THE BUTTON EVENT Production Program

Queensland Theatre Company and Black Swan State Theatre Company present

17 NOV - 7 DEC Call 136 246

P L AY H O U S E , Q PA C

queenslandtheatre.com.au PRODUCTION SPONSOR

THE

Queensland Theatre Company, in association with Brisbane Festival presents

Devised by Todd MacDonald with Bagryana Popov

Cast 18-27 September 2014 Bille Brown Studio The GreenHouse

The Button Event will run for approximately 60 minutes with no interval.

Todd MacDonald

Deviser/Performer

Bagryana Popov

Deviser/Director

Kevin O'Brien

Design Consultant

Sam Paxton

Designer (Initial Concept)

Ben Hughes

Lighting Designer

Guy Webster

Composer/Sound Designer

Yanni Dubler

Stage Manager

WARNING Coarse language and drug references.

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Recycle this program COVER PHOTOGRAPHY: Ian Golding

Support Greening QTC and recycle this program after the performance in the recycling bins provided in the foyer. Read the program before the show at queenslandtheatre.com.au

Welcome Note Wesley Enoch, Artistic Director Dear Patron, Supporter and Friend, Welcome to Brisbane Festival at The GreenHouse.

We have been enjoying a bumper year with five consecutive shows finding critical and box office success, four of those right here in the Bille Brown Studio.

Creating new work can be a joy and a challenge, especially when you are devising the show from true stories. We are welcoming two groups of artists to create shows from scratch as part of our exclusive offering for Brisbane Festival. The story of a father searching to understand the illness of his daughter in The Button Event and I Want To Know What Love Is based on the love stories from over 600 public submissions.

The Button Event comes from a long collaboration between Todd MacDonald and Bagryana Popov and more recently, an artistic support team.

Todd has worked in a huge range of shows and mediums (you may remember his

amazing performance in Venus In Fur) but I have noticed his excitement and strengths in devising and adapting, working with the body as a site of performance and generally creating emotional truths on stage. This show represents a stripping away of artifice to explore the feelings connected to his true life story.

QTC believes it’s important we support local artists to make an array of works from scripted classics, new plays, devised works and more. The imagination of the artists and the support of adventurous audiences help build a vibrant culture. Theatre is a risky business and you’re embracing of risk helps encourage artists to stretch themselves.

Thank you.

Love

Wesley

Director's Note Bagryana Popov It is a difficult thing to find a form for lived human experience. How can we tell a story from an experience which is overwhelming; a maelstrom of events, emotions, information? It does not fit tidily into a beginning, middle and end.

How to tell a story about how much a father loves his child?

We have been working on The Button Event over a few years, in creative development stages. This is unusual and has been very important to the process. It has allowed us time to research, discuss, consider, investigate, create and then reconsider. It has allowed time for themes and layers to emerge, as we delve into the memory and experience of Todd and his family and search for a form to represent that experience. We have delved into medical records, scientific information, memory, emotion, fragments of experience remembered and we have tried to join the dots.

The form of the work weaves together many elements: movement and physical effort, visual poetry, medical text and personal memory.

Our place in the universe is fragile. Science attempts to make our lives comprehensible, controllable, but the most important things are still beyond our reach. There is still much unknown and uncontrollable about conception, birth, and the human body and its processes.

The Button Event is the story of Todd doing all he can for his daughter – told in a series of attempts, in a struggle to comprehend and control the situation; a story that refuses to be tidy, because it is bigger than him and his family. It is a story of being struck by a force and then fighting with full strength to overcome it.

When a child is ill, what can make things better? There is a lot in this show about medicine, but there is also faith, luck, helplessness, effort, and the delicate walk on the tightrope over the abyss.

There is resilience, humour, and there are gaps – the gaps which appear when we retell a traumatic phase of life. It is essentially a love story.

It is rare to hear a father telling a story which centres on his child.

That, for me, makes it a profound and important story to tell.

Writer's/Performer's Note Todd MacDonald For Ruby and Lola MacDonald and Rebecca McIntosh.

