ALL THE WORLD’S A STAGE

Perth Festival Theatre Program

The Perth International Arts Festival runs between Friday, February 10, and Saturday, March 3. Information about the Theatre program and other festival events can be found at perthfestival.com.au, or by calling (08) 6488 5555.

The 2012 Perth Festival is fast approaching and with it comes a spectacular and diverse theatre program. From the remarkable citizen journalism spectacle of Super Night Shot, to the fantastical grand plays of Shakespeare in The Winters Tale and Henry V, and the vibrant and beautiful The Red Tree by local artist Shaun Tan, this year’s program is designed to reach out and engage audiences from all walks of life.

Perth International Arts Festival associate producer Annette Madden describes the common idea that binds these shows together. “The theatre program was really about the diversity of experience - finding ways for audiences to not only experience something different in terms of the aesthetic or the story telling on stage but also providing experiences for an audience that takes them out of being purely a spectator... that was I guess one of the threads throughout the program where we were looking at work, and I think you’ll see in the program that there’s work where people can engage in new and innovative ways.”

With this thread in mind, staff at the festival have strung together a truly remarkable line up of theatrical performances from both international and Australian artists. Taking the stage are works from local artists such as the Ilbijerra Theatre Company, and Perth-based Barking Gecko Theatre Company. “We really wanted to create opportunities both only for Australian artists, but also for the diversity of stories coming out of the Australian theatre scene at the moment,” says Madden.

“llbijerri’s work Jack Charles vs The Crown is one of those beautiful theatrical stories but also a very personal story. Here is a man, an elderly man, who’s not young, but who has this great hope for the future, and I think that there’s this great fusion between a beautiful story and a great Australian man, and his ability to look at his life really honestly and tell that story in a fantastic theatrical way is a great entertaining night, as well as being a touching and moving story.”

Similarly Barking Gecko’s Driving Into Walls is a starkly honest and personal account of what it means to be a teenager in a modern, media driven society. Drawn from over 500 candid and extremely confidential interviews with West Australian teenagers, the show follows the lives of five teenagers, each trying to find their footing on an emotional roller coaster of online and offline dating, colliding with each other and breaking down the walls that surround them.

“We were really excited about the idea of working with Barking Gecko to try and create a work that really engaged with the ideas and issues that [teenagers] are dealing with and create this vibrant and theatrical work that the many teenagers that they interviewed for the project had an investment in,” says Madden.

Joining these local acts are an impressive range of theatrical heavyweights from the international community. In their sold out show Oraculos, Spanish theatre company Teatro de los Sentidos will open the minds and awaken the senses of their audiences in a personal and individualised performance experience.

“Oraculos is a one on one experience,” says Madden. “The audience is taken through a labyrinth, a kind of custom built site specific space, and the experience that everyone has is kind of altered and changed and kind of mediated by their own experiences and by what they bring to the situation. So it’s a very personal experience, and it’s quite an extraordinary journey that you kind of go on in that hour long performance.”

With such wealth of artistic talent visiting WA during this time, it is unsurprising that both festival staff and performers are looking for a way to offer more at a grass roots level. Under a new framework called ‘Vital Stages’, the festival will offer local artists the opportunity to engage with artists of the festival, including the chance to directly participate in works, masterclasses, workshops, and professional development events.

“For example, with Oraculos we’re working with the company, they’re bringing their team out and they’re going to run a week long workshop with 16 participants prior to their pre-production, and then four of those artists will be invited to perform with the company,” Madden explains.

The quality of the artists in this year’s theatre program reflects the Perth Festival’s ability to attract the best of the best internationally as well as locally. “When we’re looking for work for the program artistic excellence always comes first,” says Madden. “For us it’s really fantastic that over the years there has been such good will and good conversation about the festival that artists absolutely plan to come here. It is really exciting because it means that we’ve got such a wealth of fantastic artistic product to choose from.”

_LEAH BLANKENDAAL