Back in January 2005, Tracy Harvey sat down at her Casio Keyboard and began composing a song about working in a call centre. Little did she know her musical tinkering would grow into a fully-fledged musical with her songs being performed at Melbourne’s hottest Jazz venue.

Tracy Harvey, comic genius turned chanteuse, playwright and composer will be teaming up with musical guru and extreme trumpeter Jack Howard, musical theatre actress Laura Burzacott and wunderkind director Bryce Ives for two nights of smokin’ hot tunes at the Paris Cat Jazz Club on October 14th & 15th.

“We’re ready for the big song and dance numbers now and thrilled to present them for your entertainment at the jumpin’est jazz joint in town!  We’ll be performing songs from Call Girl The Musical and my upcoming second musical, a work in progress set in a busy suburban public hospital. There are now over 35 tunes in the Tracy Harvey songbook, and I can’t wait to show them off,” says Tracy.

Tracy’s CV includes legendary Australian comedy productions The Comedy Company, The Whittle Family, The Gillies Report, Punter to Punter and Hey Hey It’s Saturday and a rich history in television, film, radio and theatre.  
“But Tracy is much more then a comedian,” says director Bryce Ives. “She is a soulful singer and an impressive writer of original songs.”

A fortunate twist of fate brought Tracy and rock music legend Jack Howard (Hunters and Collectors), theatre director Bryce Ives and comedy writer Doug MacLeod (script editor of Kath and Kim) together for Call Girl the Musical. It played for two successful seasons in Elwood and Chapel off Chapel in 2008/09 to enthusiastic audiences and critical acclaim.

“Tracys’s songwriting is beautiful – original, quirky and always full of surprises. It seems natural that we would want to to revisit some of the inspired writing of CALL GIRL and to share some of the new songs we are working on,” says Jack Howard.  “We are also incredibly fortunate to be joined by Rose Westbrook on double bass and Peter Foley on piano for these two showcase performances.”

“Call Girl lights up the switchboard with one dazzling (albeit stupid and flimsy) hit song after another. And they’re delivered with optic-fibre speed, efficiency and clarity. It’s fast and furious. Tracy Harvey doesn’t seem to have aged a day in the 25 years since The Gillies Report. Nor has the patter aged. It’s still irresistible, silly or not.”  -Chris Boyd, Herald Sun

“This musical succeeds triumphantly. Lyrically the material is as good as you could hope for: often extremely funny, occasionally very naughty, and never ever dull. Add to this some very well-written dialogue blended seamlessly between the numbers and you have a very rare thing indeed: a truly original Australian musical.” -Trevor Gager, Arts Hub

LISTING INFORMATION

Venue:                                   The Paris Cat Jazz Club, 6 Goldie Place Melbourne

Dates:                                    Friday the 14th of October @ 7.30pm and Saturday the 15th of October @ 7.30pm

Tickets:                                 $ 20 / concession $17

Bookings:                           info@pariscat.com.au or at the door

The Short and Sweet Cabaret Festival winner will take cabaret underground in this new promenade theatrical experience.

CHANTS DES CATACOMBES is a filthy little story about a showgirl, a surgeon and a courtesan. The innocence of each has been stripped.  For these three women history has turned its page, and they’re now entombed creatures of the catacombs.

This promenade piece of theatre will inhabit the basement of the gorgeous Donkey Wheel House building, showcasing this Venetian Gothic architectural marvel. This production will be an entire sensory experience.

Chants Des Catacombs is the brainchild of Anna Boulic, a NIDA trained voice teacher, harpist and singer, who developed a ten-minute version alongside theatre director Bryce Ives which won last year’s Short and Sweet Cabaret Festival.

This new cabaret experience mixes the styles of musical theatre, vaudeville, burlesco, indie pop, hip-hop and the macabre.

