Incubator
Farrugia
Torque Show
Farrugia is a
devised verbatim dance theatre work, based on interviews with adult
entertainment identity Joseph Farrugia aka Madame Josephine. In 1981, Madame
Josephine joined the Crazy Horse Revue in Adelaide as the show's choreographer
and compere. From this vantage point Joseph pioneered Australian erotic theatre
through the decadent eighties and witnessed its rupture by a public’s carnal
desire in the nineties.
In the 1980’s the Crazy Horse Revue was a theatre. It had a stage and seating bank where performers were 4-feet away from the audience by law. Performers such as unicyclists, adagio acrobats, contortionists, vocalists, magicians, jugglers, comedians and male/female strippers signed in at stage door. Perhaps most distinctively the Crazy Horse had a choreographer who brought a theatrical discipline. Much has changed in three decades.
Joseph himself has a personal story that is part migrant refugee, part business tycoon, part father, part mother and all parts entertainer. His is a culturally diverse and gender-defying tale, a barometer for an industry with a complex, untold history
Part confessional, part documentary Farrugia will explore this thirty year shift in the adult entertainment industry, in what is set to be an extraordinary theatrical experience aiming to premiere in 2013.
Torque Show will undertake their Incubator residency in April 2012.
Creative team: Ross Ganf, Roslyn Oades, Geoff Revell, Carlie Angel & Tim Standing
au revoir abattoir – a project of
intimate experiments
The Misery Children
& little black box
au revoir abattoir - a project of
intimate experiments explores notions of fear and visceral reactions to the unknown.
Psychological studies show that particular stimulus can supersede
rationality and common decency amongst everyday people
given the right circumstances. Fear, and its good friend
adrenalin, is a physiological experience; you cannot control it. It
invades your nervous system and takes up residence in your very being.
au revoir abattoir is about taking fear
into a live performance space where every sense can be challenged, pushed and
manipulated. Conceived as a series of different, immersive and thrilling
performance experiences that are shared by audience and
performer in a non-theatrical space such as a house, au revoir
abattoir is influenced by the work of
film makers Michael Haneke and David Lynch,
contemporary artists Cindy Sherman, Nan Goldin, Erwin
Olaf, Guy Bourdin and Vanessa Beecroft, the incredible work
of performance artist Marina Abramovic, and
theatre companies Ontroerend Goed and Cuocolo/Bosetti’s IRAA.
au revoir abattoir will be an intensely personal
journey that hovers between the familiar and the strange, leading you right to
where the darkness lurks. As an audience what will you learn about yourself, or
about the person sitting next to you? Will you give over to the
intimate and unknown, despite the nagging fear and the hairs standing
up on the back of your neck?
The Misery Children and little black box will
undertake their Incubator residency in July 2012.
Take Up Thy Bed and Walk
Gaelle Mellis
Classic fiction for girls used physical crippling to
represent the passage into womanhood. Disability, female transgression and
punishment were portrayed side by side; the moral of the story usually required
the learning of submissive behaviours such as
patience, cheerfulness, modesty & making the best of things. Unlike
views about women, society’s understanding of disability has not changed
greatly since these Victorian novels were penned.
Take Up Thy Bed and
Walk ground breaks a new ‘aesthetically accessible’ performance experience
through a new approach to design and
dramaturgy that is simultaneously
and seamlessly accessible to Deaf, blind, sighted and hearing audience. Presented
in three parts (pre-story, story and anthem) Take Up Thy Bed and Walk will be an intelligent, beautiful,
unsettling and humorous performance event.
Creative team: Gaelle Mellis, Ingrid Voorendt, Zoë Barry, Hilary Bell, Geoff Cobham, Wendy Todd, Joanna Dunbar, Emma J Hawkins & Kyra
Kimpton.
Take Up Thy Bed and Walk were Incubator residents in 2011 & will premiere in October 2012 at Waterside.
As part of Adhocracy 2012, Parachutes for Ladies will undertake a residency making a new work called Dance Hall. For more info see here.
