The Riddle of the Sphinx 2005, Sectrum Project Space, Northbridge, WA
The dramaturgical structure follows the myth of Oedipus and the Sphinx but offers a change in its traditional narrative. Instead of following Oedipus in his quest to Thebes, we are absorbed into the Sphinx's abandoned world of waiting at the side of the road for someone to answer her riddle.
This piece explores gender relationships at a core level. It is brought across confrontationally, but also with a sense of humour and compassion. 'The Riddle of the Sphinx' does not impose moral and philosophical judgments; its purpose is to make us question the world we live in and how we as men and women interact with each other in our daily lives.
Cast:
The Sphinx: Zoe Pepper
The Man: Maitland Schnaars
Crew:
Visual Design: Mia Holton
Light and sound operator: Patrick Cooper
Light design and sound design, dramaturgy, direction: Julián Fuentes Reta
Duration: 45 minutes
The Riddle of the Sphinx
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A Cow's Heart 2005, The Bakery - Artrage, Northbridge WA
'I like to think that every time you walk out of your work,
your house, or your cardboard bed in the park,
you can begin from scratch
and be happy
honestly happy'
A devised collaborative piece centred around two ideas: love and place.
A collection of moments in the form of actions, space, image, movement, dialogues and monologues about being here and there and what we can carry from place to place. And what we leave behind.
'A Cow's Heart' is the place that we all return to every now and then and get locked into. It is a shoebox full of photographs, buttons, movie tickets, cards, letters the things we hoard and sometimes have to burn.
Cast: Crew:
Half man 1: Richard Seidel Visual Design: Mia Holton
Half man 12: Maitand Schnaars Set Design, Sculpture: Andres Uribe-Hidalgo
Woman: T'Neal Maher Set Design: Daniel Alleck
Light design and sound design,
Duration: 70 minutes dramaturgy, direction: Julián Fuentes Reta
A Cow's Heart
(Pieces of) a Cow's Heart 2005, Chung-Wah Hall, Northbridge, WA
This is a work that follows the line of 'A Cow's Heart / Corazón de Vaca', performed at the
Artrage Festival, 2005.
'(Pieces of) A Cow's Heart' asks questions about love and place, submerging the audience in a series of images and actions. It is a piece that creates a moving collage and reinvents itself in every performance, with every new audience and in every new space.
One and a half man : Richard Seidel
Half man : Maitland Schnaars
Woman: T'Neal Maher
Duration: 30 minutes
(Pieces of) a Cow's Heart
U.D. (Urban Dreaming) 2005, Spectrum Project Space, Northbridge, WA
'U.D.' is based on the poetry of Maitlan Schnaars, an indigenous man of mixed heritage. Schnaars' poetry talks with subtle whispers and brutal strength about identity. From identity the piece travels to love, the meaning of heritage, a possible future and to a bloodstained past.
'U.D.' addresses current issues prevalent to Australia, but also bares the open wounds of all
the human communities affected by racial and political intolerance.
Mixed heritage man - Maitland Schnaars
Nyungah - Samuel Pilot
White man - Richard Seidel
Visual Design - Mia Holton
Dramaturgy - Maitland Schnaars
Direction - Julian Fuentes Reta
Duration: 15 minutes
U.D. (Urban Dreaming)
Phaedra's Love PICA, WA
A radical reworking of Seneca's classical tragedy of incest and unrequited love, 'Phaedra's Love' (first performed at the Gate Theatre, London, 1996) is a provocative interpretation of a woman's destructive obsession with her stepson and the misery that ensues. Kane drags the story kicking and wailing into the twenty-first century, presenting an unflinching examination of our societal fascination with sex, violence and celebrity.
Sarah Kane (1971-1999) offers a vision in which violence, pain, sex, joy and love are raw materials exposed to the spectator in the same way a surgeon exposes the internal organs. Her writing is a scalpel, cutting open ideas of right and wrong, beauty and horror.
She proposes a mixture of elements, from serenity to hysteria, order to chaos, from what is horrible to what is horribly funny, which Corazón;n de Vaca aimed to fully manifest in its staging of 'Phaedra's Love'.
Corazón de Vaca is the first company to have staged 'Phaedra's Love' in Perth, Western Australia.
Cast Crew
Phaedra: Caitlin MacLoughlin Assistant Director / Executive Producer /
Strophe: Mischa Ipp Stage Manager / SK: Richard Seidel
Hippolitus: Luke Ryan Visual Design: Mia Holton
Doctor / Priest / Theseus: Maitland Schnaars Light Design: Andrew Lake
Publicist: Sue Scrutton
Dramaturgy / Direction: Julián Fuentes Reta
Duration: 60 minutes Set design: Corazón de Vaca and Andrew Lake
Phaedra's Love
Tears of Blood
This is a roughly 10 minute installation piece that is designed to loop a number of times, allowing audience memebers to come and go at any point during the loop.
Tears of Blood is written by Maitland Schnaars who perfomed the piece with Sam Pilot in Spectrum Project Space, 2008.
This work is about identity, within ourselves and within cultures.
Bridging Puentes
A project for the International Expo of Zaragoza 2008.
Bridges connect paths that we journey on. They are built over expanses of water, stone, earth, over roads, cities, canyons, and over other bridges. Bridges are symbols of union, forged in iron, carved in wood, set in concrete, twisted from rope or simply made by the gesture of a hand that invites us to join forces. They exist as testimony to the necessity for us to create bonds and our abilities to do so. But we also reveal a darker side of our nature when we intentionally destroy them, leaving open wounds in our interior and exterior landscapes.
