OCTOBER 06

CIAO for now…
from James Price, para//elo Chair:

"Since 1984, para//elo has created a space for different cultures within the performing arts, so it is with a sense of sadness that we learn that after almost a quarter of a century, para//elo has been unsuccessful in attaining triennial funding from the Australia Council and Arts SA.

As a company and board we are proud of our successes and achievements, including in 2006:

• the presentation of three new works: Lontano blu at the Adelaide Festival of Arts, Dosostias at the Adelaide Cabaret Festival & Inaugural Melbourne Cabaret Festival and The Hit! previewed in Adelaide at Star Theatres and in the Tower Theatre, the CUB Malthouse, Melbourne ;
• employing 42 artists (local, interstate and Argentinian) across these projects;
• reaching over 2,600 audience members in Adelaide and Melbourne .

Across the years, para//elo's effort extends to:

• creating 39 original works with  473 artists, presented to tens of thousands of audiences in Adelaide, regionally, nationally and internationally and affected communities as far reaching as Cooper Pedy to the UK and Argentina;
• receiving the 1993 Sidney Myer Performing Arts Award for ‘distinctive contribution to the performing arts';
• presenting original works at 8 Adelaide Festivals of Arts, 2 Adelaide Cabaret Festivals, 3 Come Out Festivals, as well as 19 interstate/ regional tours including the 11th Sydney Spring International Festival of New Music (Sydney Opera House), Awesome International Festival for Young People (Perth), Brisbane Biennial International Music Festival (Brisbane), Australian Theatre Festival (Canberra);
• international presentations: Lontano blu at the 2005 International Mercosur Theatre Festival, Córdoba (Argentina), Tracking Time at the 2000 Singapore Arts Festival, A Wedding Feast at the 1996 Singapore Arts Festival and Ricordi at the 1989 Leeds International Youth Festival.

We are committed to continuing to portray cultural diversity in all its guises in Australia and this change in funding position provides the organization with the opportunity to reinvent itself. The board is currently looking at how para//elo's ground-breaking work will continue in the future.

As for the individuals who make up the core team of para//elo, they will continue their individual journeys:

Becc Bates as the Assistant Event Manager of the FUSE Festival;
Fotis Kapetopoulos with KAPE communications;
Paola Niscioli as Marketing Manager of the Casula Powerhouse.

Many thanks to artists and audiences, funding bodies, sponsors and business partners who have contributed and sustained us over the years."

AUGUST 06

Another busy month for us all here, with the second stage development of Netta Yashchin's THE HIT that had an Adelaide preview on July 28 and Melbourne season from 3 - 6 August at Tower theatre, the CUB Malthouse.

The work certainly got audiences talking:

• "Riveting and revolting from the first word to the last, 'THE HIT!' challenges our sensitivities (or lack thereof) on what humanity is capable of doing to itself." Anthea Sidiropoulos (audience, Melbourne)
• “I thought it had strong moments and visual images; I loved the Netta part, the circus atmosphere, the multi-lingual argument at the end (Netta should have been added to this in Hebrew, I thought); I liked the last Garden of Eden scene with the orange I thought the first 20 minutes needed more punch, but then it built up strongly.” Mark Baker (Head of Jewish Studies, Melbourne University )
• “It was a piece of modern theatre which embodied the truth of today's society which people at the helm are to afraid to admit, and as a consequence of the destruction of what many of previous generations have fought hard to achieve, in a religious, political and social sense.” John Fotinos (audience, Adelaide)
• “People are talking about the show. Especially the jokes. Almost like some people didn't get the irony. I had to say of course they were in poor taste. That was the point. People are definitely affected.” Kristen Messenger (audience, Adelaide)
• “ The Hit is horrific theatre. With text developed by Christos Tsiolkas, the show seems to mine every sadistic vein the anatomy of human history. Each episode adds to a sense of nihilism that blackens the heart and leaves you unsure whether to vomit or cry.” Cameron Woodhead, The Age, 7 Aug 2006

However, we'll leave the last word to collaborator/ writer Christos Tsiolkas: “What do you want from your creative life? For me it is to meet people, be inspired and get excited about what is possible through art. That happened working with you all."

JULY 06

June and July saw us present Simon Palomares' new cabaret, DOSOSTIAS at the Adelaide and Melbourne Cabaret Festivals.

"a critique of Australia's sedition laws told with frills and pink feathers and a couple of fabulously precarious headpieces.... Dosostias is great fun".  Tory Shepherd, The Advertiser, 16 June 2006

"...the heart of this show beats to a sinister pulse... As the curtain draws back, what seemed a vapid spectacular quickly becomes a disturbing burlesque on the virtues of capitalism, American imperialism, even the use of torture." Cameron Woodhead, The Age, July 11, 2006

While in Adelaide Simon also presented a series of workshops "Who's laughing now?" discussing racism to secondary students and teachers in partnership with the Migration Museum.

