SEASON TWO '08

MELBOURNE INTERNATIONAL ARTS FESTIVAL
AND MALTHOUSE THEATRE PRESENT

KITTEN

WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY JENNY KEMP
SET AND COSTUME DESIGNER ANNA TREGLOAN
COMPOSER AND SOUND DESIGNER
DARRIN VERHAGEN
LIGHTING DESIGNER NIKLAS PAJANTI
CHOREOGRAPHY AND DIRECTION
HELEN HERBERTSON
CAST
CHRIS CONNELLY
NATASHA HERBERT
KATE KENDALL
MARGARET MILLS

Kitten looms on the edge of a cliff, her lover perhaps lost to the sea, his best friend at her side. She is a song in three movements, a fragmented, untameable self. She surrounds herself with the relics of a love lost, but memory alone won’t fill the void. This yearning becomes a vacuum so powerful it threatens to devour her world.

The landscape of a mind in disorder has no horizon. Kitten’s rollercoaster journey from the depths of despair to soaring hope makes for theatre at its most powerful, freeing us from the illusion that everyday life is a realm removed from our hidden interiors.

Bewitching and unsettling, Kitten dares to conjure a magical realism which stands apart from most modern drama. It is a three act tale that is at once psychiatric fable, lyrical puzzle and metaphysical love song performed by an outstanding cast including Natasha Herbert (The Pillowman, The Wall), Kate Kendall (The Lover), Margaret Mills (The Odyssey, Still Angela) and Chris Connelly (The Club).

One of Australia’s most revered auteurs, Jenny Kemp’s Kitten is her first Black Sequin Production since the mesmeric modern fairytale Still Angela. To unlock the chambers of Kitten’s heart, Kemp reduces, sharpens and refines the numerous truths inside her narrative to the most delicate and nuanced of gestures - and then amplifies them; sound and image, movement and word, style and substance, are a single vision inextricably entwined.

Commissioned for and presented with the 2008 Melbourne International Arts Festival, Kitten is a landmark collaboration between Jenny Kemp, Malthouse Theatre’s Resident Artist, Anna Tregloan who has imagined a rich and remarkable physical world saturated with the sumptuous vocal and sound score of Darrin Verhagen and choreography of Helen Herbertson.