Life is a cabaret…

Some of our readers may have seen the above exhibition at Arts Centre Melbourne during the Speigeltent season this year which celebrated two of Australia’s successful contemporary performers, Meow Meow and Paul Capsis.

The displayed costumes and photographs relating to Paul Capsis form part of a new acquisition representing his career, donated by Capsis to Arts Centre Melbourne’s Performing Arts Collection in 2011.

One of Australia’s most exciting performers, Paul Capsis has been described as being ‘in possession of a voice that sounds like an act of God’. Capsis has enjoyed success in both theatre and film and has forged an impressive career as a virtuoso cabaret and concert performer ‘channelling’ the spirit of modern divas such as Ella Fitzgerald, Judy Garland and Janis Joplin.

His award-winning one-man shows, A Pack of Divas; Burning Sequins; Whole Lotta Capsis and Capsis vs Capsis have earned him a reputation as a ‘must-see’ performer at festivals both in Australia and overseas.

Between 1998 and 2005, Capsis consolidated his place on the international stage with stand-out performances at the Schauspielhaus Vienna in his acclaimed one-man shows, The Burlesque Tour and Boulevard Delirium (co-written and directed by Barrie Kosky). Of his performance one Viennese critic wrote, ‘Paul Capsis is able to do everything – he is a clown, a tap-dancer, a sorcerer, a rock star; he is a man, woman and child’.

A versatile performer, Capsis has also appeared with many of the country’s leading theatre companies including Company B at Belvoir Street, Sydney Theatre Company and Malthouse Theatre. As a performer he continues to defy easy categorisation appearing equally at home as Riff Raff in the legendary Rocky Horror Show as he is in his moving autobiographical work, Angela’s Kitchen.

Paul Capsis has received a number of awards for his work on stage including two Helpmann Awards and two Green Room Awards. In 1998 he was nominated for an AFI Award for his role in the film Head On, for which he won a Sydney Film Critics Circle Award for Best Supporting Actor.

Australia’s Family Jewels arrive in the USA!

Angus Young's AC/DC school uniform. Gift of Angus Young 1988. Performing Arts Collection.

Arts Centre Melbourne’s successful Icon Exhibition AC/DC: Australia’s Family Jewels, presented in partnership with the Western Australian Museum and in association with AC/DC, Albert Music and Sony Music, has just arrived at the second stop on its international tour - EMP Museum in Seattle!

The exhibition opened with a bang last week, and EMP Museum have shared some fantastic photographs of the opening party on their Flickr stream, which you can find here.

AC/DC: Australia’s Family Jewels attracted an incredible 415,000 visitors during its Australian display and is the first and only fully endorsed exhibition to bring to life the history, creativity and power of one of the world’s greatest bands.

The Australian tour, generously funded by Visions Australia, included the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney, the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory in Darwin and our touring partners the Western Australian Museum in Perth. WA Museum CEO Alec Coles said the exhibition had been a huge success. “The exhibition has attracted more than 80,000 people to WAM, and what has been great has been the diversity of visitors – this is not just an exhibition for fans – although they, of course, love it – it is for anyone interested in contemporary music and musical culture in Australia.”

AC/DC: Australia’s Family Jewels
EMP Museum, Seattle, Washington
28 April – 29 September 2012

Nellie Stewart, George Musgrove and the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake

Nellie Stewart as Nell Gwynne in ‘Sweet Nell of Old Drury’, c1902. Arts Centre Melbourne’s Performing Arts Collection.

This week marks the anniversary of the horrific 1906 SanFrancisco earthquake and fire that left much of the city in ruins and an estimated 300,000 people homeless. Caught in the mayhem that followed were Australian entrepreneur George Musgrove and Nellie Stewart, star of pantomime, light opera and drama, whose beauty and talent won the hearts of the Australian public at the turn of the twentieth century.

Nellie Stewart was a star of the Williamson, Garner and Musgrove’s Royal Comic Opera Company and throughout the 1880s performed in many of their productions including Patience, La Mascotte, HMS Pinafore, Iolanthe, Dorothy and Princess Ida. When Gilbert & Sullivan’s The Mikado premiered in Australia in 1886, Nellie Stewart was the obvious choice to play the lead.

Buoyed by her singing success, Nellie Stewart attempted to make the transition to grand opera in 1888 taking on the role of Marguerite in Gounod’s Faust. Her success in the role was unfortunately marred by severely strained vocal chords, the result of unwisely singing the role for 24 consecutive nights. Vocal problems continued to plague her and the damage was compounded by further years of singing.

