As we head towards our final show of 2022, we turn our gazes to 2023.
Here at WLT we are so grateful to our little community who turns up every show and helps out in Front Of House or puts together a costume, works backstage or paints a set, who stage manages a production or runs our lighting or sound boards. More often than not, they're the same group of people and they really are a Community. In fact, scroll through this newsletter and read Laurie Gellon's piece on where doing a couple of plays at WLT led Bill Surtees!
Every theatre company in Victoria (in fact, all around Australia) has its own little group of people who keep the lights on. If you'd like to join our little group in 2023, there are many ways to Be Involved At WLT on our website.
Come and play with us! We promise not to make you go on stage (unless you want to!!)
Your editor,
Melanie
The cast of Around The World In 80 Days, (l to r) Andrew Wild, Travis Handcock, Kate Bowers and Keith Hutton, and then joined by director Peter Newling.
Photo courtesy of Kerry Drumm.
Season 2023
As we approach the opening of our final show of 2022, I’m sure some of you are asking, "When do we find out about WLT’s 2023 season??"
We’re pleased to announce that our season 2023 playbill be will released as part of November’s Cues & News.
Next month’s issue of this esteemed rag will contain everything you need to know including info about the plays we’re doing and how you go about booking your subscription for the 2023 season. But you can find out the first show for 2023 by reading on in THIS edition of Cues & News for its audition notice!
In the meantime, here’s a little teaser of the full year! In 2023 here’s what you can expect:
You could see two dramas, two comedies and a musical.
The oldest play we’re doing was written in 1946. The youngest in 2013.
Three of the shows were written in the USA, the other two in the UK.
WLT has only staged one play written by one of the five authors in the past.
Over the course of the year you’ll be seeing 20 female and 19 male performers (the costume department is going to be busy!!)
Major themes you’ll be seeing include infidelity, murder, religion, sport and war.
Two of the plays have been made into films. One of them twice.
Three of the shows have earned Tony Awards, for the play, the author or original cast members.
These plays will be bought to us by three female and two male directors – four of whom have directed at WLT before.
Intrigued? Excellent. Be sure to keep an eye out for your November Cues & News when all will be revealed!
As a special preview for those coming along to our final show of 2022, copies of the 2023 Playbill will be available in the foyer.
Don’t forget – we’re a small theatre. Subscriptions are processed on a first-in-best dressed basis. So make sure you get in quick to secure your preferred seats.
Auditions!
All My Sons by Arthur Miller
WLT is delighted to announce our auditions for our first play for 2023.
Synopsis:
Joe and Kate Keller are at the heart of the American dream. They have an ideal family, raising two sons, Larry and Chris, live in a modest home and own a successful business building airplane parts during World War 2. However, their dream starts to crack when their elder son goes missing in action. Kate clings desperately to the hope that he is still alive and a familiar visitor arrives to divulge secrets from the past that will tear their lives apart.
All My Sons is a moving exploration of the human condition, guilt, justice and the mistaken belief of the American Dream.
Season dates:
8 to 24 February 2023
Audition dates:
Sunday 27 November 2022, from 1pm
Monday 28 November 2022, from 7:30pm
Auditionees must contact the director via ljbishop@iinet.net.au to book an audition time and date.
Character Descriptions: JOE KELLER - late 50’s early 60’s. Husband to Kate and father to Chris and Larry. Joe is a successful self-made businessman. Easy going. Protective of his family. The biggest sin that lingers on his conscience is the lie he told to escape a prison sentence KATE KELLER - Mid 50-60’s. Wife to Joe and mother to Chris and Larry. She is a loving and devoted mother. Her life is dominated by her refusal to admit that her eldest son Larry is dead. CHRIS KELLER - 30-35. Son to Joe and Kate and brother to Larry. He is loyal, affectionate and an idealist. Chris fought in the Second World War and now works with his father. Chris is in love with Ann despite the fact that she used to be in a relationship with his brother Larry. ANN DEEVER - 25-30. Sister to George. Ann is kind-hearted but strong-minded. She used to be in a relationship with Larry but has now come to visit Chris whom she plans to marry. GEORGE DEEVER - 30-35. Brother to Ann. George fought during the War and now works as a lawyer. Now, convinced of his father’s innocence, he flies to the Keller household to stop the wedding. George’s conviction is swayed when confronted with his father’s faults and because of his affection for the Keller family. DR. JIM BAYLISS - mid 30’s-40. Husband to Sue. He lives in the house that used to belong to the Deever family. Jim is a doctor. Has a “wry humor” tinged with sadness. It transpires that he always cherished a dream of doing medical research but turned his back on it to make money in order to placate his wife, Sue. SUE BAYLISS - 30-40. Wife to Jim. A bitter, avaricious, and blunt-spoken woman, she was instrumental in persuading her husband not to pursue his dream of doing medical research and to make money to support her and their family instead. Money is a big motivator for Sue. FRANK LUBEY – 30-35. Husband to Lydia. Frank is a friendly and well-meaning neighbour but sometimes speaks without thinking. Frank is writing a horoscope for Larry at Kate’s request LYDIA LUBEY – 25-30. Wife to Frank. She used to be in a relationship with George but did not wait for him when he went to war. BERT - 8-12 years old. A local neighbourhood kid. Bert and the other neighbourhood children have got Joe’s arrest confused and now believe that he is a detective and that he has a jail in his basement. This is a story Joe encourages much to Kate’s annoyance.
