MTC mourns John Sumner

We are deeply saddened to announce that our founder and longest-serving Artistic Director, John Sumner AO CBE passed away on Friday 24 May after a brief illness, aged 88 years.

MTC Chairman Derek Young said ‘John Sumner’s contribution to Australian theatre is unparalleled. As founder of Australia’s first professional theatre company, he championed the development of Australian voices and writing in theatre. His passion, energy and tough professionalism set the standard and have been an inspiration for his successors. To this day he was a regular and enthusiastic theatregoer with tickets to attend our NEON Festival.’

‘Our deepest condolences go out to his family at this time,’ he said.

Brett Sheehy, Artistic Director said ‘As MTC celebrates its 60th anniversary year, we pay tribute to John’s outstanding abilities as a director, designer and administrator. His vision set the foundations for the creativity and diversity of talent that still thrills, confronts and entertains us today. He will be sadly missed by us all.’

Originally known as the Union Theatre Repertory Company (UTRC) and later, Melbourne Theatre Company, John Sumner founded the Company in 1953 and directed its first production, Jean Anouih’s Colombe. He served as Artistic Director between 1953-1955 and 1959-1987 and during that time directed more than a hundred productions and encouraged the development of two generations of Australian playwrights including Ray Lawler, Alan Seymour, Alexander Buzo, John Romeril, Jim McNeil, Nick Enright, John Power and David Williamson to name just a few. John directed the first production of Ray Lawler’s Summer of the Seventeenth Doll, a much-loved favourite which continues to thrill audiences in productions today.

The Company he established became a model for every successful state theatre company and set the standard for Australian theatre in presenting a mix of the best plays from Australia and overseas to a large subscriber base.

As Artistic Director, he oversaw the expansion of the Company from the Union Theatre to Russell Street and on to Arts Centre Melbourne in 1984. Opened in January 2009, our own Southbank Theatre has its largest theatre, The Sumner, named in tribute to him.

Born in England in 1924, John Sumner moved to Australia in 1952. He served in the British Merchant Navy in the Second World War before moving into stage management with H M Tennent theatres in London’s West End. Following his first season with UTRC, he briefly moved to Sydney to manage the Elizabethan Theatre Trust, but soon returned to Melbourne.

He is survived by his two daughters, Alice and Victoria.

Download the full media release as a PDF.

NEON Festival: The Great Debate

On Friday night we had the first Opening Night of NEON Festival of Independent Theatre. If you have been following our Facebook, Twitter or Instagram you would have seen us getting into the spirit of NEON so naturally we were excited to see the kind of work the first independent company, Daniel Schlusser Ensemble, would create. Without any curatorial control from MTC, these works could be as confronting, controversial, outlandish and outspoken as they wanted to be. Either way, it was going to be thrilling theatre.

Menagerie. Photo by Sarah Walker.

And like all groundbreaking and innovative art it has caused quite the discussion:

The Australian’s Chris Boyd said Menagerie was "a remarkable cubist portrait of [Tennessee] Williams”, likening it to "one of those holographic illusions that quiver between states".

Online contemporary theatre site Theatre Press also enjoyed the piece, calling Menagerie a "daring exploration of the essence of a life" that "created sublime theatrical experiences".

Alison Croggon, ABC Arts Online's Theatre Critic at Large and former Theatre Notes blogger, tweeted post show "#mtcNEON. Brilliant opening of the indie season with MENAGERIE from @DanielSchlusser. Stunning. Bar set high." and a day later reflected, "Still thinking about MENAGERIE at @MelbTheatreCo last night. Beautiful, uncompromising, lacerating."

But Cameron Woodhead from The Age didn't find the show so enjoyable: “Daniel Schlusser is a director with a good eye, and his last adaptation of a classic - Ibsen's A Doll's House - brilliantly translated the play to the 21st century. Alas, Menagerie does not do this, and the result is a hideous traducement of Williams' art."

Interesting theatre generates robust discussion so we'd love to hear your thoughts. Below are some of the tweets appearing on the NEON feed. Come join the conversation!

"Then saw Menagerie. A venom filled mess of awesomeness. Crafted with a scalpel. Go see it. Short season." 

"Menagerie by @DanielSchlusser is a show that makes you want to talk to perfect audience strangers about what just happened to you all." 

"Menagerie at #mtcNEON - one of the worst 'plays' I've ever seen in my life." 

"MENAGERIE #MTCNeon Amazing!"   

"#mtcNEON. Make sure you book for all 5; no excuses. MENAGERIE is on now - it's stunning. It was worth missing the Eurovision semi final for."

Rehearsal diary: One Man, Two Guvnors - Part Three

It's not long until Opening Night of One Man, Two Guvnors in Melbourne. Here's the third and final entry from the original One Man, Two Guvnors rehearsal diary in which the cast are rehearsing with real props and food, and testing out the action on stage.

