Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre presents a La Mama Theatre/Fortyfive downstairs production
Bare Witness
This critically acclaimed play, fresh from its sell-out Melbourne premiere season, comes from a stellar Australian cast and award winning creative team.
A talented young Australian woman, frustrated as a cadet news photographer covering court cases and racing fashions, discovers her destiny is to take photos in dangerous places. At a point when thrusting the camera between herself and her subjects ceases to protect her, photographs, memories and dreams collide in her search for meaning and the pieces of herself lost to years in the field, as we follow a pack of complicated flawed characters who share the unbreakable bond of war journalists.
Set in the Balkans, East Timor and Iraq, against the complex terrain of contemporary photojournalism, Bare Witness explodes the way we view our humanity – through the fragmenting lens of the media. An entertaining and highly physical piece of theatre.
Shortlisted for the Patrick White Award in 2008 and winner of the R.E.Ross Trust Award.
Writer: Mari Lourey
Director: Nadja Kostich
Performers: Isaac Drandic, Daniela Farinacci, Adam McConvell,
Todd Mac Donald and Maria Theodorakis
Designer: Marg Horwell
Musician/Composer: Jethro Woodward
Lighting Design: Emma Valente
Video Design: Michael Carmody
“...an amazing dramatic collage describing the exhilaration, the horror, the outrage, the anguish and the dread hopelessness of combat-zone photography.....a beautiful theatrical immersion, a dramatic meeting of presence, movement and arrangement...the kinds of risks that we don’t see enough of”. Andrew Fuhrmann, Crikey.com
“...an outstanding piece of physical theatre: a punishing, sensually immersive investigation of trauma that never forgets to be intelligent...an overwhelming work...ambitious, smart, beautifully realised theatre.” Alison Croggon, Theatre Notes
“....a strikingly original work....you don’t see this kind of passion for a project often – unwavering and powerful...serious theatre with unrelenting fervour...strong performances across the board with an unselfconscious and evocative physicality”. Prue Bentley, ABC Arts Online
A La Mama Theatre/fortyfivedownstairs production. Toured by Performing Lines for Road Work, with the support of the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body, through the national performing arts touring program, Playing Australia and La Mama’s Vic Health ‘Arts About Us’ program.
