CRACK 2011 – A HISTORY OF IMAGES
THE 2011 CRACK TEAM
Festival Directors: Gareth Hart, Jane Grimley and Ben Packer
Festival Coordinator: Gulsen Ozer
Production Manager: Liam Kennedy
Production Crew: Annabelle Green, Rosemary Johnson
Designer: Annabelle Drinkwater
Design Team: Aliki Boyd, Alicia Mathieson and Robyn McPherson
Social Media Campaign Manager: Rowan McDonald
CRACK 2010 – A HISTORY OF IMAGES
Images by Holly Orkin
The 2010 Crackhouse was located at Cielo’s, 102 King Street, Newcastle (the Old Masonic Lodge and the 2009 Festival Club). The Lodge of Lounge, the Lodge of Research, the Lodge of Instruction and the Grand Lodge were all contained within the Crackhouse.
CRACK 2010 SPECIAL EVENTS
YEAR 12 FORMAL
The Entire Crackhouse
On Sunday night, the Crackhouse will bear witness to an event of tremendous significance: YOUR YEAR 12 FORMAL. Amidst the turbulent maelstrom of music, dancing and carnage, the audience is welcome to become performer, performer to become audience, woman to become man, dog to become bicycle! This time, let your hormones take over and turn a night out into a nightmare! This is the last night of the rest of your life. The punch has been spiked WITH URINE. BYO vomit or make some when you arrive. Don’t come stag, lest you find yourself alone when Green Day’s Good Riddance (Time Of Your Life) is being drunkenly howled by your weeping History Teacher.
Featuring: Hadley, Spill Collective, Svelt, Dead DJ Joke, every hormone-ridden artist in this city
SHH – BLIND, AS YOU SEE IT
The Playhouse, Hunter Street
Shh’s Blind, As You see It is a hybrid performance and exploration into the process of losing one’s sight. A visual, humourous yet delicate feast, the performance explores the memories of a 25 year old woman as she loses her vision. Inspired by Philippe Genty, Romeo Castellucci and Polish Plastic Theatre practitioners, this journey into darkness blends magic, original music, dance clowning, puppetry and visual (black art) theatre. Click here to view footage from Blind, As You See It.
SISTERS GRIMM – THE RIMMING CLUB
The Grand Lodge: Crackhouse
Four estranged friends re-unite on a Greek island, hoping to reclaim the summer of that forever changed their lives. But has too much changed? Can you really ever escape the past? What does poo taste like? (THIS IS WHAT IT TASTES LIKE!!!!)Sisters Grimm proudly present the human centipede of Strien Theatre royalty: all your faves ass to mouth NOM NOM NOM NOM!!!!1!!!
THE MASTERS OF SPACE AND TIME – SWAMPED
Lodge of Instruction: Crackhouse
What does Jack Bonhom have in that box? Melbourne, 1866: a meeting of the Victorian Acclimatisation Society. This august and learned group of academics, land-owners and other men of Empire is dedicated to the civilisation of the Australian bush through the introduction of foreign species. Their motto: ‘If it lives, we want it.’ Before a packed audience of wealthy Society members and eminent guests, Bonhom prepares to unveil what may be the perfect introduced species… This razor-sharp farce demonstrates the law of unintended consequences, handily summed up in the colloquialism – “when you’re up to your arse in alligators it’s difficult to remember that your initial objective was to drain the swamp”.
