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In the past seven years one Adelaide export who has been astonishing audiences across Australia and Europe is theatre director Benedict Andrews.
Although I had known Benedict since the Sydney Festival presentation of FIREFACE in 2001 (directed by Benedict and written by young German playwright Marius von Mayenburg), it was during the shaping of Adelaide’s relationship with the Schaubühne theatre of Berlin that I became more involved with his work.
Benedict had staged several productions for the Schaubühne, among them knockout interpretations of Sarah Kane’s CLEANSED and Marius von Mayenburg’s THE UGLY ONE. In fact, it was in Berlin that I became acutely aware of the unique and deepening writer/director relationship between Marius and Benedict.
Since then, they have collaborated on the stunning ELDORADO, and now, in a co-production between the Festival, Malthouse Theatre and the Sydney Opera House, they present the world premiere of their latest collaboration, MOVING TARGET.
For those seeking the new wave in theatre, and a view to the future of writing and direction in the 21st Century, MOVING TARGET will deliver in spades.
Benedict has been hailed as one of our greatest directorial auteurs, and in the past year alone directed landmark productions of Patrick White’s A SEASON AT SARSAPARILLA and Edward Albee’s WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF.
With MOVING TARGET, Benedict and Marius take us on a journey of frightening possibilities and often-hilarious insight. Using improvised scenes, mysterious anecdotes, nail-biting subtext and a harrowing narrative, the work reflects our fears and loss of control over our world, in this 21st Century.
Describing their first meeting, when Marius visited Sydney after the presentation of FIREFACE, Benedict described Marius as follows in an interview in The Age newspaper:
"That was a pretty wild dinner," Andrews laughs. "I'd actually pictured Marius completely differently, as had a lot of people. I'd expected this really tough-looking guy — because Fireface was just full-on, you know, murdering the parents, incest; Marius was a writer from this 'blood and sperm' generation, as they were calling them. And there was this beautiful, funny, absolutely charming guy. I mean he looks like a little angel.”
MOVING TARGET is an extraordinary work, shockingly confronting some of our darkest taboos in the most original, entertaining and theatrical ways.
Brett Sheehy |
Wednesday, 30 January 2008 2:00 PM |
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One of the great privileges of presenting a Festival is the opportunity to encourage explosive and unexpected collaborations between artists – collaborations that would not normally happen in the regular course of arts programming.
One such collaboration in the 2008 Festival is between Billy Cobham, co-founder of the legendary Mahavishnu Orchestra, Colin Towns, one of the great arrangers and composers of contemporary music, six of the world’s leading musicians, and our own, mighty Adelaide Symphony Orchestra.
I first had the pleasure to present a symphonic fusion collaboration with the 2003 Sydney Opera House event featuring Deep Purple’s Jon Lord, the Australian rock band ‘george’ and the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. The result was electrifying – a sell-out smash success. And Meeting of the Spirits in 2008 promises to be even more extraordinary.
The Mahavishnu Orchestra was, to me, the greatest of all the 70s fusion bands. Its musical virtuosity, ear-shattering intensity and Indian-inspired mysticism delivered an utterly original and timely jazz/rock fusion which became the stuff of legends.
The time has never been better to re-visit the Mahavishnu’s magnificent canon of work, especially in light of the threads of ‘enlightenment’ running throughout the 2008 Festival program.
For this special celebration of the Mahavishnu, Billy Cobham is joined by – twice Grammy Award winning saxophonist Ernie Watts, colleague of Zappa, Monk, Metheny and Davis; the astonishing Guy Barker on trumpet, whose collaborators have included Coleman, Gillespie, Sinatra, Minelli, Oldfield, Benson, Quincy Jones and Wham, and who arranged and played the brilliant jazz standards on the Minghella film The Talented Mr. Ripley; trombonist Marshall Gilkes, one of the Julliard School’s most distinguished and brilliant recent graduates; Jukkis Uotila on keyboards, the Head of Jazz at the Sibelius Academy in Finland, who has worked with Benny Goodman, Chet Baker, Gil Evans, and Maria Schneider; bassist Phillipe Chayeb, collaborator with Dee Dee Bridgewater, Dionne Warwick and Michel Legrand; and Australia’s own guitar legend Frank Gambale, who has worked with Jean-Luc Ponty and Chick Corea, and whose name is emblazoned across guitars by both Yamaha and Ibanez.
