As we begin the slow stumble out of winter and head towards spring there's a lot going on.
Catch up on rehearsals for Citysong and the international travels of our President and members of the committee, as well as the sad loss of two stalwarts of the Williamstown community.
Hope you're staying warm and will join us in the theatre for our next production.
Your editor,
Melanie
Citysong is a beautiful, lyrical story, a celebration of a city, Dublin. It’s a city not unlike ours in many ways, with its diverse community and multitude of characters.
Its young playwright, Dylan Coburn Gray, who wrote it at the age of 22, has already won a number of awards and is considered to be someone we will hear more of. WLT is excited to be presenting its Australian Premiere and World Amateur Premiere.
This production has had some rocky moments… well, days really! However all have been resolved relatively seamlessly, even the major occurrences. We lost an actor, Afreen Khan, just at the start of rehearsals, before we’d even moved in to the theatre, who withdrew due to ill health. Her place in the cast was taken by Sonia Marcon, an actor who had cancelled her audition in early July when she contracted Covid. However, at the halfway point of rehearsals, she found that she hadn’t recovered as well as she’d thought as she was swamped by fatigue, exacerbated by an existing medical condition. We miss them both and wish them an excellent recovery, and especially Sonia who’d worked so hard and had contributed so much in her time in the cast.
We had so many warm and fast responses to an urgent SOS for actors that went out by email as well as a post on WLT’s Facebook page and we had a replacement very rapidly! Marti Ibrahim joined our rehearsals just a few days later, enthusiastic and happily undaunted by the monumental task ahead of her.
Not only that, but Rhys Carter, one of the recommended people resulting from the SOS, has joined us as a general standby in case we have an actor unable to perform during the season… insurance policy in these uncertain times. It is a potentially thankless task and we’re all so grateful to him already. Our team has embraced these two wonderful new actors. We are fortunate indeed to have them.
So… fingers and toes crossed…. we are once again in balance. While there is some (well, a LOT) of hard work ahead, everyone is committed to this beautiful play and to bringing it to life on the WLT stage. We all look forward to seeing you during our season, 7-24 September!
Tickets still available www.tickets@wlt.org.au
Please note: Citysong runs for approximately 90 minutes with no interval.
There will however be refreshments on sale pre show!
Shirley Sydenham, director
In Memoriam, George Tranter
It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of George Tranter.
George was well known to the WLT community and to Melbourne theatre for his wonderful set designs.
You might remember some of his more recent pre-covid pieces: 2015's Over The River & Through The Woods dinner parties, 2014's Farragut North where he helped director Peter Newling get an entire set of Washington DC intrigue onto the WLT stage and 2018's radio play Under Milk Wood, with a full sound studio. His most recent set design was done for Shirley Valentine.
George will be greatly missed at Williamstown and by community theatre across Melbourne. We send our best wishes and sincere condolences to his partner Paula McDonald and to his family.
Vale, George.
Williamstown Little Theatre Committee
Under Milk Wood, set design by George Tranter
In Memoriam, Maggie McInnes
Farewell, dear Maggie McInnes. A few years ago Maggie McInnes sent her friends a message.
The treatment for an illness she’d been battling for some months was no longer effective and she’d decided against having further intervention which may or may not have been successful. She wanted to go out on her own terms. As she said to me, ‘I’m 81, I’ve had a wonderful life and I feel that I’ve done the best that I could.’ Not many people would argue with that.
Well, as with Mark Twain, the reports of her death were greatly exaggerated, and Maggie continued in relatively good health until suffering a major stroke about nine months ago. Sadly, Maggie didn’t recover from the effects of the stroke and she passed away on the 14th of this month.
When we thought Maggie was dying all those years ago, I was asked to write her obituary and, rather than spend sad hours at the theatre trawling through the archives, I thought I’d get it from the horse’s mouth. I called up the list of WLT productions and Maggie and I spent a lovely few hours together as she recalled the many shows she’d been involved in. She had a funny story from most of them and they were not always complimentary. More than a few ears would have been burning!
Maggie arrived at WLT in 1970 when she was asked to direct Semi-Detached. Before that she had been directing and acting at Pumpkin, Malvern and Trak Players. Over the next few years she appeared at WLT in The Happiest Days of Your Life, Summer and Smoke, Relatively Speaking, The Odd Couple, What the Butler Saw, Charley’s Aunt, The Ballad of Angel’s Alley and in 1986, she played the title role in Stevie, winning the Best Actress Award at the Waverley Festival.
Maggie returned to play Mrs Meadows in our 1998 production of Steaming and in 2002, after a break of 32 years, Maggie directed her second play at WLT, the extremely silly Tons of Money. Maggie’s last appearance on the main WLT stage was in Amy’s View in 2002. She did appear later in Play Six and told me she was terrified that she’d forget her lines until I reminded her that she didn’t have any. And, of course, she was delighted to be back on the boards for one of our 70th Anniversary Pleasant Sunday Afternoons in 2016.