We're curently working on another new performance, Netta Yashchin's THE HIT which will be premiered in early August.

APRIL 06

We're now catching our breath after a hectic start to 2006!

Our first activity for the year was a 'Back to Business' event on 17 January with our business partners, the Italian Chamber of Commerce & Industry - Adelaide. Here we toasted the new year and each outlined our 06 program to all our associates.

The last week of February sawus at the Australian Performing Arts Market. It was the first time Cross Cultural Producer, Fotis Kapetopoulos, represented parallelo at the market and he was in his element networking with the many interstate and international arts peers all interested in exciting Australian performances!

And, of course, we presented LONTANO BLU at this year's Adelaide Festival. A BIG THANK YOU to everyone who supported us by coming along, offering feedback, helping organise groups, the list goes on...

Our Argentinian collaborators, Gustavo, Jorge, Raffa and Walter LOVED Adelaide and the Festival feeling around town. IT was a joy to work with them and, in Antje Guenther's words: "The spirit and energy each and every one of them brought to the process was unique, and quite different to the attitude I can so easily adopt: stressing out too much; getting so focused on one thing that I forget to pay attention to what's going on around me; forgetting to dance and enjoy life."

Being close to the work, it's hard for us to judge its success, so here are some reactions:

"The most ambitious yet of these plays trying to capture the migrant experience, Lontano blu seeks to universalise it [...] a moving treatment of a subject so delicate that it seems to evaporate the instant the short production ends." Tim Lloyd, The Advertiser, 4 March 2006

"When art goes beyond imitating life, to capture it, you have a play to die for." M.Rucci (audience)

"Loved the vitality of the music and the layering of dance and fim - found overall I wasn't swept away. It seemed to start where it ended." (anonymous)

"Mysterious, sad, delightful and uplifting. And what a line - the one thing I learned by heart was how to forget." M. Ladd (audience)

 

JANUARY 06

We recently held a ‘back to business' event with our partners, the Italian Chamber of Commerce & Industry, Adelaide, at which Paola Niscioli, our Communications & Business Manager introduced our 2006 activities:

“I am speaking this evening on behalf of our producer who can't be with us due to interstate commitments. I love food and cooking and working in the arts is a little like preparing for a dinner party: first we ‘shop' for the right ingredients, then we spend hours putting them together, set the table and await the arrival of guests whereupon we serve the meal and then spend considerable time afterwards cleaning up! In the performing arts the preparation and ‘behind the scenes' work is often as exciting as the performance on stage! So I'm here this evening to let you know that parallelo has finished shopping and we're now preparing the meal.

This year we have some delicious projects on offer … the first is the much awaited LONTANO BLU – A distant blue. This new work is the vision of one of Australia 's respected Directors, Teresa Crea and parallelo's founding director. Lontano Blu is in the Adelaide Bank Festival for the Arts as a major South Australian contribution. The work melds Australian perspectives with counterpart Argentinian experiences. I was fortunate enough to work on the project in Argentina , t was a rewarding experience and we are excited with anticipation to reveal to our Australian audiences this evocative performance that blends dance, visual arts, live music and text.

After we get over the Adelaide Bank Adelaide Festival, we have exciting new projects throughout the year, the first of which is with SA based Director, Netta Yaschin, of Israeli origin, who is working with a team of artists from various cultural backgrounds: Greek, German, Czech, Iraqi on a new work THE HIT !

THE HIT explores the theme of terror in our lives. The title is an Israeli expression, when a suicide bomb goes off, almost every week since 1995, it's called ‘the hit' and everyone talks about it: did you hear the hit, there was a hit again in the same place, don't go there as this is where they love ‘to hit'.

We are very excited to be working with Simon Palomares on a new cabaret that will critically look at the new sedition laws in Australia. The title of the cabaret - Dosostias or Two in the Head was a common term used in Spain under the Franco dictatorship. It implied that if you criticised the government, if you indicated that life may not be as perfect as the Franco Fascists had intended it to be, then you would cop two in the head…by the government of course.

Our final project, for later in the year is THE RICE TRILOGY PART 1 which explores the stories of passage, of food and migration through performance, sound, and film. The development is beginning next month with Director, Christos Linou visiting Singapore to begin working with The Necessary Stage. In Adelaide he will also work local culturally diverse artists and community members, to develop stories that will be the basis of the performance to be presented in Australia and Singapore in 2007/08.

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