19.08.14
Palm trees, brightly coloured fish, the odd sarong… Design mood board for the upcoming Emerald City? No, Lee’s half-a-week squeezy holiday before we launch our 2015 Season. So, while the boss is off chasing a winter tan for the launch party, and the UnhoIy Ghosts team prepare to haunt the theatre, I have taken control of the laptop to give you a speed tour of an Associate Artist’s life at Griffin.
Like Australia, Griffin is small, but nimble and plucky, constantly changing, and daring itself to do better. If you speak here, you are heard, and no one is allowed to stay quiet for long. There’s too much to do and too little time. The last eight months have flashed by in a blur of 124 plays submitted for the Griffin Award, the 64 applications for next year’s indie season, and the 50 or so artists who put their hands up for the Studio Residencies. Griffin and Google have partnered in an experiment into the digital unknown, no, really unknown… and our studio artists have been reporting back from Canada, Singapore, Scotland, and (we hope) South Korea. Somehow, through all this, the strange alchemy of programming next year’s Main Season offerings is also complete. It’s like getting an extra Xmas.
To me next year’s plays prove the depth and courage of what our writers are prepared to tackle. They take us across the country and around the world, back through time and into the realms of fantasy. There’s music and argument, the ecstatic, and the terrifying, and these are all our voices, talking to us, for us, accusing and inspiring, but impossible to ignore. All crammed into the bulging SBW Stables Theatre, home to so much Australian theatre history and theatre promise.
Santa is real people, and his elves are busy at the printers, glossing up your 2015 brochure. See you soon in the foyer. Ben.