Week Six
During our last week of rehearsals, four-piece band The Craze joins the cast in the rehearsal room so we can hone the scene changes and practise the songs. All this is designed to make the transition into the technical rehearsal in the theatre as smooth as possible. 

The rehearsal props, furniture and bits of costume are gradually replaced by the real things (called ‘actuals’). Most importantly, real food for the dinner scene is tested. We have two full run-throughs of the show which audiences are invited to attend and Rehearsal Room Two is full to the seams with 100 students squeezed in. 

We use their reaction to gauge when a scene is too long, when the plot isn’t clear and when the action isn’t funny enough. New sets of rewrites and cuts are introduced after each run.

The Craze (l-r Billy Stookes, Richie Hart,
Philip Murray Warson, Oliver Seymour-Marsh) . Photo by Tristam Kenton.

Technical Rehearsal
The ‘tech’ proves to be a relatively smooth process, especially when considering the complexity of the show’s design; a live band, sliding flats, flying flats, trapdoors, automation (which transports the microphones from substage to stage level). Over three days, we work through the whole play; often running complicated sequences (such as scene changes) several times. Paul Arditti, the sound designer, has a complicated job as he has to mix the band and singers for each musical number in order to get an attractive aural balance, as well as providing direct sound effects. 

There are some complications such as the automation system, which makes a loud whirling noise which distracts from the dialogue when the mics are moved at the end and beginnings of scenes. It is decided in previews to only cue the automation after the dialogue has finished, and Grant Olding, the composer, has to extend the music to allow the mics time to travel before the singer is due to begin. 

Another major issue is the two doors, located on either side of the stage. These are used in most scenes and the action requires a lot of them. (Farces, or plays with farcical elements, are notorious for their reliance on doors). In different scenes they have to open in a different directions (denoting external locations where doors open inwards, and internal rooms where doors open outwards), they are frequently slammed and crashed against by actors, must stay firmly shut once closed, but not be so heavy that the cast has trouble operating them. At several times during the tech the doors don’t go according to plan. Eventually, the decision is made to give the actors a tech session off (3 hours) in order to allow the production team to fit new lighter, but sturdier, doors, with more reliable catches. 

At the end of the tech, there are two dress rehearsals which go very well; although the decision is taken to change some sections of action and the cast have to implement changes in front of an audience during the first preview.

This article was written by Adam Penford and first appeared in National Theatre's Education background pack for One Man, Two Guvnors.

The National Theatre's production of One Man, Two Guvnors is playing at Arts Centre Melbourne, Playhouse from 17 May to 22 June.

Feature: Pacharo Mzembe

With a string of theatre and screen roles under his belt, Pacharo Mzembe returns to the MTC stage early next month in Solomon and Marion. Here he talks to Paul Galloway about the particular dialectic challenges of his role.

Actor Pacharo Mzembe

Pacharo Mzembe reckons he has an ear for accents, and it’s a good thing he does. Since leaving NIDA a few years ago and working across a range of theatre, film and television, he has only used his natural accent
once.

‘Just once, in the film Summer Coda a couple of years ago,’ he says. ‘I went for the audition while I was working on Rockabye [at MTC] and did all the lines with an African accent, which is what I thought they wanted. As I was leaving I said thank-you very much, and they heard the Aussie accent. Then did the whole thing again in my natural accent and got the role.’

Although he so rarely plays Australians, Pacharo calls himself an Australian actor. And down the phone he certainly sounds like one, with a standard Aussie accent and a youthful, relaxed manner. Now in his mid-twenties, he was just five years-old when his family arrived here as political refugees from Malawi. His father opposed the interminable, erratic and bloody dictatorship of Hastings Banda and the family fled to Zimbabwe, where Pacharo was born. The Mzembes eventually settled in south-east Queensland.

At Ipswich Boys Grammar, where he also excelled in sport, Pacharo found he had a taste and aptitude for acting. A scholarship in his final year to the Australian Acting Academy made him think seriously about it as a career. Acting seemed a cool thing to do: ‘The role models were around, you know. There was Denzel [Washington], Wesley Snipes, Eddie Murphy, a lot of these guys.’

But those guys were American. One thing Pacharo’s tutors drummed into him at NIDA, where he had been accepted straight out of school, was that jobs for Australian actors were scarce, but jobs for African-Australians would be rare. But he’s done all right so far. Although he took the precaution of flying to LA to get an agent and plant a foot in the door, the good roles here have landed with pleasing regularity. On top of recurring characters in Underbelly Razor and Terra Nova on television, he has played on stage a British journalist in Joanna Murray-Smith’s Rockabye at MTC and a Nigerian priest in Gwen in Purgatory for Belvoir and Malthouse. He is currently gearing up to play a young South African man in Solomon and Marion.

Pacharo onstage with Nikki Wendt in Rockabye (2009)

To our ears, this might seem to require some sort of standard ‘African accent’, but Pacharo knows how distinct each African accent really is. He’ll have to do his research.

