La Mama, in association with Cumulus Productions, presents
There are Trees that are Dancers
by Monica Raszewski
There are trees that are dancers from elaine hudson on Vimeo.
August 20 2014 - August 31 2014
La Mama Courthouse
Book tickets online or call (03) 9347 6142
“When I worked at the State Library of Victoria a number of cardboard boxes arrived full of all kinds of stuff - diaries, letters, exhibition catalogues, notes on scraps of paper. They were part of the Sybil Craig bequest. Who was this woman who painted through the thirties and forties and then seemed to disappear? As I sorted through the boxes, piecing together fragments of stories, I became fascinated with how this artist worked, how she saw herself, how she lived - I knew I had the beginnings of a new play.”
Image : digital rendering by Julian Montague
Background
In 2010/2011 Monica Raszewski was awarded a Victorian State Library Creative Fellowship to research and write the first draft of a play based on material in the Sybil Craig bequest. ‘There are Trees that are Dancers’ was thus inspired by the diaries, artwork and letters of the Australian Modernist painter Sybil Craig 1901 -1989. The character of ‘Hilda’ grew from these artefacts while an interview with Sybil Craig by Barbara Blackman for the National Library oral history programme led to the creation of a second character –‘Vera’. This real life encounter is re-imagined in the form of a non-naturalistic, innovative exploration of intimacy and how we see what we want, or miss it altogether.
‘There are Trees that are Dancers’ received a R.E. Ross Trust Playwrights’ Development Award in 2012. This facilitated a week long workshop at Dancehouse with a director, two actors and a physical theatre dramaturg. The aim of the workshop was to experiment with the dynamics between Hilda and Vera and to explore through movement the surrealism in the script. Following the workshop a moved reading was held at fortyfive downstairs. A second moved reading of a section of the play was part of the Flashpoint readings at The State Library in 2013.
Workshop Participants:
Elaine Hudson – Director
Monica Raszewski - Writer
Adam Pierzchalski - Physical theatre consultant
Eloise Oxer – Actor (Hilda)
Debra Lawrance – Actor (Vera)
Flashpoint reading at the State Library of Victoria
Excerpts from the play were performed during this series of play readings with the following cast:
Eloise Oxer – Actor (Hilda)
Jane Nolan– Actor (Vera)
The play
Vera, tape recorder in hand, enters the reclusive artist's home. She is intent on getting the definitive account of Hilda's life and times. But how to get the octogenarian artist to reveal salient facts not only about her own history but also about her fellow artists, their personal lives and their art as Modernism arrived in Melbourne? Vera tries to pin down Hilda but everything about Hilda resists and rejects Vera’s classifications. A struggle begins and both women play with each other, sometimes cruelly, creating a tension between what is revealed and what is hidden. The action of the play explores solitariness, the unbalanced movement between exterior and interior life, between public and intimate space and the possibility of one person drawing another into a different reality. It exposes the complex ambiguities which characterised Hilda’s relationship with her mother; that helped fuel her artistic endeavours but also resulted in a nervous breakdown. As the play progresses the traditional power held by the interviewer over her subject begins to break down allowing Hilda and Vera to move beyond artefacts and questions and answers to a more ambiguous and finally more revealing encounter.
Production
La Mama will present ‘There are Trees that are Dancers' in association with cumulus productions as part of their Winter Season..
Performances at La Mama Courthouse from 20 August 2014 - 31 August 2014
The Company
Beverley Geldard - actor
Jane Nolan - actor
Monica Raszewski - writer
Elaine Hudson - director/co-producer
Adam Pierzchalski - movement consultant
Marc Raszewski - set design
Jo Lewis - costume design
Piotr Nowotnik - sound design
Wally Eastland - lighting design
Pamela Eastland - stage manager