This Bitter Earth: New Theatre Newtown

Joseph Lloyd
30th Jun 2019

Experimental live shows thrive in the inner west and New Theatre Newtown is the hotspot for some of Sydney’s most challenging and original works. Their upcoming world premiere is This Bitter Earth. It’s a short run 17 day production puts the spotlight on an area of relationships clouded by the languid debates of equality and homophobia in recent decades. Finally, a millennial exploration of topics with substance that take a satirical yet confronting look at queer life of online dating, corporate capitalism, climate change, fear and self discovery.

Directed by Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts graduate, Riley Spodaro, New Theatre also boasts an all-female design team Grace Deacon (set and costumes), Phoebe Pilcher (lighting), Jessica Dunn (sound designer and composer).

This Bitter Earth is my way of parsing this current cultural moment we're living through.” says playwright, Chris Edwards, “We see a generation of people struggling to connect with each other as there's this looming, ever-present sense of twenty-first century despair hovering over our heads at all times.”

The genesis of the script was part of Edwards’ major work while completing his Masters of Writing for Performance at NIDA last year and has been further developed into a full length play especially for the New Theatre stage. He describes it as a loose montage of standalone stories that give insight into a generation’s consciousness. “Each scene is a little snapshot of a particular kind of yearning for connection, and all the healthy or unhealthy ways in which we express or act on those feelings. Their hook ups turn into existential epiphanies, their relationships are only working when they're crashing and burning, and they'll talk about anything but the things tearing them apart. But also like, fun and banter and great gags and stuff.”

Starring Mitchell Bourke, Michael Cameron, Elle Mickel, Matthew Prendy, Ariadne Sgouros and Sasha Simon, the anthology is couched in banter, fun gags and dirty humor with a mission quite profound. “I want to take stock of our current queer Australian landscape, let my generation actually see itself on stage, and hope that somewhere amongst the understated brutality that we inflict upon ourselves and each other, we can find something honest, or true, or with the ability to give us a brief respite from the apocalypse happening around us.” continued Edwards.

PERFORMANCE TIMES
Previews Thu 11 - Fri 12 July 7.30pm
Opening Night Sat 13 July 7.30pm
Wed – Sat 7.30pm
Sun 5pm
Sat 27 July 2pm only

https://newtheatre.org.au/this-bitter-earth/