Acclaimed performance maker Tamara Saulwick employs portable turntables, reel-to-reel tape players and live performance in a moving meditation on cycles and the ending of things at Arts House – North Melbourne Town Hall for a limited season from 13 May 2015.
Featuring the voice of Paddy Mann (Grand Salvo), an electro-acoustic score by Peter Knight and design by Ben Cobham (bluebottle), Endings is part chamber concert and part performance work that explores the experiences – both ordinary and extraordinary – that cluster around death, dying and afterlife.
Developed as part of Arts House CultureLAB and premiered at Sydney Festival 2015, Endings is built, in part, from one-on-one interviews: real people’s stories, reflections and voices that are cut onto bespoke vinyl records and embedded in a richly textured sound design; operated, accompanied and extended through live performance and song.
Voices of the living emerge from the crackle of records turning; vintage reel-to-reels send tape loops round the space; performers converse with the recorded voices of past conversations; and a voice floats through this evocative sound world singing an ode to the recently departed.
Recipient of an Australia Council Theatre Fellowship 2015, Tamara Saulwick creates hybrid performance works for theatre and public spaces – her diverse training and experience, includes indoor theatre and outdoor performance, dance, film and video.
In 2010, her solo work Pin Drop received the Green Room award for outstanding production (Theatre – Alternative and Hybrid Performance) and her other works include map folding for beginners (2001), Imprint (2005), and her site specific works for the Big West Festival – Seddon Archives (2011) and PUBLIC (2013).
Melbourne songsmith Mann creates quiet and soulful odes – his work has been described as keeping “things achingly simple, his songs, as rudimentary, rattling odes, often kept to the barest of bones.”
“…extraordinary storytelling… Endings is an elegant, economical production… uplifting too, and comforting…” – The Guardian
Endings
Arts House – North Melbourne Town Hall, 521 Queensberry Street, North Melbourne
Season: 13 – 17 May 2015
Bookings: (03) 9322 3713 or online at: www.artshouse.com.au
For more information, visit: www.artshouse.com.au or www.tamarasaulwick.com for details.
Image: Endings – photo by Jeff Busby