Council announces 2019 At Home line up

Mount Alexander Shire Council has announced the full line up of the 2019 At Home residency program with 11 residencies at the Phee Broadway Theatre in Castlemaine.

At Home provides industry development opportunities for local creatives through three different types of residencies: Create At Home, Play At Home and Exhibit at Home.

At the launch on Monday, families and creatives were given a sneak peek at instruments and sound devices from Sonic Labyrinth, the first At Home residency project for the year.

Council partnered with the Castlemaine State Festival to support the site-specific project developed by Aviva Endean and Justin Marshall for young people between 9 and 13 years.

A partnership project with Punctum Inc.’s Seedpod program was revealed, which will bring one of Australia’s most innovative performance artists, Central Victorian choreographer and animator Dr Megan Beckwith, to the theatre in April.

Parralax is a contemporary dance work that integrates human movement, animation and 3D illusions, promising to be a daring dance and digital technology experience.

The other four intensive Create At Home residencies include:
- Deep Space, an immersive experience combining spoken word and musical sound-scapes by Tegan Gigante
- The Language My Mother Speaks, in which Samantha Bews will transform the venue into several rooms to explore themes of dementia and personhood
- A Coffee Cup, by Mark Penzak, bringing participants together for rapid-fire engagements challenging the notion of private conversation in public spaces, and
- Ghosts in the Kitchen, an Isben play reimagined by the Pricking Thumbs Collective who will bring forth his futuristic visions using improvisation, heated arguments, anecdotes and remembrances.

For Play At Home, Jeff Jones from Hobo Playhouse will be running classes for Method Acting throughout the latter part of 2019, with classes culminating in a public performance.

Council is also delighted to announce the Exhibit At Home program, including:
- Presto! by emerging artist Helen Heydon with her work on canvas with recycled materials
- A group show by artists living with a disability thanks to Asteria Services in Maryborough
- Stage Face by Natalie Waters celebrating our talented local community, and
- A photography exhibition to celebrate 30 years of operations for Over the Moon Yoga and Dance Studios in Castlemaine.

“The opportunities through At Home have been fully embraced by our community,” said Vicki Anderson, Cultural Development Officer, Mount Alexander Shire Council.

“The quality and scope of applications for this year’s program have demonstrated a desire to rethink how we activate our public spaces. We can’t wait to give them the keys,” she said.

For more information about At Home visit www.pheebroadwaytheatre.com.au.

Image: Nine-year-old Estella enjoys the experience of Sonic Labyrinth during the At Home launch. (Photo: Diana Domonkos).

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Mount Alexander Shire Council’s At Home program was first made possible through support from the Regional Centre for Culture 2018.

Following the success of eight intensive residency projects in 2018, the latest program provides industry development opportunities for local creatives through three types of residencies:

CREATE AT HOME
Intensive theatre residencies, running for three weeks each.

PLAY AT HOME
One residency over 12 regular weekday sessions.

EXHIBIT AT HOME
Four exhibitions within the Theatre Foyer, running for six weeks each.

Sonic Labyrinth
Produced by Justin Marshall and Aviva Endean
Developed in partnership with Castlemaine State Festival 2019
In residence 4 – 24 March 2019
Performances 23 and 24 March, 2019

Aviva Endean and Justin Marshall share a deep fascination with sound and interactive artworks, focusing on creating spaces for deep listening as well as the playful engagement of the audience.

Sonic Labyrinth invites you into an immersive and interactive journey. Each turn uncovers the possibility for new ways of creating unusual experiences with sound and special listening devices that enable you to hear sounds on the edge of perception. The journey will have opportunities for solitary, intimate and collective sound-making, and reflects on the age-old uses of the labyrinth for problem-solving, accessing creativity, transformation and celebration. Suitable for children 9-13 years.

Parallax
In partnership with Punctum Inc.’s Seedpod Program
In residence 8 – 19 April 2019
Showing 11 April, 2019

Punctum Inc.’s Seedpod program has been supporting artists in residence for over ten years. Following the partnership project RESTORE in 2018, this year one of Australia’s most innovative performance artist, Melbourne based choreographer and animator Dr Megan Beckwith, will CREATE AT HOME in April.

