& CONFIRMED BY WHARF 2LOUD (W2L):
A spectre is haunting Australia: the spectre of Wharf 2LOUD. The history of theatre is the history of theatrical struggles - the new and the old, rich and poor, gods and monsters, oppressor and oppressed. These struggles usually end in either temporary reconstruction or common ruin. With a world to win, Wharf 2LOUD is about uniting against deadly, expensive theatre - we’ve nothing to lose but our audience.
Wharf 2LOUD turns up the volume on new work, making no apologies for what it might do to your senses or sensibilities. It will engage the heart and electrify the senses, a tangible laceration of the mind and the wits. Wharf 2LOUD has no ‘taste’ - it is a space where imaginations can be free to do what they’ve gotta do. Wharf 2LOUD is a home for diversity - it’s not just about in-yer-face or new and emerging or documentary or correct or dirty or directors’ plays. Wharf 2LOUD is about excellent nights out, excellent nights in the theatre.
Why Wharf 2LOUD? Classics of the theatrical repertoire are well-represented across the country – at the very least this is so in our mothership company, STC. Modern movements in music, sculpture, painting, literature, cinema and dance have reasonable institutions and adequate circulation The comparable body of work in Australian theatre, however, has few outlets. DIY theatre is booming but always in an ad hoc fashion. This context is bound to affect the quality of the work imagined, created and produced here. Commercial theatre is not to be blamed. Modern theatre, often by its nature, is in advance of public taste, and not, therefore, necessarily commercial. Much attention has of course been paid to bringing known dramatists from the past, or from overseas, into the public arena – and indeed this is a rudimentary function of a major theatre company – but little systematic and sustained effort has been expended on dramatists in the here and in the now.
In order to do so there must be a theatre, with resources, where new theatre works can be capably developed and seen regularly by an audience. We must create a vital modern theatre that wins an audience around to an artistic policy (for our industry/profession can’t rely on just one play or wunderkind alone) that supports innovation and experimentation, embraces brutality and beauty, interrogates and collapses the distinctions between theatre, TV and film, and that engages deeply in our intricate, composite world.The crisis we see in theatre is one of opportunity.
Wharf 2LOUD, therefore, must be a busy theatre replete with reality and danger, fantasy and comfort, gesture and thought, humour and lyricism, destruction and texture, where the intention - social, political, formal - is as important as the achievement. Each artist must be given the right to fail in order to keep on working. We must take risks artistically, having sufficient regard for our art and our audience, that we will not compromise our efforts to produce something new, loud and of value. Each artist must accede to our Vow of Clarity to simplify and distil their work: limitation inspires invention.
We, the undersigned Wharf 2LOUD artists, in order to form a more perfectly visceral theatre, establish justice in new work, embrace contradiction, provide for the common resistance, promote a general theatrical welfare, and secure the blessings of ingenuity to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this manifesto for Wharf 2LOUD.
Wharf 2LOUD turns up the volume on new work, making no apologies for what it might do to your senses or sensibilities. It will engage the heart and electrify the senses, a tangible laceration of the mind and the wits. Wharf 2LOUD has no ‘taste’ - it is a space where imaginations can be free to do what they’ve gotta do. Wharf 2LOUD is a home for diversity - it’s not just about in-yer-face or new and emerging or documentary or correct or dirty or directors’ plays. Wharf 2LOUD is about excellent nights out, excellent nights in the theatre.
Why Wharf 2LOUD? Classics of the theatrical repertoire are well-represented across the country – at the very least this is so in our mothership company, STC. Modern movements in music, sculpture, painting, literature, cinema and dance have reasonable institutions and adequate circulation The comparable body of work in Australian theatre, however, has few outlets. DIY theatre is booming but always in an ad hoc fashion. This context is bound to affect the quality of the work imagined, created and produced here. Commercial theatre is not to be blamed. Modern theatre, often by its nature, is in advance of public taste, and not, therefore, necessarily commercial. Much attention has of course been paid to bringing known dramatists from the past, or from overseas, into the public arena – and indeed this is a rudimentary function of a major theatre company – but little systematic and sustained effort has been expended on dramatists in the here and in the now.
In order to do so there must be a theatre, with resources, where new theatre works can be capably developed and seen regularly by an audience. We must create a vital modern theatre that wins an audience around to an artistic policy (for our industry/profession can’t rely on just one play or wunderkind alone) that supports innovation and experimentation, embraces brutality and beauty, interrogates and collapses the distinctions between theatre, TV and film, and that engages deeply in our intricate, composite world.The crisis we see in theatre is one of opportunity.
