The programme includes two new premieres and begins with a jazz album launch from Jamie Oehlers and Paul Grabowsky.
Canberra’s leading creative company, The Street Theatre, has revealed an exciting 2016 season filled with music and new drama that begins this weekend.
The programme launches this coming Sunday with The Burden of Memory, an album launch and concert presented by leading Australian jazz saxophonist Jamie Oehlers in collaboration with inimitable pianist Paul Grabowsky. The two travelled to New York to record the album of original works alongside drummer Eric Harland and bassist Reuben Rogers, and the pieces – each based on the theme of memory – will receive their first live performance on Sunday 6 March. “Memory can hold us back, it can be a weight that cements us to a place in time, not allowing the presence needed to progress,” said Oehlers of the title track. “At times it seems we just need to press the reset button and start anew.”
The Street Theatre will also present four full theatrical works this year, including two brand new premieres. The Faithful Servant, written by Tom Davis, will take to the stage for the first time in September under the direction of the Theatre’s artistic director Caroline Stacey. “It’s a play about foreign aid, former colonies and conflict between generations and NGOs and their relationship to the poor and asks, ‘What does it mean to be good?’” said Stacey in an interview with the Sydney Morning Herald.
Stacey will also direct the November premiere of Cold Light, a story capturing the history of Australia’s political scene from the Menzies era to the Whitlam government. “The work features fictional characters as well as areal people,” she explained. “It’s the story of a generation of Australian women wanting to pursue their dreams.”
Two festivals will run during the year: Segue in May, which examines the cultural relationship between Europe and Australia, and the Capital Jazz Project in June. Segue will include a performance of Justus Neumann’s Alzheimer Symphony, in which an elderly character performing in a production of King Lear begins to forget his lines on stage.
Also on offer in 2016 is Raoul Craemer’s Pigman’s Lament, an amusing and engaging psychological thriller set in Canberra that will be directed by Adelaide’s Paulo Castro in June. The Sonnets Out Loud & Imprinted will take place on April 30 and May 1, marking the 400th anniversary of the death of William Shakespeare. Actor William Zappa and counter-tenor Tobias Cole will perform all 154 of Shakespeare’s sonnets live, with musical accompaniment.
For more information and tickets for The Street Theatre’s 2016 season, please visit their website.
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