This work is dedicated to the unwavering support that we can give each other ... our tolerance, love and patience.

It's dedicated to our ability to put one foot in front of the other and survive, without judgment or guilt. Things get hard in life and we can't just roll up in a ball and disappear, but equally we don't always cope as well as we would like. Struggle, not perfection, is what makes us human - we survive through adapting and trying again and again. You’re amazing Bec, you’re a star Ruby, and Lola, you are a miracle.

I want to thank the amazing team of artists that have helped me get this story out into the world. It's a remarkable thing to share your story and trust your collaborators. To trust their judgement, their sensitivity and their humour; thank you Bagryana Popov, Rebecca McIntosh, Luke Pither, Deborah Leiser-Moore, Maryanne Lynch, Guy Webster, Ben Hughes, Kevin O'Brien, Sam Paxton and Yanni Dubler. Also I acknowledge the support and belief of Arts Victoria, Arts House and the

City of Melbourne for the initial development of this work, and Wesley Enoch and the amazing team at Queensland Theatre Company for this premiere season.

It has been a few years since the darkest days that I refer to in the work and I need to say a heartfelt thanks to some very special people without whom this journey would have been entirely different. There are ultimately too many to mention but these people have in their own ways made our lives more than just survival: Our immediate family and friends (so many - you know who you are).

The seemingly endless medical teams and support groups, including: Epic Early Intervention in Bundoora in particular Selina, Clare Stewart and the Australasian Tuberous Sclerosis Society, our local doctors, the chemist, Barry Beckett Day Care, Mater Hospital teams, Rose Heard, Dr Stephen James and a special mention to Dr Honey Heussler whose dedication and passion touched us greatly.

A very special mention to the team at the Royal Children's Hospital Melbourne, the miracle workers whose "jobs" actually change the world (certainly changed our world): Dr Simon Harvey (neurologist), Dr Wirginia Maixner (neurosurgeon), Dr Sue Morse (speech pathologist and inspiration), Dr Jaquie Wrennall (neuropsychologist), Dr Lionel Lubitz (paediatrician) and Dr Rick Laventer (neurologist) and all of the other nurses, support staff, specialists and carers who helped us and we didn't even know (or were too exhausted to realise).

Thank you.

L to R: Todd MacDonald, Ben Hughes, Yanni Dubler, Kevin O'Brien and Guy Webster

Todd MacDonald DEVISER/PERFORMER

Bagryana Popov DEVISOR/DIRECTOR

Queensland Theatre Company: Artistic Associate (2011–current). As Actor: Venus in Fur. As Director: The Landmine Is Me, The Mountaintop, Kelly, An Oak Tree. Other Credits: As Director: Conquest of the South Pole. As Assistant Director: Sleeping Beauty. As Actor: Progress and Melancholy, Bare Witness, Strangeland, Construction of the Human Heart, Blowback, Ride, Julia 3, Language of the Gods. For Companies: Not Yet It’s Difficult, Melbourne; Playbox Theatre, Company B Belvoir, Melbourne Theatre Company, Railway Street Theatre Company, Melbourne International Arts Festival, Adelaide Festival. Film: The King, Salem’s Lot, On the Beach, Sahara, Belladonna, The Jammed, Guru Wayne. Television: The Secret Life of Us, Tangle, Satisfaction, Rush, Blue Heelers, Neighbours, Bed of Roses. Positions: Cofounder and Artistic Director: The Store Room Theatre, Melbourne. Awards: Green Room Award - Outstanding Contribution to Fringe, Green Room Award - Best Male Performer Progress and Melancholy, Matilda Award Nomination - Best Male Actor in a Leading Role Venus in Fur. Queensland Theatre Company: Debut. Other Credits: As Director: Fortyfivedownstairs: Café Scheherezade; La Mama: Sarajevo Suite; Victorian College of the Arts: Romeo and Juliet, Article I; Bagryana Popov independent production: Progress and Melancholy (a new version of The Cherry Orchard), Subclass 26A; National Theatre Company of Macedonia (Bitola): Yerna, Antigone: Tonight I Will Be Brave; Charles Sturt University: The House of Bernarda Alba; Community-based theatre projects: Spinning Weaving Trees and Songs, Hogshairs and Leeches, Home, Stories from the Hidden City, Inotrope and The St Kilda Drop In Centre: The Lower Depths, The Tempest, Our Chalk Circle, (Actor/Co-Deviser, Musical Director), Dante’s Workshop (Director/ Co-Deviser). As Choreographer: He is not here, Studies in Being Human, Somewhere Else, UNProtected Zone, No Words. As Actor: La Mama: Blood Moon, The Old Van: Macbeth; Theatreworks: Titus Andronicus; Lyndal Jones: As Time Goes By; Hildegard Theatre Company: (Actor, Co-Deviser, Co-Producer) Woman in the Wall, The Wedding, Al Andalus, Inje, Three Sisters. Film: (As Dramaturg) Anamnesis, (as Director/Editor) Returning, Coda, (As Actor) Earth Positions: Lecturer in Theatre and Drama at La Trobe University, Melbourne. Awards: Green Room Award – Best Director Progress and Melancholy.

Kevin O'Brien DESIGN CONSULTANT

Sam Paxton DESIGNER (INITIAL CONCEPT)

Queensland Theatre Company: Debut. Other Credits: As Exhibition Designer: Venice Architecture Biennale: Finding Country Exhibition; National Museum of Australia: Dari a Krar; Queensland Museum: Dandiri Maiwar; As Artist: Gallery of Modern Art: Family Tree in Land, Sea and Sky; Irish Museum of Modern Art: Black Bones in The Everyday Experience; Don't Come Gallery: Skate Shields in Finding Country - A Primer; As Architect: Archibald Street House.

Awards: British Council Accelerate Award; Churchill Fellowship; AIA National, State and Regional Awards for Residential, Commercial, Public Building and Urban Design, 2013. Training: Bachelor of Architecture and Master of Philosophy (Architecture) at the University of Queensland.

Queensland Theatre Company: Orphans, Hurry Up and Wait, Maxine Mellor’s Mystery Project.

Other Credits: Company B: The Little Cherry Orchard; Pinchgut Opera: Semele; Sydney Theatre Company: Pulse 10, New Stages; Expressions Dance Company: Launch Pad; Sydney Festival: Trial by Jury. Television: Nikelodeon: The Upside Down Show; ABC TV: Play School, Kylie Kwong Series I & II; SBS: Going Home. Training: Queensland College of Art (Illustration) and NIDA (Design). Sam is currently studying a Diploma of Education at QUT.

Ben Hughes LIGHTING DESIGNER

Guy Webster COMPOSER/ SOUND DESIGNER

Queensland Theatre Company: The Effect (co-production with Sydney Theatre Company), The Mountaintop, Black Diggers (co-production with Sydney Festival), Design For Living, Trollop (as Co-Director/Designer), 1001 Nights, The Lost Property Rules, Orbit, Mother Courage and Her Children, The Pitch & The China Incident, Kelly, Head Full of Love, Fractions (co-production with Hothouse Theatre), Orphans, An Oak Tree, Sacre Bleu!, Fat Pig, Let The Sunshine (co-production with Melbourne Theatre Company), The Crucible, 25 Down, Stones in His Pockets, I Am My Own Wife, John Gabriel Borkman, The Estimator, Private Fears in Public Places, Man Equals Man, Waiting for Godot, Eating Ice Cream with Your Eyes Closed, The Exception and The Rule, Ruby Moon. As Associate Lighting Designer: Toy Symphony, Heroes. Other Credits: The Danger Ensemble: Caligula, The Wizard of Oz (co-production with La Boite Theatre Company and Brisbane Festival), Sons of Sin, Children of War, Loco Maricon Amor, The Hamlet Apocalypse; La Boite Theatre Company: A Doll's House, Cosi, Kitchen Diva, Statespeare; The Nest Ensemble: Home; Zen Zen Zo Physical Theatre: Vikram and the Vampire, Cabaret, Dracula, Zeitgeist, My Sublime Shadow; Woodford Folk Festival: Fire Event 2012 & 2013; Cre8ion: Fluff; Stella Electrika: The New Dead: Medea Material; Expressions Dance Company: Carmen Sweet, Propel, Where The Heart Is; Queensland Ballet: Giselle, A Classical Celebration, ...with Attitude. As Associate Lighting Designer: Elision Ensemble: The Navigator; Meryl Tankard: The Oracle; Opera Queensland: Aida. Awards: 2011 Groundling Award - Outstanding Contribution to Lighting Design. Positions: Affiliate Artist, Queensland Theatre Company (2014 & 2011); Resident Lighting Designer, Queensland Theatre Company (2013); Associate Artistic Director – The Danger Ensemble; Emerging Artist, Queensland Theatre Company (2007); Professional Member, Association of Lighting Designers.

