Timeshare Program

TIMESHARE 23 APR - 17 MAY 2015

Malthouse Theatre presents

TIMESHARE CHAPTER TWO: POST // LOVE *** MERLYN THEATRE By / Lally Katz Direction / Oliver Butler Set & Costume Design / Dale Ferguson Lighting Design / Paul Jackson Sound Design & Composition / Jethro Woodward Choreography / Bec Reid Dialect Coach / Suzanne Heywood Stage Manager / Tia Clark Assistant Stage Manager / Lyndie Li Wan Po Stage Management Secondment / Katie Hurst Besen Family Artist Placements / Emma McManus, Lucy O’Brien Cast / Fayssal Bazzi, Marg Downey, Brigid Gallacher, Bert LaBonté

Special Thanks to Lloyd Borrett at The Scuba Doctor Australia.

Malthouse Theatre would like to acknowledge the people of the Kulin nation, on whose land this work is being presented.

Director’s Note

When Lally and I started conceiving this play, we were overwhelmed by the frustration of collaboration across time zones. There was no practical reason why it should be so hard to connect, except that while one of us was just waking up, the other was going to bed. We would curse the distance and time between us. Maybe that’s why we started making a play that dealt with time and travel.

A few years ago, I went on my first all-inclusive vacation. I was excited by the prospect of total freedom – especially not having to pull out my wallet while at the resort. The prospect of enjoying anything I wanted, whenever I wanted, was a welcome dream. What I found when I arrived was that the resort had an immense number of rules to create the illusion of total freedom: wet towels are exchanged at very specific times, and food and drink at different bars and restaurants were regulated by strange hours. I am the kind of person who naturally bumps up against the limits. And I found myself

feeling more trapped than freed. A simple holiday turned into a personal existential crisis.

Then Lally and I discovered the islands on the International Date Line in the Pacific. Because of ongoing colonisation and war the line has moved, sometimes running right through the middle of these islands. The idea of living on one of these islands, where the fabric of time can shift arbitrarily, felt like the kind of absurdity that we wanted in our play.

Lally took a trip to Fiji with my stories of the horrors of the all-inclusive vacation on her mind and found the whole experience very satisfying. You see, while I hate rules, Lally loves them. They comforted her. And the timeshare-selling vultures that haunted me on my vacations never even found her. A very good thing, because if there is one person on this planet who would buy a timeshare, it’s Lally.

And so comes Timeshare.

Oliver Butler / Director

COVER PHOTOGRAPHY /

Andrew Gough

COVER TREATMENT /

The Sisters Hayes

REHEARSAL IMAGES /

Sarah Walker