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The Wall
A place where people meet. A multitude of simultaneous events
that arise, collide, fester, explode and dissolve in one continuous scene.
The Wall is an urban ritual; a public environment where six strangers
meet and develop complex relationships over a period of two hours
The piece unfolds in real time as one continuous, fluid scene. Through
a series of ordinary conversations the actors gradually and unconsciously
reveal their loneliness and longing. There is no plot. The structure is
more like jazz - improvised in feel, random, whimsical, unpredictable,
and haphazard.
'Their interactions are so completely in the moment, so thrillingly real
and beautifully
realised, that you will feel like a voyeur. Privileged. Awed.'
Chris Boyd, Herald Sun
'The six actors give one of the finest ensemble performances I have seen.
On stage for two hours, they could almost be improvising their park bench
conversations, apparently randomly relating to one another, drifting apart,
always observers and sometimes participants in a slow, familiar social
ritual of chance acquaintance. It sounds Beckettian, but it is distinctively
Australian, local as well as universal in its references. The Wall challenges
our notions of conventional theatre, but its brilliance lies in the fact
that in the stripping away of performance conventions, it reveals deeper
truths about the human condition.'
Helen Thompson ,The Age
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Holiday
What happens to us when the structures and rigours of everyday
life are no longer present? Holiday is a theatrical confrontation with
this central concern.
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.
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
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
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
This gentle, subtly hued and intellectually rigorous piece easily ranks
among their best.
John Bailey, The Sunday Age |
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