Penny McLeod
A NEW Tasmanian play will be brought to life by an acclaimed cast and crew, including the joint winner of the 2020 Tasmanian Theatre Award for Outstanding Performance, Jane Johnson (for The Mares).
Presented by Mudlark Theatre, Caravan Boat Treehouse, by Stephanie Briarwood, will have its world premiere in Launceston and Hobart this month.
“We’ve got a fantastic team for the project,” says Mudlark Theatre company’s artistic director Cheyne Mitchell.
“Jane has always been, in my opinion, one of the greatest actors to come out of Tasmania. Jane was the original artistic director of Mudlark and one of the driving forces of the company. It’s wonderful to have Jane and Stuart Loone, her husband [and artistic co-ordinator of Theatre North], back in Launceston and back in the fold of the company.”
The cast and crew also includes Tasmanian actors Daniel Lizotte and Marcus McKenzie (now based in Melbourne), and director Mel King. It is Mitchell’s first full-length play as artistic director of the Launceston-based theatre company.
“We’ve spent the last 12 months developing the play with Peter Matheson, a dramaturg who worked with Stephanie on our first production for Mudlark, Cross,” Mitchell says.
The play follows the stories of Jack, Mack and Sylvie, whose lives intersect in an exploration of isolation “in a world saturated with social connectivity”.
“All had particular incidents that led them to take some time out from the world, so Jack finds himself on a boat at the beginning of the play, Mack finds himself in a caravan at the bottom of his grandmother’s garden, and Sylvie has arranged a house-swap with a young woman who lived in a logging coup treehouse,” Mitchell says.
The company is partnering with the Tasmanian
Theatre Company to present the play in Hobart.
“We are employing Tasmanian artists to tell Tasmanian stories, and hopefully we have created a show that’s going to leave audiences with a sense of hope,” Mitchell says.