THEATRE: GALLIPOLI
PREVIEW BY AMELIA GROOM
Director Nigel Jamieson brings a cast of almost 40 performers to the stage of Sydney Theatre for Gallipoli, one of the most ambitious productions of the year. A multi-media work featuring aerial performance, choreography, live music, choral work and huge projected images, it brings together 12 members of the STC (Sydney Theatre Company) Actors Company and 23 third year acting students from NIDA (National Institute of Dramatic Art).
Going beyond the familiar tales of unquestionable bravery and sacrifice, Gallipoli explores what drove so many young people to enlist, and the glamorising of warfare before and since. Drawing on personal letters, diaries, film footage, photographs, memoirs, contemporary reportage, songs and official documents, the piece re-explores the bloody battle on the Gallipoli peninsular, from multiple perspectives.
Pamela Rabe from the STC Actors Company says of Nigel Jamieson (whose past work has included large-scale extravaganzas for things like Olympic and Commonwealth Game ceremonies): ‘he has the most extraordinary, chaotic and creative brain that I’ve ever encountered. He’s not a director who sits back and lets it all form ‘ he’s a man who’s used to standing in the middle of a football field shouting at people through a megaphone, so he’s always amongst it and isn’t afraid of the sound of his own voice.’
She says that one of the things Nigel was interested in is the gap between the legends of war and the stories told back home – and what really happened. ‘Though it’s repackaged for us annually on that one day of the year, the reality was that it was a much much longer campaign, with a lot of time spent digging into trenches and being stuck in horrible fettered conditions, where people didn’t have a hope in hell of surviving.’
‘There’s a lot on how the stories in the press were filtered and distorted in order to present a view of Australia and it’s cultural identity,’ she says. ‘There’s an incredible, rich history of archival material that Nigel got very excited about letting people experience in a different way. The stuff that often isn’t put into documentaries is the language of the press, and the language of poetry, prose and song ‘ all of which distorted the way Gallippoli was depicted.’
‘I think Nigel’s objective is to make people look at it in a different way, to examine and question the presupposed notions of what Gallipoli was and what it means to us culturally as a nation,’ says Pamela, ‘the work is not really telling us anything, it’s not even exploding myths or anything like that ‘ it’s literally inviting people to re-examine the history through the richness of a whole lot of material we don’t always get access to.’
Gallipoli
Sydney Theatre, 22 Hickson Road, Walsh Bay
July 25 ‘ August 23
Tickets: $56-$77, 9250 1777 or www.sydneytheatre.com.au
