OLD 505 SEASON 2018
https://old505theatre.com/performances.html
5 February – 17 March 2018: FRESHWORKS FRESHWORKS is a short, sharp season of experimental and new works returning for the fifth year. FreshWorks provides experienced artists an opportunity to test out new ideas and young artists an opportunity to work with 505. This year 505 will present six one week seasons plus the new FreshWorksFEMME a season of feminist work, talks and readings by young theatre makers.
6–11 February 2018: JACK DATA Written and directed by RUTH BELL A one act comedy set in the not to distance future. On Alice's 31st birthday her worried parents present her with Jack Data. Jack is the 'perfect man' robot, with reproductive options.
13–17 February 2018: LOVE ME Written by JOSEPH BROWN Love, Me is the story of a group of friends in their early 20’s who are attempting to have their first Christmas away from their families. Disillusioned and finally out of the comforting confines of tertiary education, they’re ready to take on the world, just like their parents did when they were young. But it’s a different world now, one that they’re not ready for, and that’s not ready for them. Over the course of a blazingly hot Australian Christmas, the group attempt to start their adult lives and create traditions of their own, but the walls of secrecy surrounding them are starting to tumble down into a sea of bargain bin shiraz and cold turkey gravy.
20–24 February 2018: BEAST.BELLY.BEAST "Two Men. Two Friends. Two Soldiers. Two Lost Souls – In, and Out – of the Belly of the Beast." Inside the minds of two men suffering from PTSD, the play itself distorts Time, Place, Events, Structure, Perception. "What is it to live with trauma? What is it to with anxiety, but try and keep it together? What is it to not quite be able to move on...? What is it to 'live' in confusion? What do relationships mean anymore? - What holds meaning? - Who/What am I...?" All this in a fast paced, dramatic, darkly humorous, fractured barrage of entertaining scenes that are (broken) windows in which to glimpse the heart, mind, soul, fears, destruction, pain, wants, desire, hope, forgiveness, innocence, guilt, greed, shame – and, a game of darts...
27 February – 3 March 2018: CAGE By Jordan Shea and Directed by Shae Riches Cuong, Bryce and Ryan turn up in Thailand for three very different reasons. They meet in a sordid little place in the city, where they disrespect the country beyond recognition. As the three negotiate their way through a firestorm beyond their wildest imaginations, a rite of passage joy ride turns into a nightmare.
6–10 March 2018: SATELLITE By Laura Turner and Cloe Fournier
13–17 March 2018: RUDY & CUTHBERT Directed by Ellen Cressey After meeting on Skype in the ‘Steve Martin Teaches Comedy’ Masterclass, Rudy & Cuthbert decided to throw away their $120 Lifetime Access subscription and combine forces to form the dynamic duo… Rudy & Cuthbert. Having modelled themselves on the greats, they have crafted a partnership to interrogate modern life. Hot off a string of sold out runs on the West End, Broadway, and Anzac Parade Rudy & Cuthbert are eager to bring their unique style of comedy to The Old 505. Made redundant by the Sydney lock out laws, witness two brothers - not of blood - but of art, try to make a life for themselves in the Sydney housing market. Watch as they negotiate Ikea furniture, mentos packets, and their own crippling shyness. Rudy & Cuthbert are a new pair of clowns whose portrayal of a mundane move into the adult world is a rallying cry for warmth and forgiveness in a time racked with mistrust and the internet.
21 March – 7 April 2018: HOME INVASION
By Christopher Bryant and Directed by Alexander Berlage
An obsessive Paula Abdul fan, June, auditions for American Idol in an attempt to impress her hero. A young girl named Sam enters a relationship with her mechanic, Anthony, and cultivates a dangerous obsession with brutally confronting his wife, Carol. Carol, meanwhile, has reoccurring dreams in which a ghostly Jon Benét Ramsey visits her, prophesying about the future.
Equally disturbing and humorous, Home Invasion explores celebrity infatuation and our culture’s obsession with the relentless mediatisation of violent acts, weaving together three incidents from real life.
9–22 April 2018: RAPID READS
Dino Dimitriadis and Apocalypse Theatre Company
Following the success of 2017’s season, Rapid Reads is back at the Old 505. The festival will showcase the newest work from Australia’s most contemporary emerging playwrights, who will be paired with and mentored by some of our best established writers.
This year, Rapid Reads will include a series of panels, discussions and networking nights for a two-week joyride of new work.
2–19 May 2018 : REVOLT. SHE SAID. REVOLT AGAIN.
Presented by House of Sand. By Alice Birch and directed by Charles Sanders.
“Each scene …begins with deconstruction and proceeds into detonation.” – Ben Brantly, of the Soho Rep production
REVOLT. SHE SAID. REVOLT AGAIN.Alice Birch tears apart the language, structures and ideas that keep feminism and women trapped inside a patriarchal system, and presents a rallying cry for a new feminism; to work outside the system and re-redefine the way we think about womanhood.
Packed with intelligence, humour and wrenching social commentary, Revolt will be a punch in the face wrapped in a satin glove.
“The siblings’ ability to move us, to cease our attention and connect with our emotions, without the use of anything remotely formulaic or conventional, is evidence that a purity of intention and an instinctive acuity are at play here…Eliza and Charles Sanders are important artists who give us an alternate view of the world.” – Suzy Goes See, of Pedal & Castles @ Sydney Fringe Festival 2016
22–26 May 2018: THE BRIDE OF WAR
Presented by Sekrit Projekt
Co-created & performed by Hannah Cox, Caitlin West, Pierce Wilcox
THE BRIDE OF WAR is a feminist response to Shakespeare’s Henry V, turning that epic of war and nationalism into an intimate study of patriarchal power, told through music, dance, visual art and Shakespeare’s greatest writing.
29 May – 9 June 2018: TWILIGHT and MUT
Presented by Motimaru Dance Company (Berlin)
TWILIGHT
Around 100.000 years ago, when Homo sapiens emerged on this planet, the initial embryonic human art emerged in the dark cave, where eyes cannot see. What they were seeing with their inner eyes was the depth of our unconscious. This must be the universal principle of human art.
Social systems and technological advances have changed society over years, but our human nature has never changed. This is why primitive arts could give important influences on great artistic experiments of the 20th century, such as Cubism or Surrealism.
We are living in a society where our innermost nature is deeply buried. Modern science relies on the intellectual rationale based on mathematics and language, and overemphasizes the information perceived by the eyes. Yet it misses direct physical experience and divides the world into separated pieces.
Human is human, animal is animal, I am I,you are you…Even in the dance scene, where body is the main media, productions can be reduced to merely intellectual concepts or movement patterns, which can loose the profound experience of the body itself. In the modern era we are missing deeper experience of body and mind, the power to explore and reveal the unconscious. In its depth, the world is not separated but connected freely. Human is animal, life is death, I am you.
Twilight questions the fundamental purpose of human art, and searches for a new dance method to walk down the stairs towards the depth of our being through the subtlest movement within.
MUT
How often do we read news without having an idea of the depth of that reality? We are used to hear such news, throw away the newspaper and continue the daily life as always. But if the newspaper could take life what would we see?
About nowaday’s domination, manipulation, cultural and religious conflicts, woman and human rights, shifting from personal to public news, this piece is a collective solo that includes stories from many women of different countries and cultures that come to be taken as icons and represent the contradicted faces of our society. MUT means mother/courage/mutilated/mutual/multiracial.
The piece encourages new actions toward transformation and dignity.
13–30 June 2018: AIR
By Joanna Erskine
The dead don’t talk back. Until now.
Annabel sits in a dark radio studio, hosting the graveyard shift. Single and introverted, she spends her nights reading the death notices to a silent audience. One morning while on air, the station phone rings. When Annabel answers, she unwittingly unleashes the grief and secrets of an entire community, desperate to connect with the past.
From writer Joanna Erskine (K.I.J.E., Boot) and director Anthony Skuse, comes this black and bittersweet comedy about death, grief, holding on and letting go.
3–21 July 2018 : ROOMBA NATION
Presented by Hurrah Hurrah. Concept & director Alison Bennett
Pippie is a curious character. She makes friend’s with cockroaches, cuts her own hair and generally makes up her own rules.
Until Pippie discovers that she is the carrier of a medical anomaly. Alone in her ward, Pippie comes to realise that things are serious. Isolated from her world of crooked comforts, Pippie befriends what ever she can…including a Roomba robotic vacuum cleaner.
Roomba Nation takes us on a journey of realisation and the acceptance of a fate that befalls us all. Its dreamlike world asks us to consider the delicate balance of improved quality of life and solitude that our modern conveniences can bring.
After the critical acclaim of Trade in 2017, Hurrah Hurrah bring you this beautiful new work that will make you laugh and then break your heart.
1–11 August 2018: HELL’S CANYON
By Emily Sheehan. Directed by Katie Cawthorne
“Sometimes there are things you can’t forget about, even when you try. They just pop into your brain outta nowhere. Walking home, or in line at the canteen, or when we were making out before. It smacks you right in the face. Right outta nowhere. I don’t know what’s so wrong about remembering.” – Hell’s Canyon
Caitlin and Oscar are hiding out in a motel in the middle of the Australian outback. No one knows they’re there, and seventeen-year-old Caitlin won’t tell fifteen-year-old Oscar why she’s running. They’re out of money and the only thing they have on them is a rare and valuable graphic novel, Hell’s Canyon. But Oscar doesn’t want to sell it. Not for this. Not for anything.
HELL’S CANYON is a play that celebrates everything magical about being a young person, the tenacity of teenage friendship, and our ability to transcend tragedy by reaching for the sublime.
HELL’S CANYON was developed with the support of Playwriting Australia at the National Play Festival, and in the National Script Workshop.
14–18 August 2018: THE NOSE
Presented by The Bloomshed (Melbourne)
Created and performed by Elizabeth Brennan, James Jackson, Tom Molyneux
A CEO is crying in front of a mirror. A severed nose is lying on the floor. There are inspirational quotes plastered everywhere – WE CAN ALL BE HEROES – just make sure you don’t stop producing.
Disparate narratives collide around the missing appendage; a psychotic, hallucinatory journey as people start falling to pieces. The Nose is an attempt to locate the systems that exploit our bodies.
The Bloomshed creates new things by cannibalizing the old – The Nose is the company’s latest attempt to consume a classic, written by an author who starved himself to death. This is agit-prop political theatre raised from the dead and zombified. Like everything else, The Nose is a rotting corpse, animated, moaning and stumbling around for your pleasure.
“James Jackson is Kafkaesque without any of the boringness of Kafka” – Sometimes Melbourne
21 August – 8 September 2018 : THE GRAND ILLUSION
Directed by Kate Gaul
“On the 6th of July, 1988, I lost my mother. I don’t mean she died. She vanished. Which was suspicious, as my father was a magician. A club magician who never quite escaped the Legions and Rotary circuit. But maybe he outdid himself just this once.”
The Grand Illusion transports the audience into a world of hocus-pocus and the desire to believe. Our guides are a detective, a celebrated author, and a mystic on the threshold between the living and the dead. Oh, and the greatest showman on earth, the incomparable Harry Houdini.
10–30 September 2018: SYDNEY FRINGE FESTIVAL
The Sydney Fringe Festival is the largest Independent arts festival in NSW. presenting over 350 productions in over 50 venues across Sydney every September.
Featuring over 2000 artists across over 900 sessions the Sydney Fringe Festival shines a light on the best local Independent artists Sydney has to offer, uncovering hidden cultural gems, highlighting secret venues and encouraging audiences to explore the city.
The Old 505 Theatre will again present a cutting-edge program of Australian works across four jam-packed weeks. Stay tuned for program details in mid 2018.