Rarely has a more outstanding ensemble of musicians performed on the one Adelaide stage.
And for this world premiere symphonic presentation of Meeting of the Spirits, our arranger and conductor is the great Colin Towns, one of Europe’s most prolific composers for film and television, whose scores include Mon Ange (My Angel) starring Vanessa Paradis, the groundbreaking score to Rivieres Pourpres 2 (Crimson Rivers 2) starring Jean Reno, The Puppet Masters starring Donald Sutherland, Ben Elton’s Maybe Baby, Space Truckers starring Dennis Hopper, Vampire's Kiss starring Nicholas Cage, and the television productions of Goodbye Mr Chips, The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby and The Crow Road.
This special Festival presentation of Meeting of the Spirits will, I believe, long be remembered as one of the great musical nights of Adelaide’s life. I look forward to seeing you there!
Brett Sheehy |
Thursday, 20 December 2007 3:00 AM |
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In 2003 I had the great privilege of debuting the work of Osvaldo Golijov in Australia. It was my second Sydney Festival as director and the event was Osvaldo's monumental LA PASION SEGUN SAN MARCOS (THE PASSION ACCORDING TO SAINT MARK) presented in the Sydney Opera House.
Three or four years earlier I had first heard murmurs throughout the classical music world of an astonishing new composer of Argentinean/Venezuelan heritage whose music was annihilating classical preconceptions. He was creating epic classical works of sweeping breadth and depth, infused with Afro-Cuban motifs, street rhythms, bossa nova, rumba and flamenco. The consensus was that he was one of the brightest hopes for taking classical music boldly and winningly into the 21st Century.
Osvaldo’s LA PASION was a triumphant success. In time, its reception across the world left audiences, critics and commentators breathless. In its American debut, The New York Times described it as “a millennial work of genius, a magnificent triumph and an unquestionable masterpiece,” while the Boston Globe hailed it as “a work of genius and the first indisputably great composition of the 21st Century.”
It had been an enormous and complex undertaking, not least of all getting the Venezuelan orchestra and the choir – La Schola Cantorum de Caracas – out of Caracas during the crippling general strike which hit Venezuela in late 2002 and early 2003.
Following LA PASION, I kept a close eye on Osvaldo’s work and was excited to hear he was composing his first opera.
When I first heard AINADAMAR (FOUNTAIN OF TEARS) I was speechless. The power and beauty of the music was extraordinary, and this time the magnificent orchestral score was infused with Jewish, Christian and Muslim musical influences of Iberia, Spanish dance rhythms, toreador fanfares, fabulous percussive riffs and some of the most beautifully lyrical passages I’d heard in the contemporary classical canon.
I emailed Osvaldo immediately and asked if he might be interested in the work’s Australian debut being in Adelaide in 2008. He was.
I should add here that at one stage during our negotiations for LA PASION the entire project collapsed under managerial problems and Osvaldo personally sprang to the rescue, enabling us to proceed, and later pulled out all stops to facilitate our presenting the 100 or so Venezuelan musicians, singers and performers, during that 2002/2003 strike. I raise this because during that time I warmed to him enormously. He was astonishingly generous, helpful, funny and selfless, and he struck me as an artist of towering ability and unstinting humility.
Then came the issue of the production. I had received the DVD of the first staging of AINADAMAR, but had felt that the persistent rhythmic elements of the work were under-realised choreographically. It was then that I recalled a brilliant TURANDOT I had seen at Opera Australia, and an equally brilliant SWAN LAKE for Australian Ballet – both directed by Graeme Murphy. I hope Graeme won’t mind my also mentioning that some years earlier he had talked to me about an astonishing concept he had for a dance work around the life of the Spanish artist Goya, a work I still hope to see some day. The planets seemed to have aligned - it was a ‘no-brainer’ – Graeme would be the perfect director.
In our very first conversation about AINADAMAR, when I called to see if he might be interested, Graeme actually finished my sentence. I began “Graeme, you know the composer Osvaldo Golijov, well…” and he excitedly jumped in with “He’s written an amazing new opera AINADAMAR which I’ve just been listening too – it’s extraordinary!” And with that, we had our director.