Queensland Theatre Company: The Effect (co-production with Sydney Theatre Company),Venus in Fur, Kelly, Orphans. Other Credits: La Boite Theatre Company: As You Like It, Ruben Guthrie, I Love You, Bro, The White Earth, The Narcissist, Kitchen Diva, Summer Wonderland, Last Drinks, Creche and Burn, Urban Dingoes; Lisa O’Neill: The Pipe Manager, The Pineapple Queen; shake & stir theatre co: Revolting Rhymes & Dirty Beasts, Tequila Mockingbird,

1984, Animal Farm, Statespeare; Brisbane Festival: Alice 21; Zen Zen Zo: Vikram And The Vampire; State Library of Queensland: Teacup Sonata, I Cherish This, The Unexpectedly Mind Boggling Adventure; Transmute Collective: Intimate Transactions, Transact, Liquid Gold, Transit Lounge; Matrix Theatre: 1347, The King and The Corpse; Wilde Applause: Operacus, Circopera; Red Shoes: Under Today; Institute Of Contemporary Art (London): Shifting Intimacies. Awards: Prix Ars Electronica, Interactive Art, Honorable Mention for Intimate Transactions.

Yanni Dubler STAGE MANAGER

Queensland Theatre Company: As Assistant Stage Manager: Gloria.

As Secondment: Design for Living.

Other Credits: As Stage Manager: QPAC: Russian Ballet: Don Quixote, Clancestry, Brisbane Powerhouse: Brisbane Comedy Festival, Woodford Folk Festival: Flying Squad. As Assistant Stage Manager: Queensland Ballet: Coppelia, QPAC/Queensland Symphony Orchestra: Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. As Production Assistant: Expressions Dance Company: APAM (R&J, Carmen Sweet). Training: Bachelor of Fine Arts (Technical Production), QUT.

MEMBERS OF THE BOARD Richard Fotheringham (Chair) Julieanne Alroe (Deputy Chair) Kirstin Ferguson Erin Feros Simon Gallaher Peter Hudson Elizabeth Jameson Nathan Jarro Liz Mellish Karl Morris ARTISTIC DIRECTOR Wesley Enoch EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR Sue Donnelly Executive Assistant: Tammy Sleeth Artistic Associate: Todd MacDonald Resident Dramaturg: Louise Gough Resident Directors: Jason Klarwein & Andrea Moor Programming Manager/Senior Producer: Katherine Hoepper Producer (New Work & Development): Shari Irwin Programming Project Officer: Laurel Collins Artistic Coordinator: Samantha French Touring & Regional Program Coordinator: Christine Johnstone Producer (Education and Youth Programs): Heidi Irvine Casual Programming Coordinator: Helen Stephens Chief Financial Officer Michael Cullinan Systems Accountant: Roxane Eden Finance Officer: Robin Koski Front of House & Events Supervisor: Deirdree Wallace

