Production Team
DAVID HARE - WRITER
David has written twenty-two plays for the stage and thirteen original screenplays for cinema and television. His plays include Slag (Hampstead Theatre, Royal Court and New York Shakespeare Festival), The Great Exhibition (Hampstead Theatre), Brassneck (with Howard Brenton, Nottingham Playhouse), Knuckle (Comedy Theatre), Teeth ‘N Smiles (Royal Court and Wyndham’s), The Judas Kiss (Almeida Theatre, Broadway, Company B) and Via Dolorosa
(Royal Court, Almeida Theatre, Broadway and Australia – also performed at all these venues).
For London’s National Theatre: The Bay at Nice and Wrecked Eggs; Fanshen (also at Joint Stock); Plenty, Racing Demon and The Secret Rapture (also on Broadway); A Map of the World (New York Shakespeare Festival); Murmuring Judges, The Absence of War and Skylight (Wyndham’s,Vaudeville and Broadway), Amy’s View (Aldwych), My Zinc Bed (Royal Court, Company B) and Pravda (with Howard Brenton).
Plays he has adapted for the National include Mother Courage and her Children; Pirandello’s The Rules of the Game, also for the Almeida Theatre Company, as was Brecht’s Galileo and Chekhov’s Ivanov (also at the Lincoln Center) and Platonov. He also adapted Schnitzler’s The Blue Room (Donmar Warehouse, Broadway and Theatre Royal, Haymarket). David Hare’s films for BBC television are Licking Hitler, Dreams of Hitler, Heading Home and The Absence of War. He also wrote Saigon: Year of the Cat for Thames Television.
Feature film screenplays include Wetherby, Plenty, Paris by Night, Strapless, Damage, The Secret Rapture, Via Dolorosa (also acted) and The Hours. He also directed The Designated Mourner and has written the books Writing Left-Handed, Asking Around and Acting Up.
Awards include the BAFTA Award (1979), the New York Drama Critics Circle Award (1983), the Berlin Film Festival Golden Bear (1985), the Olivier Award (1990), and the London Theatre Critics' Award (1990). In 1998 David Hare was given a knighthood for services
to the theatre.
In 2004, David Hare toured his one-man play, Via Dolorosa to Melbourne and Sydney
for newtheatricals.
NEIL ARMFIELD – DIRECTOR
Neil Armfield graduated from Sydney University in 1977 and became Co-Artistic Director of the Nimrod Theatre in 1979. He joined South Australia’s Lighthouse Theatre before returning to Sydney in 1985, where he was involved in the purchase of Belvoir St Theatre and the formation of Company B, becoming its first Artistic Director in 1994.
For Company B, he has directed Signal Driver, State of Shock, Aftershocks, Master Builder, The Diary of a Madman, Diving for Pearls, The Tempest, Ghosts, Hate, No Sugar, Hamlet, The Blind Giant is Dancing, The Alchemist, WASP, The Seagull, The Governor’s Family, As You Like It, The Judas Kiss, The Small Poppies, Suddenly Last Summer, The Marriage of Figaro, Emma’s Nose, Aliwa, My Zinc Bed, Waiting for Godot, The Underpants, The Lieutenant of Inishmore, Gulpilil and The Spook; as well as numerous joint productions including Cloudstreet, Picasso at the Lapin Agile, Dead Heart, A Cheery Soul, and Night on Bald Mountain. He has also worked extensively both in Australia and overseas with companies including Nimrod, State Theatre Company of South Australia, Queensland Theatre Company, Sydney Theatre Company, Seymour Group, Melbourne Theatre Company, Opera Australia, Welsh National Opera, Canadian Opera, Bregenz Festival, Zurich Opera, English National Opera, the Royal Opera Covent Garden, and Chicago Lyric Opera.