Then followed the casting, our securing Kelly O’Connor and Jessica Rivera to lead an international and Australian cast, confirmation of the availability of our great friends at the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, securing guitar maestros Slava and Leonard Grigoryan, and of course the wonderful Giancarlo Guerrero to conduct.
As well, video artist Tim Gruchy, who had so brilliantly ‘animated’ and visually realised Shostakovich’s Leningrad Symphony for our 2006 Festival, made himself available to create AINADAMAR’s visual world.
A year down the track in our planning and negotiations, came the news that AINADAMAR had taken out two of the most coveted honours in the 2007 Grammy Awards - Best Classical Composition and Best Opera Recording, the latter Grammy shared with Osvaldo by Jessica Rivera and Kelly O’Connor whom we would welcome to Adelaide.
Our presentation of AINADAMAR will be the culmination of many threads in my own working life. If fulfils my ambition to present Osvaldo’s first opera to Australian audiences; it presents a work about one of my favourite playwrights – Lorca - whose BLOOD WEDDING and THE HOUSE OF BERNARDA ALBA I have adored since my years as Literary Manager of the Sydney Theatre Company; it gives me the opportunity to work with Graeme for the very first time; and it realises my and Stephen Phillips’ (of State Opera of South Australia) dual determination to put the finest contemporary operas on Australian stages – something which happens lamentably infrequently.
Brett Sheehy |
Monday, 3 December 2007 9:00 AM |
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To Sydney to begin the interstate one-on-one media briefings on the 2008 program. I conducted the Adelaide briefings last week and all went well, so fingers crossed the Sydney and Melbourne press will respond likewise. The Booking Guide went onto the presses today, the contracts are all finalised, flights are being booked, and hundreds of artists around Australia and the world are telling their partners, parents, children, friends and colleagues they’re going to Adelaide next March. Now its up to us to give them the warmest of welcomes.
Brett Sheehy |
Monday, 1 October 2007 9:00 AM |
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To Melbourne to watch the outcome of three weeks of rehearsals of Moving Target. It has become darker, more sinister and more confronting. I love what I’m seeing and think it will bowl audiences over, though structurally they’ll need to prepare themselves for a journey of fracture and deconstruction – a vivid slice of where new writing is heading in this 21st Century.
Brett Sheehy |
Saturday, 29 September 2007 9:00 AM |
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Lesley Newton comes into my office ashen-faced. “Have you heard the news?” What news? “Tanja is dead, she was hit by a truck last night.” I feel like I’ve been punched in the stomach. The rest of the day is spent making calls, talking to colleagues, trying to fathom what’s happened. I have never known someone’s death to have such an impact on the entire Australian performing arts world. I knew her for only 48 hours, but am feeling all the shock and grief of the loss of the closest of friends. For those who were truly part of her world, I can’t begin to imagine what they’re feeling.
Brett Sheehy |
Friday, 17 August 2007 9:00 AM |
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To Sydney again for the Helpmann Awards - no nominations this year as we didn’t present a Festival, but the organizers have kindly asked me to present the Best Male and Best Female Dancer awards. Coincidentally, my co-presenter is Tanja and she’s every bit as fresh and dazzling as I’d been told.
We spend an intense 48 hours together, rehearsing and then doing the show. Everyone she meets seems to fall in love with her; she’s such a breath of fresh air – so unpretentious, so generous, so funny and so beautiful. We promise to have dinner when I’m in Sydney again in three weeks time.
Brett Sheehy |
Monday, 6 August 2007 9:00 AM |
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Tonight I’m at the Paris Opera’s L'Allegro, il Pensiero ed il Moderato directed by Robyn Orlin, the South African director and choreographer.
This is a fine production, technologically fusing the action onto footage of the mountainous regions of central South Africa, then through the savannah and into the streets of Johannesburg, by projecting all of the performances onto a cinematic blue-screen covering the entire top half of the stage.
Despite the technology and sublime playing by Les Arts Florissants (Bill Christie’s incomparable ensemble) I find myself disappointed, particularly in the choreography of the Paris Opera Ballet. A dance corps like this is a gift for a choreographer, and a huge opportunity is missed by Orlin.