At age 43, Nellie Stewart decided to reinvent herself, this time as a dramatic star. As fate would have it her first non-musical role would also become the one for which she is best remembered. The play was Paul Kester’s Sweet Nell of Old Drury which premiered on 15 February 1902 at the Princess Theatre. The role was that of Nell Gwynne, a real-life rags-to-riches story of a poor ‘orange seller’ turned actress who became mistress of King Charles II.

Apron worn by Nellie Stewart as Nell Gwynn in ‘Sweet Nell of Old Drury’, c1902.1931. Arts Centre Melbourne’s Performing Arts Collection.

Nellie’s gamble paid off with sell-out performances and rave reviews following around the country. On the back of its success Nellie and her partner, entrepreneur George Musgrove took the ambitious step of sailing to San Francisco to undertake an American tour of Sweet Nell of Old Drury.  They arrived early in 1906 with a full dramatic company, stagehands, scenery, costumes and props.  The production and its star were an immediate success and following a successful season, Nellie and daughter Nancye travelled on to Colorado Springs while George remained in San Francisco organising further tour dates.

When the city was struck by an earthquake and ensuring fire on 18 April, Musgrove was caught in the midst of the devastation. A week later, ragged and battered, he made his way to his worried family. Scenery was destroyed in the disaster and the Sweet Nell tour had to be abandoned. It was a financial loss from which George Musgrove and Nellie Stewart never fully recovered. To enable the company to return to Australia, they sold their home in England and Nellie sold all her jewellery.

A New Acquisition From Comedian Denise Scott

Denise Scott's Nude Suit on display in the exhibition '25 Years of Laughs - Melbourne International Comedy Festival 1987-2011'

Denise Scott, (Scotty) is one of Australia’s most treasured female comedians, particularly in Melbourne where she performs regularly and has featured at most of the Melbourne International Comedy Festivals over the last 20 plus years.

In 2011, her solo show – Regrets was awarded the MICF Directors Choice Award and she received a Helpmann award for best Comedy Performer.

This nude suit was displayed in Arts Centre Melbourne’s exhibition 25 Years of Laughs – Melbourne International Comedy Festival 1987-2011. After the exhibition closed Denise generously donated the costume to the Performing Arts Collection.

The nude suit featured in the production Comedy’s Not Pretty, 1999 and Comedy’s Still Not Pretty, 2003 and 2004, with collaborators Judith Lucy and Lynda Gibson. Comedy’s Still Not Pretty was awarded The Age Critics award and a Green Room award (cabaret) for most innovative use of form and most outstanding cabaret show.

Denise often ‘suits up’ to attend functions and launched the 2009 Melbourne International Comedy Festival in ‘the nude’…suit.

John Romeril wins Green Room Lifetime Achievement Award

Congratulations to playwright John Romeril, who is this year’s recipient of the Green Room Lifetime Achievement Award. As one of Australia’s leading and most prolific contemporary writers for theatre, Romeril is recognised for his plays focusing on political and social issues. His work has also been performed internationally and translated into Japanese, Vietnamese and Italian.

Programme for 'Carboni' by John Romeril, Australian Performing Group, 1980. Arts Centre Melbourne, Performing Arts Collection.

John Romeril was born in Melbourne in 1945 and graduated from Monash University. Following his early work as a performance poet, he began writing plays when La Mama Theatre opened in 1967. He was a founding member of the Australian Performing Group and between 1970 and 1981 wrote more than 20 plays for the company including Marvellous Melbourne (1970) with Jack Hibberd, Bastardy (1972) and Carboni (1980). His most enduring play from this period was The Floating World (1974), which addresses Australian-Japanese relations and instigated Romeril’s on-going interest in Japanese theatre and society. As well as revival productions by leading Australian theatre companies, the play was staged in Canada in 1978 and Japan in 1995.

Throughout his career, Romeril has continued to actively collaborate with community theatre companies and the education sector across Australia. Working both as a playwright and dramaturge, he has collaborated with organisations including Jigsaw Theatre Company in Canberra, Troupe and Magpie Theatre in Adelaide, Salamanca Theatre Company in Hobart, and Melbourne Workers Theatre, the Victorian College of the Arts and Arena Theatre Company in Melbourne. He has also been writer-in-residence at several universities, has held positions on many literary boards and is a regular guest speaker at conferences and events.

