VCA graduates take Flight with five new plays

Volume 11 Number 7 July 13 - August 9 2015

Roderick Cairns performs in Yours The Face, written by Fleur Kilpatrick.
Roderick Cairns performs in Yours The Face, written by Fleur Kilpatrick.

Alix Bromley showcases the innovative works of five emerging playwrights about to stage their plays.

FLIGHT, a festival of five new Australian plays by some of our most innovative emerging playwrights, will premiere at Theatre Works and Footscray Community Arts Centre in July and August.

Fleur Kilpatrick, Morgan Rose, Bridget Mackey and Patrick McCarthy will each present a 10-day season at Theatre Works. A site-specific performance by playwright Chi Vu sees her work commence from a secret location and move in and around the Footscray Community Arts Centre.

All the playwrights are graduates of the Victorian College of the Arts’ Masters in Writing for Performance.

Creative Producer at Theatre Works, Daniel Clarke, says: “I was presented with so many new scripts from artists who had completed the Masters course (at the VCA) that I was inspired to create a specific context in which to stage them.

“Flight provides a platform to support playwrights to create new work while enabling experimentation and risk-taking. I am so excited to see these works evolve and to support the careers of these five emerging playwrights.”

Bridget Mackey’s Kindness follows an unlikely friendship between three bored office workers and a woman in her late 80s fuelled by a need to escape.

Under the direction of Robert Reid and Sarah Walker, Yours The Face is written by Fleur Kilpatrick and tells the story of a photographer and his model, both played exquisitely by Roderick Cairns, who come together to create one perfect image.

A coming-of-age play by Morgan Rose, Virgins and Cowboys tells the story of Sam who meets two women online. They are both virgins when Sam decides it would be really interesting if he were the one … to, you know.

Writer and director Patrick McCarthy launches his new company Fabricated Rooms with his debut play Grief and the Lullaby, a delicate and moving work which explores what it means to grow apart from those you grew up with.

Chi Vu’s The Dead Twin reimagines the horror genre as an immersive, cyclical, site-specific performance.

While at the VCA the five playwrights were led by acclaimed dramaturg and writer Raimondo Cortese of Ranters Theatre, a postgraduate lecturer in Theatre.

“Flight demonstrates the progressive rigour that underpins programming at Theatre Works under Dan Clarke’s direction,’’ Mr Cortese says.

“These plays provide a wonderful opportunity for audiences to experience the diversity of contemporary aesthetic practice currently happening in Melbourne theatre writing, which places the city right at the forefront of experimentation and provocation in world theatre.”

Bookings: theatreworks.org.au. 03 9534 3388 and footscrayarts.com. 03 9362 8888