“Cry Havoc sums up an attack on bad art: Cry havoc! – shake it up a bit! Try something new! Be risky, be brave! No more safe theatre. No more museum pieces. No more two people on a couch. No more TV in the theatre. No more static space, domestic theatre. We want the big stories, the big experiences and the big visceral time in the dark,” declares the fresh-faced and audacious Kate Revz.
As a former alumnus of UTS in Media and Arts Production, Kate has gone on to a directing degree at NIDA under the tutelage of Egile Kipste. From this expert training, she has gained the skills to hatch her childhood dream of her own theatre company. Having completed her Assistant Directorship with the Sydney Theatre Company’s production of God of Carnage, Revz is in a prime position to achieve her dream. Her upbeat approach and enterprising attitude have garnered the vital support of family and the big wigs in the industry such as Cry Havoc’s patron Marcus Graham, and the sponsorship of Sydney Theatre Company.
Cry Havoc is no longer the naïve high school whim that she shared with her now creative accomplice and co-founder, Gemma Pranita but is now an ever-surprising reality replete with hard work. However, Revz is adamant that the pros far outweigh the cons. She sports the confidence to authenticate her optimism. “We learnt very quickly at drama school that it’s not just going to happen… I really believe in big vision and big concept but you can’t have that without strong performances that are informed by truth and the intricacy of the text,” muses Revz.
As she recounts the story of school-day infatuations with musical directors, and the intensity of her often premature infatuation with the works of William Shakespeare as a teenager, it is quickly evident that Revz’s relationship to theatre has grown into a fully-fledged love affair with the practical traction to awaken and rebuild a thriving theatre scene.
“I believe you’ve got to go for the gut rather than the head. I try and make theatre that I want to see. I do like thinking but I prefer to be provoked to thought… You can think and think and analyse when you go to the theatre but how wonderful is it when you ‘stop thinking,’ and you just feel it and it naturally converts itself to enlightened thought,” Revz muses.
Her vision is larger than solely dramaturgy and directing. Revz is crying out for a new generation of arts activism and a renaissance that echoes the Nimrod Theatre days born of the collaboration of Australia’s theatre legends, John Bell, Richard Wherrett and Ken Horler.
“[It’s] poetic, but we like to think we are starting a new era in theatre and the revolution comes from the idea that Australians are quite comfortable with mediocrity and often there’s a lot of good theatre around but not much great theatre around… Cry Havoc for us is going to be the next premier theatre company in Sydney and we want to do this for forty years, and we want to leave a legacy… and it’s not just so we get picked up by STC,” Revz asserts.
Her fresh tenacity and determination are a product of a particular view of theatrical practice. For Revz, it is the infusion of contemporary concerns with classical theatrical texts that provide the richest crescent for the creation of compelling and bold theatre.
“You can speak about today through the great classic texts because there was a climate in Ancient Greece, and in Renaissance London and in the turn of the century Germany of saying big things through art. I don’t think it’s gone away but there seems to be another renaissance now of us realising that these big texts hold the key to our existence. I do think we are text starved. That’s where the revolutionary idea came from and the central mission of the company,” says Revz.
The company’s first production, Julius Caesar, which debuts on the 27th of October, holds a particular sentimentality as her favourite Shakespearean play, but also as a text that makes manifest the company’s own ethos and vision.
“You’re breaking bread with the dead when you work in a revolutionary way with these kinds of texts… you’re sitting on the shoulder of greats and if you start there then the sky is the limit. I’m an atheist but if I had a religion it would William Shakespeare. I’m fanatical and I defend Shakespeare if anyone threatens his authorship, and I arch up like I’m talking about Jesus. I have this profound respect for him and all his work, and I find it quite a ritualistic and religious kind of experience to work on his plays,” muses Revz.
The production difficulties and obstacles don’t seem to deter her either. The love of resurrecting a play, and getting under the skin of an audience keep her anchored. “I think we’re actually doing Shakespeare justice by taking Julius Caesar and throwing it against the wall and seeing where it breaks and of course always with the deepest respect for the work… but reading it with a contemporary angle and trying to breathe it back to life,” says Revz.
As we turn the conversation to the future, Revz’s outlook is optimistic, as if she is on the tip of a new vanguard of Australian theatre, expecting nothing less than a mutinous effect. “It’s this ephemeral process that I hope keeps working; where it’s a deep respect for the past with a strong vision towards the future, and they collide in the Molotov cocktail that is Cry Havoc,” muses Revz. It seems in these young hands we can rest assured that the future of Australian theatre is looking up.
“Our strength is that we all have the same vision, and it is one really strong factor that none of us are in this as a star vehicle, or as a step on the way to larger things,” says Revz.
Julius Caesar debuts on the 27th of October at the Wharf Theatre. See www.cryhavoc.com.au for more details.
No comments:
Post a Comment