Megan’s project Parralax is a contemporary dance work that integrates human movement, animation and 3D illusions, promising to be a daring dance and digital technology experience. The AT HOME development showing and audience feedback event leads into the work being presented as part of Regional Arts Victoria’s and Victorian Association of Performing Arts Centre’s 2019 Showcase event in May.

Deep Space
Produced by Tegan Gigante
In residence 24 June – 14 July, 2019
Performances TBC

Deep Space aims to provide audiences with the opportunity to engage with an immersive, embodied experience, combining spoken word and musical sound-scapes in an atmospheric setting.

The project is concerned with transforming poetry - usually an individual, analytical, process of reading on the page - to an immediate, shared and heard experience. The collaboration with musicians will incorporate feeling and tone, drawn directly from the words and taking the listener on a journey through feeling and imagination.

The Language My Mother Speaks
Produced by Samantha Bews
In residence 15 July – 4 August, 2019
Performances TBC

The Language My Mother Speaks will be the third major project created by Samantha on the themes of dementia and personhood. The project will be a collaborative project between Samantha (theatre artist), Denise Martin (film maker and photographer) and Tim Preston (lighting design and production management).

This project jumps into the territory of consciousness and takes as its starting point the artist’s impressions of the last year of her mother’s life as she lived in a state of advanced dementia. The Phee Broadway Theatre will be transformed into many rooms of consciousness to create an installation ‘mansion’ that the audience will walk through.

A Coffee Cup
Produced by Mark Penzak
In residence 13 January – 2 February 2020
Performances TBC

A Coffee Cup is a ten-minute mini play that explores private conversations conducted in public spaces.

The audience – who are first invited to order a cup of coffee as if in a café – will sit at one of four tables in groups of three or four where an actor is seated. The actor will talk to them as if they’re old friends sharing a confidence, with each actor telling a different story. The whole event runs for 90 minutes with the audience arriving throughout, getting their coffee and joining the first available table. The audience’s attention is centred on their own table but they’ll overhear fragments from the other’s – some loud and boisterous, others quiet and sad.

Ghosts in the Kitchen
Produced by Pricking Thumbs Collective
In residence 3 – 23 March 2020
Workshops and performances TBC

Following two weeks of experimental script development and three open public inter-active workshops, a new group-developed play will emerge. Ghosts in the Kitchen will see this well-established group of thesbians bring Ibsen’s words and his futuristic visions into a limited space, found though improvisation, heated arguments, anecdotes and remembrances. Isben’s themes have touched each of their lives and they consider that 140 years later, the ghosts are their own and of this society, and they still haunt us.

Presto!
3 April – 12 May, 2019

Helen Heydon is a self-taught artist who has been developing and refining her style through experimentation over the last 5 years.

Helen’s inspiration comes from bright natural colours and the forms and shapes that occur naturally in the environment. As well as canvas work, Helen recycles homewares (glassware, coasters, dinner settings), transforming them into colourful and unique objects.

Articulating Our Art
15 May – 2 June

ASTERIA Services is a Not for Profit, Disability Service located in Maryborough. This year, Asteria’s theme is telling a story using paints and their clients are supported to express their thoughts, feelings and passion through paint colours. All works are completed by the artists themselves, with the only interventions being prompts and hand over hand or as required, for example to open a new paint bottle.

The body of completed works from Asteria have been displayed at Central Goldfields Art Gallery and are now coming to the Phee Broadway Theatre, Castlemaine.

Stage Face
26 June - 4 August, 2019

Natalie Waters will present Stage Face, a show celebrating the creativity, vibrancy and strength of our arts community. Natalie has deep appreciation of our local creative talent and contribution, recognising that the face of Castlemaine would be very different without them.

Natalie will include actors, artists, musicians, writers and performers.

Over the Moon for 30 Years
7 August – 15 September, 2019

This exhibition will celebrate Over the Moon Yoga and Dance Studio’s 30 years of operation in Castlemaine.

Photographs captured by numerous local photographers over the past 30 years in the studio, at community events and during performances will be on display to celebrate the development of the studio from the very first classes held in the foyer of the Town Hall to the now bustling purpose-built studios on Templeton Street.