Category: Darren Gilshenan

Sydney Theatre Company and Qantas present LOOT by Joe Orton at the Drama Theatre, Sydney Opera House. LOOT by Joe Orton was written and premiered in 1966. It, followed the success of ENTERTAINING MR. SLOANE on the West End stage, the year before. Orton with LOOT “ extended the boundaries of farce by taking it out of the bedroom and into the funeral parlour: this is Feydeau with fangs or Ben Travers rewritten by a socialist anarchist. The action hinges on stolen bank loot being stashed in a coffin while the displaced corpse (of one of the robbers mothers) is…

  Sydney Theatre Company and Commonwealth Bank present THE WHITE GUARD by Mikhail Bulgakov. In a new version by Andrew Upton at the Sydney Theatre. On a recent Wednesday morning on my way to the university after another job working in Surry Hills, I decided to get out of the bus and go to the Fox Precinct markets to but some flowers and some organic/gourmet food stuffs and browse. It struck me, on this early winter day, what a lucky life I led. That I could leave family at home in the morning and know, definitely, that in eight hours…

TAMARAMA ROCK SURFERS THEATRE COMPANY present FOOLS ISLAND by Darren Gilshenan & Chris Harris at the Bondi Pavilion Theatre, Bondi Beach. The principal creative force for FOOLS ISLAND, Darren Gilshenan: “So here is what I think …Theatre is its own delicious creature, full of symbol, metaphoric imagination and collaboration, it is bland when it is literal. It offers us a unique experience to explore an intimate relationship with a live audience. My aim was to challenge myself as a performer and utilise a wide skill set of performance qualities by creating a piece of theatre full of opposites; Physical performance…

    SYDNEY THEATRE COMPANY presents Thornton Wilder’s OUR TOWN at the Drama Theatre, Sydney Opera House. I saw OUR TOWN in the highly celebrated off-Broadway production in New York earlier this year directed by David Cromer (closed September 12th after 566 performances – a record, at the 199 seat Barrow Street Theatre). A few years ago I saw a production by Lee Lewis at the NEW THEATRE . It has been a part of my consciousness from my early youth. So, sitting in the Drama Theatre the other night I wondered what would my experience be. The scale of…

  Sydney Theatre Company Education presents THE BEAUTY QUEEN OF LEENANE by Martin McDonagh at Wharf 2. THE BEAUTY QUEEN OF LEENANE by Martin McDonagh is on the school syllabus and so the Education wing of the Sydney Theatre Company have mounted a production to take the play from the page to the stage, to give some students the brilliant opportunity to see the text as intended: Full of the life of actors telling the story to them in a space where they are part of the creative exchange that is the magic of the theatre. Actor and audience together,…

  Griffin Theatre Company present World Premiere of STRANGE ATTRACTOR by Sue Smith at the SBW Stables Theatre, Sydney. This play is set “in a railway construction camp….. inland from Port Hedland, Western Australia in the “wet mess” – a featureless space with tables and a bar. The working personnel wear identical uniforms covered “in the red dust of the desert.” (Design by Jo Briscoe. Lighting by Bernie Tan. Sound Designer and Composer, Steve Francis). The play’s action is told in one act, 17 scenes, and uses a simple split time mechanism (the present and a few weeks ago) to…