‘Oh, yeah, there are differences within countries,’ he says about the myriad forms of African English. ‘Africa is tribal and, although they will unite and call themselves Africans when they have to, on the ground there are massive cultural differences between peoples. South Africa is a particular case in that respect, because there are Zulu and Xhosa, and these tribes see themselves as very different.’

When speaking English, Malawians and Xhosa have distinct accents.

‘There is an influence of the Dutch that you can hear. But mainly the accent is more sing-song, because the Zulu and Xhosa languages are more rhythmic compared to the short, sharp sounds you get in the north.’

On top of that, his character speaks a fair number of lines in Xhosa, a completely foreign language to Pacharo. ‘Yeah, that’s going to be intense for me, because it includes those clicks,’ he says, demonstrating the characteristic Xhosa tongue on palate snap. ‘People where I’m from don’t have those clicks and don’t speak from the throat as much as the Xhosa guys do. My mum helped me out with a bit of it, because she’d picked some of it up. But I’ll need a coach, or some sort of native speaker to get it right.’

Most of the time, Pacharo takes a pragmatic view of having to play so many Africans. ‘That’s good for me,’ he says. ‘I am African and obviously I can easily play African characters. That’s my advantage. But there comes a point where you feel that the people who are casting are not looking too far out of the box. They have pretty narrow vision. They work in stereotypes a bit and leave me out. That gets a bit frustrating. Obviously that happens in America, too; you get it everywhere. I just have to understand that as an actor and make it work for me.’

Solomon and Marion is playing at Arts Centre Melbourne, Fairfax Studio from 7 June to 20 July.

#mtcNEON Instagram Competition

NEON is only two weeks away! In the lead up to the Festival, we are giving you the opportunity to win a double NEON Pass - that's two tickets to each of the five 2013 NEON productions!

To enter, all you have to do is take a photo of something neon, post it on Instagram with the hashtag #mtcNEON and mentioning @MelbTheatreCo, then share a copy with us via email (offers@mtc.com.au).

Make sure you submit your photo by Sunday 12 May, 2013. NEON Managing Producer Martina Murray will judge the best photo alongside a member of DANIEL SCHLUSSER ENSEMBLE and the winner will be announced on Wednesday 15 May, 2013.

Need some inspiration? The staff at MTC are getting excited about our inaugural Festival of Independent Theatre, and some of them are really getting into the spirit of NEON. Here's an example from NEON Managing Producer Martina Murray:

We're looking forward to seeing what you can come up with!

Terms and Conditions


1. This competition commences at 10:00am on 7 May, 2013 and closes on at 11:59pm on 12 May, 2013.. 
2. The winner will receive a double NEON Pass (a double pass to each of the five 2013 NEON productions) valued at $200. Tickets are subject to availability. 
3. Entrants must submit photo of something neon via Instagram, mentioning @MelbTheatreCo and #mtcNEON in their caption. They must then share the photo with offers@mtc.com.au either via Instagram or with a web link.
4. Any entries that contain offensive material will be removed from the competition. 
5. Entries must be original photographs or images, created and shot by and/or featuring you. The image must not have been previously published, released or distributed in any form. The entry must not have been entered into any other drawing or competition nor won any award. Modification of an existing image does not count as original.
6. Submitted images must not infringe the copyright, trademark, privacy, publicity, or other personal or proprietary rights of any person or entity. 
7. By submitting an entry you are responsible for receiving express consent of any identifiable persons appearing in the image to their likeness being used. If the subject of the photo is under the age of majority, written consent and a signature of a parent or legal guardian is required and can be sent to info@mtc.com.au with the Instagram user's name. 
8. This competition is a game of skill - chance plays no part in determining the winner. 
The competition will be judged by the following criteria: photographic quality (20%), artistic quality of the images (20%), originality (20%); creativity (20%); response to the theme and rules (20%). 
9. MTC reserves the right to exclude any entry from the competition, at any time, and no correspondence regarding the exclusion will be entered into. 
10. The most creative entry will be selected by NEON Producer Martina Murray alongside a member of DANIEL SCHLUSSER ENSEMBLE on Monday 13 May, 2013. 
11. The winner will be contacted via email, and announced via Melbourne Theatre Company's social media channels on Wednesday 15 May 2013.
12. The winner must then contact MTC to arrange their prize, by calling (03) 8688 0900 or sending an email to info@mtc.com.au 
13. Failure to contact MTC regarding the prize before Thursday 16 May will result in a reselection of the winner. If reselection occurs, the new winner will be announced on Friday 17 May 2013.
14. This competition is open to Australian residents over the age of 18 only. MTC staff and their immediate families, as well as those involved with NEON Festival and any of the events and productions included, are not eligible for the prize. 
15. The supply or submission of any content to the Melbourne Theatre Company grants Melbourne Theatre Company the right to use or publish the content or ideas contained in the content without consideration to the submitter.