For more details of the Program, including a full list of productions selected, see: http://www.nida.edu.au/NIDA-Independent-Program/default.aspx.

Stay tuned for more information!

Concrete Playground Review: Night Letters
Trish Roberts

It would be deceptive to characterise So What? as a typical student theatre company. Rather than ‘shy’, ‘brave’ would perhaps be the best word. Despite limited years, they are unmistakably ambitious. Having tackled Shakespeare (a production of Macbeth is already under their belts), this company has moved on to another incredibly complex work.

Adapted from Robert Dessaix’s novel of the same name, Night Letters follows the escape to Europe of a dying man desperate to understand his own history. Rather than comprehending his story, however, he becomes entangled in the histories of others: both those who surround him and those who have inhabited the same place before him. Presenting this play as part of Mardi Gras foregrounds the fact that it pays attention to marginalised individuals, those who are otherwise excluded from the pages of the past. It is a surprisingly joyous act of celebrating their existence, while it inevitably mourns their tragedies.

The strength of this production lies in what may initially appear to be its weaknesses. More eager to extend themselves than display skills mastered, more willing to tackle difficult scripts than stick to safe options, the members of this company expose themselves to dangerous risks. Taking this path, however, opens up the space to create a performance that is dynamic, playful and unpredictable. Potentially dull moments are infected with the actors’ irresistible charms, while extensive scenes are stretched into absurdity, only to be poignantly pulled back into the immediate. Entrances and exits — a typical pitfall of student theatre — are managed seamlessly. Above all, the emotion of the script is carefully managed by director Christopher Hay to sidestep the issue of age and still deliver on the demands of the plot.

In short, Night Letters is one to watch, and so is the company behind it.

Musefront Review: Night Letters
David Kary

Currently playing at the Seymour Centre is Susan Rogers’s play ‘Night Letters’, a work that has been inspired by Robert Dessaix’s highly acclaimed novel ‘Night Letters’. This work, produced by So What? Productions, is one of this year’s featured Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras Festival events.

The narrative starts with two literary, sophisticated men, Robert and Peter, living a comfortable gay lifestyle in suburban Melbourne. Peter has been feeling unwell and goes for a medical check-up. His Doctor diagnoses that he is suffering from a chronic illness. Robert is devastated.

Not knowing how much longer that he has, Robert determines a course of action. He’s going to travel overseas and spend time living in Italy. He assures Peter that he’ll write letters home, the night letters of the title. Robert’s journey begins…

I have come to Rogers’s adaptation without any preconceptions, not having Dessaix’s novel. This evening at the theatre, as directed by Christopher Hay, featured a celebration of the muse in full flight with Robert being the master storyteller, holding his partner Peter and the audience captive.

There’s Robert the travel writer, with his evocative descriptions of cities like Venice and the unusual characters that he befriends, including an untrustworthy valet and an eccentric Professor. There’s the contemplative, philosophical Robert, trying to work out his place in the world post diagnosis. And then there’s the postmodern Robert, crafting out of traditional tales his own intriguing fables.

A large cast performs well in bringing Robert’s odyssey to the stage. Sean Ohlendorf is great in the lead role, the director himself plays Peter, and they are supported by a fine cast.

Recommended, ‘Night Letters’ opened at the downstairs theatre, Seymour Centre on Thursday 17th February and runs until Saturday 12th March, 2011.

Young guns tackle Robert Dessaix’s best-selling novel
Simon Binns

Sydney’s annual Mardis Gras festival is a cultural phenomenon. The parade down Oxford St, which serves as the centrepiece of the celebration, has become almost as iconic an image of Sydney as the Harbour Bridge, and the festival as a whole has given a public voice to a community whose interests and rights are too often marginalised.

However, as impressive as the giant floats and feathers of the parade are, it’s the other, less tangible elements of gay experience that Christopher Hay, artistic director of So What? Productions, is interested in bringing to the fore.

“A lot of Mardis Gras stuff doesn’t engage with anything other than ‘Oh look, pretty boys taking their clothes off’ – which absolutely has its place, but to me there is a seriousness to Mardi Gras that the theatre program has sometimes lost out on,” explains Hay. “We wanted to say, ‘There is work which is relevant and important for homosexual audiences which is not flamboyant or light. There’s a big difference between homosexual content and camp.”

