Those men and their flying machines

As they deal with their own dreams, losses and secrets, the characters in We are the Ghosts of the Future grieve the disappearance of a national hero ...

Below is a page 1 story from The Canberra Times of Wednesday 13 November 1935. Here's the NLA link: http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article2401475

On his way back to Australia from England, fellow aviator C J Melrose joined the search for Kingsford Smith and co-pilot Thomas Pethybridge in the area around the Bay of Bengal. Melrose was the last person to sight Kingsford Smith’s Lockheed Altair as it flew above him. At one stage there were fears that 22-year-old Melrose had also disappeared. He hadn’t, but back then flying small aircraft was a dangerous activity, and less than a year later, he died when his monoplane broke up in turbulence on a flight from Melbourne to Darwin. 

WE ARE THE GHOSTS OF THE FUTURE: PHOTOSHOOT

A sunny Friday in Balmain.
Designer Hugh O'Connor artfully adjusts paper planes around Emily Eskell, who plays Bridget, Cath Zimdahl's Irish bohemian.

Waiting around... photographer Phyllis Wong, actor Pierce Wilcox, Hugh O'Connor, producer Stephen Carnell, actor Leof Kingsford-Smith, and director Harriet Gillies.

We Are The Ghosts Of The Future: Edith

"Edith": Where do you find a character? Oh my. I don’t know. I often have to wait until  a voice starts talking in my head. Someone who possesses a distinctive phrasing and the sense of a lived life flickering behind their words. after all these years, I get a sense of a very particular energy when the character concerned has potential for the stage.

Edith was like that. I’d been thinking about a time when I stayed with some friends in their house in the middle of a wood in Brittany. My friends are from Paris but their best friends in the neighbourhood were a wild-eyed Breton, Jean-Pierre, and his long-suffering, much younger wife, Lulu.

Jean Pierre inveigled us over to their place for ‘just one glass of wine” (+ cakes + ham+ dumplings + – well, you get the picture!) Jean Pierre and Lulu lived in a traditional Breton cottage with grey stone, low ceilings, thick walls and blue doors and windows, at the end of a long, winding, rocky forest road.

And I’d been thinking about World War One soldiers for a show I have on next year with the State Theatre company of South Australia, The Red Cross Letters, http://www.statetheatrecompany.com.au/home/whatson/shows2016/theredcrossletters/.

And I’d been thinking of my grand-father, who’d fought in that war and who, when he’d returned, alive and well,  and qualified as a surveyor, had taken his new young bride, my grandmother, Mabel, out into the bush with him to the survey camps in the mid-north of South Australia. Mabel wrote a memoir of her time in the bush. It’s evocative, practical, funny, and true, and I wish there was room to include it in this post. I think those three years may have been the happiest of her life.

But why all these things schlepped into Edith, a Breton girl who marries a wounded Australian soldier/surveyor and who ends up in a boarding house in The Rocks, I’m not quite sure. But I heard her voice one evening, and there she was.

Verity

Tiger Moths

One of the characters in We are the Ghosts of the Future is 11-year-old Archie. And he is fascinated by all things aviation.

The Tiger Moth aircraft that Archie makes as a model, is an open tandem cockpit biplane. Archie crafts his replica with cardboard and glue, but the real plane had a fuselage made of steel tubing and covered with fabric and plywood. De Havilland manufactured over 8-thousand DH 82 Tiger Moths between 1931 and 1945, in 7 countries, including Australia.

Royal Australian Navy De Havilland Tiger Moth

In 1937 a Tiger Moth crashed into Sydney Harbour. Newspapers reported the incident:

Flying over Sydney Harbor this afternoon an aeroplane suddenly turned on its side and crashed into the water near Circular Quay.

Three men working on No. 2 wharf east Circular Quay pluckily dived to the rescue within a few seconds of the plane touching the water. One of them supported the men until a ferry threw a line to him and hauled the injured men aboard … A launch took the airmen to Clifton Gardens wharf at the Quay, where Central Ambulance officers, were waiting.

The Newcastle Sun, Wednesday 21 April 1937

The Tiger Moth plane which crashed into the harbour at the eastern end of Circular Quay on Wednesday, when it was circling over the Nieuw Holland at a height of 1100ft, was recovered yesterday. A diver located it, half buried in silt, on a ledge of rock in about 35ft of water, and a crane on a tender hauled it to the surface … The severe damage to the plane indicated the narrow escape of the two occupants … 

The Sydney Morning Herald, Friday 23 April 1937

Both airmen received minor injuries and the Tiger Moth was retrieved to fly again.

WE ARE THE GHOSTS OF THE FUTURE

With only 22 sleeps till our first preview, we are going to tantalise you with little fragments of who and what goes into making this show. Check back in regularly for interviews, pictures, snatches of dialogue, and other stuff.

Hilary says:
This image is one from the collection 'City of Shadows' that served as inspiration for my playlet. The photo of Lewis Stanley Keith and Neville McQuade (aged 18 & 19) was taken at North Sydney Police Court, where they were detained for a week. Lewis is trying to make the best of it, but Neville's face says it all. Clothes are one thing, but how did these boys 'of insufficient means' (one of their alleged crimes) find shoes to fit? I guess the answer is they didn't: Neville's heel is poking out a good two inches.