Neil Armfield has won numerous awards including the Sydney Theatre Critics Circle Award for Best Director and Best Production, the Major Award for Significant Contribution to Sydney Theatre (1989), several Green Room Awards, AFI Awards for Best Director (mini-series Eden’s Lost), Helpmann Awards and the Sidney Myer Performing Arts Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Performing Arts in Australia. International awards include Best Production, Dublin Festival for Cloudstreet; Best Director and Best Musical, Dora Mavor Moore Awards, Canada for Billy Budd; and Best Opera Production, Barclays Award for Billy Budd. Neil has recently finished directing the film, Candy, starring Heath Ledger and Geoffrey Rush which is currently in post-production.
BRIAN THOMSON – SET DESIGNER
An A-Z: Arcadia / Billy budd / Coriolanus / Death in Venice / the Eighth wonder / centenary of Federation ceremony / Grease / Hair / Intimate and live (Kylie Minogue 98 concert tour) / Jesus Christ superstar / King and I / Love burns / a Midsummer night's dream / Night of shadows / Sydney 2000 Olympic games closing ceremony and medal podiums / Pandora's cross / the Rocky horror picture show / Sweeney Todd (Royal Opera House 2003) / Tony award (best scenic design 1996) / Up for grabs / Voss / 2003 Rugby World Cup Opening and Closing Ceremonies / eXtremities / JekYll and Hyde / my Zinc bed
JENNIFER IRWIN – COSTUME DESIGNER
Sydney-born costume designer Jennifer Irwin has designed some of the most memorable costumes for Australian dance and theatre. Jennifer was awarded a Theatre Board (now the Australia Council) grant to study scenic design at La Scala Opera Milan, Italy. Jennifer designed the costumes for The Awakening, the Indigenous component of the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games Opening Ceremony including Cathy Freeman’s spectacular outfit for the lighting of the Olympic cauldron. She also co-designed all the costumes for the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games Closing Ceremony. Her costumes have been seen live on stage in 24 countries and before a worldwide television audience estimated at 3.4 billion for the Sydney 2000 Olympics. Her costume design commissions have included over 25 works for Graeme Murphy and the Sydney Dance Company; The Australian Ballet and all the costumes for Stephen Page’s works with Bangarra Dance Theatre. For theatre, Jennifer has designed for Company B (The Laramie Project and My Zinc Bed) and Sydney Theatre Company. She was also the designer for Jacobsen Utstick’s production of Dirty Dancing, which is currently playing in Melbourne. Jennifer designed the costumes for the Official Ceremony for the Centenary of Federation, Centennial Park (1 January 2001) and cut all the costumes for The Matrix, as well as Mission Impossible II and Red Planet. Jennifer also worked with world-renowned costume designer Terry Ryan on the film Looking for Natalie Wood.
DAMIEN COOPER – LIGHTING DESIGNER
Damien, a Sydney-based lighting designer has had the pleasure of working for many of Australia’s leading performing arts companies. His lighting designs have toured Europe, Asia and the United States. For Company B he has worked on The Chairs, The Spook, In Our Name, The Underpants, The Threepenny Opera, The Ham Funeral and The Cosmonaut’s Last Message to the Woman He Loved in the Former Soviet Union. Recent productions include: Julius Caesar, This Little Piggy, Bed, Far Away, Thyestes, Morph, The Shape of Things for Sydney Theatre Company, David Hare’s Via Dolorosa, Three Furies and Theft of Sita for Performing Lines. Grand, Some Rooms, Shades of Gray, Ellipse for Sydney Dance Company and Swan Lake and Tivoli for The Australian Ballet. Other companies he has worked with include Australian Dance Theatre, Theatre of Image, Chunky Move, Griffin Theatre and ATYP. Damien was awarded the Mike Walsh Fellowship in 2003 with which he spent three months with Director Robert Wilson in the Hampton’s New York. Damien lectures in Lighting Design at NIDA where he trained and graduated in 1996.
