Cirrus@Austlit

'Absurd and darkly funny, I Hide in Bathrooms is a revealing meditation on mortality and romance from performance artist Astrid Pill. 

'Working with long-term collaborators and experimental theatre-makers, including co-devisors Ingrid Voorendt, Zoë Barry and Jason Sweeney, Astrid Pill draws on real experiences to create a work that fuses fiction with autobiography. I Hide in Bathrooms reflects on the experience of losing an intimate partner, falling for someone whose partner has passed away and traversing a relationship while dying. Shifting between these points of view, a woman addresses her romantic delusions, sense of mortality and capacity for hope. 

'Premiering at Adelaide Festival and presented by Vitalstatistix as part of their 40th anniversary celebrations, I Hide in Bathrooms is a funny and deeply moving work about the relationships between lovers – dead and alive.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Welcome to Narungga Country. You’ve been warned. 

'Guuranda is a monumental new theatre work telling the Narungga Creation stories of South Australia’s Yorke Peninsula from Narungga/Kaurna theatre-maker Jacob Boehme.  

'Commissioned by Adelaide Festival, Guuranda has been created by a collective of First Nations artists, Narungga Elders and non-Indigenous artists. It is written and directed by Jacob Boehme with artwork by Narungga visual artist Kylie O’Loughlin and sung by Narungga songwoman Sonya Rankine and songman Warren Milera, supported by the Narungga Family Choir. 

'Taking its title from the Narungga language name for the Yorke Peninsula, Guuranda tells of a people and place that teach us about being human, drawing on history to speak into the present. These ancient stories are not myths, nor are they old, quaint tales. These stories are vital, violent, delightful and dangerous. They are stories to charm, shock and instruct audiences of all ages.  

'Effortlessly weaving together theatre, song, puppetry, dance and visual art, Guuranda shares stories that offer insight and balance, with chaos and death ever-present. You must look, listen and tread carefully.'

Source: Adelaide Festival.

'Inspired by a story from Stephen’s grandmother from the Ngugi/Nunukul/Moondjan people of Minjerribah (Stradbroke Island), Baleen Moondjan celebrates First Nations’ relationships between baleen whales and communities’ totemic systems. The signature elements that have defined Stephen Page’s career are all present in this work with dramatic storytelling, striking choreography and haunting live music integrated into a stunningly designed world from Jacob Nash.  

'Set amongst giant whale bones on the sandy shores of Glenelg, Baleen Moondjan tells the story of a proud Elder, a curious granddaughter and the day a baleen whale comes close to shore. The whale is there to catch Granny Gindara’s spirit and carry it out to sea – a farewell, a celebration, a poignant start to a final journey. Baleen Moondjan recognises the intertwining relationships between all living creatures and our connection to earth,  sky and sea.'

Source: Production blurb.

'Emma Beech’s art is both simple and hard to define. Labels like direct address performance, docu-drama, verbatim real-life portraiture, all seem to rob her storytelling of its straightforward warmth and worth.

'Conversations with other people have always been central to her shows, but a few years back something happened that persuaded her to turn the lens on herself. Her mum and dad gave her a box of family snaps and, as she had a performance that night, she thought it might be fun to rummage through them for the first time in front of an audience of strangers.

'Amongst all the embarrassing hilarity of hairdos and frocks was a shot of her mum, taken aged 40, holding her baby self, the little surprise born eight years after the last of her eight(!) brothers and sisters. Emma, at the time, was 40 herself and mother of 5-year-old triplets. Out of that instant electric connection between two very different women The Photo Box was born.

'It’s about a town in regional South Australia where everyone knows you, and a girl left to make her own mistakes and grow herself up. Family, choices, memory and myth-making, and how the baby of a big Catholic brood became devoted to the search for unsentimental truths. Borrowing from cinematic installation, The Photo Box is a funny and heartfelt new work from one of our most gifted performers.'

Source: Adelaide Festival.

'Challenging, joyful and deeply affecting, Jurrungu Ngan-ga confronts Australia’s shameful fixation with incarceration in a powerful and provocative new dance work. Inspired by perspectives on incarceration, Jurrungu Ngan-ga reflects on the disgraceful disproportion of Indigenous Australians in custody and first-hand descriptions of life inside Australia’s immigration detention centres. Searing truths blend with dark humour, fear, sadness and courage to shine a light on new ways to resist and to empower us all to rewrite our future – together.' (Production summary)

'Framed by velvet drapes and bedecked with Jatz cracker crumbs and cigarette ash, Maureen invites you into her bohemian living room. She’s here to take you on an intimate journey brimming with witty repartee, well-worn life advice, an exotic array of friends now gone and the dauntless potency of limitless imagination.

'With exquisite storytelling, writer and performer Jonny Hawkins transforms into Maureen: a razor-tongued doyenne of Kings Cross in its heyday. Co-created by Nell Ranney, this poignantly funny solo show takes inspiration from Hawkins’ friend, a self-described “working class glamour queen” and one of life’s true eccentrics.

'Magnificently flouting many of the rules of drama and narrative, Maureen: Harbinger of Death redefines our concepts of older women. Caustic and moving, it is an uplifting demonstration of the wisdom, vitality, kindness and humour of women too often overlooked or dismissed by society.

'A night of wit, imagination and storytelling with a character you won’t forget.'

Source: Adelaide Festival.