Hay will address the imbalance with Night Letters, adapted by Susan Rogers and Chris Drummond from Robert Dessaix’s best-selling nineties novel of the same name. The play focuses on Robert (the main characters just happen to have the same names as Dessaix and his partner), who gets sick and convinces himself, whether it be true or not, that he is going to die. In an attempt to get away from his known world and make sense of his life he goes to Europe. However, instead of being able to focus on his own experience, Robert gets caught up in the lives of the people he meets, and is left more confused than before. This process is told through letters that he is writing home, to his partner in Melbourne.

Night Letters struck Hay as a work that was concerned with the more serious issues that the Mardi Gras Festival encompasses. “It’s interested in modes of masculinity, about how you can live in the world as man and what sexuality has to do with that. It’s also interested in how you can live in the world as someone whose story is not told – and those are very important confrontations that Mardi Gras is also about.”

One of the last plays developed through the National Playwright’s Conference, a bastion of Australian playmaking that has since folded, Rogers and Drummond’s old-fashioned, well-made script stood out to Hay as a great story that was beautifully told. “It resists the trends of contemporary play writing,” the director observes. “They [Rogers and Drummond] took a stand and said, ‘This is a particular type of play that is out of fashion but it’s the kind of play that we want to make.’”

With an ensemble of actors who have all worked together before, the production also presents a great opportunity for this young company, who pride themselves on their bold choices.

“The biggest thing we’re about is not being scared of ambition,” says Hay, citing So What’s recent production of King Lear, which toured to the Adelaide Fringe Festival, as an example. The attitude is, “So what if we’re 19? It’s a work that we’d like to do, it’s a work that we’d like to challenge ourselves with. This is a space for us to do things that we might never get the chance to do again.”

GuidetoGay Review: Night Letters
Robert Manser

A tale of self-discovery and the meaning of life, Night Letters narrates the trials and tribulations of one man as he journeys across Europe and is confronted by questions of his own mortality, masculinity and identity.

A somewhat confronting story greets punters in the Downstairs theatre at the Seymour Centre for this production presented by So What? Productions and 2011 Mardi Gras Festival. Staging enveloping the audience, with the actors in place, scattered throughout the venue before you take your seat. You feel like you are really walking into their existing world.

Sean Ohlendorf, who portrays Robert, the central character, sucks you into his world expertly, with not only a flawless delivery of the material, but with a heart fluttering presence that makes you instantly fall for his character and feel for every story he and his scene partners deliver.

The play itself is a multi arc journey, with actors playing several roles, in seemingly different times in history. At times a little confusing – but it all comes together in the end.

A relatively large cast encompasses some fresh and incredibly talented performances. Their individual commitment to the roles is second to none and they have a fresh, yet seasoned style that works well with the content.

Funny, engaging and disturbing – Night Letters confronts the audience with illness, abuse, love and sacrifice.

This production has definitely left its mark – you know something has effected you when the next day you have flashbacks, goosebumps and you jump on the net to find out more about the cast and crew and the story itself.

Please keep checking back for details as the production gets underway!

Adelaide Fringe review: King Lear
Ben Crisp | Buzzcuts

This interpretation of the great Shakespearean tragedy by members of the Sydney University Dramatic Society approaches the classic text with a blend of bravado and innovation, and rewards the audience more than is to be expected of a student production.

The cast delivers the four hundred year old dialogue with skill and confidence; admittedly, such confidence that the speed of delivery that (no doubt in an effort to contract the lengthy material into a two hour Fringe production) occasionally creeps into the realm of unintelligibility. Stephen Sharpe however shines as the insane monarch in the titular role, playing the 90-year-old Lear with an energy and humanity that never belies the tragic patriarch’s descent into madness amidst a power struggle between his daughters and their husbands.

Lear has decided to divide his kingdom according to his daughters’ sycophancy, resulting in his disinheritance of the honest Cordelia (played with earnest by Jacqueline Breen) and a bloodthirsty quarrel between his disrespectful in-laws. Houston Ash, as the dark and brooding Edmond, sadly bridles his obvious talent in favour of a monotone menace, whilst Ash Vlahos is pleasing as the cruel and excitable Regan. Clare Matchett injects a most welcome and cheeky vitality to the drama as the precocious Fool, emerging like Oscar The Grouch (with the personality of Elmo) from a green wheelie bin to tease and berate the King and his court.

