In 2021, Theatre Republic ran its Future:Present program for the first time, and it attracted a surprising audience.
“One of the great things about the first Future:Present was that we had a lot of people who had never seen a Theatre Republic show before,” says the company’s artistic director, Corey McMahon.
This feels like a potentially strange outcome for an initiative that would – at first glance – likely appeal more to educated theatre audiences. Future:Present, which Theatre Republic is running again this month, sees four playwrights each write a play in just four days. A small contingent of directors, actors and crew are then also given only four days to work out how to stage the works for a public performance.
The program is designed in the image of other new writing incubators, such as Sydney-based Griffin Theatre Company’s 24-Hour Plays Offs (although it is perhaps “less brutal”, says McMahon), but Theatre Republic adds a thematic dimension to the challenge.
“Because we are a company that really leans in the direction of sort of political work… [we wanted to ask] how could we capture the most compelling themes and ideas that we are engaging with in our world today, and combine this first-draft writing idea with responding to one of those burning issues?” McMahon says.
This instinct to tap into the public conversation is what brought in unusual audiences in 2021. That year, the playwrights worked with the theme of climate change, and environmentalists flocked to the theatre.
The 2022 Future:Present playwrights are (clockwise from top left) Sarah Peters, Sam Lau, Anthony Nocera and Emily Steel.
This year’s writers – Anthony Nocera, Emily Steel, Sam Lau and Sarah Peters, who range from emerging to experienced and span a diversity of identities – are focussing on democracy.
“I think we’re acutely aware that there is a push from certain sectors of the far right to pull back some of the progress we’ve made in terms of free speech, freedom of expression, [and in areas like] transgender rights,” says McMahon.
“There are communities that are disproportionately affected by the rise of a far-right, ultra-conservative movement. So democracy felt like it had to be the thing we engaged with.”
Speaking to InReview on the first of her four-day writing window, playwright Emily Steel had started her process by considering the modern phenomenon of democratic factionalism.
“There’s a lot of talk about the bubbles that we live in now and whether we are more isolated from people who think differently to us now, or whether it’s always been like this,” she says.
“You see after an election how hurt one side can be that other people voted differently to them. And how you can interpret someone else’s vote as in some way evil, rather than based on their thinking about how to balance their own needs in the world, which I think is quite interesting.”
The intention of Future:Present is to bring audiences closer to these early sparks that motivate a playwright in their ideas phase, while also providing artists with a chance to test their instincts by taking something rapidly from page to stage.
it feels like theatre is alive and connecting with the world
McMahon says that over more than 15 years of working with new stage writing, he’s often noticed that rounds of development can lead a play further and further from its original purpose. Steel agrees, and sees Future:Present as a way to re-centre Adelaide theatre as part of the ever-evolving social conversation.
“I think that a lot of the work that we see here is developed over long periods of time, so it doesn’t have the opportunity to respond in this way to what’s going on at this moment,” she says.
“So it feels like it’s an unusual kind of event for Adelaide, and it feels like theatre is alive and connecting with the world.”
More than 18 artists will be involved in bringing Future:Present to the Goodwood Theatre and Studios on July 14, with the plays to be directed by Shannon Rush, Annabel Matheson, Connor Reidy and Clara Solly-Slade, and performed by actors Adam Ovadia, Elizabeth Hay, Juanita Navas-Nguyen and Eddie Morrison. The creative team comprises Kathryn Sproul (designer), Nic Mollison (lighting designer) and James Oborn (composer).
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The event falls near Theatre Republic’s fifth anniversary on July 6, and McMahon says it is heartening for a small company to have a sustained effect on the local scene.
“I think it’s really important for artists to feel like, in addition to the opportunities that are offered by the major players in the state, a company like us, albeit on a much smaller scale, can also give them an opportunity to showcase their work,” he says.
“And from that, people from the bigger companies may see their work and go, ‘We’d like to talk to that person’. It plays a part in the bigger ecology of the local arts sector as well.”
Future:Present is an intense experience for the writers, directors, actors and crew involved, but their rapid bursts of creativity will have impacts that last much longer than four days.
Future:Present 2.0 will be performed at Goodwood Theatre and Studios on July 14 at 7.30pm.
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