'Bridging Puentes' combines dance, movement, word, action and image in a performance based on the metaphorical and architectural aspects of a 'bridge'.
We believe that in our present world religious fanaticism, lack of communication, the deafness of nations and the exploitation of human and natural resources are destroying millions of bridges everyday. We would like to talk about this devastation, not by destroying a bridge, but by building one. A bridge we have been working on for four years; the union of the Spanish and Australian team of Corazón de Vaca.
With a cast of six performers, and a design and production team with members from both sides of our bridge between Spain and Australia, 'Bridging Puentes' speaks fluently of our labour as a company. It is the manifestation of the creation of common ground among diverse human communities through hard work and perseverance.
This show was commissioned and supported by the International Expo of Zaragoza 2008. 'Bridging Puentes' was performed within the Expo venue at the 'Balcon de las Artes Escencias / Performance Arts Balcony'.
Cast
Maitland Schnaars, indigenous performer and story-teller. (AUS)
Caitlin McLoughlin, performer and musician. (AUS)
Lucia Reula, dancer. (SPN)
Ana Eva Cruellas, dancer. (SPN)
Rubén Martinez, dancer. (SPN)
Design
Mia Holton, Audiovisual Design. (South Africa)
Ignacio Rubio, Assistant director and sound designer. (SPN)
Iván Arroyo, Set and light design. (SPN)--
Apolo Ruiz de la Hermosa, Movement assistant (SPN)
Luis Araujo, Dramaturgy assistant (SPN)
Production
Fernando Cuadrado, Chief Technician. (SPN)
Inés Reta, executive producer. (SPN)
Nati Buil, production assistant (SPN)
Aránzazu Camard, production assistant. (SPN)
Direction and dramaturgy
Julián Fuentes Reta. (SPN)
Play Beckett
Play Beckett is a hybrid of Becketts particular language with the contemporary concepts of performance action and site-specific installation. With a powerful but simple visual environment and a sharp use of black humour, the piece travels through three Samuel Becketts short plays:
Catastrophe (1982), Play (1964) and Rockaby (1982).
Using the surgical precision of Becketts words, Play Beckett proposes an intense emotional journey leading to activate audiences here and now, by showing them the heart and the entrails of the human ability to comunicate.
'The farther he goes the more good it does me. I dont want philosophies, tracts, dogmas, creeds, ways out, truths, answers, nothing from the bargain basement. He is the most courageous, remorseless writer going and the more he grinds my nose in the shit the more I am grateful to him. Hes not f---ing me about, hes not leading me up any garden path, hes not slipping me a wink, hes not flogging me a remedy or a path or a revelation or a basinful of breadcrumbs, hes not selling me anything I dont want to buy he doesnt give a bollock whether I buy or not he hasnt got his hand over his heart. Well, Ill buy his goods, hook, line and sinker, because he leaves no stone unturned and no maggot lonely. He brings forth a body of beauty.
His work is beautiful.' Harold Pinter
Cast Direction, Visual & Sound design
Assistant - Woman 2 - Voice : Rosa de Guindos. Julián Fuentes Reta
Protagonist - Woman 1 - Body : Ana Eva Cruellas.
Director - Man - Shadow : Iñaki Rubio. Assistant Director & Visual Operator
Ena Fernandez
Dramaturgy and production Visual and Graphic Design Duration
Corazón de vaca. Javier Olariaga and Corazón de vaca 55 minutes
The Bridging Project 2009, Deckchair Theatre Fremantle WA
The Bridging Project is an original, personal and passionate performance about living life across the borders, within the cultures and between the linguistic divides that are scattered over our social landscape.
The story is gathered from the diverse background of the four performers, (Australian, Irish, Ngoongar, Mexican, Swedish and Portuguese) and is pieced together like a jigsaw through the universal language of movement, sound and iagery.
Feeding off the story of the Tower of Babel, from The Bible and taking inspiration from a short story by Michael Ende in his book, The Mirror in The Mirror, it explores the bridges that we are continually building, burning and rebuilding within, and amongst ourselves.
Performers were asked to look at their own backgrounds and fictionalise material gathered from their history. The Irish text in the play comes from a real letter written by one of the performer's great, great...grandparent on his arrival in Australia on the convict ship Rolla in 1803. Text and movement has also been devised by performers around the questions, Where am I from?
and Why would you burn a bridge?.
This is a work that speaks openly to anyone who has migrated, even if only from their own comfort zone.
Cast: Director: Original Concept:
Taciano Cavalcante Sarah Neville Julian Fuentes Reta
Adelina Larsson
Caitlin McLoughlin Lighting Design: Set Design:
Maitland Schnaars Joseph Mercurio Ivan Arroyo & Mia Holton
Visual Designer Sound Design: Sound & Lighting Technician:
& Technician: Michelle Outram Garreth Simmonds
Mia Holton *Featuring tracks from
Filastine (Dirty Bomb) &
Paul Prestipino (Tunnel)
Duration: 56 minutes
The Bridging Project
- The Riddle of the Sphinx
- Corazon de Vaca/A Cow's Heart
- (Pieces of) a Cow's Heart
- U.D. (Urban Dreaming)
- Phaedra's Love
- Tears of Blood
- Bridging Puentes
- Play Beckett
- The Bridging Project