The use of the wheelie bins is an example of the effectively innovative set dressing, for the most part utilising newspaper to create the backdrop, swords, snow and – brilliantly – the paper crown of the King. Whilst visually and psychologically effective the shredded newspaper snow becomes problematic for the cast during the storm of Act 3 when its noisome rustling tends to drown out all but Sean Ohlendorf’s booming rants as the beggar-guised Edgar. Ohlendorf manages to create a convincing transition from the babbling Tom o’Bedlam into the prodigal disinherited son of the blinded Gloucester, played with ferocity and brilliant agony in rich, resonant tones by the excellent Oliver Burton. Even Burton and Ohlendorf struggle to compete with the odd choice of audio to represent the storm – a mixture of what sounds like microphone feedback and radio interference – which could be mistaken for a technical error until it permeates almost the entirety of the third and fourth acts. Like the use of newspaper, this seems to be a bold attempt to engage So What? Production’s commendable aim of representing the humanity and relevance of the characters on stage, but unfortunately serves more often than not to overpower rather than reinforce the drama.

Where the newspaper motif would better serve is in a more consistent representation of props and costume pieces. Whilst rolled newspapers were parried and thrust as swords or batons, at other times the cast drew breadknives and semi-automatic pistols and – most disturbingly – when blood was spilled it was issued by the cast slapping what appeared to be small tomato sauce packets against their brows, before collapsing to the floor in a fashion that leaned more towards farce than provocative irony. Likewise the plain costumes (uniform black trousers and white collared shirts) tended to blend the performances rather than emphasise the humanity of the characters, particularly when several of the players delivered monologues whilst rolling up their sleeves; the exception being the Fool’s plain singlets adorned with wonderfully irreverent digital-age abbreviations such as “WTF” and “OMG”.

Despite these perhaps too-courageous attempts by capable director Christopher Hey, overall the innovations in staging and set design demonstrate the company’s potential to create exciting Shakespearean theatre given the opportunity to give the text the time and experience it deserves. This is most evident in the surprise ending, where the fourth wall is suddenly broken. The cast performs a rhythmic physical underscore whilst Pierce Wilcox as the engaging and sadistic Cornwall addresses the audience in the first of a number of passages from contemporary theatre beginning with a line from Forced Entertainment’s “Bloody Mess” (a telling reference that seems to reveal the kind of experimental theatre that So What? Productions aspire to). The numerous deaths of the finale are contracted into a contrived summary, and whilst this sudden departure from the consistency of the rest of the production leaves the audience confused it does serve to challenge us to consider the absurdity of human tragedy which results from a lack of understanding between people.

A challenging piece of theatre for both cast and audience, So What? Productions’ King Lear is an enjoyable interpretation of Shakespeare’s greatest tragedy. Whilst the feeling remains that the lengthy production has been cut short for the sake of brevity, there is plenty in this production to reward the audience and demonstrate the potential for further truly innovative theatre by the still-young company.

Riel wrote:
Fed up with Fringe comic fare? Then this gutsy take on King Lear will catapult you out of complacency. The energy and intensity of these young actors from Sydney’s SW?P leave you breathless as they depict the disintegration of family and social structures in fast furious dialogue, skilfully mirroring it with the stripping away of vestments and flimsy pillar of power yet offsetting it with a welcome dose of fun. The novel intelligent conclusion pulls no punches: we humans are alone and miserable.
4 Stars

theatregoer wrote:
Young, energetic and sassy. Wrapping your head around this play is never easy, but this travelling company of student actors distills one of Shakespeare’s finest works to its core. Madness, tragedy and chaos is mixed with great humour and fun. And when else will you see Lear in under 2 hours?? One of the festival’s little gems.
4 Stars

LAE wrote:
King Lear was never done so energetically or with such passion-certainly not for $15 anyway.It was like stumbling into a restaurant that nobody is aware of and having an amazing meal when you thought the best they could do was a pizza supreme.Guarantee you’ll see at least two of the actors strutting stage and screen in years to come. The set is so basic you could wrap fish and chips in it-yet the rapid fire sequence and dialogue dispels any preoccupation with these visiting Sydney Uni thespians.
4 Stars

King Lear
Lauren Werner | RipItUp | Reviewed Friday 19 February 2010

So What? Productions is a theatre cooperative formed through the Sydney University Dramatic Society. King Lear, the most powerful of Shakespeare’s tragedies, has clearly been something that this cast has been living and breathing; both have been impacted positively in the process. Lighting and stage are simple; costumes basic; but all are effective and enhance some powerful performances – particularly Lear and his fool, but the whole cast do a great job. Shakespearian English can be a little difficult to our ears; most through this play is clear, although some was a little too fast for me and the acoustics of the theatre are not all that good. A little Shakespeare is good for the soul – here is a good chance to experience Shakespeare both old and new.

Final Word: Epic.