An awarded writer, actor, and “elder millennial shaman”, Ash Flanders (Blackie Blackie Brown) has done it all. But he’s never quite been vulnerable like this on a stage before.
There’s no crueller thing you can say to an actor than “Don’t quit your day job”. Fortunately, thanks to cover bands and theatre restaurants, Flanders never needed one. But one day, after years of glittering appearances on stages and school gyms across the country, he unceremoniously found himself seated at a computer terminal in a decidedly un-sparkly corporate office. All that time seated at a desk led to some dark places, insightful self reflections, and eventually, this deeply confessional show for Griffin Theatre.
“I've seen everything Ash has done in the last 15 years. He's from Melbourne, as is the director, Stephen Nicolazzo. They're two of my absolute favourite theatremakers,” Griffin Theatre’s artistic director Declan Greene told Time Out.
“I've never seen him do anything like this show before. It's a much more vulnerable proposition for him. He's writing about, I guess what you would consider in his life as a low point, where he had to get this job as a legal transcriptionist to make ends meet. And then in the process, sort of pulling apart his life, asking questions about who he is, why he does what he does… and then realising, it's kind of all about his mother.”
End Of. plays at Griffin’s SBW Stables Theatre from October 13 to November 5, 2022.