ALAN JOHN – COMPOSER
Alan has a long association with Company B, especially the work of Neil Armfield, composing music for his productions of The Tempest, Hate, The Diary of a Madman, Diving for Pearls, The Governor’s Family, As You Like It, The Small Poppies, Twelfth Night, Emma’s Nose, My Zinc Bed, Waiting for Godot, The Underpants and The Spook. Other work for Company B includes Richard Roxburgh’s Twelfth Night, Musical Director on The Threepenny Opera, Our Lady of Sligo and The Chairs. Other music credits for theatre include: The Government Inspector, Death and the Maiden, A Month in the Country, A Man with Five Children, A Doll’s House, Major Barbara, Harbour and Hedda Gabler (Sydney Theatre Company); Confidentially Yours (Playbox Theatre); The Winters Tale, Henry IV, Henry V, Antony and Cleopatra, Hamlet and Moby Dick (Bell Shakespeare Company). Alan also writes and orchestrates for film and television. Credits include Traveling North, Edens Lost, Bruce Petty’s Human Contraptions and the ABC mini-series The Farm, The Shark Net and Loot. His larger scale music-theatre pieces include the musical Jonah (with John Romeril), the opera for young people Frankie (with David Holman) for Come Out ‘87 and The Eighth Wonder (with Dennis Watkins) which Opera Australia premiered in 1995 and revived in 2000, winning the inaugural Helpmann Award for Best Opera. Alan also composed the original scores for the feature films Looking for Alibrandi, The Bank, which won the 2002 APRA/AGSC award for Best Music in a Feature Film and the recently released Three Dollars.
PHIL SLATER – TRUMPET
Phil Slater is a multi-award winning trumpeter and composer based in Sydney. He is the leader or co-leader of several bands including The Phil Slater Quartet and Band of Five Names, and has performed and recorded with artists including Nigel Kennedy, DIG, Archie Roach, Mike Nock and The Australian Art Orchestra. He has been a featured artist at many music festivals, including those at Montreaux, Northsea, Umbria, Montreal, Vancouver, Toronto, Copenhagen, London, Tokyo, Mexico, Seoul, Hanover, Washington D.C., and New York. As well as being awarded the 2004 Bell Award for Australian Jazz Artist of the Year, Phil was the 2003 National Jazz Award winner, and was awarded the 2002 Music Council of Australia Freedman Fellowship.
SCOTT TINKLER – TRUMPET
Australian trumpeter Scott Tinkler has been performing professionally since 1983 and is well known for his many brilliant incarnations as an ensemble player, recording and touring with such groups as The Australian Art Orchestra, Mark Simmonds Freeboppers, The Paul Grabowsky Quintet and The Dale Barlow Quintet as well as with international artists such as Mark Helias, Joe Lovano, Betty Carter, Branford Marsalis, Han Bennink, Billy Harper, Arthur Blythe, Cindy Blackman and Karaikudi R Mani. It was, however, his debut as a band leader in 1993 that really brought him to the attention of both the media and the public. His Melbourne based Scott Tinkler Quartet with Grabowsky, Rex and Lambie received rave reviews for live performances and the quartet’s two CD’s The Back Of My Head and Hop To The Cow both received ARIA nominations. In 1997 Scott received an Australia Council grant to tour Europe and America, culminating in the recording of the CD Sofa King at New York’s Knitting Factory. Scott is now lecturing at the Victorian College of the Arts and Monash University and has given master classes at the Perth, Adelaide and Brisbane Conservatoriums, Southern Cross University and the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Scott was also a guest in New York at the New School of Jazz and when in Europe gives master classes at the Den Haag Royal and Rotterdam Conservatoriums in the Netherlands.
JEREMY SILVER – SOUND DESIGN
This is Jeremy’s tenth production for Company B. He has worked on Ray’s Tempest, Little Black Bastard (part of the Life Times Three series), In Our Name, The Threepenny Opera (including the tour to Bogota, Colombia), Macbeth and My Zinc Bed. He was also the Sound Designer on Run Rabbit Run, and Assistant Stage Manager for The Lieutenant of Inishmore and Ubu. Jeremy has his own production company, Silver Productions, which produced Chicks Will Dig You for the 2003 B Sharp season. Other productions he has worked on include sound design for Morph (STC), Hamlet (Pork Chop Productions), Crazy Brave, Woyzeck, Cross Sections and This Blasted Earth (all for Old Fitzroy Theatre) and Car Gods Burn at the Q Theatre. Jeremy has also worked as the Technical Manager for Belvoir St’s Downstairs Theatre.
