A LIFE LESS ORDINARY

Sometimes the biggest changes hinge on the smallest moments... for Wally Stern, fridge salesman, passionate historian and robust idealist, these moments take him from the criminal to the most wonderful possibilities for a life less ordinary!

In AN ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM, Bill Ten Eyck (as Wally) captures the nuances of character and oft dangerous foibles that can take the most law abiding citizen to the edge of what is considered morally right. Jennifer Innes (as Lucy) seems far less extreme, yet it is her perception of her current circumstances that threaten the very ideal she bases her Art - and therefore her identity - upon.

As Writer/Director Robert Gough says: "In An Elephant in the Room, the lives of Wally and Lucy collide and collude as each discovers that the world does not necessarily reward good intentions."

A compelling postmodern fable for our times that promises to entertain and surprise with its many twists and philosophical conundrums!

A play that makes you laugh AND think!

Book online at www.theatreworks.org.au,

purchase your tickets at the door, or phone

(03) 9534 3388 (Monday-Friday, 10am-3pm)...

Don't miss AN ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM!!

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ELEPHANT'S FIRST WEEK...

It's Monday, July 12, and it's hard to believe that the production of An Elephant in the Room has reached the end of its first week!  Four performances, including a big Opening Night. Congratulations to cast and crew for bringing together this most memorable original Australian play. Writer/Director, Robert Gough (who has a cameo appearance as THE STAND OVER MAN), is well pleased with the audience response and the wonder that is the theatrical life.

Book online at www.theatreworks.org.au 

or phone (03) 9534 3388 (Monday-Friday, 10am-3pm)...

Don't miss AN ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM!! 

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Picture: July 07, 2010 (L-R)... 

David Cotter, Bill Ten Eyck, Robert Gough and Jennifer Innes

ELEPHANT MUSINGS...

Hi Everybody,

A quick update about the play:

An Elephant in the Room opens at Theatre Works on July 08, 2010 @ 8pm...  We're experiencing healthy ticket sales (phew!) so please book now (we'd love a sell out!)... 

Book online at www.theatreworks.org.au 

or phone (03) 9534 3388 (Monday-Friday, 10am-3pm)...

There's also an Opening Night party at the Dog's Bar (54 Acland Street, St Kilda) from 9:30pm... meet the cast, crew and Robert Gough - writer and director extraordinaire!  It'll be FUN!

... If you happen to be busy that night, An Elephant in the Room runs from July 08-July 25, 2010 (Thurs-Sun). So please come along and we'll catch up for a drink after the show.

Have a break from the cold...  

Put on your nice warm coat and enjoy a night at the theatre!!

See you soon!

Best,

Wendy & Robert

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AN ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM

STARRING: 

BILL TEN EYCK | JENNIFER INNES | TOM HENDERSON WILL MORGAN 

KARL COTTEE | DAVID COTTER

WRITER and DIRECTOR: 

ROBERT GOUGH | Antipodean Theatre

“Ambition is but avarice on stilts, and masked.” 

[Walter Savage Landor]

THE PURSUIT OF ART… THE PURSUIT OF AVARICE…?

This age old dilemma continues to wrestle many a soul.

Be prepared for some rollicking fun! 

In Robert Gough’s new Australian play, Melbourne locals vie for success in a story about a likeable salesman, an ambitious actress, and a wise Indian storyteller who imparts wisdom with a smile! This is a play for those who seek a LIFE LESS ORDINARY! There’s even a beautifully lush LIPS COUCH to heighten the intrigue as money comes and money goes in this wonderfully black comedy...

A compelling fable for our times that promises to entertain and surprise

with its many twists and philosophical conundrums!

A play that makes you think AND laugh!!

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THE PLAY

The second week of rehearsals ended today.  At 6pm we locked the doors to Theatre Works until July 05, 2010, when we bump in pre-performance (Opening Night is July 08 @ 8pm). As Bill Ten Eyck said recently, rehearsing is where the magic happens...

Thoughts about the

play from the Producer: 

Comedy emerges from drama, intrigue from optimism, and loneliness from the benefits of technology. This is our world with all of its wonders, power struggles and charming irrationalities.  Here are our human foibles pushed to that postmodern edge where truth seems fragmented and pleasure subverted.  And yet Robert Gough creates a most appealing ambience where success is possible and optimism seems to be the natural outcome.

Stay tuned for more...

