With the chill slowly creeping in at the edges of your doona, warm the spirits with independent theatre company Montague Basement’s If This Be Nothing. A lockdown take on Shakespeare’s classic The Winter’s Tale, it’s the one with the best stage direction ever: “Exit, pursued by bear.”
Montague founders Imogen Gardam and Saro Lusty-Cavallari put their heads together to figure out how best to keep making theatre while theatre buildings are closed down. They came to the conclusion it was not possible. Instead, they’ve come up with this Facebook-hosted stay-at-home version of the Bard, with The Winter’s Tale re-told from the perspective of staying connected but apart.
As Gardam and Lusty-Cavallari previously put on radical reworkings of Macbeth and Taming of the Shrew at the Sydney Fringe, we’re looking forward to seeing what they come up with. This new take encompasses all sorts of online adventures, from cam girls to Netflix quandaries.
The show will be performed by co-creator Lucinda Howes, who has teamed up with Lusty-Cavallari. Special guests include Jeremi Campese, Laura Djanegara, Laura McInnes, Annie Stafford and Laura Wilson.
Lusty-Cavallari says moving off-stage and heading online has been bitter-sweet. “Projects like this that try to reimagine those skills for digital content are their own unique creations. Whatever they are, they’re not theatre.”
He says The Winter’s Tale works well in discussing these strange days. “The first half, which corresponds to literal isolation, is closed off, cold and paranoid, while the second half is kind of manic and bawdy, crowded with characters and hopeful. When those two worlds meet, we get a partial redemption... Out of loss can come new opportunities, but that loss never goes away.”
Howes adds that while we’ve all slowed down, it’s also been a time of persistent, all-consuming connection. “Over the past few months, I know I haven’t put down my phone or disconnected from the internet. There are really great things about that immediate access to other people – to entertainment, the news, social media – but I think it also alters what ‘being alone’ actually looks like now.’
She says If This Be Nothing speaks to that idea. “While there will be a lot of thematic content people should recognise and connect to, we’ve also tried to recreate that sense of disconnect, of getting ‘lost’ somewhere inside the internet.”
You’ll be able to get lost in it live on the Facebook page here on Thursday, June 11. It will then be available to watch for two weeks afterwards, like a good old-fashioned in-theatre run.
This article is supported by the Judith Neilson Institute for Journalism and Ideas.
