La Boite announces 2012 season
La Boite Artistic Director David Berthold (pictured) has tonight announced La Boite’s 2012 Season.
The 2012 line-up of 10 productions includes five Mainstage productions and five La Boite Indie productions.
“We’ve rhymed some Shakespearean joy with summery Scottish charm, layered a mischievous hoax with a spellbinding puppet, and crowned it with melting verses of tender napalm,” David said.
“I love what this theatre can do. This is a theatre that allows for the most direct and fundamentally sensual conversation between actor and audience I have ever encountered. Our shows – and they are shows, not just plays – very often break down barriers in ways that spice the space with a frisky playfulness.”
The show features classic shows, as well as new contemporary works.
The season opens in February with Berthold directing a contemporary reinvention of Shakespeare’s most joyous comedy, As You Like It. Helen Howard (Hamlet) and Thomas Larkin (Hamlet, Julius Caesar) lead a 10-strong cast that includes Helen Cassidy (The Wishing Well), Kathryn Marquet (Ruben Guthrie), Bryan Probets (Edward Gant’s Amazing Feats of Loneliness), Hayden Spencer (Ruben Guthrie) and Trevor Stuart (Hamlet).
“Our theatre is perfect for Shakespeare,” David said.
“It’s open and alive and allows actors and audiences to come together to share the joy. I know Helen will delight as Rosalind, Shakespeare’s greatest female creation, and I could think of no better Orlando than Thom – what a gorgeous pairing. This production will be our biggest in years; outrageous fun and full of theatrical surprises.”
In April, La Boite presents the Traverse Theatre’s smash hit musical rom-com Midsummer (a play with songs), direct from Edinburgh and the Sydney Opera House.
In May, La Boite teams up with Sydney’s Griffin Theatre Company – where Berthold used to be the boss – for the world premiere of Rick Viede’s Griffin Award winning
new play A Hoax. Directed by Lee Lewis, A Hoax will rehearse and premiere at La Boite ahead of a Sydney transfer in July.
“Rick is one of the bravest and most entertaining new voices in Australian theatre,” David said.
In August, the Dead Puppet Society’s 2011 La Boite Indie smash The Harbinger moves to La Boite’s Mainstage in a refreshed and fuller version.
In September, David returns to the director’s chair for Philip Ridley’s intoxicating new play Tender Napalm, a presentation with Brisbane Festival 2012.
“Philip is undoubtedly one of the world’s most sensational playwrights,” David said.
“I’ve directed two of his plays and see in this, his latest, the most beautiful and acute distillation of his incredible art. It’s a theatrical firecracker about love, desire and the whole damn thing. It’s danced as much as acted, taking us into the secret places of a relationship, and I know it will explode in our theatre.”
An additional five productions will feature as part of La Boite Indie: The Truth About Kookaburras (Pentimento Productions), I Only Came to Use the Phone (Netta Yashchin), Home (nest4change), A Tribute of Sorts (Monsters Appear), and Children of War (The Danger Ensemble).
Now in its third year, La Boite Indie aims to nurture a more sustainable independent theatre culture in Brisbane, to cultivate new audiences, to enable closer ties between independent theatre and La Boite, and to help create outstanding contemporary works made with passion and rigour.
