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A new place to meat! Wendy Johnson
Miller’s tale of memory games By arts editor Helen Musa
DIRECTOR Chenoeh Miller says she never grew out of doing lounge-room dance routines. Educated in Canberra, she spent her childhood making up little plays, usually playing the lead character. Now as an adult, she’s just written a play, but this is one she’s not in. In “Cordelia”, Miller tells the story of Shakespeare’s tragedy “King Lear” through the eyes of the shadowy King of France, seen briefly in Shakespeare as the man who marries Lear’s youngest daughter Cordelia when she is thrown out for refusing to play her father’s childish game of “tell me how you love me”. France will be played by Canberra’s Adam Hadley as the filter through whom everything is seen. He’s shown hosting a dinner party and tells the story in a way that involves memory games, making “Cordelia” a prequel to “King Lear”. Created by Miller and produced by Dave Sleswick, from Brisbane, it is co-devised and performed by Rowan Davie and Janine Watson from Melbourne and Erica Field (as Goneril), Noa Rotem (who plays Cordelia) and Peta Ward from Brisbane. Trained in theatre-making at the University of Western Sydney, Miller founded “Theatre of Love”, worked with the innovative physical theatre companies Version 1.0 and Zen Zen Zo, and set up Little Dove Theatre. Her name “Chenoeh” is American-Indian for “Little Dove.” Miller’s Japanese Butoh-inspired work “Six Women Standing in Front of a White Wall” was seen at the Multicultural Fringe in Canberra and the Edinburgh
Erica Field who plays Goneril. Fringe in 2007. In Scotland, it enjoyed a sell-out, three-week season and won the “Scotland on Sunday” Best Direction Award. In Edinburgh, she met the lighting designer Hartley Kemp who, now in Australia, will light “Cordelia”. “It was the perfect Edinburgh experience,” Miller says. She’d read “King Lear” at age 15 and it was her favourite – “I’d always wanted to rework ‘Lear’.” So she did, assisted by The Street Theatre’s dramaturg Peter Matheson, who encouraged her to “make it as long as you like”. After a preparatory workshop last year involving writers Joe Woodward as Lear and Anni Doyle Wawrzynczak, a former jazz singer, as his Queen, she further developed it in a Hothouse Theatre “A Month in the Country” residency in Albury, where she halved the script. By now Woodward wasn’t
Noa Rotem in the title role of Cordelia. available, so she wrote Lear out, focusing on the disturbingly honest Cordelia. She also wrote out Gloucester, poor Tom and the Fool, but added in “moving and heartfelt” monologues for the commonly reviled sisters, Goneril and Regan. Miller is adamant that “this is a texty play”, but swears she hasn’t looked at the Shakespeare since starting her version. The set is “very minimal” and the period-inspired costumes by Imogen Keen will have an ‘80s twist, with billowing skirts and fluoro linings. The music comes from ‘80s pop bands such as Split Enz, and the classically trained choreographer Cristina DeMello will be busy countering the earthbound movements of the Japanesetrained players. With Robyn Nevin playing Queen Lear for the Melbourne
Theatre Company’s Shakespeare next year, “Cordelia” could well be timely, and Miller is pleased to learn that Bell Shakespeare’s Peter Evans will be keeping an eye on it. “Cordelia”, The Street Theatre, November 3-5. Bookings to 6247 1223 or www.thestreet.org.au
Director Chenoeh Miller... “It was the perfect Edinburgh experience.”
Why Josh Thomas makes failure funny By Helen Musa COMEDIAN Josh Thomas says his show is dauntingly called “Everything Ever”. What exactly is “everything”? In Thomas’ case, he says, he just stands up on stage and talks about everything that’s ever happened to him. “It’s about my life, how dull it is, embarrassing stories, making bad choices – it all comes very naturally to me,” he says. And when you have Josh Thomas. been doing boring things for as long as Thomas has – a whole 24 years – there are plenty of humiliations and break-ups to provide grist to the comic mill. For instance, when at school in Queensland, Thomas was “really fat”. Even now that he knows how to dress to his 183cm height, he describes himself as “very marsh-mallowy, very soft”. He was definitely not a footballer. As well as humiliations, Thomas has had glowing triumphs as a star of the television show “Talkin’ ‘Bout Your Generation”, “GQ” magazine’s Comedian of the Year in 2010 and a Logies’ nominee for Most Popular New Male Talent 2010. As a schoolboy aged 17, before he came out as gay, Thomas was the youngest-ever winner of the Melbourne International Comedy Festival’s RAW Comedy Competition. He fills big theatres, including our own Canberra Theatre, wherever he goes. He’s made the finals of “So You Think You’re Funny” in Edinburgh, appeared at Smithwick’s Cat Laughs Comedy Festival in Kilkenny, Ireland, and the Geel Comedy Festival in Belgium, and curated the Brisbane Comedy Festival twice. He’s played at Sydney Opera House, toured NZ and performed at least three times in Canberra, where his sister lives. Thomas, who speaks more like an Irishman than a Queenslander, is careful to say ridiculously flattering things about the ACT, his second-favourite place to Melbourne, where he now lives. In all, it is obvious that Thomas has been having fun being boring all around the globe. He’s been doing stand-up comedy as long as he can remember and no, he’s not thinking of making a movie, because he probably wouldn’t be any good at it. Comedy is his metier – “what else can I do?” Josh Thomas is at Canberra Theatre, 7.30pm, October 29. Bookings to www.canberratheatrecentre.com.au or 6275 2700.
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