Maggie was a wonderful seamstress and until ill health slowed her down, she costumed so many shows that even she lost count. Among those were Chilling and Killing My Annabel Lee, Silly Cow, The Glass Menagerie, ‘Allo,’Allo, Biloxi Blues, Bullshot Crummond, Honk!, Rough Crossing, Three Days of Rain, Dealer’s Choice, Glorious!, Jimmy Dean, Moonlight and Magnolias, The Dixie Swim Club and The Beauty Queen of Leenane, as well as assisting on many more. She was a founding member of The Ancient Sewers of Rome.
In 2012 Maggie was made a Life Member of WLT for the wonderful contribution she made to the group.
I got to know Maggie well when I took over the organisation of the wardrobe department. One of the first things we did was throw out all the manky old curtains. After several trips down the stairs to the skip we finally thought ‘bugger this’ and started throwing them over the railing, madly yelling ‘Fore!!!’ as they sailed down in a cloud of dust.
We spent many happy, funny hours together, bickering over what we should keep or throw out. When we started cataloguing the clothing, her encyclopaedic knowledge of period and colour was invaluable, although I did draw the line when she wanted to describe a hot pink dress as ‘American Beauty’.
Goodbye dear Maggie. We will miss you very much. Thank you for being such a wise and wonderful friend to us all.
Written by Barb Hughes (with help from Maggie).
Open Letter to WLT.
Dear WLT members and friends,
By the time you read this, I shall probably be in that “Bourn from which no Traveler returns” but I wanted to take a moment or two to say to all of you how much you have meant to me. It may be a bit unusual but I’ve been given the chance to do this and I’m taking it.
The theatre has always been magic; only the creators involved know how much hard work is necessary to make the magic and there’s no shortage of them in Albert Street. Over the years, I have loved being at this theatre, whether on stage or backstage, and I’ll take with me the memory of the sheer pleasure of rehearsing to exhaustion, painting sets, making costumes, finding props, doing FOH or whatever; and all together with the most wonderful (and, sometimes, exasperating) people.
When I look back, there are fragments which stick in my mind, a panoply of delight and enjoyment, culminating in the privilege of being part of the 70th celebrations. It was wonderful to be performing that day, in front of a warm and loving audience, without the terror of forgetting lines, and re-living the past. You do that a lot when you’re 80! For one, shining moment I was young again.
So many friends. I shan’t mention names, as it’s impossible to cram them into this note and it really doesn’t matter. What does matter is the pleasure of knowing all of you, sharing experiences and enjoying your company. What does matter is the laughter (lots of that). What does matter is the way you showed me the magic of the theatre in so many ways and so many times.
Thank you for that. Love, Maggie.
Rehearsals are well underway for our next production.
Citysong by Dylan Coburn Gray and directed by Shirley Sydenham is a play that is also a lyrically poetic ode to modern day life in Dublin. It is a chorus of voices showing us three generations of a Dublin family on one day, and it turns out one day holds the entire past. There are teen discos, late night taxis, home nurses, Jewish launderettes, vigilantes, babies, immigrants, seagulls, bars …
It’s a modern-day Irish Under Milk Wood which requires an ensemble cast who will inhabit a multitude of different characters throughout the play, all linked by the narrator who will guide us all through Dublin's fair city.
The director, cast and crew have been working tirelessly and the production will surely warm your hearts and be another balm for your soul during these last weeks of what has been a very cold and wet winter. Aren’t we all happy to now have the inside loos and a great heating system?
Congratulations are due to our WLT members who travelled to Edinburgh for the Fringe festival where they bumped in and bumped out every evening the production of Brothers. Congratulations Emma Hunt, Kerry Drumm, Peter Newling, Liam O’Kane and Daniel O’Kane- you certainly took the Fringe by storm.
What a blast the Edinburgh Fringe is! The Royal Mile was a buzz of street theatre, hawkers of theatre possibilities and just plain madness. For three weeks in August, the city of Edinburgh welcomes an explosion of creative energy from around the globe.
Artists and performers take to hundreds of stages all over the city to present shows for every taste. From big names in the world of entertainment to unknown artists and around 240 events from which to choose. The festival includes theatre, comedy, dance, physical theatre, circus, cabaret, children's shows, musicals, opera, music, spoken word, exhibitions and events. Exhilarating and exhausting for me as an audience member I can’t imagine how tired Liam O’Kane will be having done two shows back-to-back each night for over a week and still performing one of them. The Fringe goes until August 29.
My trip to the home of “the Bard” was equally exhilarating. Not just to be near and around where Shakespeare had been but also to see the RSC production of Richard III. I hadn’t realized how funny it could be and again the audiences were enthusiastic and young. Again giving me great faith that theatre is well and truly alive and active.
Arthur Hughes played the unscrupulous Richard of Gloucester, and his climb to the top and his tyrannical actions leading to the unraveling of it all were truly splendid to behold- a standing ovation no less at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre. Talk about a surfeit of theatre! And since I’ve been home, I’ve managed to be at the Anglesea Players One Act play Festival celebrating its 30th year and MTC’s Laurinda.
We certainly are lucky here in Melbourne to have the opportunity to see and participate in such a wide variety of productions and theatrical experiences.
Not long now before we can see Citysong - I hope you’ve got your tickets.
Until next time,
Celia
Lost & Found
(in the theatre after Shirley Valentine!)
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