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Productions

Creativity (2022)
by Carl Caulfield 
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First produced at The Playhouse
 
A satire for the zeitgeist as creatives in a Conservatorium of Music take on their tone-deaf leaders in a bid to save music. 
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A recent purge of academics and courses at a Conservatorium of Music at an Australian university has left the remaining staff and their students demoralised, their only life raft the joy they find in making music.

 

Dr Richard Fenchurch lecturer, conductor and Mozart scholar, reluctantly agrees to lead the Conservatorium through the maelstrom, following the mysterious departure of the Head of Music. Fenchurch finds himself caught between the smooth-talking PVC Professor Graham Gombold with his promises of musical manna, and his mutinous colleagues, led by Dr Lucy Golding, who are firmly against any further cuts or changes to the curriculum.

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Director: Carl Caulfield
Production Manager: Felicity Biggins
Musical direction: Ian Cook
Set design: Felicity Biggins
Video, images and props: Geoff Overmyer
Lighting design: Andrew Moore
Sound: Simon Ritchie
Costumes: Ghilly Sullivan

Cast: Mick Byrne, Khalil Khay, Anne Hartsuyker,

Jeffrey Cutts, Melinda Smith, Nola Wallace,

Fiona Collins, Claire Conry.

 

 

Photos: Elena Gan

Mick Bryne, Khalil Khay

Mick Bryne, Jeffrey Cutts, Claire Conry, Fiona Collins

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Lysistrata (2022)
By Aristophanes, translated by Michael Ewans

Produced by Stray Dogs at Newcastle Theatre Company.


Lysistrata persuades the women of Athens and the cities with which her men are at war to institute a sex strike until the men of both sides make peace. Aristophanes works out the hilarious consequences with brilliant comic scenes, culminating with a joyous celebration when peace is made.

 

Director: Michael Ewans
Cast: Claudia Bedford as Lysistrata and Richard Murray as the Bureaucrat

with Aimee Cavanagh, Grace Callaghan, Matthew Collins, Robert Comber, Crystal Davis, Mick Hall, Melinda Hicks, Thomas Henry, Kane Kaiser, Melinda Latsos, Pascal Lecathelinais, Leianna McCloy, Xanthie Pagac, Mimi Parfitt, Bill Parry, Ian Robinson, Miranda Smith, Deepika Yerrakalva.

 

Assistant Director/Choral Movement: Jessica Alexander-Lillicrap

Dramaturg: Marguerite Johnson

Composer: Simon Ritchie

Set: Leni Johnson

Costumes: Melinda Hicks

Lighting: Sophie Botta

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Photo: Jo Roberts

Thomas Henry and Xanthie Pagac

Medea (2021)

by Euripides, translated by Michael Ewans

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Produced by Stray Dogs at Newcastle Theatre Company.

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Euripides’ powerful tragedy about a woman's terrible revenge after her husband betrays her.  

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Director: Michael Ewans

Cast: Claudia Bedford as Medea and Phillip Ross as Jason

with Aimee Cavanagh, Emma Crowther, Derek Fisher, Tracey Gordon, Carol Hong, Sam and Noah Lane, Richard Murray, Hannah Richens, Ian Robinson and Melody Thorburn.

 

Assistant Director/Choral Movement: Jessica Alexander-Lillicrap

Dramaturg: Marguerite Johnson

Composer: Simon Ritchie

Set: David Murray

Costumes: Melinda Hicks

Lighting: Sophie Botta 

 

Photo: Jo Roberts   

Claudia Bedford

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Being Sellers (2020)

by Carl Caulfield

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First produced at The Playhouse

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On the 40th anniversary of the death of Peter Sellers at the age of 54, Stray Dogs reprised its hit Being Sellers in honour of the comic genius. Directed again by Jonathan Biggins with Carl Caulfield as Sellers, the production played in November of  the first year of the COVID pandemic to a mandated 75 per cent capacity in the Playhouse. Jonathan Biggins told The Newcastle Herald  it was interesting to see how they approached the show 22 years on.

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"Carl is able to give a more honest and deeper performance because he has the extra life experience," Biggins said. "He's now older than Sellers was when he died, so I think that's been very illuminating."

