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Black Swan is packing up and moving out! We are preparing for our move into the new State Theatre Centre of WA. Here are a few photos of the beginning of the moving process – our Wardrobe Manager Sacha is packing up the first of many boxes full of costumes from past productions.
We are extremely grateful to Crown Relocations for their help and assistance – and boxes!
Stay tuned for more details, like our new location, new contact details and the garage sale we will be having!
The judging panel for the Richard Burton Award for New Plays has been announced. The panel will be chaired by Sally Burton and will include Black Swan State Theatre Company’s Artistic Director Kate Cherry, Adam Mitchell, director of Black Swan’s HotBed Ensemble, Stephen Bevis, arts editor at The West Australian and Terri-ann White, director and publisher of UWA Publishing. Entries to the award close on Friday, 2 July 2010, and winners will be announced at Black Swan’s 2011 season launch in October 2010.
The Richard Burton Award for New Plays was established to celebrate the illustrious career Richard Burton, one of the great stars of the silver screen, and encourage great storytellers from all over Australia to develop new work. The competition is open to full length, unproduced plays which have been written in the 12 months leading up to the closing date of the Award. Plays that have been commissioned by a company are not eligible for the Award, and entrants must be 21 years of age by the closing date.
Black Swan State Theatre Company will stage a reading of the successful work, and Sally Burton’s company Onward Production and Black Swan State Theatre Company will have the first exclusive rights to produce the play for 12 months from the Award being announced. With a prize pool of $30,000, the Richard Burton Award for New Plays is one of the richest in Australia.
Sally Burton said, “I am very excited to begin the process of reading, discussing and shortlisting this year’s entries to the Richard Burton Award for New Plays. I am sure the panel will have some very lively debates about the merits of each play, but I am confident that the panel members will select a deserving inaugural winner. I have high hopes that the Richard Burton Award for New Plays will help to discover new work that will not only be seen in Perth, but on stages across Australia.”
For further information and the entry form, click here. Entries close on Friday, 2 July 2010.
One of the 2010 HotBed Ensemble actors, Austin Castiglione, is no stranger to Black Swan audiences after his role in last year’s Much Ado About Nothing. He talked to us about the HotBed Ensemble, the two productions HotBed will put on this year, and more:
Black Swan survived Perth’s worst storm in decades with over 15 windows on the northern side of our Masonic Hall smashed by hailstones. There were glass shards and hailstones flying everywhere at the height of the storm as we all huddled down in the street level entrance.
The Swimming Club had only hours before commenced rehearsing prior to the Perth season opening, ironic that only weeks before Melbourne Theatre Company lost a number of performances during its season of The Swimming Club in its new Sumner Theatre due to the storm that hit Melbourne!
Black Swan State Theatre Company and Company B are currently touring the production of The Sapphires by Tony Briggs. The Sapphires is currently playing at The Scott Theatre which is owned by the University of Adelaide and is positioned on North Terrace. Our season in Adelaide is being presented by the Adelaide Festival and State Theatre Company of South Australia (STCSA).
I flew into Adelaide on Saturday at the same time as Trent, the lighting designer. The Adelaide Fringe opened the night before but the city was still busy. Our truck had arrived on Wednesday and the set, props and costumes had been unloaded at the Adelaide Festival Centre and put into storage by the STCSA. Trent and I arrived on Sunday at the theatre to find the lighting technicians and mechanists hard at work getting the lighting rig up. The crew at The Scott
Black Swan is excited to unveil our Young Writers’ Program members! As part of our dedication to building and developing the arts in WA, this Program accepts writers who are in their first five years of professional practice.
Lead by Adam Mitchell, Director of the HotBed Ensemble, the Young Writers’ Program accepts diverse talents and guides them on playwrighting skills, building skills, and play development. The writers will also contribute to Black Swan’s literary department by reading and analysing work for the Company.
We are very excited to see what these nine writers will create and accomplish while in the Young Writers’ Program:
Here’s another blog post from me straight away! I conducted this interview with Trent Suidgeest, our lighting designer for The Sapphires a few weeks ago and thought you might be interested in it too.
You were the lighting designer for Black Swan’s HotBed Ensemble in 2009. Tell us about what you valued about the experience.
The HotBed Ensemble was a wonderful program to be involved with. The camaraderie we established by working on two productions and various workshops throughout the year was different from any other project I’ve worked on. The texts were dynamic, fresh and arty. The collaboration was invigorating because we could give the designs an edge.
Black Swan’s Education Program is off to a flying start this year with many Drama Teachers eager to have our professional actors and designers visit their students. The most popular workshops for the year so far have been Set Design and Original Solo Performance.
19 school groups and one university group attended our production of The Sapphires. We received fantastic feedback from the teachers, with many saying that their students had experienced the best theatre moment of their lives.
Black Swan are thrilled to welcome Sam Longley (Improvisation Guru) and Trent Suidgeest (Lighting Designer) to our in school workshop tutor team.
Our friends at Canton Lounge Bar have created a very special cocktail to coincide with Black Swan’s season of The Sapphires at the Playhouse Theatre. You would have guessed it … it’s called the Sapphire cocktail!