Wharf 2LOUD, therefore, must be a busy theatre replete with reality and danger, fantasy and comfort, gesture and thought, humour and lyricism, destruction and texture, where the intention - social, political, formal - is as important as the achievement. Each artist must be given the right to fail in order to keep on working. We must take risks artistically, having sufficient regard for our art and our audience, that we will not compromise our efforts to produce something new, loud and of value. Each artist must accede to our Vow of Clarity to simplify and distil their work: limitation inspires invention.
We, the undersigned Wharf 2LOUD artists, in order to form a more perfectly visceral theatre, establish justice in new work, embrace contradiction, provide for the common resistance, promote a general theatrical welfare, and secure the blessings of ingenuity to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this manifesto for Wharf 2LOUD.
I swear to submit to the following set of rules drawn up and confirmed by Wharf 2LOUD (W2L):
1 NO JUNK: All props, costumes and sets must neither be bought nor built, but found by the artists working on each project from within W2L/STC. Milk crates and hip flasks, are expressly forbidden.
2 NO CHANDELIERS: Technical restrictions: a) all sound must be created on stage - the only exception to this is pre and post show; b) all shows must be lit using available resources and equipment - extra colour filters and specialist gobos are forbidden; c) technical rehearsal must be in a ratio of 2:1 with the show eg. 1 hour show, 2 hour tech; d) the play must be unified and self-contained: ie. no external special effects or extra media created elsewhere; nor specious action in the body of the work itself.
3 KEEP IT FRESH: The writers must not deem their play completed when a workshop-readingproduction begins, nor shall it have been performed or developed elsewhere.
4 THE TIME IS NOW: Each play must be about the here and now. Specificity is key, no generalisations and no vagaries. The pulse and intention is now.
5 GO TEAM: Each W2L creation is made by a team. Credit must always be given to that team; they must be offered first option to work on subsequent productions.
6 NO FUCKING SWEARING: No W2L play can contain more than 1 ‘cunt’; it can contain ‘fuck’ no more than three times, and ‘shit’ no more than seven times. Actors may not yell more than three times per show.
7 VIGILANCE: Furthermore, artists must remain vigilant that the work demonstrates theatrical imagination and is unclouded by the constraints of other forms. The artists’ supreme goal must be to push theatrical form, ideas and emotions as fa r as possible and not hold back.
8 OUT JOKES: No W2L show can contain in-jokes or private references. Work is to be accessible. Artists therefore must not mention in their piece, for example, any current or past staff of STC.
9 HAPPY BIRTHDAY: All artists must be willing to be naked on stage.
10 RED PEN: All shows must run no longer than 83 minutes.
I swear to achieve this by all the means available and at the cost of fine taste and aesthetic considerations.
Thus I make my Vow of Clarity.
On behalf of Wharf 2LOUD:
BRENDAN COWELL
CHRIS MEAD
1 NO JUNK: All props, costumes and sets must neither be bought nor built, but found by the artists working on each project from within W2L/STC. Milk crates and hip flasks, are expressly forbidden.
2 NO CHANDELIERS: Technical restrictions: a) all sound must be created on stage - the only exception to this is pre and post show; b) all shows must be lit using available resources and equipment - extra colour filters and specialist gobos are forbidden; c) technical rehearsal must be in a ratio of 2:1 with the show eg. 1 hour show, 2 hour tech; d) the play must be unified and self-contained: ie. no external special effects or extra media created elsewhere; nor specious action in the body of the work itself.
3 KEEP IT FRESH: The writers must not deem their play completed when a workshop-readingproduction begins, nor shall it have been performed or developed elsewhere.
4 THE TIME IS NOW: Each play must be about the here and now. Specificity is key, no generalisations and no vagaries. The pulse and intention is now.
5 GO TEAM: Each W2L creation is made by a team. Credit must always be given to that team; they must be offered first option to work on subsequent productions.
6 NO FUCKING SWEARING: No W2L play can contain more than 1 ‘cunt’; it can contain ‘fuck’ no more than three times, and ‘shit’ no more than seven times. Actors may not yell more than three times per show.
7 VIGILANCE: Furthermore, artists must remain vigilant that the work demonstrates theatrical imagination and is unclouded by the constraints of other forms. The artists’ supreme goal must be to push theatrical form, ideas and emotions as fa r as possible and not hold back.
8 OUT JOKES: No W2L show can contain in-jokes or private references. Work is to be accessible. Artists therefore must not mention in their piece, for example, any current or past staff of STC.
9 HAPPY BIRTHDAY: All artists must be willing to be naked on stage.
10 RED PEN: All shows must run no longer than 83 minutes.
I swear to achieve this by all the means available and at the cost of fine taste and aesthetic considerations.
Thus I make my Vow of Clarity.
On behalf of Wharf 2LOUD:
