| Ranters Theatre |
| Artistic Director Adriano Cortese +61 3
9537 1771 • General
Manager Alison Halit +61 (0)421 789 210
Unit 6, 76-80 Grey St., St. Kilda, Victoria, Australia 3183 ranters@pacific.net.au Company CV Facebook |
| MELBOURNE 2009 Affection | Victorian
Arts Centre, BlackBox Theatre Melbourne 1-11 July |
| EUROPE 2009 Holiday | Noorderzon
Festival Groningen, the Netherlands 24-26 August Aarhus Festuge Aarhus, Denmark 1-2 September Dublin Fringe Festival Dublin, Ireland 5-9 September |
| Affection | ||
| Presented by |
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A contemporary performance of profound lightness, humour and exquisite detail that explores the complexities of human affection. With conversation, song and live harpsichord music, Affection gently searches the connections between three performers and their audience. Freely traversing the abstract and the ordinary Affection looks at the way people empathise and nurture, reject, help and play with each other. Featuring the music of Francois Couperin (1668-1733), Brian Wilson, The Ramones and the harpsichord of Anastasia Russel-Head. |
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| reviews A brutal naturalism, which feels more like great improvisation than the scripted piece it is. For all this, it is as refreshing and as unmannered a piece of theatre as I have seen, which leaves the audience squirming and self-scrutinising, even as they laugh. Allison Vale, British Theatre Guide Funding Partners
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Performance
History 2007 - Premiere Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff, Wales |
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| Personnel Directed and Devised by Adriano Cortese Text by Raimondo Cortese Performed and Co-devised by Heather Bolton, Paul Lum, and Patrick Moffatt |
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| Holiday | ||
| Touring this year to |
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| Holiday uses performance, baroque song, sound, and video installation to expose the hidden anxieties, private fantasies, boredom, personal mythologies, and the strange, inexplicable behaviour between two people trying to relax. | ||
RevieWS Wistful humour permeates writer Raimondo Cortese's artful manipulation
of the solecisms of everyday speech. The writing is infused with a yearning
for simplicity, the pleasures of lost youth. Director Adriano Cortese's
production... is unforced and nuanced... you could almost be fooled into
thinking no one is really acting at all. But therein lies a paradoxical
point of Holiday: we perform all the time. When we're watched, we're theatre. This is theatre of the moment, in which no word exists before it is uttered, no action before it is performed. There is no story in the sense of a developing narrative, just a series of crystalline moments that can leap from the boring to the beautiful in a breath. This is contemporary performance of the highest calibre, wrought with deft skill and tempered with a discerning, unwavering hand.John Bailey, Real Time Magazine Ranters Theatre achieves a profound and joyous lightness. From writing to performance to design, Holiday is a devastatingly elegant show. It's a series of apparently artless, inconsequential dialogues, interspersed with a capella performances of baroque love songs by Schubert, Bocconcini or Gluck that excavate the unspoken desires that run beneath the skin of idle conversation. Alison Croggon, Theatrenotes Holiday is great theatre - funny and light as air on the surface, with philosophical depths that will niggle you long after you leave. Cameron Woodhead, The Age This gentle, subtly hued and intellectually rigorous piece easily ranks among their best. John Bailey, The Sunday Age Funding partners
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Awards 2007 Victorian Green Room Awards for: Best Production Best Direction Best New Writing Best Male Performer Best Set/Costume Design | |
| Performance History 2007 - Premiere Arts House, North Melbourne Town Hall 2008 Malthouse Theatre, Melbourne 2009 SBW Stables Theatre, Sydney |
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| Personnel Concept and Direction Adriano Cortese Text Raimondo Cortese Performed and Co-devised by Paul Lum and Patrick Moffatt Set Design Anna Tregloan Lighting Design Niklas Pajanti Sound Design David Franzke Holiday script available online from Currency Press |
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| Past Production | ||
| The Wall | ||
| A place where people meet. A multitude of simultaneous events that arise, collide, fester, explode and dissolve in one continuous scene. | ||
| Presented
in association with Melbourne International Arts Festival Arts House, North Melbourne Town Hall Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff, Wales British Council for the Arts |
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| RevieWS |
Performance
History 2003 - Premiere Horti Hall, Melbourne International Arts Festival 2008 Arts House, North Melbourne Town Hall 2008 Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff, Wales |
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| Personnel Direction Adriano Cortese Co-directed Bob Daoud Text Raimondo Cortese Performed by Kris Bidenko, Heather Bolton, Beth Buchanan Natasha Herbert, Paul Lum, Margaret Mills and Patrick Moffatt Set Design Adriano Cortese Lighting Design Shane Grant and Paul Lim Music Kim Salmon |
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| Past Production | ||
| roulette | ||
| 12 plays set in 12 different locations based on themes drawn from an ancient Chinese cosmology called the 12 Branches of Life. | ||
| Presented in association
with Adelaide Festival Company B, Belvoir St Theatre, Sydney PoNTi 2001 European Capital of Culture Festival, Porto, Portugal Chapel of Chapel, Melbourne Site Festival, Coimbra, Portugal La Mama Theatre, Melbourne Arts Victoria Australia Council City of Melbourne |
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| RevieWS It's been a long time since I've experienced acting as transcendentally clear, clutter free and mesmerising as this. See it. David O'Brien, DB Magazine The short works on offer here are each as amusing, accomplished and provocative entertainments as you could wish to stumble upon. This is very exciting work, by turns naturalistic and surreal, unbearably tense and wildly comic, and always utterly contemporary. At times it's theatre so good you wonder how cinema ever took over in our estimations of performed reality, when only the stage can give a sensation of eavesdropping on extremely intimate human exchanges from a constant, silent point of view. Steve McLeod, Daily Telegraph Raimondo Cortese's series of plays is raw theatre at its most basic and brilliant. Craig Clarke, Sunday Mail. The plays are works if nuance, throwing light into shadowy realms of common human experience, with sudden stabs of emotional revelation providing climaxes that are occurring within the watcher as much as the actor. Beneath the everyday discourse, the apparently unmediated chat of strangers, we sense incredibly powerful emotions - anguish, rage, terror, longing - that are the real context of human life. Helen Thomson, The Age. Such intimate moments of revelation and affinity, such surprising connections, seem to make sense of an increasingly absurd world of laws, rituals and habit. Raimondo Cortese has deftly tapped into these all-too brief epiphanies that bypass politics, culture, social standing and the games we play. Dina Ross, The Age. Roulette is highly worked naturalism, dexterously constructed text with the rhythms, ellipses, repetitions and stumbles of ordinary speech. Yet none of these works are two people just having a chat - there are issues at stake, matters to resolve, possibilities to explore. Lovers of the subtleties of narrative, of the joy of pieces that don't deliver meanings pre-determined will find much to stimulate and enjoy. Stephen Dunne, Sydney Morning Herald. Raimondo Cortese's writing is delightful. Each character is a hive of buzzing idiosyncrasies. They speak like mad birds, pecking at one another. They pull ideas and memories from the backs of their brains, surprising us with non sequiturs. Kate Herbert, Herald Sun. The gold which comes from the writer and the Ranters undoubted theatrical alchemy consists of paring back conversations between characters to the point where the viewer is almost beguiled into believing they are spontaneous, happening now. The Australian |
Awards 2002 Victorian Green Room Award Nominations for: Best Direction Best Male Actor in a Leading Role Best Female Actor in Leading Role |
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| Performance
History 2000 - Premiere The Price Theatre, Adelaide Festival 2001 Company B, Belvoir St Theatre, Sydney PoNTi 2001 European Capital of Culture Festival, Porto, Portugal 2002 Chapel of Chapel, Melbourne 2003 Site Festival, Coimbra, Portugal 2005 Carlton Courthouse, La Mama Theatre, Melbourne Butterfactory, Drouin, Victoria |
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| Personnel Direction Adriano Cortese and Bob Daoud Text Raimondo Cortese Performed by Kristina Bidenko, Heather Bolton, Beth Buchanan, Zoe Burton, Adriano Cortese, Paul Lum, Robert Morgan, Torquil Neilson, Tony Nikolakopoulos, Kelly Tracey and David Tredinnick Set Design Adriano Cortese Lighting Design Listerine |
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| Roulette Scripts available online from Currency Press | ||
| Past Production | ||
| St Kilda Tales | ||
| A relentless night-time ritual of drugs, alcohol, and excess. | ||
| Presented
in association with Centenary of Federation Festival, Merlyn Theatre, Playbox, Melbourne Site Festival, Coimbra, Portugal Teatro Nacional S. Joao, Porto, Portugal Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff, Wales Aberystwyth Arts Centre, Wales Green Room, Manchester, England Arts Victoria Australia Council City of Melbourne British Council for the Arts |
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| RevieWS St Kilda Tales is a rush of theatrical adrenalin that leaves you punch-drunk but strangely exhilarated. There is nothing like it. Stage Left Review 2001 Amazingly authentic and not at all precious. It's hard-hitting and obscene, but sounds dead right coming from his cast of 10. Chris Boyd, Herald Sun This production really does extend the possibilities of the Australian stage. St Kilda Tales pushes theatre into a new relationship with the world of experience. It reminds us of the most subversive, most democratic truth of all. That everyone has a story. Michael Cathcart, Summer Series ABC Radio St Kilda Tales is reminiscent of of the kind of stage occupation practiced by Les Ballet C de la B. It certainly had that same alternating slackness and static electricity, breaking through expectations of the well-organised play or performance piece. Its power is deliberately presentational rather than representational. The critique it presents is finally less of society than of the way that theatre has represented it. Richard Murphett, Real Time Magazine |