Venue & Operations Supervisor: Julian Messer Marketing Manager: Yvonne Whittington Marketing Coordinator: Amanda Solomons Database Trainer & Supervisor: Dale Ric-Hansen Publicist: Kath Rose & Associates Marketing Assistant: Yuverina Shewpersad Digital Marketing Officer: David D’Arcy Project Officer: Claire McKee Ticketing Coordinators: Maggie Holmes & Brad Routledge Receptionist & Ticketing Officer: Donna Fields-Brown Administration Trainee Kalisha Soe Philanthropy Manager: Amanda Jolly Corporate Partnerships Manager: Nikki Porter Development Coordinator: Dee Morris Researcher & Grant Writer: Danielle Bentley Production Manager: Toni Glynn Technical Coordinator: Daniel Maddison Production Coordinator: Scott Klupfel Head of Workshop: Peter Sands Company Carpenter/Head Mechanist: John Pierce Carpenter: Jamie Bowman Head of Wardrobe: Vicki Martin

Affiliate Artists: Tony Brumpton Ben Hughes David Walters Associate Artists: Rod Ainsworth Candy Bowers Carol Burns Katherine Lyall-Watson David Morton Gayle MacGregor Paula Nazarski Ngoc Phan Lucas Stibbard I Want Love Know What Love Is Production Staff Wardrobe Maintenance: Liezel Buckenham Production Electrician/Lighting Operator: Matt Golder Mechanist: Brenton Slattery The Button Event Production Staff Scenic Artist: Leo Herreygers Wardrobe Maintenance: Liezel Buckenham Production Electrician/Lighting Operator: Matt Golder Front of House Staff Anita Hughes Jermaine Beezley Jake Shavikin Leisha Du Bois Prue Green-Hansen Marilyn Green-Hansen Kathleen O’Sullivan Ashley Morris Belinda Locke FOUNDING DIRECTOR Alan Edwards, AM, MBE (1925 – 2003) Queensland Theatre Company is a member of Live Performance Australia.

Our Indigenous Program Black Diggers is part of QTC’s award winning Indigenous Program, known for producing exciting new Indigenous work and bringing it to audiences across Australia.

It’s a demonstration of our commitment to sharing these stories and making sure the voices of Indigenous artists are heard.

If you’re interested in actively supporting our Indigenous Program please contact our Philanthropy Manager on 07 3010 7621.

Roxanne McDonald in Head Full of Love.

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Acknowledgements Royal Children's Hospital, Melbourne, Victoria Queensland Tennis Centre La Trobe University Rochelle Lentini, University of South Florida for the scripted story, Tucker Turtle Takes Time to Tuck and Think Fragment from Avalanche (Lavina) by Blaga Dimitrova, translated by Bagryana Popov Dr Simon Harvey, Lionel Lubitz, Rebecca McIntosh and Dr Wirginia Maixner for supplying text and voice over.

Chris Chafe and Josef Parvizi, Stanford University, for excerpts of brain wave sonification.

The artists, medical specialists and audiences who provided their time and feedback during the development of this work.

To ensure that patrons enjoy the performance, management asks you to note: • Cameras, tape recorders and paging devices should not be used inside the auditorium.

• Switch off alarms and mobile phones prior to the performance.

• A single cough measures approximately 65 decibels of sound.

The use of a handkerchief helps greatly to soften the sound.

The management reserves the right to refuse admission, also to make any alterations to the cast which may be rendered necessary by illness or other unavoidable causes.

Patrons are advised that the Bille Brown Studio has EMERGENCY EVACUATION PROCEDURES, a FIRE ALARM system and EXIT passageways. In case of an alert, patrons should remain calm, look for the closest EXIT sign in GREEN, listen to and comply with directions given by the in-house trained attendants and move in an orderly fashion to outside the Studio.

Queensland Theatre Company and Brisbane Festival, in association with QPAC and The Balnaves Foundation present

A Queensland Theatre Company and Sydney Festival production



“Not just one of the highlights of this year’s festival but a new high point in telling a national narrative on the stage.”

THE GUARDIAN

24 Sep – 12 Oct QPAC, Brisbane Call 136 246 queenslandtheatre.com.au

Tickets $33 - $80 (plus booking fee) Concessions, Groups and Under 30s prices available.

This project has been assisted by the Australian Government’s Major Festivals Initiative, managed by the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body, in association with the Confederation of Australian International Arts Festivals, Sydney Festival and Brisbane Festival.

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Photography: Branco Gaica