This production is a collaboration of eight outstanding artists:

• Nicola Andrews (Lighting Designer and VCA Design Graduate)
• Anna Boulic (Winner of the 2010 Short and Sweet Cabaret Festival, Harpist and NIDA Graduate)
• Laura Burzacott (Call Girl the Musical and I Heart Frankston)
• Nathan Gilkes (Theatre & Opera Director and VCA Directing Graduate)
• David Harford (Choreographer and Ballarat Arts Academy Graduate)
• Bryce Ives (Theatre Director Call Girl the Musical, The History Boys and I Heart Frankston)
• Emma Leah (Scent Alchemist and Perfumer at Fleurage Perfumery)
• Zoe McDonald (Wrong Town and VCA Musical Theatre Graduate)
• Sophie Woodward (Designer and VCA Graduate)

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Venue:

• Donkey Wheel House, 673 Bourke Street Melbourne

Dates:

• Thursday 16th of June at 8.30pm,
• Friday 17th of June at 8.30pm & 10.30pm
• Saturday 18th of June at 8.30pm &10.30pm
• Sunday 19th of June at 6pm

Running time:

•   One hour, with no interval

Tickets:

• $ 30 Adult
• $25 Concession/ Student

Bookings:

• http://www.trybooking.com/9503 or at the door

Chants Des Catacombes, the winner of the  Short and Sweet Cabaret Festival, may feel a little familiar. You might have dreamt something like this once, a lifetime ago. It’s is a tale concerning a Showgirl, a Courtesan and a Surgeon, who have long since been murdered. They’re now entombed creatures from a strange time, just like the Venus de Milo sitting timeless and emotionless forever in the Louvre.

For these three dead women history has turned his page, yet they continue to restlessly walk up and down the dark corridors of the Catacombes.

Chants Des Catacombes is a new collaboration between Nicola Andrews (Lighting Designer), Laura Burzacott (Call Girl the Musical), Anna Boulic (Winner of the 2010 Short and Sweet Cabaret Festival), Nathan Gilkes (Theatre & Opera Director), David Harford (Choreographer), Bryce Ives (Theatre Director), Zoe McDonald (Wrong Town) and Sophie Woodward (Designer).

Chant Des Catacombs
Venue: The Basement of Donkey Wheel House
Where: 673 Bourke Street Melbourne
Performances: Thursday 16th of June at 8.30pm, Friday 17th of June at 8.30pm and 10.30pm, Saturday 18th of June at 8.30pm and 10.30pm and Sunday 19th of June at 6pm.
Bookings: http://www.trybooking.com/9503

From today’s Herald Sun by Sally Bennett

IT BEGAN in Geelong eight years ago with a “let’s give this a go” attitude.

Now Footlight Productions is recognised as a leading light in Geelong’s theatre scene, putting on crowd-pleasing musicals and elevating young acting talent.

Melbourne director Bryce Ives is on board for the company’s next big show, Sweet Charity, opening at the Playhouse Theatre on February 4.

Footlight founder and artistic director Peter Wills made the leap of faith to set up the company after seeing a need for more “professional” amateur theatre.

“We don’t have the budget of the big shows, but some of the performances these directors are getting out of the casts would easily compete with some of the professional performances you see,” he says.

Starring Cara Oliver in the lead role of Charity Hope Valentine, Sweet Charity follows the success of Broadway hits such as Cats, The Boy From Oz and West Side Story.

The love story of cinema legends Raymond Longford and Lottie Lyell (creators of “The Sentimental Bloke” and other classics), as they ride the wave of the golden age of Australian cinema.

Directed by: Bryce Ives
Musically directed by: Nathan Gilkes
Cast includes: Glen Hogstrom, Laura Burzacott and Trevor Major

On a school excursion, six very different thirteen year olds take a wrong turn. They hurl through a wormhole into the parallel world of Dig Deep Creek – an 1850′s gold mining ghost town.

The wormhole is an unpredictable beast that connects to an infinite number of vastly different worlds. Amazing and terrifying things can travel through to Dig Deep Creek and at any time the wormhole could collapse.

Needing courage, ingenuity, cooperation and hope to survive, the teens are their own worst enemies.

Their daily struggle to find food and water, outwit the bushranger and battle the wormhole’s perils is hamstrung by infighting, jealousy and self interest.

Can they work together to survive day to day – let alone find their way back home?

Have you ever been surrounded by the bush at night – to be engulfed by the extreme darkness of the night sky? It can’t be denied that there is something deeply unnerving and uncanny about it.

As part of the Post Graduate Directors season at the VCA, I’m currently directing Goat Town.

Developed through a process of storytelling and improvisation, Goat Town follows a group of old friends on a camping trip to scatter the ashes of a mate. Grief and nostalgia mix with guilt and tension as they discover how much, yet how little, between them has changed.

