2020 has been a rough year. The cost of Covid to the arts community is immeasurable and we expect to feel its impact for years to come. At a time when audience numbers were limited meaning producers were unable to manage realistic budgets and pay artists, we decided to open the doors of KXT to our artistic community. thanks to the generous support of our partners at KX Hotel, we’ve been able to spend the past few months developing work, offering peer networking, connecting early career artists with industry mentors and upskilling producers.
WARWICK DODDRELL working with Snatched Theatre Collective // Reimagining Sputnik 1
In 2019 Warwick Doddrell directed If We Got Some More Cocaine I Could Show You How I Love You pres by Green Door Theatre Company at KXT. This year, as theatres closed down, Snatched Theatre Collective were preparing to stage the premiere season of Madeleine Stedman’s play April Marlowe’s Abortion, directed by Hannah Goodwin for the Belvoir 25a season.
We’re thrilled to have the team in at KXT for work on their latest project. Stay tuned for more
"Nonna hated this place when she arrived. She thought this was a godforsaken country. She had the classic 60s housewife thing, where she'd have a drink when no one was noticing ... she'd, she'd - yeah, so I noticed her doing stuff like that, sneaking in extra drinks, always like 'where's the wine? where's the brandy' ... And then of course the Joan Crawford moment, and the top of the stairs with the dressing gown..."
Danny Ball, Jeremi Campese, Thomas De'Angelis and Emma O'Sullivan are co-creating and writing a new Australian play exploring the Italian-Australian experience across generations.
Danny Ball has been in the middle of some of KXTs most audacious work: from seasons of Mercury Fur and The Serpent’s Teeth, the 2017 development of LADS, to launching and co-producing the first seasons of play read programs KXTeethcutting and Storytellers. Jeremy Campesi is back at KXT after Rosaline (2019), Yen (2018), and DNA (2018). Emma O’Sullivan has worked at KXT in the bAKEHOUSE production of Coram Boy and with JackRabbit Theatre for the HiJacked Rabbit season, and Thomas De’Angelis is one part of Bontom productions, co-presenting Disparate Scenes for Millenial Dreams with Periscope Productions.
image: from the 2017 UK production
Emily Buxton will be taking over the KXT space to workshop UK playwright Glenn Waldron’s play Natives - all about the generation of “digital natives” that are growing up with the internet. She’s excited to work with a team of incredible young actors to explore a bold work that champions young voices and experiences.
Emily was a member of the KXT2019 Step Up team
TOOTH AND SINEW have been regular visitors to KXT with successful seasons going right back to the start of 2016’s Year of the Family. Also Osama the Hero and the groundbreaking U.B.U. featured in 2019s inaugural Popupstairs season. They’re back in the theatre with a development season, led by Artistic Directors Richard Hilliar and Nicole Wineberg
Taking its inspiration from Euripides' The Bacchae, Agave is an exploration of misogyny and what options are available to women who want to destroy it.
Tooth and Sinew has grown passionate about creating brand new work for the stage and developing these pieces through exploration, improvisation and discussion. Experimental and consciously theatrical, this development period is essential to distil many ideas into a cohesive whole.
We look forward to seeing what kind of messes we can make back in the theatre.
Over three weeks in October, a small group of members from Little Eggs (old and new) will be developing a new work, Symphonie Fantastique.
Through live music, dance and movement, the Eggs will be exploring the disturbing love story of Hector Berlioz’s 1803 symphony. A queer and contemporary lens revitalises this production for the twenty-first century, with a tale that is uncomfortably familiar.
We are so grateful to be back at KXT to explore this production at length. The value of a development period like this is undeniable and we hope to bring a full scale production of this theatricalised symphony in the coming year.
development imagery: Christopher Starnaswki
In 2019 Little Eggs launched our Popupstairs program with a blisteringly beautiful rendition of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, a part of the JackRabbit season. They’ll be in KXT through October working up their next beauty as part of the bAKEHOUSE investment in new work.
SYMPHONIE FANTASTIQUE was to have featured as part of the 2020 Popupstairs program. We’re thrilled to invite the team to popdownstairs to KXT.
In development, led by Mathew Lee (The Rime of the Ancient Mariner; KXTeethcutting) with Oliver Shermacher