is at least as important as the spoken language; the evoking of a mood, a sense of unease, is crucial. As a playwright, you indicate how this might be realised, and you make space for it to emerge and exist, but you are absolutely dependent on your collaborators for it to succeed.

Perhaps this why the evolution of The Splinter has been such a happy one. Theatre is the most collaborative art-form of all: if you’re not prepared to compromise, or to share, or to be influenced by others, then you’re in the wrong business. It’s the only way to see your ideas augmented by other people’s imaginations and skills. Beginning with my initial pitch, I worked in close contact with dramaturge, director, puppeteer, designer and performers. Through these conversations, workshops and script meetings I was able to take advantage of tools not previously at my disposal. These exchanges opened my eyes to alternative ways of communicating an idea, to going against the grain of habit.

A writer needs to spend a lot of time alone – thinking, doubting, exploring sidetracks and reversing from dead ends. But it’s such a pleasure to work in a room with other people, exploring new ways to tell a story. While there’s a virtue in figuring out one’s technique, refining and perfecting it from one project to the next, I am very excited by the prospect of working with artists from different disciplines and revising the process for every show. I am a passionate advocate of text-based theatre, but there are so many exhilarating approaches towards creating that text.

And then there’s the audience: the most important collaborator of all. Without an audience, there’s no play. In the case of this play, where the audience’s assumptions at any given moment are so critical, we were especially conscious of this collaborator.

A week since Opening, and The Splinter is now strutting confidently around the stage of Sydney Theatre Company’s Wharf 1. You've got till September 15 to catch it. 

Here are some reviews:

The Australian

Stagenoise 

Crikey

The AU Review

Stage Whispers

Sunday Telegraph

And if you just can't get enough, check out this in-depth interview with Real Time Arts

Thanks to the Sydney Theatre Company for permission to publish the above, which in the main is extracted from my programme notes.

Ears and Eyes!

Hello! Tis Vanessa here with you this week and HEY!...we just heard the outrageously fabulous news re Australian playwright Alana Valentine!

YAY ALANA! and congrats X 7 from all of us on winning the STAGE International Script Competition for best new play about science and technology. The play is called Ear To The Edge Of Time and was selected by a panel including Tony Kushner, David Lindsay-Abaire and Donald Margulies.  

Also, just wanted to remind people about the book of monologues that 7-ON published this year (with the lovely people at The Federation Press).  No Nudity, Weapons or Naked Flames is available at all brilliant bookshops like the one below...MacLeans in Beaumont St, Hamilton...  Or why not go straight to the source by clicking on the little picture on the side of our blog which should send you here.

No Noodles (as I fondly, yet erroneously, refer to it sometimes) is chock-full of chewy monologuey goodness and also it made Miranda Otto go "Wow"* so that's a good thing, right? If you're auditioning for something or presenting your wonderful self and your acting talents in front of, say, a board of performing arts judges, or perhaps just looking for something to serve at a very smart dinner party between the main course and dessert then THIS IS YOUR BOOK!!!

*no honestly it did, it says so right on the cover: "Wow what a great book... Miranda Otto"

The Inspirational 13P

Ah, yes, we remember it well. That night seven years ago when seven playwrights in the Bellevue Hotel in Paddington came up with the name 7on. It was time to do something about the shabby perception of the mid-career playwright, to develop our own initiatives, and to support each other's ambitions. We took as our inspiration the New York based company 13P which was founded by 13 playwrights, also mid career, who came into existence specifically to break out of the endless rounds of script development hell by producing one play by each 13P member. They would create art on their own terms, and prove their shared belief that you fix a play in rehearsal. 

Happily, 13P no longer exists. On the 31st of July, the final performance of the thirteenth play produced by 13P took place. Why is this cause for happiness? Because it means mission accomplished! Production, not longevity, was their goal; productions artistically driven by each playwright in turn. Coincidentally, the thirteenth play was written by Sarah Ruhl who, seven years ago, via Hilary, gave 7on 13P's blessing.

7on modified the 13P model, and evolved into group which develops multi-writer production and publishing initiatives, but without doubt, 13P inspired us to band together in a spirit of co-operation and doing it for ourselves. Congratulations 13P! We wish each of your members outrageous success.

7on seven years on