John Romeril’s works have been presented by Australian state theatre companies including the musical Jonah Jones (1985) written with composer Alan John, Lost Weekend (1989), Top End (1989) and XPO: The Human Factor (1998). His play Love Suicides was co-produced by Playbox Theatre Company and Company Skylark in 1997 and his stage adaptation of Miss Tanaka, jointly staged by Handspan Visual Theatre and Playbox, won the NSW Premiers Play Prize in 2001.

Programme for 'Miss Tanaka' by John Romeril, Handspan and Playbox, Melbourne, 2000. Arts Centre Melbourne, Performing Arts Collection.

Romeril has also written for film and television, including collaborating on the award-winning One Night the Moon (2001) with Paul Kelly, Kev Carmody, Mairead Hannan and Rachel Perkins. In 2009 he adapted this work as a stage version for Malthouse Theatre, Melbourne. His most recent play is Jack Charles V The Crown, co-authored with Jack Charles for the Ilbijeri Theatre Company. This premiered at the Melbourne International Arts Festival in 2010 and has since been staged in Sydney, Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide.

John Romeril’s work is represented in the Performing Arts Collection through archives relating to the Australian Performing Group, Handspan Theatre and Playbox Theatre Company.

A Sunbury Day Out…

Crowd at Sunbury Festival 1972. Photographer unknown. Arts Centre Melbourne, Performing Arts Collection

While the sun’s still shining come in and see our new exhibition, ’A Sunbury Day Out’ – an exhibition celebrating the 40^th Anniversary of the legendary Sunbury Music Festival – with a nod to the 20^th Anniversary of the Big Day Out.

Proof for 'How To Get There' advertisement. Arts Centre Melbourne, Performing Arts Collection

Promoted as ‘Bigger than Big’, the original Sunbury Music Festival, held over the Australia Day long weekend in 1972, attracted thousands of festival goers from around the country – from laid back hippies to hard core rock ‘n’ roll fans. An annual festival from 1972-1975, Sunbury has iconic status in the history of Australian music and was perhaps the closest thing we had to an Australian Woodstock als well as a spiritual precursor to the Big Day Out.

Much of the material on display has been drawn for the Performing Arts Collection’s  Sunbury Music Festival Collection which evokes the spirit of this significant event through a comprehensive range of material including colour photographs, slides, planning documents, correspondence, payment schedules, design layouts and merchandise. The collection was donated to the Performing Arts Collection festival organiser, John Fowler in 1993 and since that time has become one of our most highly accessed collections. Come in and find out why…

A Sunbury Day Out
St Kilda Rd Foyer Gallery
25 February – 27 May, 2012

Vale Judith Cobb (1961-2012)

Set model designed by Judith Cobb for Janis Balodis’, God’s Best Country, Melbourne Theatre Company, 1988

The Australian theatre industry recently lost one of its most respected friends and colleagues, theatre designer Judith Cobb. Writer Michael Girr paid tribute to her yesterday in a moving article in which he described the way ’her work with playwrights and directors always improved their take on what theatre was meant to achieve’.
During her career Cobb worked with many of Australia’s major theatre companies and respected playwrights including Nick Enright, Hannie Rayson, Joanna Murray-Smith and Andrew Bovell. 

Her introduction to design followed hot on the heels of her graduation from a Diploma of Arts (Fashion) at RMIT in 1981. From 1981-1983 Cobb was Assistant Set and Costume Designer at Melbourne Theatre Company before being appointed Resident Designer in 1983 at the age of just 22.

The Performing Arts Collection holds a number of designs created by Cobb during this period including designs for George Bernard Shaw’s Candida (1984) and Barry Dickens’ Reservoir By Night (1985). 

Design by Judith Cobb for ‘Reverend Laurie Throttle’, Reservoir By Night, Melbourne Theatre Company, 1985

Design by Judith Cobb for ‘The Fat Woman’, Reservoir By Night, Melbourne Theatre Company, 1985

In 1988, Cobb left the Melbourne Theatre Company to become a rarely out-of-work freelance designer designing productions for Playbox Theatre, HIT Productions, Sydney Theatre Company, Queensland Theatre Company and Melbourne Theatre Company. During the 1990s she returned to study to pursue a passion for painting and became a teacher at RMIT and the Victorian College of the Arts.

Her legacy will no doubt continue to enliven the work of the many colleagues and students whose work she encouraged and influenced.