Act One

Emerging Writers Program Showcase

FEATURING Members of the Junior and Senior Ensembles (14-26 years) VENUE Royal Exchange and Civic Playhouse DATES 2-3 October 2009

Act One is a showcase of four new one-act plays by the participants of Tantrum Theatre's Emerging Writers Program. These plays are directed and designed by Newcastle's next wave of emerging artists and are sure to inspire and excite audiences of all ages.

DOUBLE BILL: Three Days by Sarah Gaul & Bivouac by Brad McDonald
Saturday 3rd October, 4pm & 6pm

Royal Exchange, Bolton St, Newcastle

Three Days

FEATURING Senior Ensemble: Carl Gregory, Cara Pflueger

DIRECTOR Greg Gorton

MENTOR/DRAMATURG: Ross Mueller

SOUND DESIGNER Edward Gubbay

LIGHTING/SOUND OPERATOR Dean Winter

Bivouac

FEATURING Junior + Senior Ensembles: Jesse James Johnston, Thomas Sherbon, Paris Turier

DIRECTOR Cara Pflueger

MENTOR/DRAMATURG: Raimondo Cortese

LIGHTING/SOUND OPERATOR Dean Winter

The Women of Doom by Penelope Kentish
The Playhouse, Hunter St, Newcastle
Friday 2nd October & Saturday 3rd October, 8:15pm

FEATURING Junior Ensemble: Kate Neilson, Emily Drummond, James Ross-Evans, Rita Kidd, Tommasina Scanu, Rebecca Fenwick, Tom Walker, Brittany Clapham-Screen, Jessica Provost, Phoebe Kiriakidis, Ashley Boyd, Rhianna Boyldew, Samatha Cluff, Cordelia Hamilton-Russell, Nelson Hamilton-Russell, Oliver Shiplee

DIRECTOR Lauren O'Brien

ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR Brad McDonald

MENTOR/DRAMATURG: Lally Katz

LIGHTING DESIGNER/OPERATOR Brendan O'Connell

SOUND DESIGNER/OPERATOR Lauren O'Brien

Going Home by Dean Blackford
The Playhouse, Hunter St, Newcastle
Friday 2nd October & Saturday 3rd October, 9:15pm

FEATURING Senior Ensemble: Ricky Alley, Sarah Coffee, Zach Dulin, Dean Johnson

DIRECTOR Greg Gascoine

ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR Matthew Ballard

MENTOR/DRAMATURG: Alana Valentine

LIGHTING DESIGNER/OPERATOR Brendan O'Connell

SOUND DESIGNER Noel Grivas

About these productions

Bivouac by Brad McDonald

Director: Cara Pflueger

Featuring the Junior Ensemble

Freddy, Duke and Mark have lived in the same street all their lives. They have shared every experience growing up, and now that they have hit puberty their lives have become fuelled by sex, drugs and violence – leaving little time for friendship. When Freddy organises an overnight camp-out in the forest with the boys, the anxieties, fears and inherent animalistic nature of the ambivalent youth will be revealed. Freddy has a deep secret. Duke is acting suspicious. Mark just wants to beat something. Exposed to the elements, the boy’s true nature unfolds in the isolated wilderness, providing the stage for a camping tale that will not be told around camp fires in years to come.

Going Home by Dean Blackford

Director: Greg Gascoine

Associate Director: Matthew Ballard

Featuring the Senior Ensemble

Young men who come home from war often feel a sense of displacement from their civilian surroundings. Luckily they have the other soldiers to turn to for help. What about those who come home away from the other soldiers? What about those Army Reservists who filled in the ranks?  The men who return to non-military environments and are expected to return to civilian life. These men find that everything changes when you are not around. These men find that the betrayals that civilians live with now scar. These men trust each other with their lives. What happens when they are forced to return to a world where they can't even trust their best friend with their girlfriend?

Three Days by Sarah Gaul

Director: Greg Gorton

Associate Director: Natasha Bush

Featuring the Senior Ensemble

A brother. A sister. A stage, a set, people watching. A novelist and a cynic. And their dialogue. In a room in suburbia, a brother writes a novel and burns it to erase his past. A sister writes a play to save herself. Meanwhile, they tiptoe around a dark truth that they struggle every moment to conceal. Sharp and heartfelt, Three Days takes a step into the world of the grief-stricken imagination, where the divide between reality and memory is as blurred as the edges of a sepia photograph, where destruction of the family unit is only a conversation away.

The Women of Doom by Penelope Kentish

Director: Lauren O'Brien

Associate Director: Brad McDonald

Featuring the Junior Ensemble

“You’ve sat in her chairs. You’ve drank her tea. But who is this Flockard that we see?” Penny Flockard warily visits the town of Doom to collect an inheritance from the grandmother she’d never met. Here she is confronted by an array of strange townsfolk and mysteriously falls pregnant. Was it the tea? The handsome young carpenter? Or the fact that the town is overrun by witches? The Women of Doom explores identity, family and the ever-nurtured pang of ‘what is home?’.

For more information about the Emerging Writers Program and the four writers mentioned above click here.

Act One was presented at the National Young Writers Festival, as part of This Is Not Art (TINA).