All characters require an American accent and will also have to pass a Working with Children check with the Victorian Government as a condition of being cast in this production.
Audition Bookings and Inquiries:
Please contact the Director – Loretta Bishop via ljbishop@iinet.net.au
When?
Currently any Thursday or Saturday that you can make it.
Why?
To help us put together the sets you see on stage.
Learn about the mystery of the theatre - no, that's NOT really a working stove but yes, that might be running water - and watch how quickly you could help transform a bare stage into a 1920's den of iniquity or an Irish cottage or a New York apartment!
For some, it's a chance to learn some handy life skills like how to paint a wall and use a cordless drill and for others, it's a chance to teach and use those life skills.
What else?
Wear comfortable clothing and sensible shoes. You might be asked to lift or carry dirty/dusty things or paint a flat - don't do it in the outfit you want to wear out later that night!
If you do want to help the Set Construction Team create the next world for our cast and crew to play in please email our Set Construction Manager Alex Begg at abegg@wlt.org.au to let him know you're interested!
Our final show for this season Around the World in Eighty Days by Tom Hulse has been cast and is well into rehearsal and the set is coming together too.
Our wonderful cast consisting of Andrew Wilde, Travis Handcock, Kate Bower and Keith Hutton is working hard to ensure you’ll have a thoroughly enjoyable evening. Peter Newling is directing this entertaining piece of theatre having completed the final run of Brothers at the Melbourne Fringe Festival. What a busy and productive year Peter is having!
It'll soon be time for you to be thinking about your selections for season 2023 and you’ll surely enjoy the range and quality of what we have in store for you.
Once again, this past month, my exposure to theatre and drama has been at a distance from WLT as I travel.
Once again, the rain has been falling heavily and, once again, around my home has been inundated with water. It all happened whilst I was traveling in New Zealand and I have a wonderful community of caring neighbours and friends who stood out in the rain digging trenches and checking on the progress of the dispersal of the rain away from our home. We were lucky this time that it didn’t inundate the house itself as it did in January this year. My thoughts are those of gratitude to those who kept our home safe and of hope that all of you were as lucky as I was to escape damage to your home. Dorothea Mackellar’s 'flooding rains' have certainly been present.
Hoping you are all safe and dry.
Until next time,
Celia
'What ever happened to?' or Life After Willie.
By Laurie Gellon
Forty years ago, WLT mounted a famous, or perhaps infamous, production of King Lear. It was very popular, it was critically and popularly acclaimed, and it played an extended season of 21 performances from 17 July to 7 August, 1982. However, in the rehearsal period there were many problems and dramas so get someone from the production to fill you in – too much to put here! Or read the Bob Glass book 'A History of Williamstown Little Theatre 1946 to 1996' (pages 66 & 67).
I had brought in a friend, Bill Surtees, to help with lighting and he and myself also shared lighting operation during the season. He also assisted on our next production Dusa, Fish, Stas & Vi, which I directed and then he went onto further exploits. So if you ask “What ever happened to Bill Surtees”, or “What to do after learning at WLT?” here is a resume below of Bill’s theatrical life which he sent me a couple of years ago, and seemed to me to be appropriate for Cues & News now – 40 years after that turbulent and wonderful time. For some people will still remember Bill and others, I hope, will just find his adventurous tale interesting.
The photo of the three (handsome?!) fellas (L- R forgotten name, Bill Surtees, Laurie Gellon ) was taken during bump in when we took Dusa, Fish, Stas & Vi to the Waverly Festival of Theatre. It was a complex lighting show and we are all smiling because in moments of stress, I had worked out how we could have a spare lighting channel and we were over the moon because now we would not have to repatch at interval. And Bill refers to this in his resume as a life-long lesson. The other photo is from the last night party for Dusa, Fish, Stas & Vi held at Eulleen Darcy’s home and thank you again Eulleen (L – R Helen Vorrath 'Fish', Laurie Gellon Director, Bill Surtees, Paula Mc Donald 'Stas', Daniel Lillford 'The Fool' in Lear and Production Assistant on Dusa, and Allison McMichael 'Dusa').
