Contest
World Premiere
25 July - 4 August 2018
Northcote Town Hall
Come to play, come to win or don't come at all.
I don’t know when I first saw it / In a memory, a premonition, or a dream.
It was a house and it was on fire / I was the house and I was on fire.
A suburban netball team. A new player. Cass says she wants to fit in but if she won’t play by their rules why does she bother coming at all? She claims to see something they cannot, a warning of sorts. All the other women want to do is play. But this player will push each of them to a point of furious revelation. Nothing will be left on the court once these women are done with their reckoning.
A sweaty play about the petty and the profound, the mundane and the mythic, Contest asks how we might be with each other if we don’t have to win.
Presented by Darebin Arts Speakeasy in association with New Working Group and Bureau of Works.
Contest was originally commissioned by Malthouse Theatre through the support of the Malcolm Robertson Foundation. It was seeded through Malthouse Theatre’s Besen Family Artist Program, and developed through the City of Yarra Performance Investigations Program. This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts, its arts funding and advisory body. The production is supported by the Besen Family Foundation. This project has received funds from Creative Partnerships Australia through the Australia Cultural Fund.
Written by Emilie Collyer
Directed by Prue Clark
Movement Direction: Nat Cursio and Alice Dixon
Set and Costume Design: Romanie Harper
Lighting Design: Amelia Lever-Davidson
Sound Design: Emah Fox
Script Dramaturg: Mark Pritchard
Producer: Erin Milne (Bureau of Works)
Cast: Alice Ansara, Natasha Herbert, Kate Hood, Sonya Suares, Emily Tomlins
Production and Stage Manager: Adelaide Harney
Assistant Stage Manager: Harriet Wallace-Mead
Stage Assistant: Alaina Bodley
Promo and production images: Sarah Walker
Video: Cobie Orger
Reviews and Media
Watch Trailer
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“Collyer patterns wide-ranging dialogue – we get everything from frank sex confessions to stories of bodily betrayal, from surreal elegy to piteous intimations of domestic violence – into a kind of dream play that, underneath the surface comedy, offers a jarring lens onto gendered experience… Prue Clark directs a strong ensemble performance. Emily Tomlins has radioactive presence as Cass…An unsettling tragiomic vision from a talented local playwright, brought to life with buckets of grunt and style” – Cameron Woodhead, The Sydney Morning Herald
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“Collyer’s writing arcs from brutally unromantic to gruffly - poetic with some exquisitely confessional exchanges along the way. Jousting dialogue unravels into contemplative soliloquies…the design sharply – and magically – counterpoints the narrative reality…production elements resolve and coalesce into something remarkable, even ecstatic.” – Chris Boyd, The Australian
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“Netball as Homeric battlefield: In Contest, now on a Darebin Arts Speakesy, the world created by writer Emilie Collyer and director Prue Clark is remarkable: an epic battle worthy of Homer that spills out of, and perfectly captures, formalised physical contest” - Robert Reid, Witness Performance
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“Contest (the very title open to multiple interpretations) is a highly intelligent, perceptive and deeply felt work, performed by an excellent cast. They bring out all the buried or repressed fears and emotions of their characters, layered into them by the playwright. I hope I won’t put anyone off by saying this is a genuinely feminist play which makes its convincing case by being so believable” - Michael Brindley, Stage Whispers
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“Contest is a sweaty, no-regrets play [that] delights in the small moments. Emily Tomlins is a force” - The Herald Sun
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“An incisive and moving portrait of five women on a netball team. The real strength of ‘Contest’ is its physicality. There is something cathartic but also unsettling in seeing women’s sweat pour down their faces, and their muscles shake with effort. This, combined with Collyer’s writing, makes for a dynamic conversation between mind and body, language and motion. The performers work brilliantly together as an ensemble” - Laura Hartnell, Theatre People
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“It is simply spellbinding” – Olga Tolkacheva, The Bohemian Rhapsody Club
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“Emilie wrote a beautiful, devastating piece about female relationships, using netball as a metaphor. Part poem, part script, she made a conscious effort to cast it inclusively” - Kate Hood, MEAA
Images by Sarah Walker