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Director and set design: Jonathan Biggins

Cast: Carl Caulfield

Lighting: Andrew Moore

Sound: Simon Ritchie

Stage Manager: Eily Pleming

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Photo: Elena Gan

Carl Caulfield

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Dali: Hallucinogenic Toreador (2019)
by Carl Caulfield

First produced at The Playhouse

Dali: Hallucinogenic Toreador uses the scandalous and surreal life of Salvador Dali to ask questions about art and fame. Outrageous, flamboyant and often on the edge of sanity, Dali considered himself a genius, but was this just a mask to hide his fear? The obsessions and neuroses that drove his art and life – grasshoppers, melting clocks, crutches, telephones and doubles, also expose his shameful secrets and raise disturbing questions about his legacy.
As surreal and provocative as a Dali masterpiece, Dali: Hallucinogenic Toreador is a wild, joyous, and moving journey into Dali’s strange and fascinating world.

Director: Daniel Stoddard
Cast: Carl Caulfield, Shane Bransdon and Charlotte de Wit
Set design: Marion Giles
Costumes: The Scissor Sisters
Props maker: Geoff Overmyer
Sound score: Simon Ritchie
Lighting and audio: Jacob Harwood
Hair and make-up: Kimberlee Claire

Comments from the opening night audience:
A fascinating story of a complex man. Claire Williams
Carl Caulfield captures Dali’s surreal idiosyncrasies and anxieties superbly.
Roger Markwick
A Tour de force! Debra Anne Kelly
This work is so smart, charming and oozes with dialogue faithful to the Surrealist timeline. Nerida Walker

Photos: Sam Reid
Charlotte de Wit and Carl Caulfield; Shane Bransdon and Carl Caulfield

Love Magic (Theocritus) and Behind the Wire (Carl Caulfield)
a double bill at the Royal Exchange (2019)

A young woman cast aside in a patriarchal society – a foreign national interrogated in a detention camp. Two short one-act plays from ancient Greece and contemporary Australia, linked together by the theme of oppression. 

 

Theocritus' Love Magic (c. 280-60 BCE) is the finest surviving example of what the Greeks called mime, a short spoken play for one to four actors which was probably performed without props. It is very unusual because its heroine is a young unmarried woman, usually 'invisible' and without a voice in ancient Greek society.

 

Translated and directed by Michael Ewans.

Dramaturg: Marguerite Johnson

Costume Design: Michael Ewans. Created by Gail Purcell at Stitches

Body art: Nicole Kimball

Lighting: Dean Winter

Sound: Geoff Overmyer

Siobhan Caulfield as Simaitha

Photo: Debra Hely

Behind the Wire is set in a detention camp on an island somewhere - where a man is being questioned about his faith and his allegiances to Australia. As the questions get harder, the tactics suddenly change and the rules of engagement disappear. How far do you go to protect borders? A short sharp shock of a play with a warning from the interrogator…”You have no idea what’s coming, do you?”

 

Director: Carl Caulfield.

 Cast: Michael Byrne, Khalil Khay, Eily Fleming and Dez Robertson

Lighting design Dean Winter

Props and sound: Geoff Overmyer

 

Photo: Debra Hely

Photo: Eily Pleming, Khalil Khay, Dez Robertson and Mick Byrne.
 

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Hecuba Reimagined (2016)
by Carl Caulfield (after Euripides)


First produced at The Playhouse

A Greek tragedy reimagined, with its bloodstained plot intact, to reflect on the realities of modern warfare and the evils of modern society. Carl Caulfield has taken Michael Ewans' translation of Euripides' play Hecuba and completely reworked it into twenty-first century terms. As the title suggests, this play is a total reimagining of the original - very far from just a translation. It evokes almost every aspect of the horror of modern warfare. Drug taking is rife among the commanders; there are detention camps, PTSD sufferers, human sacrifice and revenge executions. Some things have changed in 2,440 years in how men and women can become inhuman under the stresses of war; but much has stayed relentlessly the same since Euripides denounced the corrupting power of hatred - especially the use of what the fifth century knew as sophistry and we now call 'spin'.

Producer: Felicity Biggins
Director: Carl Caulfield
Assistant director/dramaturg Michael Ewans
Stage Manager: Stephanie Rochet
Set design: Geoff Overmyer
Lighting design: Andrew Moore
Costume and sound: Felicity Biggins
Cast: Jan Hunt as Hecuba with Angela McKeown, Leanne Guihot, Dez Robertson, Siobhan Caulfield, Joshua Holloway, Patrick Campbell, Danielle Asquith, Tim Blundell, Michael Byrne, William Parker, Camden Aglio.

