Red Stitch Crew Reap Benefits Of Modern Comforts
The Age
Tuesday March 13, 2007
INDEPENDENT theatre company Red Stitch is about to come in from the cold, ditching its tent-like foyer for a bar and toilets with a new heating and cooling system.
"It all seems incredibly luxurious to us," says long-term member Kat Stewart, during a break from rehearsals for the company's first production of the year, the New York hit Rabbit Hole, which has been well received by Melbourne critics after its weekend opening.Stewart performed last year in the Melbourne Theatre Company's Festen where she enjoyed the luxuries of inside toilets. "We've always had the anxiety of what will happen if we got caught short during a performance," she laughs. "But not any more."The $120,000 renovations will finish mid-year when the theatre hiding behind the church opposite The Astor in Chapel Street gets new flooring and re-stumping. Seating will follow. But the atmosphere will remain intimate, capacity rising from 58 people to 85.The company, founded in 2002, is celebrating its achievements against bigger publicly-funded companies in this year's Green Room nominations. It dominates the best direction category with three of five nominations. It also has two nominations for best production."It's amazing, if you think about it," Stewart says. "We can spend only a maximum of $500 on a show, compared to the far greater resources at the MTC and Malthouse."Stewart, who won last year's fringe award for best actress, says the company decided to open with Rabbit Hole by David Lindsay-Abaire because its traditional, naturalistic writing was missing from its program. It will be followed by a very different work - a version of Strindberg's classic, Miss Julie by British playwright, Patrick Marber, author of Dealer's Choice and Closer.Playwright Lindsay-Abaire is an off-Broadway regular, but Rabbit Hole was the first of his works to open on Broadway.. "The play just exploded in New York and we're very happy that we were able to get the rights," Stewart says. It had five Tony nominations including best play. Stewart plays Becca (played in New York by Sex and the City's Cynthia Nixon), who is at the centre of a grieving family. Her husband is played by Red Stitch's artistic director, David Whiteley."It is a strong actors' piece to open the theatre, with very subtle writing - much more so than we first realised," she says. "The play is about what's not said as much as anything. There is a playwright's note calling for disciplined performance, rather than anything melodramatic. It's not so much about grieving, as about surviving."This is Stewart's first performance with the company for more than a year. She has been working on a BBC TV series in Sydney, Supernova, and an SBS pilot.Rabbit Hole director and Theatreworks board member Naomi Edwards says "it's such an incredibly strong actors' piece"."The challenge is to restrain the emotional display," she says.Edwards has just finished the MTC production of David Williamson's Don's Party, where she was associate to director Peter Evans. "That is another naturalistic play and I'm using everything I learnt from there," she says. "This is more about human resilience. But just as Don's Party was an examination of Australia, this is looking at America."She says Rabbit Hole reflects American shock after September 11, the realisation that bad things happen to good people."We were dealing with the demands of the accent and I realised the play's psychology is specifically about New York," she says. "But I think the concerns are also universal."Rabbit Hole is at Red Stitch Theatre, rear of 2 Chapel Street, until April 7. Book on 9533 8083.
© 2007 The Age