'The Golden Years Are Now'
The Golden Years Are Now - development trailer from Cara Dinley on Vimeo.
debut development for illumine hybrid theatre in Cyprus - September, 2017
‘The Golden Years Are Now’ was provoked by the Henrik Ibsen classic ‘Hedda Gabler’, in conjunction with ‘Homer’s Hymn to Demeter’.
In a world where the subconscious bleeds and time and space are fluid, the woman Hedda Gabler is re-imagined, her unborn child watches from a different dimension. This fragmented fairytale reaches inside the bodies of these characters revealing their deepest desires and flickers of ancient memory. A friendly competition turns sour, unearthing remnants of an everlasting history. Mother and Daughter finally meet each other and find their story together, the story that started all of this. Songs of mourning bring a fractured family back together.
The auteur, Cara Dinley, describes the work as “physically driven” and explains that "it’s not dance, it’s not circus, the physical movement is what I would call heightened-it is accompanied by multi-lingual text, an electronic soundscape and raw vocalisation.” Saale Kreen, Estonian cast member and musical collaborator, called the work “multi-dimensional poetry.” Dinley notes how important the presence of the female voice and female gaze is, for the health of the community and the artistic landscape.
The cast of four come from France, Finland, Estonia and Cyprus. The costume designer/theatreologist is from Greece and lighting designer from Poland. This work will require an additional development phase in order for it to be developed into an entire work. Showings of this stage of the development will be open to the public on 29 & 30 September, at Mitos Performing Arts Centre. The audience will be invited to give their feedback to the creative team following each showing.
29 September @ 8pm & 30 September @ 5pm (30 min duration)
Admission 5 euro each, tickets at the door.
Venue: Old Vinegar Factory, Genethliou Mitella 34, 3036 Lemesos, Cyprus.
Cast: Anu Almagro, Saale Kreen, Yorgos Onisiforu & Julien Touati
Electronic Music: Doris Hallmägi and Saale Kreen
Adapted motif from Forgotten People's "Karelian Destiny" Veljo Tormis
Costume Designer: Myrto Sarma
Lighting Designer: Lukas Walewski
cast & creatives
biographies
Cara Dinley writer, director
Anu Almagro - hedda-demeter
Saale Kreen - the nymph-persephone
Yorgos Onisiforu - the drunk-zeus
Julien Touati - the lawyer-hades
Doris Hallmägi - electronic music composition
Myrto Sarma - theatreologist, costume designer
Lukas Walewski - lighting designer, performance space
A Divergent Herstory Pt. 1
CREDITS
Created in collaboration by Lucy Ansell, Cara Dinley, Sarah Fitzgerald and Magda Miranda
Performed by Lucy Ansell, Sarah Fitzgerald, Magda Miranda
Concept Design and Direction by Cara Dinley
Special thanks to Felix Ching Ching Ho
Photo credit: Vivian Cooper Smith
What happens if some kind of break has occurred in our ancestry that cuts our connection to either the people, the places or both?
How do we find stories and information about the past that have not been written or passed down orally?
Cellular (body) memory provides an alternative source.
Research has shown that memory can be passed down through generations, which can inform certain parts of the body—its postures and behaviour. Our lived experience, whether we can remember it or not, is stored in our bodies and also affects our postures.
Embryology teaches that the heart develops before the brain and a female creates eggs which could become grandchildren—not their children. We, our eggs, were created in part by our grandmothers.
What does all of this say about the presence of our matrilineal heritage inside our bodies? We have sought to trace the stories inside our body’s cellular memory through sensorial,somatic, ‘body first’ practice to develop A Divergent Herstory Pt. 1.
This work explores an embodied, experimental theatre development incorporating an intergenerational group of all-female artists.
The initial provocation asked “How does your lived experience differ to that of your mother’s and grandmother’s?”
Inside an ambiguous temporal space, intimate stories told through the voice of the body and the body of the voice will feature, intersect with others, and meld together...finding connection in difference.
biographies
Director & Concept Design
Performer-Makers
Lucy Ansell
Sarah Fitzgerald
Sarah’s theatre credits include Sabina in The Skin of Our Teeth (dir. Dean Bryant) Lulu #1 in Don’t Bring Lulu (dir. Tom Gutteridge), Helen of Troy in The Greeks (dir. Melanie Beddie); Fluellen in Henry V (dir. Leith McPherson) and Tituba in The Crucible (dir. Adena Jacobs). Sarah has also featured in the webseries Words From Wilde (dir. Mary McGillivray) as Constance Lloyd, and VCA-produced web series The Waiting Game as Jess. In 2015 she was a creator in the devised show The Roar which was awarded The Script Writing Award by the University of Melbourne Theatre Board.
Magda Miranda
Magda is a performer and visual artist with background in dance, drama
and improvisation. Magda is Brazilian and works across media to realise live
performance that responds to identity, location and belonging. Her latest work
explored her bi-cultural identities through performance. She presented Fractured,
a live durational installation at Big West Festival 2015. In 2016 she performed
Pedaços, a solo work composed of memories and artefacts collected over a life, in the La Mama Exploration program. She is currently an associate director with
Fusion, an inclusive theatre company in Dandenong.