Red Stitch Build Up Their Options
The Age
Monday March 20, 2006
RENOVATIONS are seldom on schedule so no one should be surprised that members of the Red Stitch Theatre Company are rehearsing their first show of the year with little sign of their new performing space.
"There were planning issues that no one expected," says Ben Anderson, who is joining the actors' ensemble this year. "All the building work has been put back but that won't have any effect on us."Anderson is in the company's tent foyer, taking a break from rehearsals for the production of Fewer Emergencies, a play by British writer Martin Crimp.It is the second Red Stitch play for Anderson, who performed in the hit production of Edward Albee's The Play About the Baby in 2002.Since then he has appeared on television in an ongoing role in Neighbours and in the sketch comedy show Skithouse.Anderson, who graduated from the National Theatre drama school in 1998, says he is enjoying the rigours of Crimp's script."He uses language with the same precision as (Harold) Pinter," he says. "There are only two stage directions and it looks like there are options galore until you get into it. Then you find yourself back at square one as the options close off."Anderson says the writing is so direct that he and the other three cast members cannot afford to lose focus."Sometimes you can find your way back into a performance but that is impossible with this one," he says. "We have to be on top of it all the time."This is the second time that Red Stitch has produced a play by Crimp, regarded as a leading contemporary playwright. The company performed The Country last year after the Melbourne Theatre Company's production of Cruel and Tender.Anderson says Fewer Emergencies is a combination of three separate works that Crimp combined last year after he realised they were all concerned with threats to everyday contentment."You only have to listen to talkback radio to realise how paranoid the culture has become," he says.The title story deals with the internal tensions within a household, while Face to the Wall was inspired by the Dunblane primary school massacre in Scotland. Crimp wrote the last segment, Whole Blue Sky, last year. It deals with the everyday threats to contentment that people refuse to talk about.Anderson says the works have shock value without being abrasive. "I hope people will be startled but then mull over what exactly has happened in what they have seen," he says.Anderson, 34, and his partner had their first child last year, and he admits there are demands on his time. But he says his job at a trophy-making business gives him the flexibility that he needs."I vowed that I would give up bar work and I reached 30 and I've just about managed it," he says. "It's very easy to get a bar job and then become disillusioned when acting opportunities become intermittent."He was given the opportunity to join the Red Stitch ensemble when Daniel Frederiksen left to try his luck in Los Angeles last year, and joins the company's 10 other active members, with four others away on leave.The company was founded as an actors' ensemble in 2002 to attract a new audience, concentrating on the best scripts available from around the world. It has been at its current location since 2003."The opportunity we have to select our own scripts is a great freedom not possible anywhere else," he says. "What's great is that the company has succeeded in building audiences this way."He offers a reassurance that the completed renovations will not alter the intimacy of the company's performance space."The audience will continue to feel that they are right in there with the performers," he says.Fewer Emergencies, by Martin Crimp, is at the Red Stitch Theatre, rear 2 Chapel Street, St Kilda, until April 16. Book on 9533 8083.
© 2006 The Age