A Perfect Plan – A Race Against Time

Jealous Theatre presents STAB 2001

A Perfect Plan – A Race Against Time

BATS Theatre
8pm, November 22 – December 8 2001 (excluding Sunday and Monday)
BATS Theatre, 1 Kent Terrace
$16/$12 Bookings phone 802 4175

On a railway platform a Station Master awaits his final train. In the seven subsequent minutes he discovers a dead body lying on the track, is interrupted by a Greek busker and harassed by a zealous Brownie. Together they are locked in a race against time.

A Perfect Plan is a devised physical theatre work. It explores narrative structures by playing with looping and repetition. It is influenced by the films Run Lola Run and Groundhog Day and Italo Calvino’s novel, If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller,

A Perfect Plan is a new work from the award winning company who brought you Milk (Best Fringe Theatre 1998), Flood (Chapman Tripp Most Original Production 1999) and Fever.

“[Jealous are] quirky and brilliantly innovative…extraordinary” – The Dominion

The story is set in a New Zealand railway station in a year resembling 1953. The play takes an explosive short story that runs for approximately seven minutes and puts it on repeat. Each repetition of the original loop helps to build an evocative poetic landscape while revealing new information about the stories and characters to the audience.

A Perfect Plan features an original score composed by Sebastian Morgan-Lynch, Matthew Hutton and Steve Gallagher. It stimulates the senses, immediately taking the audience to a railway environment. The music is built entirely from sampled cello (which is digitally distorted, reversed, messed up, layered and transformed), one live cellist and four human voices.

Set designer Tracey Monastra has completely transformed the interior of BATS into a railway station. The audience is seated on either side of the station’s platform, suggesting they are voyeurs waiting to catch trains from other platforms. Lighting effects by award winning lighting designer Jennifer Lal will give the impression of a platform which floats in space.

In May 2001 Jealous performed The Railway Project in the Wellington Railway Station to 20,000 rush hours commuters. The Railway Project explored ideas of travel, looping and time and has now grown into the commissioned show, A Perfect Plan.

A Perfect Plan features Jealous regulars Miranda Manasiadis, Claire Martin and Judy Dale along with Toby Leach. Direction by company co-founder Emma Willis.

STAB is an annual commission awarded by BATS Theatre and funded by Creative New Zealand. It focuses on producing innovative and challenging new work that excites audiences by exploring new styles and forms of presenting performance. “BATS is thrilled to be commissioning A Perfect Plan. In the past couple of years STAB has focused on integrating technology into performance. In contrast to this, A Perfect Plan explores how we understand the way that stories are told using human resources.” Sharyn Duncan, BATS Programme Manager.

For more information contact:
Shelley McCarten Anna Brown
Publicist Producer
04 495 8015 or 021 261 5664 04 387 8614 or 021 511 515

© Scoop Media