Category: Griffin Stablemates

    Bambina Borracha and Griffin Stablemates present a World premiere: HAMMERHEAD (IS DEAD) at the SBW Stables Theatre. Hammerhead has been hit in the head by his sister and the play begins with her calling for help. “8.00 – the accident. 8.01 – the play begins. ‘Hammerhead’ is dying. 9.30-the play ends, ‘Hammerhead’ dies.” “The time in between includes some sex with dreamboat Denny, adventures on the high seas with Mindy, and conversations in a seaside shack with Jones.” This is a new play by young playwright Nick Coyle. Although this is the first play of his that I…

    Christmas and the New Year is hurtling towards us. Have the Holiday wishes from me. I thought I would go back over the year and list responses that left impressions upon me. I hope it leads to some ease of conversation for you. I feel that the possibility for good work in the performing Arts has most to do with the writing.The writer as “GOD”. So, that’s where I’ll begin. After drawing up a rough draft and some cogitation here we go. This is mostly in a chronological order of experience. THE SERPENT’S TEETH by Daniel Keene. Two…

This play is written by a Serbian author dealing with the games children (may) play in the debris of a war zone. The war zone can be that of the domestic house front between the sexes, between the generations, between the neighbours, next door or next city. It is the terrible tale of the Human Animal when placed in extremes of stress. The stress is always relative and always viable for those in the thick of it. My body. My bed. My bedroom. My house. My suburb. My city. My country. And it is the humanity of it. The mothers…

The Arabian Nights that I know from my childhood memories and also from my occasional foray into the ONE THOUSAND AND ONE NIGHTS (Five volumes long) that I have at home, begins with a betrayed husband, a cuckold, the King Shahrayar who in vengeful grief has his first wife beheaded, and then declares that from now on he would marry for one night only and the next morning would order the Vizier to have the Headsman cut off his new wife’s head. For a thousand nights he married and the next day each of the thousand wives would perish. Until…

When we enter the space thirteen actors are standing in a flat straight line across the widest part of the Griffin stage. The walls are black. The floor is black. There are some bricks full and whole, strewn across the stage. Later are revealed a few precast plastic chairs with metal legs. The people on stage are cheaply dressed. The clothes of the “working poor” (Maybe Target or K Mart).The lights dim down in the auditorium and a projected slide appears on two walls. “THE AIDS GENOCIDE. …THE PRESCRIPTION” Later another projection for another scene says “A CHILD SOLDIER” and…

This is another of the curated independant theatre co-operative productions presented as part of the Stablemate season. This is the best new Australian play I have witnessed this year. Developed with the financial assistance of the R.E. ROSS TRUST, Philpott not only breaks with traditional structure and form in his style, he creates a world with a keen eye for authentic detail and depth, has a masterly control of plotting and character revelation with a musician’s ear for rhythm and cadence, the ability to set a theme or subject and to know when to repeat it, develop it, contrast it.…