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Pictured L-R (back): Will Morgan, Karl Cottee, Bill Ten Eyck, Thomas Henderson; (front) Jennifer Innes.  (David Cotter, our sixth cast member, is not pictured.)

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Welcome DAVID COTTER...

Today, infamous cabaret performer, DAVID COTTER, joins the cast of An 

Elephant in the Room. Known around the traps as a seasoned stage and television actor, David found fame as a stand-up comedian back in the high-rolling '80s, appearing at many festivals and popular events including the Comedy Store in both Sydney and London.  

Yet in true show business style, it was David's cabaret show, Dean's Martini, (first performed in 1998) that saw his cult following go supernova. Funny, charming, and ridiculously amazing, Dean's Martini (a one man show with David playing eight characters ) gave audiences a taste of yesteryear with a twist!  In 2003, David teamed up with Tony Lewis to form The Dean and Jerry Show, and later, Dean and Jerry.

DAVID COTTER has three roles in An Elephant in the Room.  He plays ALBY TAYSON, DETECTIVE SGT. BRIAN MANNING and THE COURIER.  We welcome David to the cast and thank Bill Ten Eyck (Wally Stern) for introducing us!

(Pictured: David Cotter as Dean Martin in Dean's Martini)

Watch David Cotter as Dean Martin on YouTube...

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THE INDIAN STORYTELLER

Today,  THOMAS HENDERSON auditioned for the role of THE INDIAN STORYTELLER. Tom's reputation as a talented public speaker and enigmatic storyteller preceded him and after his 20 minute performance, Tom was immediately offered the part.  

Returning to the stage after more than 40 years, Tom, who cites Shakespeare's Julius Caesar as one of his favourite plays, makes his Australian theatrical debut in AN ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM!

Tom was born in 1952 in the town of Jhansi (in central northern India), and emigrated to Australia with his family in 1988.  He is currently self-employed in the taxi business and is a well-known identity in that industry.

The cast and crew welcome Tom to the production.  He is perfectly cast as THE INDIAN STORYTELLER who will provide the subliminal chorus to our modern day fable.  (Pictured: Tom Henderson)

Elephant Read Through, 2010

The cast and crew met for the very first time on Saturday, May 29, 2010. It was exciting to see them together after so many months of casting and interviewing tech specialists.  After coffee and a chat, the actors completed a read through of AN ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM. 

"It was quite extraordinary seeing the play move beyond the point from which it was written," says Writer/Director, Robert Gough.  "Actors often have surprising nuances in their interpretation of their characters, and for me that was the highlight of Saturday's reading."   

ELEPHANT was originally read in the winter of 2008 with a completely different cast.  It was read again on March 2, 2009 at Melbourne Writers' Theatre in Carlton, Victoria.  From that reading, the producers decided that Bill Ten Eyck was so perfectly cast that the play's July, 2010 season was scheduled around Bill's availability.  

Pictured above: Actors Bill Ten Eyck and Jennifer Innes, May 29, 2010.   

For more rehearsal photographs, please visit our cast album. There's also some footage of Bill Ten Eyck as the irrepressible Wally Stern on our YouTube channel, ElephantStagePlay.  Enjoy!

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Casting News

Antipodean Theatre is pleased to announce that WILLIAM MORGAN and KARL COTTEE have joined the cast for the first run of An Elephant in the Room, opening at Theatre Works in St Kilda, Melbourne, in July, 2010.  

Will, who plays DAVID HAWTHORN (Dave), has spent the last six years working as a stage and film actor in Melbourne and London (Stratford Circus).  Will is currently an arts journalist for Channel 31's YARTZ program.  

Karl, who plays AARON HAMILTON, Lucy's younger brother,  studied drama in Melbourne and  New York.  Karl has performed in several plays at the Edinburge Fringe Festival, and also worked on Steven Spielberg and Tom Hank's The Pacific for 11 months.

For more, please visit Elephant's CAST page... 

And please stay tuned for news about the Indian Storyteller and snippets from Elephant rehearsals!

Jennifer Innes as Lucy Hamilton

Jennifer Innes plays Lucy Hamilton, a talented actress who lives in a small apartment across the hallway from Wally's Warehouse. Lucy loves her profession - the language, the art.  The transformative power of performance is her true passion. But all is not well...