And this photo (from the same collection) is another stimulus. I won't say any more. For now.

PLAY HAVOC: IMPORTANT NOTICE

Donna's and Hilary's playwriting workshop weekend, a fundraiser for the upcoming production of We Are The Ghosts Of The Future, has been postponed to November 28 & 29.

Same time, same place, and same stimulating, energising and inspiring hours of fun!

Join acclaimed playwrights Donna Abela (‘Jump For Jordan’) and Hilary Bell (‘The Splinter’) for a weekend of wild and playful writing exercises, designed to open up your head, get out of your own way, and explore numerous entry points into creativity. With a focus on impulse, exploration, curiosity and surprise, you’ll leave with the beginnings of a brand new play, and the know-how to take it to a first draft. As a bonus, producer Stephen Carnell will provide inside experience on how to then get your play from page to stage.

To book a place, or for more information, contact Stephen Carnell.

'WE ARE THE GHOSTS OF THE FUTURE'

The countdown begins!
7-On's new immersive promenade show opens in just one month's time.

'We Are The Ghosts Of The Future' began life in 2009. Inspired by the now famous photography exhibition at Sydney's Justice And Police Museum, called City Of Shadows (curator, Peter Doyle), we took it upon ourselves to create a theatrical response to the extraordinary images. For those who don't know, it's a collection of mugshots and crime scenes photographed in the course of duty by police photographers, from the 1930s and '40s.

The Sydney Theatre Company was our first supporter, giving us a luxurious two-week development under the direction of Lee Lewis, with composer Phillip Johnston, and the vast talents of the Residents, a group of young actors then in residence at the STC. We came out the other end with 'Long Shadows', an epic sprawling site-specific show, whose perfect incarnation was to be the old Darlinghurst Gaol, now the National Art School.

When that proved too logistically ambitious to pull off, we recreated the show as a very intimate site-specific work, this time to be performed in various rooms of an old terrace house. In the process, we moved away from the 'crime' aspect, becoming more drawn to the domestic side: the realities of life in Sydney in the '30s, the deprivations and privileges that were taken for granted, so different to life now. If we were to look at crime at all, it was the crimes of necessity that interested us, perpetrated mostly by women, like abortion and prostitution.

What began to emerge was the idea of a Sydney very different from the one we live in now, yet traces of it peeping through all over the city - a kind of palimpsest of the past. Where had they gone, these lives lived not so long ago, full of passion and rage, hunger and love and ambition? They're forgotten. Just as we, living as if no one ever came before or will follow, occupy this city now. But in a few decades, our lives and times will be erased and replaced. We are the ghosts of the future.

The idea of loss is embodied in the play by being set on 13.11.35 (the show's initial title), the day beloved aviator and national hero Charles Kingsford-Smith was officially declared 'missing'. Set in a boarding-house in The Rocks, the lodgers occupy separate rooms, and digest the news of Smithy's disappearance while living out their own struggles and delights.

We have teamed up with director Harriet Gillies and producer Stephen Carnell to bring 'We Are The Ghosts Of The Future' to The Rocks Village Bizarre Festival next month.

Watch this space for daily feeds of news and information about the show. Meanwhile: book your tix!

WHEN: November 13 - 29, 2015
WHERE: The Discovery Museum, 4-8 Kendall Lane, The Rocks
TICKETS: $20 / $25

PLAY HAVOC

DONNA ABELA AND HILARY BELL TO RUN A WEEKEND PLAYWRITING WORKSHOP

Join acclaimed playwrights Donna Abela (‘Jump For Jordan’) and Hilary Bell (‘Wolf Lullaby’) for PLAY HAVOC, a weekend of wild and playful writing exercises, designed to open up your head, get out of your own way, and explore numerous entry points into creativity. With a focus on impulse, exploration, curiosity and surprise, you’ll leave with the beginnings of a brand new play, and the know-how to take it to a first draft.

As a bonus, producer Stephen Carnell will provide insider experience on how to get your play from page to stage.

Plus a one hour Q&A with all involved.

CLASS SIZE: 12 maximum on a first paid basis.

COST $280 or $250 for Actors Anonymous members.

BOOKING: Just join this event (see email address below), then simply make an EFT payment to producer Blancmange Productions' bank BSB 032032 A/C 209972. Then you're booked in and you'll receive a confirmation email and workshop agenda.

QUESTIONS? Email scarnell@bigpond.net.au

The PLAY HAVOC workshop runs 10-4pm Saturday 28 and Sunday 29 November on the top floor of a magnificent sandstone warehouse where our next production 'We Are The Ghosts Of The Future' will open in the The Rocks Village Bizarre over two weeks and three weekends from Friday 13 to Saturday 29 November.

All workshop attendees will receive a complimentary ticket to this performance.

NOTE: All funds raised from this weekend workshop will go to support the production of 7-ON's We Are The Ghosts Of The Future directed by Harriet Gillies (watch this space for more details!). The drama is set on 13th November 1935, the day Australia's beloved aviator Charles Kingsford Smith was declared missing.

Find out more about the show here: We Are The Ghosts Of The Future