It’s an original play by Alexandra Burgess and Loren de Jong and this is the first time it’s been performed outside of the original group of collaborators. The writers have said that they use their theatre to capture the natural rhythms of a distinctly Australian voice.

“We hold a tiny mirror up to the world and hope that audiences will recognise their own words, their own conversations, in our work. There is a certain thrill in that.”

In preparing for this production I’m working with an exceptionally talented third year design student from the college. We are using the work of Australian artist Bill Henson as the starting point for our design collaboration.

There’s something incredibly interesting when you think of the Australian bush as a place of disorientation and death. In many ways I believe that white Australia has actively fought against embracing it’s natural surrounds and has tried desperately to suburbanise as much of our inhabited places as possible. Is this because we think the Australian bush is a scary place?

The bush is untidy. It seems that most Australians would prefer something neat, something edged, raked – something with concrete. I’ve heard people say our obsession with suburbia has something to do with our white convict heritage… something like suburbia gives white Australians status and control.

Maybe this is why people often find Hensons images of Australia disturbing:

“the ambiguity between day and night, nature and civilisation, youth and adulthood, male and female.”

His art lives somewhere that isn’t real and isn’t imagined. He also has an interest in youth isand that transition between child and adult.

This is what we want to start to achieve with our design for Goat Town:

Looking back over my early preparation work and the first few rehearsals, it has become increasingly clear that something has shifted in my energy and focus as a director.

To describe this in a sentence, it would be something like “a director must feel empathy for all characters situations, feelings, and motives.” This empathy is about registering what it is for the character of the Emperor to be at his wits’ end after a terrible battle and to understand, also, where an actor may be on any particular day and at any particular stage of the rehearsal process.

So it can be said that there is the struggle of the text and the struggle of bringing the world of the text into being for  both the actors and the director. Both situations require empathy and incredible attention to detail, not just from an organisational level, but from an emotional place.

What I now know is that the rehearsal room will not be in a position to be fully receptive of the nature and depth of the work of Barker, or indeed any text, without all individuals embracing the true and full extent of their own feelings, thoughts and experiences. The director must sense, feel and name empathy. This may mean that the Director is regularly examining their own personal experiences and vicariously bringing that energy and understanding into the room.

In early rehearsals I was in a sense travelling steadily through the motions of the process.  I was setting activities and introducing the work. In a sense I was doing everything ‘correctly’ by introducing the activities and saying the right things. But I wasn’t fully engaged in the process.  I was being too correct in introducing the activities and not feeling, not involving my own energy in the room.

Things don’t always have to be correct; a creative process isn’t a black and white kind of thing. It can be grey. It can be ambiguous. It can be murky. In a workshop with writer/director Richard Murphett he said “If you have the answers too soon, you might possibly be asking the wrong questions.”

Barker asks us to embrace the chaos of ‘not-knowing.’  Embracing ‘not-knowing’ has made me feel freer in my work as a director. (It must be said, it does also leave you vulnerable to longer nights of reflection and new questions for yourself to consider, but this is a good thing.)

I must continue to be more willing to understand my own energy and subconscious. I have to be willing to accept that a great deal of this may be dark, difficult or sometimes leave me in a vulnerable position in the rehearsal room.  Being vulnerable or “not knowing” is an energy that I have to continue to accept and champion in the rehearsal room, not only from the actors I’m working with, but from myself. There is a hint of this in Barker’s essay writing: “The audience has to share my not knowing, when it was accustomed to being taught. (1993)”

So on reflection there has been something in my past productions that has been about teaching the audience or the actors about what they need to feel or what should be happening.

This was the shift.

Midway through the rehearsals I came clean with the actors. I’d been having personal issues outside of rehearsals with family members. I was tired and deeply emotional.  I’m constantly deeply emotional, often without allowing this emotion to be part of my work. Acknowledging this allowed me to open the scene from that perspective and to sit with the scene in a different light, to feel empathy towards the Emperor.

I was suddenly attuned to a deeper level of transaction between the characters and between the actors. Side coaching became easier, something evolved in the focus and energy of the work.  I could suddenly see and name moments in the rehearsal room: interactions crucial to the scene and in need of framing.

What also became apparent was that the language of Barker doesn’t exist in a naturalistic world. It’s erratic: something can be yelled, or whispered, wept or screamed. The tension is a thing that is always shifting.