Jennifer moved to Melbourne four years ago from Adelaide, and has worked on a number of challenging roles since then. With PMD Productions, she has appeared in Arcadia, Closer, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, Three Sisters, The Merchant of Venice and Picasso at the Lapin Agile.  Prior to that she spent two years in London studying Classical Theatre at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. There she appeared in Much Ado about Nothing, Hamlet, The Philistines, The White Devil and The Provok'd Wife.  

Other productions have included Coriolanus, A Passage to India, Chinchilla, Stolen Moments and Low Level Panic, which Jennifer also produced for her Adelaide-born theatre company Scylla Productions.  She recently assistant directed Dogg'sHamlet, Cahoot's Macbeth and will be directing Liz Lochhead's Blood and Ice in October 2010. Jennifer is a familiar face on Australian television, and has appeared in a number of short films for the New York Film Academy and Utrtext Film Productions.

AN EXTRACT FROM THE PLAY #2

Hi Everybody!

Thanks again for all the interest in reading the script. We have casting in progress, set design is now complete, and we’ll start set building soon.

Anyway, here's the second extract...

A curious phenomenon of human behavior I’ve often observed is people’s passions for subjects, such as history, the sciences or sport. They are often unable to contain these passions within themselves and frequently feel the need to share them others less interested in the subject.

* * *

NIGEL has placed a handset with speaker phone on Wally’s desk. NIGEL is crouched down and focused on connecting the phone.

WALLY: How’d you get into this business, Nigel?

NIGEL: I used to help my dad when I was a kid. He was with the PMG and he replaced the telex machines when they invented the fax...

WALLY: And when was the fax invented?

NIGEL: Eighties...?

WALLY: 1842. Alexander Bain was the man’s name and they used the new telegraph cable to send faxes across the English Channel, Paris to London. It worked by sending a metal engraving of the picture that was wrapped around a copper drum. Extraordinary. 1842, sending faxes 40 years before people started having telephone conversations...

NIGEL: Oh yeah...?

WALLY: Bain was actually experimenting with sending electrical current down a copper wire and there were some chemicals spilled onto some paper at the other end and it left a black mark. Or so the story goes. Imagine what people in those days thought when they heard about sending a picture down an electrical wire? They must have thought, “what bullshit”.

NIGEL is squatting down and concentrating on getting the line connected.

NIGEL: Yeah, what bullshit...

WALLY: Anyway, the military were always interested in them because of their potential for sending maps, and there was a commercial service in the US in 1902, but they weren’t really used until the First World War when they started using them for transmitting newspaper photos...

NIGEL has connected the new business line. NIGEL calls from his mobile in the midst of Wally’s technological lecture. The new business line rings.

NIGEL: How’s that?

WALLY: What, already? Nice one young Nigel!

WALLY picks up the line and listens to the dial tone. NIGEL has already packed his toolbox.

WALLY: Alright. So will your company bill me or are you ABN or Sole Trader or…?

NIGEL looks bewildered and doesn't know what to say, but WALLY soon picks up that NIGEL wants cash off the books… WALLY pays NIGEL with cash from his wallet.

*   *   *

Above picture: Alexander Bain's improved facsimile, 1850.

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Bill Ten Eyck as Wally Stern

Popular stage and film actor, Bill Ten Eyck, plays Wally Stern in Robert Gough's comedic fable, An Elephant in the Room. A true performer bound to capture your imagination, Bill is now matched with a most challenging and charismatic character: Wally Stern, the irrepressible everyday man who seeks a life less ordinary in a world that demands wealth and prosperity.

In An Elephant in the Room Wally confronts some modern day dilemmas in a most endearing way. Even Lucy, the aspiring actress, is taken aback by Wally's confounding ingenuity. But what happens when passions overfloweth in the name of avarice? Can Wally make the deal of a lifetime without compromising his own ideals?

Can the 21st century contain such a man of likable contradictions??

Stay tuned for more intriguing details...

AN EXTRACT FROM THE PLAY

Hi Everybody,

Thanks once again for all the interest, both home and abroad, in reading the script.  Our advisors have requested that we do not float the script on the internet until after the play’s first run at Theatre Works, St Kilda, Victoria, July 8-25, 2010.

However, due to the amount of requests received, we’ve decided to publish a few extracts leading up to the first run. 

Here's the first extract...

* * *

Wally Stern, 48, Australian wholesale fridge salesman, has found a box of old 16mm films and a projector in his warehouse. He mounts one of the reels and watches with great curiosity.