THE LAST TUESDAY SOCIETY
The Grand Lodge: Crackhouse
The Last Tuesday Society regularly presents the creme de la creme of Melbourne’s underground performance scene and now we’re going national. Come watch as we conquer TINA with our patented brand of lo-fi, am-dram, theatrical mash up, rock n’ roll vaudeville. Your eyes won’t believe themselves. “The jackass of arty pub performance events…the well-dressed step-child of experimental theatre” – threethousand.com.au
Festival Artists 2010:
Applespiel
Anthony Arblaster
Van Badham
Max Barker
Bron Batten
Simon Binns
Paul Black
Daniel Brine
Red Button
Pete Butz
David Clapham
Spill Collective
BURN Collective
Benjamin Crowley
Michaela Dabson
Kerri Dibben
DJ Alistair
Tom Doig
Caravan of Dooom
Di Drew
xs Entertainment
Hayley Forward
The Ghost of 29 Megacycles
Pat Gordon
Kylie Gral
Declan Greene
Jane Grimley
Sisters Grimm
Jane Gronow
Hadley
Cathy Hagarty
Sam Henning
Richard Higgins
Brenna Hobson
Michal Imielski
Hunter Impro Network
Dee Jefferson
Dead DJ Joke
Mitchell Jones
Alex Kelly
Dan Koop
Lian Low
Peter Matheson
Margaret Mayhem
Jeff McCann
Nick McCorriston
Chris Mead
Naomi Milthorpe
Next Wave
Brendan O’Connell
Holly Orkin
Penis Tower Anti-Slam Collective
Natalie Randall
Versificator Regis
Candy Royalle
Catherine Scobie
Laura Scrivano
Surgical Sideshow
Steve Smart
Ivan Smith
The Masters of Space and Time
Spartak
Quinn Stacpoole
Shasta Sutherland
Ssh
Svelt
Emily Taylor
Surface Tension Quintet
Tantrum Theatre
Wazzadeeno Wharton-Thomas
Martin White
CRACK 2009 – A HISTORY OF IMAGES
Images by Pete Butz and Talsit
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Crack wants to thank the Canberra Youth Theatre, the Street Theatre, PACT, Accessible Arts, Tantrum Theatre, QL2, Boho Interactive. To our awesome volunteers: Hadley, Pete Butz, Max Barker, Nickamc, Holly Orkin, Simon Binns, Shasta Sutherland, Michaela Dabson, Kerri Dibben, Jeff McCann, Pat Gordon, David Clapham and Na Milthorpe. Also let us be real: this whole festival would be a fever-dream if not for Anthony Arblaster. And finally, to the artists: all our artists: they’re not getting paid, they’re not getting housed, they’re not getting supported in any real way, they’re just MAKING IT HAPPEN and we are grateful.
The Masters of Space and Time’s Up to your Arse in Alligators has been commissioned by the Crack Theatre Festival in partnership with the Australian Museum, and supported through the Coalition of Australian Museum Directors.
This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.
CRACK 2009 HISTORY
Festival Artists 2009
Anna Barnes
Cathy Petocz
Matthew Kneale
Daniel Koerner
Zoe Meagher
Zackari Lovelorn
Dragonfly and Julez
Hanna Cormick
Charles Martin
Benjamin Forster
Julian Fleetwood
Seung Baek
Andrew Galan
Steve Smart
Erin Kelly
Alli Sebastian Wolf
Jane Grimley
The DeConverters
Quarterbred
Sensitive New Age Gang
Arran Mckenna
Dan Jobson
Jack Lloyd
Mick Bailey
David Shaw
Reuben Ingall
Svelt
Josh Inman
The Tragic Troubadours
Yolande Norris
Dee Jefferson
Mark Rogers
Simon Binns
Holly Orkin
Lachlan Tetlow-Stuart
Mish Gregor
Jeff Khan
Annette Madden
Jennifer Hamilton
Jon Thomsen
Chris Carmody
Leah Shelton
Jackson Castiglione
Sam King
Emma Kelly
Grahame Thompson
Min Mae
Amy Turton
Ella McDonald
Tom Doig
Infinite Other
Isle Adore
Grant Hunter
Paul Gough
Laine Stewart
Dan Koop
Chloe Gordon
HaiHa Le
Carl Nilsson-Polias
Lovelorn Living Party
Emma Ramsay
Festival Production 09
David Finnigan
Gillian Schwab
Anthony Arblaster
David Clapham
Adam Hadley
Thomas Henning
Nick McCorriston
Peter Butz
Hanna Cormick
Lina Andonovska
CRACK 2009 HISTORY
In October of 2009, a slew of theatre artists and performance collectives launched themselves towards a new world. Amidst an audience of fellow misfits and troublemakers, they carved out of Newcastle’s rocky cliff-faces the space for a national conference where the future of performing arts practices could be created, debated and deformed. The result is the Crack Theatre Festival, a home for Australia’s independent, emerging and experimental performing arts.
Downstairs a gypsy ensemble plays behind a manic refugee storyteller, bellowing lovelorn tales of beauty and misery across a sea of festival-goers. In another room a performance is conducted using the SMS texts of the audience as its only directorial tool. Upstairs, notebooks and pencils fly across the room in a passionate debate on political vs pastiche theatre. No side shall concede and the middle ground does not exist. Across the city, a 3-tonne truck pulls up to a loading zone and a brightly dressed mob break into dance while a DJ plays a 15-minute set from within.
The 2009 Crack Theatre Festival featured over 60 artists across 31 events, including 14 contemporary Australian performances. The festival presented work across a range of mediums including musical storytelling, narrative and post-dramatic theatre, multimedia and technologically-mediated interactive performance, site-specific and installation theatre, invisible and guerilla performances, hiphop theatre and spoken-word, cabaret, physical theatre, inter-disciplinary performance and ‘Playground’, a large-scale participatory performance / chaos party.
Welcome to Crack. We have landed.
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