A COMEDIC ADVENTURE OF WITCHES, WIZARDS, ROMANTIC INTERLUDES, A ROYAL WEDDING, STRANGE CROP CIRCLES, EVEN STRANGER MORRIS DANCERS, AND THE BIGGEST THREAT DISCWORLD HAS EVER FACED . . . ELVES!
Based on the novel by Terry Pratchett
Adapted for the stage by Irana Brown
Directed by Simon James
Dare Not Call Them By Their True Name
As Magrat Garlick leaves the Lancre Coven of Witches to prepare for her marriage to the young reformist king, Verence II, strange events occur around the land. Crop circles are popping up everywhere. The barriers between one dimension and another are thinning. The Elves have been waiting for a thousand years and now it is once again their chance to cross over from their world and conquer Discworld. As the local chapter of Morris Dancers perform a play on Midsummer's Eve for the Royal Wedding celebrations, the Elves break through and chaos reigns. Elves are not very nice. Forget all that cutesie Disney crap, Discworld Elves, although beautiful and glamorous, are spiteful, aggressive, cruel, vicious beasts. They may enjoy luring humans into their mesmerising spell of charm, but once bored with the new toy, they will quickly kill it. What are the people of Lancre to do?Throw in a new coven of young gothlike girls playing with magic, a group of Wizards from the Unseen University enroute for the Wedding, the world's second-greatest lover, Casanunda (a dwarf), and add Magrat's dismay at what "queening" currently involves, LORDS AND LADIES is a multi-leveled comic adventure featuring the titanic struggle between the Elf Queen and Granny Weatherwax, ably supported by Nanny Ogg, and suprisingly (at least to herself) the kick-ass defiance of Magrat.
Once More Unto The Breach . . .
After the success of WYRD SISTERS (2001), we knew we had to do another Terry Pratchett. The next in the Witches stories in his Discworld series of novels was "Witches Abroad", an adventure involving lots and lots of dwarfs (a tad difficult to cast), a complicated diverse plot (difficult to simplify for the stage) and such things as Caribbean voodoo characters (which seem to be in short supply in Perth) and mirrors reflecting mirrors onstage (not a good thing to try to light). So we plumbed for a more theatrically dramatic story and leapt at LORDS AND LADIES .Changes were made to the original adaptation. Pratchett fans do such things. It's expected and it's accepted. (Hey, a Discworld production without Death in it is just not a Discworld production!) The whole show could have been presented on minimalist lines, but why not give the audience more of a background to the settings and the characters than were originally suggested in the script? Let's cut the long monologues and show rather than tell what is happening. Let's harken back to the roots of drama and use the Elves as a (sort of) traditional Greek Chorus rather than just as minor characters. It was certainly a big undertaking doing this project. A big cast, a big crew and lots of ideas that kept mushrooming and becoming more complicated. The vagaries of working in Community Theatre meant dealing with some people that should have been more committed to the show than what they actually delivered. Our professional background was superimposed on "amateurs", some of which couldn't live up to our expectations. With a cast of 29, we had 16 cast replacements since the auditions occured in December 2001. The record was three weeks without a cast change! What were left with, however, was a group of dedicated, very hard working folk who do this, not only for the fun of it, but also becasue they work so well as a team and enjoy sharing such an experience with an audience. Our Actors as well our team of Production Crew, Costumes people, Make-Up Artists and Publicity folk all laboured long and hard, and although it seemed at times like we wouldn't quite get there, we did, and we did with some outstanding results.Feedback from audiences was fantastic. Apart from comments made after each performance, we received phone calls and emails congratulating us on the show. A nice story to tell is that later that year, Mr Pratchett himself was in Perth for book signings and one of our fans took along our posters to be autographed. Upon seeing the LORDS AND LADIES poster, Mr P said that was just how he envisioned the Elves. Can't ask for much better than that, eh? Although this has probably been the biggest single project ARENA has tackled, the show was a critical and financial success. It has also brought a lot of people close together, creating new friendships or cementing old ones. Can't ask for much better than that, eh?LORDS AND LADIES had eight performances at the Hayman Theatre for an audience of over 1200. HAYMAN THEATRE, Curtin University
10th - 13th and 17th - 20th July, 2002
Tkts $14 FULL, $10 CONCESSION
Bookings 9362 4080 or 9362 4550
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