Awards 2001 Victorian Green Room Award Nomination for: Best Ensemble |
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| Performance History
2001 - Premiere Centenary of Federation Festival, Merlyn Theatre, Playbox, Melbourne 2003 Site Festival, Coimbra, Portugal Teatro Nacional S. Joao, Porto, Portugal Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff, Wales Aberystwyth Arts Centre, Wales Green Room, Manchester, England |
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| Personnel Direction Adriano Cortese Assistant Direction Bob Daoud Text Raimondo Cortese Performed by Kristina Bidenko, Heather Bolton, Beth Buchanan, Zoe Burton, Luke Elliot, Paul Lum, Patrick Moffatt, Robert Morgan, Genevieve Morris, Glenn Perry and Tess Masters. Set Design Anna Tregloan Lighting Design Shane Grant Music Shane Thornton |
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| St Kilda Tales script available online from Currency Press | ||
| Past Production | ||
| Features of Blown Youth | ||
| Those with plenty of time and little else. Into a shared house of urban twenty-something's including a student, a stripper, a wannabe writer, an unemployed 'philosopher' and his frustrated offsider, enters a naive skinhead, an ambitious prostitute and the very dangerous landlord and everyone's world explodes in a raw, provocative and ultimately violent drama. | ||
| Presented
in association with Melbourne International Arts Festival Performance Space, Sydney Theater Der Welt Festival, Berlin, Germany Arts Victoria Australia Council City of Melbourne |
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| Reviews This is a powerful work given an excellent production, and it satisfyingly
develops a subtle plot out of its tangle of relationships. The end is
almost sickeningly bleak... this is genuinely disturbing theatre. See
it if you can. Blown away - gritty young theatre to mess with your head. Oliver Kranz, Radio Kultur, Berlin Features Of Blown Youth is vital, compelling and utterly devastating theatre. Originally staged in Melbourne, it has lost nothing in its transplant to Sydney. In fact it has gained a razor quality to its already sharp edge through expedient editing and clarification. Truly an ensemble work. Julietta Jameson, Daily Telegraph |
Performance History
1997 - Premiere Economiser Building, Melbourne International Arts Festival 1999 Performance Space, Sydney Theater am Halleschen Ufer, Theater Der Welt Festival, Berlin, Germany |
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| Personnel Direction Adriano Cortese Assistant Direction Bob Daoud Text Raimondo Cortese Performed by Arthur Angel, Kristina Bidenko, Beth Buchanan, Zoe Burton, Patrick Moffatt, Robert Morgan, Torquil Neilson and Tess Masters. Set Design Dan Potra Costume Design Ina Shanahan Lighting Design Lisa Trewin Music KIm Salmon |
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| Features script available online from Currency Press | ||
| Past Production | ||
| The Fertility Of Objects | ||
| Have you ever looked deeply into the eyes of your obsession and sworn you would do anything to possess it? Bob and Insatiable stand before a great shiny object of desire for which they will do or sacrifice anything. | ||
| Presented
in association with La Mama, Melbourne |
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| Reviews Fertility Of Objects -better described as a dried blood burlesque than a black comedy -reinforces my initial impression that Cortese is an outstanding new dramatist. Chris Boyd, Herald Sun Fertility Of Objects is a sharp reminder of everything theatre should be. Truthful, entertaining, honest and thought provoking. More please. C E C Busby, Theatre Reviews |
Performance History 1995 - Premiere La Mama, Melbourne 1996 La Mama, Melbourne |
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| Personnel Direction Lynne Ellis Text Raimondo Cortese Performed by Zoe Burton and Patrick Moffatt Set Design Lynne Ellis Lighting Design Lisa Trewin |
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| Past Production | ||
| The Room | ||
| Surrounded by a projected landscape of his eerie imaginings, Dino interacts with various 'ghosts' from his past and ritualises his obsessions with the few remaining objects left at his disposal. Meaning slowly disintegrates, rationality crumbles, past and present are fused into a continuous verbal monologue as Dino's situation becomes increasingly bizarre. The Room is a play for one actor. | ||
| Also in
association with Napier Street Theatre, Melbourne |
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| Reviews The performance of Jerome Pride turns Raimondo Cortese's dense, lengthy,
monologue The Room into a liquid and hypnotic night at the theatre. The
Room, poetic and daring, continues Cortese's fascination with the mental
landscape of characters who isolate themselves from the outside world.
