OCTOBER 11 – 28

MALTHOUSE THEATRE AND MELBOURNE INTERNATIONAL ARTS FESTIVAL
PRESENTS


By Richard Foreman
Direction and Composition Max Lyandvert
With Ben Winspear, Gibson Nolte and Rebecca Smee
Lighting Design Luiz Pampolha
A Kitchen Sink production
(Producer Brenna Hobson)

The talents of one of the most influential figures in contemporary American
drama, avant garde playwright and director, Richard Foreman combine with our
own celebrated composer and director, Max Lyandvert, in the Melbourne
Premiere of Foreman’s satirical riot Now that Communism is Dead my Life feels
Empty.

Presented as a labyrinth of triptychs, flashing lights, microphones and frenetic
action, where truths show themselves as untruths and statements are
answered by contradictions, this multi-platform production promises to turn the
theatre into a conceptual echo chamber, haunting the minds and assaulting the
senses.

In Now that Communism is Dead my Life Feels Empty director and ten-time
OBIE Award winning playwright Richard Foreman has written a ferociously
funny homage to communism; a fierce and satiric exploration of the cultural
remnants from the Cold War.

A black and white world exists, with shocks of crimson, where two alter egos
dance, fall down, get up and ponder the mysterious contents of drawers and
boxes while desperately wanting to be each other. Fred and Freddie’s
philosophical and side-splitting encounters persist in a universe of oppression,
spying and mass manipulation.

Freddie played by Gibson Nolte (Ubu Roi, An Alphabet, Savage Grace) could be
a macho acid-rocking ‘Soviet’ who is obsessed with and expert in everything
and anything American. While Ben Winspear (Victory, Metamorphosis, Great
Expectations) who plays Fred may be a snide American with a wilting influence
who has lost faith with his own culture, and is desperately seeking ideology
and meaning. These two masters (and victims) are continuously poked,
imprisoned and are apprehensively trying to be, each other, whilst sometimes
a Voice, and sometimes a Dog (played by Rebecca Smee, Some Explicit
Polaroids, I’ve Got the Shakes, Faustus) cuts through them and tells us what
the reality is.

Malthouse Theatre welcomes the return of Max Lyandvert (composer for The
Ham Funeral, Journal of the Plague Year and Eldorado) who also directed
Richard Foreman’s I’ve Got the Shakes and My Head was a Sledgehammer in
Australia to great critical acclaim.

Richard Foreman has written, directed and designed over fifty of his own plays
both in New York City and abroad. Foreman is the founder and artistic director
of the non-profit Ontological-Hysteric Theatre (1968-present). Since the early
1970s his work and company have been funded by the National Endowment for
the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts, as well as many other
foundations and private individuals. In the early 1980s a branch of the theatre
was established in Paris and funded by the French government. The theatre is
currently located in the historic St. Mark's Church-in-the-Bowery in New York
City's East Village neighbourhood and serves as a home to Foreman's annual
productions as well as to other local and international artists.

"Max Lyandvert's realisation of I've Got the Shakes by Foreman reveals why
one of the most influential international artists in contemporary theatre has
entrusted his body of work to this talented director/composer from Australia." Sydney Morning Herald.

Presented as part of the Melbourne International Arts Festival

Venue: Tower Theatre, CUB Malthouse
Season Details: October 11-October 28, 2006
Previews: Wednesday 11 October & Thursday 12 October at 8pm
Opening: Friday 13 October at 8.00pm
Performance Times: Tuesday– Saturday 8.00pm, Sundays 5.00pm
Matinee – Thursday 19 & 26 October, Saturday 21 & 28 October 2pm.
Tickets: $15 - $27 + booking fee
Bookings: Malthouse Box Office 9685 5111/ www.malthousetheatre.com.au

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