Mongrel 2023

Credits

Program Note

Program Note from Music Theatre Mentor

Mongrel is a performance-making collaboration between Music Theatre and Interactive Composition students, presented annually since 2016. Each year, Peter Farnan and I provide a variety of prompts to the cohort and then we stand back and watch in wonder at what emerges from the crucible. What is most exciting is when the students provoke us (along with themselves) to think about the form in new ways, or to consider ways of experiencing the world we have not encountered before.
For some students, Mongrel is their first foray into making work. For Music Theatre students particularly, it’s a chance to explore their own voices — what do I want to make, what do I want to say? Some will continue making work throughout their careers, in cabaret, in theatre, in music. Sometimes the collaboration between Music Theatre students and Interactive Composition students produces lasting professional relationships.
It is always a pleasure to work with such talented students, from both cohorts. Watching them create work that reflects their interests, their anxieties, their enthusiasms and their energy is exhilarating. Our task now is to deliver the work to you, our audience, so you can become as exhilarated as we are.

— Maude Davey

Program Note form Interactive Composition Mentor

These composers are interactive. They do not sit, isolated, in musty artist garrets or academic ivory towers. They intersect with styles, genres, methodologies, practices, life, politics, identities and all the energies and modalities that a culture has coursing through it. Mongrel is the kind of high speed, hard-to-pin-down beast that suits the interactive composition approach. Here our composers must collaborate with openness, generosity, spontaneity and speed; 6 weeks from meeting their fellow devisors for the first time to opening night… and who knows what they might be making? In these times of regressive and reactionary trumped up culture wars we need artists who are adaptable and can show us how to imagine beyond tired binary divisions. Art can’t change the world but it can help people feel and maybe this might dissolve the membrane that divides us.

— Peter Farnan

Program

Meet us at the clocks

Flinders Street station never sleeps, but are you awake to Flinders Street station? Zoom in on the stories that happen behind your back or even in front of your eyes on your daily commute. Long standing rivalries, educational opportunities, scintillating love stories and imminent revolutions unfolding within arms reach but you haven’t even noticed… have you?

Created and performed by Teddy Burgess, Ellie Carroll, Remy Castan, Robert Feher, Liam Harper and Erin Sherlock, Tymyka Wines. Starring special guest Sam Brew.

MARS ATTACKS THE HUMAN PSYCHE: AN UNAUTHORISED SEQUEL

What you are about to see is raw, uncut footage of [PROPERTY OF AREA 51]. For the full viewing experience, please [REDACTED] and take off your [TOO HOT TO PRINT]. Something for the whole family; graphic historical re-enactments, an all-encompassing feeling of doom, Communism, and the harrowing fact that we are all living in a [NICE TRY]. Guaranteed to leave you searching for intelligent life!

Book and [MEDIOCRE]  performance lovingly conceived and home-birthed by Ash Garner, Henny Walters and Julia Sterrett.

Score, lyrics and [MARGINALLY BETTER] performance plucked from the collective womb of Brianna Dahlstrom, Dean Elliott, Thomas Fernando and Mq Iser-Smith.

Direction and casting rescued from the forest and nursed to health in a log cabin by Kylie Minogue.

MISSED THE MEMO

They say ‘Communication is key’. This comedy (or tragedy) of errors explores the ways we try to connect with one another. All fun and games until one finds themselves stuck in the relationsheet…

Rising Jazz artist, Connie Lingus performs her one-woman cabaret (or so she thinks) for the audience at The PussyCat Club. Supported by her band members, let’s see how the performance plays out…

TV sensation, Helen DeSelfishness invites diva Connie onto her popular talk show to discuss the outcome of Connie's performance… but that’s not all she wants…

DING!

Two friends are hit with devastating news… maybe a shopping centre wasn’t the best place to drop this bomb…

Created and performed by Chloe Stojanovic (MT), Grace Laing (MT), Laura Joy Bunting (MT), Lewis Nicolson (IC), Max Reina- Henriksen (IC), Merrick Craven (IC), Sam Brew (IC) and Will Thomas (MT).

The Troupe

Creating new works can be difficult. There’s no funding for the arts and everyone wants to watch content they already know. Enter the Grant Street Troupe! Bringing you snippets from 5 brand new musicals making their World Debut before your very eyes, they’ll introduce you to concepts you didn’t know you needed to see, and some that maybe you didn’t even want to. Original content like no other - are you ready?

Tonight’s Billing:

1. Dentistry’s Child

2. Traffic Lights

3. Lights, Camera, Hostage

4. Dogs: The Musical

5. RENT inspection

Written, performed and composed by Ellie Chan, Kristen Robertson, Justin Gray, Lili Wymond, Julian Smith-Gard, Archie Cumper, Qinghua Tan and Lachlan Rae.

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