So, whatever happened to Bill Surtees?
Dear Laurie,
First up, curse you for attaching that photo! (Laurie – the photo of the Dusa, Fish, Stas & Vi after show party) That Bill guy was so skinny and had way too much hair! Actually, I quite like the photo as it has an air of fun and cheerfulness that epitomises my memories of the time. I can remember speeding across the Westgate Bridge in my Mini trying to make rehearsals in time because I was, and still am, useless at time management.
I also have an indelible memory of one esteemed cast member making a grand entrance in King Lear to still wearing his Ugg Boots donned for protection against the bitter winter chill experienced between the green room and side of stage. To his eternal credit, he paused, turned to the wings, kicked them off and continued flawlessly as if he did it every night. I think it took me until the last act to recover my decorum!
The photo has another important facet as you described our mirth at finding we had a spare channel. I learned from the very start the value of getting the most out of what you had available and a spare channel was like a gift from God! Now we would only have to repatch 6 dimmers at interval. Oh joy! This way of frugal thinking would stick with me and look after me all through my lighting career which turned out a great deal better than I had any right to expect.
I was fortunate enough to fall in with a small sound company that needed a lighting guy, based in North Fitzroy. Thus began my inner-city era whence I absorbed more than a little about sound reinforcement, recording and even outside broadcast and camera work. I also worked casually at the Tennis Centre as load in crew and follow spot operator on some of the big international rock shows that came through. These were great fun and we got to see some of the amazing new toys that were being developed overseas and work with the guys who knew how they worked. Not to mention that sitting in a spot chair on a lighting truss 40 feet in the air overhead the likes of Pink Floyd, AC/DC and Dire Straits was pretty darned cool!
In the early 90's, I was lucky enough to spend some time on the road with Hunters and Collectors, a wonderfully rebellious and arcane indie rock band. Their records didn't bring the world to its knees but my goodness could they put on a live show! Their fans were rabid and would pack out all the pubs and clubs we did up and down the east coast, across through Adelaide and the Nullarbor to Perth. We had three crew, one sound rigger, one lighting rigger (me) and a stage guy, (Dugald McAndrew, a wonderful fellow whom you can see holding up the scorecards on SBS's RockWiz). We all had our heavy vehicle license and two would drive the truck, while the third would travel with the band. In this way I got to see an incredible amount of this wonderful country of ours, coming to appreciate it so much more than if I had stayed a city slicker.
While on a break from touring with them, I was working for a lighting hire company in Melbourne (Clearlight Shows, run by John McKissock) when I was sent down to the old Festival Hall with some additional lighting gear for a visiting British band. I duly delivered the gear, and found the lighting director was an ex-Perth fellow, who had moved to the UK. He was having more than a little trouble with a bunch of gear they had rented in Sydney for the tour so I rolled up the sleeves and dived in with him to get it going. We managed to beat it into shape just as the punters walked in and to show his gratitude he took me downstairs to catering for a feed and a beer or two.
He told me that he was working for a London lighting company that was up and coming and that it was run by a lighting guy who was determined to knock the two long standing big companies off their perch. He then made the fateful offer that, if I could get myself over there, he would put in a good word with the boss and that I had a good chance of making a good living out of what I loved doing.
Thus, I arrived at one of life's crossroads. I had just achieved my Commercial Pilots license, and had pretty much gone as far as I could in the Aussie band/concert lighting scene. Should I stay or should I go?
I decided to just jump and see what happened. (I scrounged up the money for a return ticket in case it didn't work!) Long story short, my Aussie colleague was true to his word and the company did indeed rise to knock the incumbents off their perch, over a period of several years through the nineties and early 2000s. I was privileged to be a witness to, and part, of that rise and what a ride it was! The advent of DMX moving lights, digital dimmers, lighting consoles that could control hundreds of channels. Dichroic colour changers, affordable lasers, even video screens that ran media controlled by a lighting desk!
I worked on touring rock shows with the likes of Status Quo, (perpetrators of the first album I ever bought) to Peter Gabriel, The Cure, and The Rolling Stones. They took me three times around the world in the space of five hectic years.
My lovely wife Lorna met me not that long before I moved over to London and had the courage to follow me. There she made good use of her time getting a degree in Psychology from the Uni of Westminster.
By the time she had finished her third year I had got to the point where I was tired of living out of my suitcase and while I could have made a good living out of it, the job was not going to look after me when I was old. I really felt I was going to be doing more of the same and I wasn't getting any younger, so we came back to Aus and I started working on getting my flying career under way.
I realise I have rattled on much more than is reasonable, so perhaps the next chapter leading to us being in sunny Darwin is best left to another missive.
