Image by David Evans
Like Across the Universe, Lady Beatle uses the songs of the Beatles to reconstruct an alternate narrative, a behind the scenes to the making of the world’s largest rock band if there had been a fifth Beatle. This story, though, is almost true. There was a lady beetle that bestowed with the love and support and good luck that propelled them out of Liverpool, and this show is in tribute to him.
Image by Heidrun Lohr
The audience enters a smokey display room or warehouse space with frozen mannequins in tense suspension of the entrance of their leader. Under her authoritarian instruction the ensemble bend and eventually break out of their restrictive moulds to take control over their own bodies. Mea Culpa is an abstracted exploration of female bodily autonomy and the power of cooperation to overthrow systems of oppression.
Image by Alison Lee Rubie
What is the measure of a life? It’s a question not often considered in the rush of living but left for the last moments of reflection when it all feels a bit too late. Margaret Edson’s Pulitzer Prize winning script is a meditation on the boundary between life and death from the perspective of one accustomed to the event in the abstract.
Image by Brett Boardman
Have you ever loved something so much that it took over your world, pushing things like family and school into subplots and background information to the fateful love story at the centre of it all? Have you ever felt that way about someone you’ve never met? Never seen or touched in real life? Someone who doesn’t know you exist? That overwhelming, all consuming sensation is called being a fangirl.
Creative bots, algorithms, and AI that pump out scripts based on the input of thousands of human-written examples have been a source of hilarity for the last few years but what if a bot was tasked with writing a play about cyberspace, the internet, itself? The output of this hypothetical is Netgirlz, an “anti-theatre” and “anti-linear” piece bringing you the thrills of the internet in the comfort of the theatre.
Image by Chris Sullivan
Death changes everything: suddenly there’s a before and after, the continuity of a life cleft in two. In My Best Dead Friend, Anya spreads herself across this boundary to tell the story of her best friends including the Australian one, the clever one, the best one, and the dead one.
Image by Lightbox Photography
The legal profession is an opaque realm with notable barriers to entry and impenetrable jargon but popular culture genres like legal thrillers or legal dramas reveal a general interest in the world behind the courtroom. Bondi Legal exploits this interest in a comedy about the performativity and show-boating of lawyers.
Image by Bob Seary
In the late 60s and early 70s, stirred by the political unrest abroad, a group of young anarchists began a bombing campaign in Britain and became the country’s first terrorist organisation. James Graham’s script is a political history of both sides: the specialist investigative team established to find the Angry Brigade and the group of anarchists themselves.
If you’ve ever loved a food with your whole being, eating it probably felt like a divine experience, a communion with God. The Coconut Collective Clan have taken their love a step further and constructed a religion around the magnificent coconut. Intrigued?
In a throwback to the days of vaudeville and the picture palace, Nick Russoniello and the Golden Age Quartet reawaken the Independent’s past and celebrate the great Charlie Chaplin in a concert that combines classic film and live music. Including pieces from Golden Age greats and new compositions, the afternoon was part history lesson and all entertainment.
Night Writes 