I recall what a great choreographer can do with opera, as Graeme Murphy showed with Opera Australia’s Turandot, and as he also showed in his operatic staging of Australian Ballet’s Swan Lake. Sitting in the splendour of the Palais Garnier I find myself beaming at the thought of Graeme’s directing Ainadamar for us. He would have bowled this audience over had his vision of Handel’s masterpiece been up there on stage. How fortunate for us that he’s free next March, and how fortunate that, by all accounts, his successor at Sydney Dance Company who was named last Friday is going to be terrific. She’s a former Australian Dance Theatre performer, Tanja Liedtke.
Brett Sheehy |
Wednesday, 9 May 2007 9:00 AM |
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A series of meetings in Paris with the representatives of each artform division of Cultures France, the French Government’s primary international arts funding body, sets up the potential for assistance for any French artists and companies we may program. Obtaining international support from foreign governments is part and parcel of the job, and while a lot of negotiation can be done with the Consuls-General and Ambassadors in Australia, these face-to-face meetings at the funding coalface are invaluable.
Brett Sheehy |
Tuesday, 8 May 2007 9:00 AM |
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To the National Theatre to see Katie Mitchell’s’ production of the radical Martin Crimp work Attempts On Her Life. Adam Cook at STCSA is very interested in the play, and we jointly have to decide whether Adelaide should see the Mitchell production through the Festival, or a new production through STCSA. Adam is an old friend and when I tell him I adored the play, but was disappointed in the production, I encourage him to pursue it for his season.
Brett Sheehy |
Monday, 30 April 2007 9:00 AM |
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Out to the Lyric Theatre in Hammersmith to see My Dad’s a DJ and My Mum Is Too. A terrific work for children, connecting them to contemporary music in a fun, artistic and original way, but I worry that it is too similar to the Fringe’s successful Baby Rave earlier in the year. When we can produce equal experiences ourselves, there is no need to bring art across the oceans.
Brett Sheehy |
Saturday, 28 April 2007 9:00 AM |
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To Stratford-upon-Avon to see the Royal Shakespeare Company’s presentation of Tim Supple’s glorious Indian/Sri Lankan A Midsummer Night’s Dream. I have heard much about this Dream, and it lives up to every expectation. A bonus is that we again get to collaborate with our friends and colleagues at Adelaide-based Arts Projects Australia, who will manage the production’s tour to the Southern Hemisphere.
Brett Sheehy |
Wednesday, 25 April 2007 9:00 AM |
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To London for my last meeting with DV8 before confirming we are on board for To Be Straight with You. Lloyd talks me through the production, explaining his casting philosophy, the way he will use the recorded testimonies, his ideas for filmic and animated elements, and he gives me more detail about the politics of the piece.
He is not sure of the timeline, and needs a commissioning partner to roll out the first performance, something our budget won’t allow at the moment. But if a partner could be found in Europe it could open there in December, and then be freighted straight down to us. Three agonizing months pass before the commission is confirmed. To Be Straight With You will open in Germany in December and then have its exclusive Australian premiere for us in March.
That night the new production by Britain’s Shared Experience theatre company, Kindertransport, opens. I have had a long dialogue with Shared Experience, having marveled at their stagings of great literary classics – War and Peace, Jane Eyre, Anna Karenina. This new work is very fine drama, but doesn’t have the excitement of seeing the classics realized so theatrically. While I have to pass, I hope Adelaide gets to experience the work of this wonderful ensemble sometime soon.
Brett Sheehy |
Tuesday, 24 April 2007 9:00 AM |
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At last, a performance of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof coincides with my being in Europe. It is everything I had hoped it would be, and more. I am not prepared for the intensity of the performances – had I forgotten that one of the most dynamic aspects of Nora was the phenomenal acting? – and the confrontational scene between Brick and Big Daddy is heart-stopping. The production is also wildly sexy, and Maggie is so coolly erotic, it’s a revelation. When Tobias and I meet afterwards, we are both relieved; the gamble was worth it.
Brett Sheehy |
Saturday, 21 April 2007 9:00 AM |
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To Amsterdam to meet with the Kassys company, the ground-breaking Dutch ensemble who fuse cinema and theatre in a discombobulating exploration of the real and the virtual. Their Kommer (Sorrow) is a wonderful piece and I hope we can weave it into the program.
Brett Sheehy |
Wednesday, 18 April 2007 9:00 AM |
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