Photo: Elena Gan
Jan Hunt


 
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Where Late the Songbird (2015)

by Carl Caulfield

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First produced at The Playhouse

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It's 1613 and William Shakespeare has retired from the London stage and returned to the family mansion in Stratford, hoping for a quiet, pleasant life in the country as a gentleman. But all is not well at home: his wife Anne is distant and his two adult daughters troubled, Susanna still bruised from being falsely accused of adultery and Judith hostile at her father's long absences. How will he reconcile the gulf?

None of the women in his lfe seem overly impressed by his status as England's greatest living playwright and nor do the parochial citizens of Stratford, who are deeply anxious about the future of their farms and see Shakespeare, a believer in the enclosures, as the enemy.

On top of all this, Shakespeare is under pressure from his London players to write a new comedy, a stage version of Don Quixote. But his health is rapidly declining and The Fool keeps appearing in his fevered sleep, reminding him of his mortality and the urgent need to sort his life out.

 

Directors: Carl Caulfield and Felicity Biggins

Set: Brian Lowe

Costumes: The Scissor Sisters

Lighting: Dave Grinstead

Cast: Claire Williams, Carl Caulfield, Phil McGrath, Angela Diaz, Angela McKeown, Alexandra McKeown, Barney Langford, Brian Randall and Theo Rule.

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Photo: Allan Chawner

Angela McKeown

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The Anatomy of Buzz (2014)
by Carl Caulfield
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First produced at The Playhouse

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When American organisational change consultant and marketing guru Dixon Uzzi comes to Newcastle to bring Sunbeam Corp into the 21st century, Ben Quilty, Head of Sales, is ready to reinvent himself. “You’ve found the fear, Ben. Now market that fear,” says Uzzi. Before too long, Ben has shaved his head and is twerking to Beyoncé.

But while Ben is busy anatomising buzz and conquering virtual frontiers with Dixon, his family begins to implode. His son Tom seems to be associating with terrorists while daughter Amy seeks fame through her laptop. His Head-Teacher wife Kristen, stressed to the eyeballs fighting off the bean counters at TAFE, is forced to question Ben’s new faith when she finds him talking to his Action Man.

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Directors: Carl Caulfield and Felicity Biggins

Cast: Alex Jacobs, Paul Sansom, Dez Robertson, Angela McKeown, Theo Rule and Siobhan Caulfield

Set: Felicity Biggins and Robyn Greenwell

Set construction and painting – Joel Yager and Robyn Greenwell

Sign-writer – Vanessa Turton

Props design and construction – Robyn Greenwell

Lighting - Theresa Sawert

Sound – Felicity Biggins

Poster design and all graphics – Dez Robertson

Video - Bruce Leaver

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Photo: Elena Gan

Dez Robertson, Alex Jacobs and Paul Sansom

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Shakespeare's Fools (2010)
by Carl Caulfield with music by Gareth Hudson
 
First produced at The Playhouse

Shakespeare's Fools explores the evolution of the Fool through the actors who helped create the original characters. Richard Tarlton, Will Kemp (who famously jigged all the way from London to Norwich circa 1600) and Robert Armin were the 16th century's equivalent of our contemporary stand-up comics, as well as prima donnas with party pieces.

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Director: Carl Caulfield

Cast: Carl Caulfield, Theo Rule, Daniel Stoddart and Brendan O’Connell

Costumes: Anne Hele and Miranda Ryan

Lighting: Adam Zakarauskas 

Winner of CONDA for Best New Play in 2010

 

"Caulfield expertly blends Shakespeare’s words and today’s language in the text…And the three actors playing the fools – Theo Rule (Tarlton), Brendan O’Connell (Kemp) and Daniel Stoddart (Armin) – magnificently bring out the differences of their styles and humour."

- Ken Longworth, Newcastle Herald, 1st September 2010.

Photo: Elena Gan

Daniel Stoddart, Theo Rule and Carl Caulfield

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Henry IV, Part One (2008)

 

by William Shakespeare, adapted by Carl Caulfield

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Performed at the Gloucester Shakespeare Festival on May 16th and 17th, transferred to The Playhouse later that year.

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Stray Dogs' production of Henry IV, Part 1 is set in England, sometime in the not-too-distant future. There's been some sort of major ecological disaster and the Royal family, the Windsors are back in charge of affairs of state. The landscape has been laid to waste. There is no petrol, all travel is taken on horseback. There are no telecommunications and there's no electricity, no laptops, no television or radio, no modern weaponry. It's all been destroyed. Letters are delivered by messengers. Battles are fought with sticks and stones. People make do. Henry IV is on the throne and battling civil unrest on all fronts. His greatest problem is his son, Prince Harry, who wastes much of his time in the pub drinking and punning with Falstaff and his gang. Hal's favourite sport is highway robbery! But if he's to hold onto power, the King must convince Prince Hal to join him in the fight against rebels from Scotland and Wales.

Director: Felicity Biggins

Cast for Gloucester: John Shearman, Alex Hetherton, Rebecca  Sheldon, Barry Shepherd, Timothy Blundell, Caitlin Caulfield, Tim O’Donnell, Carl Caulfield, Mark Coles, Phillip Minns.

Playhouse: Garth Russell, James Buckingham, Alex Hetherton, Rebecca  Sheldon,  Timothy Blundell, Caitlin Caulfield, Tim O’Donnell, Carl Caulfield, Mark Coles, Phillip William Minns.

Costumes: Felicity Biggins and the cast, with special thanks to Mark Coles

Set and lighting: Gererd Wilson

Stage Manger: Toni Byrnes

Choreography: Allon Silove

 

Photo: Elena Gan

Caitlin Caulfield as Poins and Carl Caulfield as Falstaff

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Dante's Dream (2007)
by Carl Caulfield
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First produced at The Playhouse
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Dante's Dream is an exciting and ambitious dramatisation of the artistic impulse through the weird and tragic life of the brilliant pre-Raphaelite artist, Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Rossetti's paintings of his muses, the doomed Lizzie Siddal and later Janey Morris, the wife of one of his best friends, shocked and captivated Victorian england with their sexual power. The great art critic John Ruskin recognised his genius, but Rossetti's life - and that of fellow travellers such as the decadent libertine poet Charles Swinburne and even Ruskin himself - descended into drugs, perversion and madness. Set in London in the 1850s, Dante's Dream takes you into a world where creativity and passion collide with reality. It's a rich and colourful tapestry of ideas, full of zest for life and art and humanity.

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Directors: Felicity Biggins and Carl Caulfield

Cast: Allon Silove, Helen Atkinson, Jan Hunt, Anthony Svensk, Phil McGrath, Lawrence Aitchison, Carl Caulfield

Set, props and costumes: Chris Maxfield

Lighting Design: Adam Zakarauskus

Stage Manager: Alex Newton

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Photos: Brock Perks

Allon Silove as Gabriel Rossetti and Lawrence Aitchison as Swinburne.

Jan Hunt, Phil McGrath and Lawrence Aitchison

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Human Resources (2006)
by Carl Caulfield

First produced at The Playhouse

Human Resources is a dark campus comedy about the corporatisation of Australian universities. Wil Lynot is an English lecturer whose private life is unravelling while he struggles to cope with the speed of change at work. A sinister rep from the Quality University Assistance Division, the QUAD officer, arrives to monitor his teaching, a student lodges a complaint against him, his wife won't return his calls and he's had to move into his office. As his ivory tower crumbles, Wil questions his faith in the transformative powers of education . . . until he decides to fight back!


Director: Felicity Biggins
Cast: Rod Ansell, Jan Hunt, Barry Shepherd, Isaac Turier, Timothy Blundell and Grant Walmsley
Lighting Design: Adam Zakarauskas
Set Design: Robyn Greenwell
Stage Manager: Alex Newton

Winner of CONDA (City Of Newcastle Drama Award) for Best New Play, 2006.
Here’s what the CONDA judges said about the play:

Human Resources dealt with a topic that is very relevant in academia today. It showed a clear grasp of modern university life. There was sharp dialogue and clever use of current catch phrases and the characters sank or swam as the practicalities of economic rationalism battled the ideals of scholarship.

Photo: Allan Chawner

Barry Shepherd and Jan Hunt.
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Seems Like Old Times (2005)
by Carl Caulfield
 
Opened the refurbished Playhouse
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It's Miranda's 50th birthday and her husband Steve has organised a reunion of their former cabaret act, the Incidentals, at their Lake Macquarie home. As the guests arrive the night is full of laughter and promise, but things take a turn as old resentments surface and tensions flare. Stig, the band's most ardent follower, who Miranda inadvertently invites when she runs into him in Coles, is so appalled at their squabbling he strips naked and runs around the room wielding a chain saw, a scene which had audiences in hysterics of laughter and disbelief. The show ran for several weeks and by the final nights it was standing room only.

 

Director: Felicity Biggins

Cast: Rod Ansell, Jan Hunt, Garth Russell, David Yarrow, Lawrence Aitchison, Barry Shepherd, Anne Frost and Bethany Jones. 

Lighting Design: Adam Zakarauskas.

Set Design: Robyn Greenwell.

Stage Manager: Kate Graham.

 

Photo: Elena Gan

Anne Frost, Barry Shepherd, Kerry O'Hearn, Garth Russell, Jan Hunt

Confusion of Tongues (2002)
by Carl Caulfield

 

Produced at PAN (Performing Arts Newcastle) Building

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A psychodrama set in the early 1930s, Confusion of Tongues explores the work of controversial psychoanalyst Sandor Ferenczi and his notorious falling out with Sigmund Freud. Ferenczi believed in touching, hugging and kissing his patients in an attempt to break down the divide between patient and therapist. Freud thought a lot of the repressed memories this produced were fiction, but Ferenczi believed his patients had recovered traumatic events from the past. 

 

Director: Felicity Biggins

Cast: Rod Ansell, Samantha Fiddes, Julie Kirby, Kate Sweeny, Michael Smythe and Bethany Jones.

Lighting Design: Adam Zakarauskas

Set Design: Robyn Greenwell

Stage Manager: Kate Graham

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Photo: Elena Gan

Michael Smythe, Rod Ansell, Julie Kirby

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Indecent Obsessions (2002)
by Carl Caulfield

First produced at the Civic Theatre

Caulfield created these three monologues for actor Barry Shepherd. In Aureole, Grant is worried about a friend who is obsessed with her growing fame. Why doesn't she return his calls? The Boxer, Eddie, is the wrong side of 40 but still a contender who is consumed by his quest for the title, but what is he hiding from? In For No One Pete Tweed lives for The Beatles but is it enough to heal his heartache? A play about secrets and self deception exploring what it is to be human.


Director: Carl Caulfield
Cast: Barry Shepherd
Set Design: Tim Neve
Stage Manager: Enid Bailey (Newcastle); Rosie Glover (Sydney)
Lighting Design: Adam Zakarauskas

Also, performed in Adelaide at the Festival Of One in July, 2002.
In 2003, produced at The Stables Theatre, Kings Cross, Sydney, on November 18th for three-week season.

Shepherd’s a knockout…It is must-see theatre!
Ken Longworth, Newcastle Herald.


Photo: Elena Gan
Barry Shepherd

 
Being Sellers (1998)
by Carl Caulfield

 

First produced at the Playhouse

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Director and set: Jonathan Biggins

Lighting Design: Adam Zakarauskas

 

Peter Sellers was revered for his ability to transform into characters, from Clouseau to Chance the Gardener. But who was he? What was the personal cost of his comic genius? Being Sellers is the hilarious and confronting unmasking of a tortured Goon. Carl Caulfield's one man show exploits the theatricality of Sellers' chameleon art. There is a gallery of memorable characters over a lifetime and Caulfield recreates them all in one night!

 

Transferred to The Edinburgh Fringe Festival from August 16th to 31st at C Venues. (Selected by The List as one of the highlights of the Fringe.) 

 

Then to Man In Moon Theatre, King’s Road, Chelsea, London, from November 24th to December 12th, 1998.

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Season at Geelong Performing Arts Centre in Geelong, Victoria, 2000.

 

Performed Being Sellers at ANU, Canberra, as part of Australian National Playwright’s Conference, 2001.

 

Reprised with David Boyle as Sellers at the Waterloo East Theatre, a new off West End Theatre in London in November, 2010. Performed by David Boyle and directed by Simon Green. Also part of Brits on Broadway from 23rd November to 12th December at 59E59 Theaters, New York. 

 

"Caulfield is never judgmental, though, and takes as much care to impart Sellers’ moral failings as his singularly fecund imagination. Most of all, he shows us the very human being behind the venerated clown." - Madeleine North, Time Out, 2nd December 1998.

 

"The piece is skillfully written. It takes us from theatre dressing rooms in Sellers’ childhood, through the larky RAF and ENSA - Entertainment National Service Association - years, to raging, disappointing marriages (“like cars – beautiful at first, then after a while you hear a rattling”)". - Libby Purves, The Times, 6th November, 2010.

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Photo: Elena Gan.

Carl Caulfield as Dr Strangelove, one of Sellers's film creations.

Photo: Oscar Blustin.

David Boyle as Peter Sellers, Waterloo East Theatre. 

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These Foolish Things (1998)
by Carl Caulfield
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First produced by CTN at the Civic Theatre

 

Separating couple Tom and Fiona meet one night to divide up their stuff. It's been an acrimonious split so Tom invites their best mate David to act as peace maker. The night unravels as old grievances are aired and home-truths told. Tom saws the couple's prized Charles Blackman watercolour in two and presents Fiona with her half as David watches on aghast until the tables turn on him. A black comedy about modern  marriage and friendship, These Foolish Things still resonates.

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Director: Felicity Biggins.

Cast: Rod Ansell, Barry Shepherd and Kate Sweeny

Lighting Design: Adam Zakarauskas

Set Design: Robyn Greenwell

Stage Manager: Enid Bailey

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Top photo: Elena Gan

Barry Shepherd and Rod Ansell

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Reprised at the Playhouse in 2008 directed by Felicity Biggins. Cast: Paul Kelman, Phillip McGrath and Helen Atkinson.

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Photo: Elena Gan

Phil McGrath and Helen Atkinson

Angel of Mercy (1996)
by Carl Caulfield
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The first production under the Stray Dogs banner
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A multi-media play that explores the lead up to a random mass murder, very loosely based on the final months in the life of Frank Vitkovic the perpetrator of the Queen St massacre in Melbourne in 1987.  It was in rehearsal when the Port Arthur massacre happened, which led to gun reform in Australia that ended random mass killings by male perpetrators. But its theme of toxic masculinity and disaffected youth resonates today. 

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Cast: Lawrence Aitchison, Barry Shepherd, Kath Leahy, Greg Davis

Dramaturg: Paul Thompson

Director: Felicity Biggins

Lighting: James Jablonski

Set and multi-media: Dean Parker

 

Produced at the Newcastle Community Arts Centre from July 13th to the 27th funded by the NSW Ministry of the Arts.. Reprised in February, 1997 in association with the Hunter Valley Theatre Company as part of the 1997 Bicentenary of Newcastle.

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Photo: Allan Chawner

Lawrence Aitchison

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The Human Behan (1995)
by Carl Caulfield

 

Produced at the Mission Theatre by Don McKewen and Novocastrian productions

 

A biographical fantasia on the life of Brendan Behan, the play moves along like an Irish jig – fast, funny, furious – with music and energy, exploring Behan’s dilemmas as a human being and an alcoholic playwright, as well as his troubled relationship with the IRA.

 

Produced at the Mission Theatre in Newcastle, September 1995.

Cast: Bob Ellis, Brian Joyce, Tim Richards, Kate Sweeny, Julie Kirby. Musicians: Jonathan Barry. Phil Clifton, Sue Morley.

Dramaturg: Paul Thompson.

Director: Felicity Biggins.

Set Design: Vickie Newman.

Lighting: Malcolm Miles.

Stage Manager: Terry Gonzales.

 

Invited to the Sydney Fringe Festival in January 1996, where it played a season at the Bondi Pavilion.

 

It was first read at The Stables Theatre, on the 23rd of June, 1993, with a cast that included David Wenham, Valerie Bader, Judi Farr and Drew Forsythe, as well as Bob Ellis as Behan.

 

It was the lead, it had more words than Hamlet, I had to sing, dance, smoke cigars, sodomise a shop dummy, have delirium tremens, betray the IRA and die of diabetes, things I have not thus far done in life. I thought I would not even get the lines down, but I did. And what followed showed me why it is most actors would work for nothing in a lead role anywhere, so great is the rush of oxygen it brings. - Bob Ellis posted on acting on his blog in 2013, reflecting about his performance as Brendan Behan.


Guillotin! (1994)
by Carl Caulfield

Produced at the Mission Theatre by Don McEwen and Novocastrian Productions. Each performance was followed by a concert of songs of solidarity and struggle presented by a choir. 

While the French revolution rages outside his laboratory window, scientist Monsieur Guillotin stumbles on a more humanitarian method of despatching the criminal element. Convinced his invention will make the world a kinder, gentler place he markets it to Robespierre and Danton. Meanwhile he's arranging liaison dangereuse with revolutionary and feminist Camille Devereaux and doing battle with his formidable landlady Madam Donat, whose idea of a top night out is a packet of pork scratchings at a public hanging. But who is that mysterious woman in trousers found lurking in the Tuilleries Gardens and is that a poisoned spike in her umbrella or is she just pleased to see you?

Director: Felicity Biggins
Cast: Rod Ansell, Paul Makeham, Sarah Aubrey and Felicity Biggins
Set and props: Vicki Sienczuk
Lighting: Mally Miles

Plaster head: made by Anthony Hoysted

 
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