Black Swan Announces 2012 Season

Black Swan State Theatre Company announced it’s 21st birthday season last night (Monday) at the State Theatre Centre’s Studio Underground, Perth. 

 Black Swan State Theatre Company announced it’s 21st birthday season last night (Monday) at the State Theatre Centre’s Studio Underground, Perth.   2012 will see six plays presented in the Heath Ledger Theatre, four world premieres of new Australian works and the start of a new era of regional engagement for Black Swan, which aims to embed theatre in the lives of all Western Australians, regardless of location. 
SEASON LIST Heath Ledger Theatre: 

The White Divers of Broome (World Premiere)28 January – 16 February 2012 The White Divers of Broome is a fast-paced celebration of boom time Broome, its unique beauty, its exotic mix of cultures and the seductive power of its landscape. It is a stirring account of isolation, non- conformity and survival in a harsh and relentless environment. “Hilary Bell will sweep you along in this epic and heartbreaking story, and take you back to a time when the racial and class relations in the exotic frontier town of Broome were watched by the entire country.” Kate Cherry The White Divers of Broome was commissioned by Black Swan State Theatre Company as part of the Rio Tinto Black Swan Commissions.A Perth International Arts Festival event.  Arcadia17 March – 1 April 2012 Sidley Park, Derbyshire, April 1809. Surrounded by eccentric family members, fastidious house guests and surly staff, tutor Septimus Hodge is in charge of educating Lady Thomasina Coverley, aged thirteen. Beyond the grand windows are the ‘500 acres inclusive of lake’, where Capability Brown’s artificially manicured naturescape is about to give way to the fashionably ‘picturesque’ Gothic style of landscape gardening. 180 years later, garden historian Hannah Jarvis and academic Bernard Nightingale stand in the same room, trying to shed light on the garden’s secrets and uncover the scandal which is said to have taken place when Lord Byron stayed at Sidley Park in Lady Thomasina’s time?.. Tom Stoppard’s absorbing play jumps back and forth between the centuries and explores the nature of truth and time and the confusing and disruptive influence of sexual attraction on our orbits in life.  National Interest (World Premiere)5 – 20 May 2012 Tony Stewart was just 21 when he was killed in Balibo in October 1975. 32 years after Tony and his television news crew were murdered, the ghosts of the past are awakened again. For Tony’s mother June, these ghosts are real, as tangible as her daughter Jane standing in the kitchen with her. The fate of the Balibo Five shocked Australia in 1975 and the issues still reverberate today. National Interest personalises the headlines with a true story of a family still in the grip of grief.  Signs of Life (by Tim Winton)21 July – 12 August 2012 Alone in her farmhouse on the riverbank one night, Georgie Jutland hears noises out on the highway – car doors, voices, weeping. She’s recently widowed and a little spooked. It’s not just her – the entire world feels wrong, as if the land beneath her feet is dying. It hasn’t rained for years. The river has dried up and the olive grove is beginning to wither around her. Signs of Life is a story about people with uncertain futures navigating with only shreds of the past to guide them. It’s about the mutual incomprehension between white and black – the anxiously safe and the pragmatic dispossessed – in country where nobody is really sure they belong anymore, and where everyone’s fate seems to have been determined by those who came before. Bitter and funny, Signs of Life reflects on the ways in which people with radically different histories form awkward, spiky alliances in order to survive.  Boy Gets Girl (West Australian Premiere)15 -30 September 2012 Successful journalist Theresa gets talked into a blind date with computer consultant Tony. As blind dates go, this one could have been a lot worse, but Theresa quickly realises that Tony isn’t the man of her dreams. She extricates herself from their second rendezvous as tactfully but firmly as possible. That should have been the end of the story but Tony doesn’t stop calling her at work. He continues to inundate her with flowers. And then he finds out where she lives, and the blind date turns into a living nightmare. In search of help, desperate Theresa finds support where she least expects it, but will she be able to regain control of her life? Managing Carmen (World Premiere)10 November – 2 December 2012  Brent Lyall is a freakish young sporting talent. At the age of twenty-three, the country lad is already captain of one of the most successful football clubs in the land. He is managed by the ruthless and famous sports manager Rohan Swift, a foulmouthed bully of legendary status. Not only is Brent paid a prodigious amount of money to play AFL football, he makes three times as much with product endorsements: the advertisers simply love him and his glamourous model girlfriend. But he should be raking in a lot more advertising cash – if only he wasn’t so guarded in front of every camera! “A laugh out loud comedy for anyone who likes football or designer dresses. Nobody writes about Australian football like David Williamson; t
his is a crackling funny dissection of stereotypes in sport.” Kate Cherry  SUBSCRIBE TO BLACK SWAN  Subscribers can choose between 5 or 6 Play Opening or Closing Night and 3, 4, 5 and 6 play subscription packages. Black Swan continues to offer affordable 3 matinee and 3 preview package, enabling subscribers to see three previews of their choice for only $141. For the first time, Black Swan is also offering a 3 play student subscription package for just $79.50. Affordable Family and Student Tickets Students can save $5 compared to the standard student ticket price by purchasing unsold seats for just $24.50 up to 30 minutes before a performance begins upon presentation of valid student ID. The $24.50 student rush tickets are available for all mainhouse and studio productions, but are subject to availability.Black Swan will continue to offer a Family Package, enabling two adults and two children/students to see a Black Swan mainhouse production for just $158.