The Room is unusual in that the only narrative is of a gradual and cumulative
decline in the mental credibility of the character: there is no plot,
no emotional development, no journey. The attention to detail is spectacular...
The production is also very funny; Pride is debonair and loquacious, his
demeanour mocking and his physicality explosive. This is a rough, disturbing
production, but voyeuristically mesmerising, nonetheless - in the manner
of a car accident or American Psycho. Chris Boyd, Herald Sun |
Awards 1995 Victorian Green Room Award for: Distinctive Contribution to Melbourne Theatre (Sound Design) 1995 Victorian Green Room Award Nomination for: Best Playwright Best Director Most Outstanding Performer Emerging Designer |
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| Performance
History 1995 - Premiere Napier Street Theatre, Melbourne |
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| Personnel Direction Marcia Ferguson Text Raimondo Cortese Performed by Jerome Pride Lighting Design Paul Jackson Sound Designer Darren Steffen |
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| Past Production | ||
| Lucrezia and Cesare | ||
| Two lovers engrossed in an erotic game in which they alternately caress and desecrate each other with words. Motivated equally by longing and boredom, they must perpetually evoke new fantasies in order to resurrect their love. | ||
| Presented
in association with Napier Street Theatre, Melbourne Theatreworks, Melbourne Arts Victoria |
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| Reviews Word for word - perhaps the most impressive new play to appear on our stages this year. Bar none. Two lovers, a man and a woman, fantasise - literally - to the death. Raimondo Cortese, the playwright, displays the same kind of natural intelligence and passion for language that can be found in Shakespeare. Even in the vortex of lust, Cortese's lovers spin words into silken rope. Lucrezia and Cesare is dangerous, dazzling theatre. You have been warned. Chris Boyd, Herald Sun |
Awards 1994 Victorian Green Room Award Nomination for: Best New Australian Play |
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| Performance
History 1994 - Premiere Napier Street Theatre, Melbourne 1998 Theatreworks, Melbourne Directors Cut, Victorian Tour |
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| Personnel Direction Adriano Cortese Jason Blake Text Raimondo Cortese Performed by Adriano Cortese and Kelly Tracey Zoe Burton and David Tredinnick Set Design Ben Anderson Lighting Design Lisa Trewin Costume Design Jacqueline Everitt |
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| Past Production | ||
| The Large Breast or The Upside-Down Bell |
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| A murder mystery and a tale of obsessive passion. A man and woman from different worlds meet beside a pond, which holds the secret to something shocking that happened between them in the distant past. | ||
| Presented
in association with La Mama, Melbourne Upstairs Belvoir St Theatre, Sydney |
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| Reviews (The play) aims to make the writer, Raimondo Cortese, invisible, and, in its skillful employment of situational dialogue, it succeeds. (The actors) tease out the possibilities of the dialogue with a light touch, making the final shock all the more effective. Helen Thomson, The Age |
Performance History 1994 - Premiere Upstairs Belvoir St Theatre, Sydney 1995 La Mama, Melbourne 1996 La Mama, Melbourne |
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| Personnel Direction Adriano Cortese Brett Adam Text Raimondo Cortese Performed by Jerome Pride and Kelly Tracey Beth Buchanan and Luke Elliott Lighting Design Lisa Trewin |
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