If making it into an International Festival of Arts program is a big deal, then the Adelaide-based theatre company, Windmill, has hit it big, bigger, biggest. It has not one but three shows included in the 2014 Adelaide Festival program.
Wildest and bravest aspect of this is that the shows target the hardest of all theatre audiences - teens.
Windmill's artistic director Rosemary Myers credits Festival director David Sefton with the courage and, indeed, some of the impetus which has made this happen.
"David Sefton saw ‘School Dance’ when it premiered in Adelaide and when we said we saw it as part of a trilogy, he said 'do it'," she reports. Now, on the eve of the Festival, the third play of the set is finishing rehearsals and having its first runs. It is called ‘Girl Asleep’.
"We wanted the third instalment to be more of a girl's story," says Myers.
"It's more beautiful. It has a different dynamic to the others.
"But it is just as hilarious and inventive."
Already the first play in the set has been an award winner. Critical acclaim for ‘School Dance’ was followed by two Helpmann Awards and a Best Production for Young People gong at the Sydney Theatre Awards. ‘Fugitive’ was the next story to be told in the series which describe adolescent rites of passage.
Since she came to Windmill, director Rosemary Myers has shown that she does not shirk from the sensitive issues, the raw realities of growing up, and hence her productions can be quite confronting. Her ‘The Wizard of Oz’ was quite an eyebrow-raiser in 2009.
Hallmark of her shows in the older genre is that they may be loud, wild, movie-like and, most importantly, wickedly funny. They burst across genres, referencing pop culture and movies. They are not quite like any other theatre that is out there.
‘School Dance’ depicts young people in just that - the nerve-racking predicament of the school dance, the ‘who likes’ and ‘who doesn'ts’ and the fragile egos and edgy tempers.
It had and has a powerful and tight professional cast of Amber McMahon, Jonathon Oxlade, Luke Smiles and Matthew Whittet with Whittet also behind the writing, Oxlade on the design, Smiles on the soundtrack and Myers directing.
Those creatives turned out to be the stuff good chemistry is made from - and they have continued to work together to create the rest of the trilogy.
Myers sees the team refining its work as it progresses, getting bolder and learning from the responses of audiences just how far the company can go to bring this difficult teen demographic into the theatres.
‘Fugitive’, is darker than ‘School Dance’. It is futuristic, somewhere out there off the edge of a hip hopper world. It's a very lateral take on Robin Hood. Myers describes it as "Manga-esque", meaning it draws on the idiom of Japanese comics. For ‘School Dance’, on the other hand, she references the spirit of the John Hughes films of the 80s. He's the ‘Ferris Buella’ man, ‘National Lampoon’, ‘Breakfast Club’... Hence the plays have filmic elements as well as graphic ingredients - among the many things.
"We also have made them in different periods," says Myers.
"Fugitive is set in the 90s and School Dance in the 80s.
"This last one, ‘Sleeping Girl’, is 70s - flares and hotpants. Lots of costume changes, Lots of wigs. Shudders of excitement."
It might be a modern take on ‘Sleeping Beauty’ but, like the other plays, it leaps to unexpected heights.
"We do outrageous things on stage," laughs Myers.
"There are fantastical creations. For instance a paper crane turns into a Finnish penpal."
While it is all very well devising plays for teens, Windmill has been very conscious that theatre also is a family thing. Just as its plays for juniors, the likes of its last children's hit, ‘Grug’, must also have elements to engage the parents, with these plays directed at teens, it has nodded at adult interest.
"The plays are foremost for teens but there is so much fun and drama, so much popular culture that they draw in a wider audience," says Myers. "We play to a young audience but appeal to an old one as well."
School Dance
March 12 - 16
Space Theatre
Fugitive
March 1 - 9
Space Theatre
Girl Asleep
February 28 - March 1
Space Theatre
Bookings from Bass.net.au or 131 246
Samela Harris