TOMMY MURPHY – ASSISTANT DIRECTOR
Tommy Murphy graduated from NIDA with a Postgraduate Diploma in Directing in 2004. His directing credits include Troy’s House (La Mama and The Old Fitz), Being Friends (NIDA), Happy and Clean (The Old Fitz), Bendy (ATYP) as well as various projects with SUDS and other assistant directing positions. He is currently an emerging writer in residence at Griffin Theatre Company. His writing credits include Strangers in Between (Griffin), Try Hard (NIDA), Troy’s House, The Massacre at Paris (ATYP), Bendy, For God Queen and Country (Canberra Youth Theatre, winner of STC Young Playwrights’ Award and ACT Young Writers’ Award) and as a contributing writer for 360 Positions in a One Night Stand (Kicking and Screaming for The Sydney Festival, Viscous Fish/Random Cow in Melbourne), Kinderspiel (ATYP for The Sydney Festival) and The Ozreps (The Fat, ABC TV).
JOHN HIGGINS – DIALECT COACH
Although John was born in Australia he has spent many years working in the United States and England as an actor and a dialogue director. Since returning to Australia in 1999 John has been in high demand as an American Dialect Coach. His film credits include The Quiet American, Steel Magnolias, The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, Dynasty - The Making of a Guilty Pleasure, Counter Strike and Inspector Gadget. Previously John has worked with Company B on Buried Child, My Zinc Bed, The Laramie Project and Suddenly Last Summer. Just prior to Stuff Happens John worked on the critically acclaimed and successful Hurly Burly for Griffin Theatre. John has also been the dialect coach on productions such as Saturday Night Fever, Farscape, The Price, I Ought to be in Pictures, The Rainmaker, Assassins, and numerous TV commercials.
KYLIE MASCORD – STAGE MANAGER
Kylie graduated from the Technical Production course at the National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA) in 2000. Since graduating Kylie has worked for The Paralympics Arts Festival, The Australia Day Council and Tasmania’s Ten Days On The Island Festival in varying roles from Production Assistant to Program Coordinator. Her work with Company B includes: The Laramie Project, Emma’s Nose, My Zinc Bed, Buried Child, Macbeth, The Lieutenant of Inishmore, The Fever, Run Rabbit Run, The Threepenny Opera (Festival Iberoamericano de Teatro de Bogota, Colombia), A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Gulpilil (2004 Adelaide Festival, 2004 Brisbane Festival, Company B), The Spook (Company B, Glen St, QTC) and Ray’s Tempest. Kylie is currently Resident Stage Manager for Company B.
STEWART LUKE – ASSISTANT STAGE MANAGER
Graduating in 1992 from the Theatre/Media course at Charles Sturt University, Bathurst, Stewart has worked on a range of theatre and events activities, including STC, New Theatre, The Australian Museum education unit, PACT, Sydney Festival, Phantom of the Opera, Miss Saigon, in a paddock in the Southern Highlands with Opera Australia, in the crypt of Sydney's St Mary's Cathedral, a gorilla suit for Railway Street Theatre Company, and has made a crocodile outfit for Peter Pan. He was Sydney Harbour Event Coordinator for Australia Day, production and/or stage manager for a number of South Sydney Council Mascon Festivals, and production coordinator for Tubowgule, the Opening Event of the Sydney Olympic Arts Festival. Stewart has worked at Belvoir Street Theatre with activities for Mardi Gras festivals, as well as a number of shows in Belvoir Downstairs. He is enjoying Stuff Happens, his first production with Company B.