Valley Artists

Date: 20-Nov-07
Author: Valley Artists

Until the set has been built, a great number of rehearsals happen in an empty room with rudimentary props in imagined spaces. Director Fiona Burless deftly manoeuvres her cast into gymnastic positions where, when you see the play there will be a stove, a light bulb or a sink, but in all cases some part of someone's kitchen. Kitchens are central to Absurd Person Singular, the three act play Valley Artists presents for the end of 2007.

While the cast are busy learning their lines and where in the set they need to stand, run, fall, climb, enter and exit, the production designers grapple with just how to build three different kitchens in the set space and have enough room for the audience.Well, as always,Valley Artists ingenuity comes to the fore and the solution could potentially revolutionise how this play is delivered in the future.

Mark the dates in your diary now, it's a show not to be missed!

Absurd Person Singular

Particularly well known for such highly successful comedies as The Norman Conquests and How The Other Half Loves, Alan Ayckbourn as a playwright represents a particular type of comedy - the witty farce - comedy with a violent underbelly.

Like a trilogy of one-act plays sharing the same characters, Absurd Person Singular is set in three different kitchens on three successive Christmas Eves. As the director, I see it as being about victims of the rat-race as they thrash comically in the rat-trap of life.

In three funny snapshots, each of three couples takes it in turn to host the Christmas Eve drinks in three successive years. Each new act takes us to another kitchen, showing us not only how the story unfolds from each of the play's three different perspectives, but also how each couple's facades impact their own lives and the lives of others.Time is unkind to each couple in its way, however. One marriage is beset by infidelity and mental health issues, one by alcoholism and the last by being obnoxiously perky.

Each act has its own tone, too: the first comes across as a straightforward old-fashioned sitcom farce, yet there is an uncomfortable seam of darkness running through it.

Determined to put on a good show is the socially inept, small business owner Sidney (Darren Phillip), who sees the opportunity to expand his shop, but needs the help of architect Geoffrey (Steve Pembroke) and banker Ronald (Neville Newman).

The second delves swiftly into surprisingly black comedy as Geoffrey's wife Eva (Karen Butler-Hues) does nothing except silently attempt suicide throughout the act, but is repeatedly denied, with hilarious consequences.

In the third, Sidney and his wife Jane (Shea Thommeny), have found financial success through hard work, luck and wellcalculated glad-handing. By contrast, the other previously prosperous couples have battled through personal setbacks and are not in the mood for Sidney's party games - except Ronald's wife Marion (Bronwyn Duncan), who is perfectly cheery (hic). Flushed with success, Sidney makes them dance to his tune.

The challenge of this darkly comic farce is to marry the darkness and the substance of the play with the laugh-out-loud material.As is my wont, I have chosen to stress the comedy in everything from the staging to the casting, never resisting the urge to go for each and every laugh that can be mined from the three troubled (and troubling) couples that constitute the play's characters.The real challenge, though, has been to battle the elements and cast illnesses.

Absurd Person Singular, a play by Alan Ayckbourn, will be presented by Valley Artists at Laguna Hall at 7.30pm on the following dates: Opening night, Saturday 10th November, then on Sunday 11th,Wednesday 14th, Friday 16th, Saturday 17th with a final performance on Sunday 18th November 2007.

Fiona Burless (Director)

Wollombi Valley Short Film Festival Results

What a great evening's entertainment.

Out of 18 films shown the three winners were:

1st prize $500 - Karen Borger All is Forgiven
2nd prize $300 - Rosemary Aldahn Who wants to be a Celebrity Chef?
3rd prize $200 - Ally Kvisle The Dark
People's Choice Award for $250 (kindly donated by Laguna Shop) - Tennille Hogan The Crumps

Thanks to Bob Philippe for being MC, RC Sound, Monterosa Media, Laguna Shop and all those others who helped.

AND YOU CAN START MAKING ANOTHER FILM NOW FOR THE 2008 FILM FEST!!

The Tin Man Did It, a documentary about the effects the June 2007 flood had on the Valley and how a community can pull together in times of hardship, was shown while the committee counted People's Choice Award votes.Wojt has worked extremely hard on editing this doco and it is for sale at local shops, with proceeds going to the Bush Fire Brigades.