Category: Company B

Advice for every writer: Write what you know. In the program notes from Tommy Murphy: “Memory is like writing a play. After about a year of writing, something clicked in the story and I was surprised to discover that much of the play is in fact underpinned by disputed memories. Perhaps this is a likely conflict in a family, among people who may have opposing interpretations of their shared history and shared identity. The voices in this play stem from people I know and love but as soon as they found their way to the page they were characters bending…

Company B Belvoir presents MEASURE FOR MEASURE, written by William Shakespeare. Adapted & Directed by Benedict Andrews, for the Upstairs Theatre, Belvoir St. From Benedict Andrews’ Director’s notes in the programme:A PLAY OF MIRRORS. MEASURE FOR MEASURE is my third Shakespeare staging concerned with the mechanics of power. JULIUS CAESAR (2005) dealt with the theatrics of government, and THE WAR OF THE ROSES (2009) raised the spectres of sovereign power which haunt our concept of society. MEASURE FOR MEASURE looks into the ‘very nerves of state’ where the economies of desire and law interlock. This MEASURE FOR MEASURE is set…

Company B Belvoir and Black Swan Theatre Company present THE SAPPHIRES at the York Theatre, Seymour Centre, Sydney. THE SAPPPHIRES by Tony Briggs and Directed by Wesley Enoch won two Helpmann Awards for Best New Australian Work and Best Play in 2005. This is a revival production that began in January as part of the Perth International Arts Festival and since has toured to several venues in Victoria and after this season here in Sydney, travels internationally to South Korea for a short season. There are plans to make a film of this work. After the success of BRAN NUE…

    Company B Belvoir presents THE POWER OF YES – A dramatist seeks to understand the financial crisis by David Hare in the Upstairs Theatre, Surry Hills. On September 15th 2008 capitalism failed. The National Theatre of Great Britain commissioned David Hare to discover, uncover, what had happened. To try to answer the Queen’s question “Why did nobody notice?” A year later in September 2009 a ‘verbatim’ text had been ‘massaged’ by Mr Hare from an intense year of interview and research and opened in the Lyttelton Theatre. A character called The Author begins the performance: “This isn’t a…

  Company B Belvoir presents THAT FACE by Polly Stenham at Belvoir St Theatre. One of the major centres for contemporary writing, “ a new writing powerhouse”, in the UK is the Royal Court. In all of its manifestations, it has been, for a very long time. My memory of my History of Theatre lectures, as a student, take me back to G.B. Shaw and Harley Granville Barker dreams of a National Theatre and this building. Certainly the John Osborne LOOK BACK IN ANGER ‘bomb’ resonated from there (1957) and changed what was, then, newly acceptable on our stages. From…

  Company B Belvoir and Kim Carpenter’s Theatre of Image present THE BOOK OF EVERYTHING. The Play. Adapted by Richard Tulloch from the Novel by Guus Kuljer. A few weeks ago writing about WAR HORSE and NATION, two projects that the National Theatre in London developed, with young audiences in mind , I “boldly” suggested that perhaps the STC could begin to be more enterprising in that area with the special commissioning of such like work for Sydney over our long festive summer break. Well, blow me down, there was I at the Belvoir on Saturday afternoon (after fearing I…