Deluge: Adelaide Festival of Arts Premiere

The Adelaide Festival of Arts is renowned for its World Premieres and Adelaide will see yet another in March as the Festival joins with Tiny Bricks and Brink Productions to present the world-first production of Deluge. Lesley Reed reports.

How many of us have texted while watching a video on YouTube and at the same time skimmed an online article, scrolled through Facebook and watched TV? It’s an everyday occurrence and we may also do this while taking part in real conversations, distracted though those discussions may be.

We are deluged with information from every imaginable source and happily pass it on to others, yet wonder why we all tend to be anxious and stressed.

Presented at the Adelaide Festival  for the very first time worldwide, Deluge takes this 21^st century fact of life and weaves together five very different but simultaneously staged narratives, as ten characters attempt to find meaning and connection without drowning in a flood of information.

Two strangers conceive a child in a one-night stand and spend the next few months getting to know each other. A young man delivers a prophetic speech he hopes will change the world. An online game takes a deadly turn and becomes frighteningly real. A US soldier in the middle of Iraq has a dark secret to share. A young woman’s life spirals out of control as she searches for absolution in God.

The play reflects our anxiety-creating modern experience of rapidly accelerating information overload. Itis the first work by new independent theatre company Tiny Bricks, which isa creative partnership between director Nescha Jelkand playwright and dramaturg Phillip Kavanagh.

Phillip Kavanagh is based in both Adelaide and Sydney. Phillip’s awards include the 2011 Patrick White Playwrights’ Award, the 2011 State Theatre Company of South Australia Flinders University Young Playwrights Award, the 2011 Colin Thiele Creative Writing Scholarship and the 2014 Jill Blewett Playwright’s Award. He was also shortlisted for the 2014 and 2013 Philip Parsons Emerging Playwrights Fellowship. In 2013 he undertook an Australia Council JUMP mentorship with playwright and screenwriter Andrew Bovell, through which he first developed Deluge. Other works include Jesikah (STCSA), Replay (Griffin) and Tartuffe (Brink/STCSA).

Nescha Jelk is the Resident Director at the State Theatre Company of South Australia. In 2010 she won Helpmann Academy’s Bendigo and Adelaide Bank Award. For State Theatre Company Nescha has directed Othello, Jesikah, Random and Krapp’s Last Tape for the Beckett Triptych in the 2015 Adelaide Festival. Other directing credits include Alice and Peter Grow Up (Milk Theatre Collective), Hamlet (The Actor’s Folio), and Sepia (RiAus) which was awarded the 2012 Adelaide Fringe Tour Ready Award. Nescha has worked extensively as an assistant director for numerous companies including State Theatre Company, Eleventh Hour, Brink Productions, Belvoir, Griffin, Bell Shakespeare Company and Sydney Theatre Company.

Cast for Deluge includes Alex Woollatt, Andrew Thomas, Antoine Jelk, Ashton Malcolm, Eliza Oliver, James Smith, JulieNixon, Lucy Lehmann, Rebecca Mayo and Stuart Fong.

Staged from March 8 in a Tiny Bricks and Brink Productions collaboration, the World Premiere of Deluge is set to provide Adelaide audiences with an absorbing essay on the worldwide flood of information technology and the impact this is having on people and our times.

WHEN:

Tue 8 Mar & Thu 10 Mar* 8pm

Wed 9 Mar & Fri 11 Mar 6pm & 8pm

Sat 12 Mar 2pm & 8pm

Sun 13 Mar 2pm & 6pm

*Q&A after show

50 minutes (no interval)

WHERE: Plant 1, Bowden.

BOOKINGS: adelaidefestival.com.au or BASS 131 246 

Image: Ché Chorley, Adelaide Festival of Arts