2–14 October 2018: I AM A LION
By Liz Hobart
A haunting and beautiful thriller.
Cinematic and fast paced story telling featuring physical theatre and beat poetry. A mother’s son is arrested, accused of being a serial killer. Can a person be forgiven for the sins they did not commit, but created?
16 October – 10 November 2018: FRESHWORKS FEMME Presented by Old 505 Theatre Bringing together some of Sydney’s fiercest young female theatre makers exploring new works, new ideas and how they view the world today. This inaugural edition of FreshWorksFEMME presents three week-long productions and a week of play readings, talks and forums.
16–20 October 2018 : BEFORE LYSISTRATA Story by Ellana Costa & Michaela Savina Aristophane’s Lysistrata paints a picture of women at the end of their tether. With Athens and Sparta in a seemingly endless war, the women of both states take from their husbands the one thing neither of them want to live without. Sex. Before Lysistrata explores the role of women in politics and the place of feminism in the world. It offers two types of women, both devoted to their causes, and each stronger than the armies of Sparta and Athens combined. Each fights to cement their place in global politics while staying true to their values. Exploring gender in politics, the role and nature of democracy and the heart, beauty and tragedy of both the Right and the Left, Before Lysistrata examines the humanity and failings of each side in the hope we can come together for the greater good.
23–27 October 2018: (W)REST Presented by The Adelphi Experiment The Adelphi Experiment is an all-female contemporary performance collective celebrating sisterhood throughout all ages and stages of life. Exploring the rich cultural heritage of our diverse communities, we use performance to amplify the voices and stories of girls' and women’s lives. “Being busy all the time has become a badge of honour – albeit a heavy, awkward, uncomfortable badge that doesn't go with any of your outfits.” – Alison Hill, The Huffington Post
30 October – 3 November 2018: WHOSE UTERUS IS IT ANYWAY? By Georgina Adamson and directed by Eve Beck “What happens when an IUD, HRT and STI walk into a bar?” Have you ever wanted to take a peek at the privatest privates of complete strangers? Have a squiz at their naughty bits? A geez at their ganders? Well now you can! Four people have made appointments here at the reproductive health clinic and will now compete to receive their treatments. Our contestants are Mary the nun, Michelle the wine-mum, Lila the millennial and our dark horse Tom. What prizes will they receive? Maybe an IUD? An STI? An abortion? You’ll have to tune in to find out. WHOSE UTERUS IS IT ANYWAY? is the waiting room gameshow where contestants must compete to receive their treatment. It’s a game of reproductive health and the ‘contestants’ will be fighting it out to receive an IUD, Hormone Replacement Therapy, an STI test and an abortion- all in front of a live studio audience! Our Host will guide the contestants through a series of trials and tribulations, making sure to keep things interesting. In between challenges, the personal lives of the contestants will be put on display- but don’t worry, it’s all information they gave the doctor.
13–24 November 2018: BLAME TRAFFIC
Directed & written by Michael Andrew Collins
Alice is cut off every day after work by the same Mercedes. One night, she decides to follow the Mercedes home. She follows the car again the next day, and the next. She becomes obsessed with the car, and its driver, Khalid. She follows him until, one day, he disappears. Alice slowly forgets about him; months later, she sees the Mercedes again.
Blame Traffic is a story about chance, forgiveness, and blame, told through 5 characters, and 4 stories.
28 November – 22 December 2018: ALL MY SLEEP AND WAKING
Written by Mary Rachael Brown and directed by Dino Dimitriadis
‘I am not saying I don’t wish him peace but he should run through those pearly gates of heaven. If he walks, he’ll get caught for something.’
As a father’s death approaches, three siblings struggle to reconcile with their differing experience of the same man. Conflicting memories, rusted on family habits and arguments about who will do what at the funeral all create distraction from the painful truth. Parental love isn’t always fair. And keeping score on family history is a dangerous game.
In a special and rare move, Mary Rachel Brown revisits and rewrites her first play; an ode to the complexity of forgiveness and a searing and unflinching look at family, love and duty.