SPX - FILM PROJECTED AND THE INDIAN STORYTELLER

The INDIAN STORYTELLER holds some chain and rope and gestures with the rope and chain as he recites the verse of “The Baby Elephant”.

STORYTELLER: Child Elephant of Indostan

Our Babe from Gods descended!

When small and curious will wander far

As nature has intended,

So with mighty chain and sturdy tree

Baby Elephant is apprehended.

Small Elephant is the friend of Man

And to Man the Gods did say, 

To chain the Baby’s foot to tree

For Baby runs away,

But soon he learns by chain and tree

That Elephant by man must stay.

The Elephant grows huge and strong

With memory stronger still, 

Could flimsy rope hold so strong a beast 

Against its mighty will? 

For rope cannot but memory can

Memory of chain and tree,

Forget he can’t - The Elephant

Therefore never shall be free! 

WALLY switches off the projector and flicks on the main light.

The personal line rings and WALLY answers promptly.

WALLY: Hello, Wally’s Ware… Howyadoin’ Alan again... Kelvin, Lord William Kelvin, hence Kelvinator. British thermodynamic physicist invented the Kelvin scale of temperature… Ooohh, sometime late 1800s I think. 1870? or thereabouts… No, Fahrenheit was a German and he invented the mercury thermometer… Centigrade is the freezing point of water at zero and the boiling point at 100… “Cent” after Latin centum, hundredth, easy one… (Laughs) H’mmm no worries mate… Nah, it’s good to have a yak… Yep, they’ll go out this afternoon, that’s if I ever get off the phone... See ya mate.

WALLY does a few dance steps across the floor. Whistling and singing...

* * *

Above picture: Blind Men and the Elephant, cover detail, (1972)  

Lillian Quigley, illustrated by Janice Holland

Comedy, drama, fable...?

Hi everybody,

Thanks for all the interest! A few people have asked the question: “What exactly is the genre of the play...? Comedy, drama, fable…?"  Good question... as Australians often say!

An Elephant in the Room incorporates quite a few genres. However, it is easiest described as a black comedy with fables.

A well known example of a black comedy is George Bernard Shaw’s Androcles and the Lion which is a comedy about feeding Christians to the lions. It’s also a fable as I don’t think Mr. Shaw (GBS) intended us to believe that the lion would actually remember Androcles as being the man who pulled the thorn from his foot some months before.

Androcles and the Lion does, however, raise the point that some of us would rather be eaten by lions than repent against the Christian faith. Some of the Christians choose death in preference to lighting a candle and re-converting back to the faith of the Roman Sun God.

It is this curious human phenomenon that GBS used the fable of Androcles as the metaphor to iterate… and did so with much comedy for our entertainment.

To me, entertainment is an important factor when I pay cash for my theatre ticket and gamble on my enjoyable night out!

Best to you all, 

Robert

Theatreworks, St Kilda

For the first run of An Elephant in the Room, playwright and director, Robert Gough, has chosen the beautiful location of Theatreworks, an iconic venue located in the heart of St Kilda in Melbourne, Victoria.  

Known for its independent productions, Theatreworks has hosted such companies as the Melbourne Workers Theatre, Wu Lin Dance Theatre, Performing Lines, John Bolton, SNAFU, VCA, The Melbourne Festival, and The Next Wave Festival.

Following in this great tradition, An Elephant in the Room,  presented by Antipodean Theatre, opens at Theatreworks on July 8, 2010.

An Elephant in the Room: An original Australian play about contemporary life and timeless dilemmas.

Note from the Playwright

Hi Everybody,

Bernard Shaw once said: “If you are going to tell people the truth, you better make them laugh. Otherwise they will kill you!”

Our new production An Elephant in the Room is written for those of us who enjoy a wise comedy. I’ve always been fascinated with fables and metaphors as they have the special magic and charm of discovery.

My favorite famous playwrights are fairly classical from The Bard to Stoppard, Sophocles to Shaw, Oscar Wilde, David Mamet, Howard Korder, David Hare and Harold Pinter.

I’ve also enjoyed so many nights at the theatre with the works of little-known playwrights performed by actors who should be movie stars. It’s a strange delight of our existence that some of the best works are appreciated by so few.

However, the theatre has been running a long time and we all love it and keep doing it!

Hope to meet you on the night…. Have a drink with the cast…?

Best regards,

Robert Gough
(Writer/Director)

Wally's Marlin

This is Wally's favourite possession...