Launching Sport For Jove's 2016 Theatre Season

SYDNEY - Oct. 30, 2015 - PRLog -- In December and January, Sport For Jove’s acclaimed Outdoor Summer Season returns for its 7th year with a double bill of moonlit romance, of men behaving badly and women winning the day, with a swift kick up the backside for a culture that is still discussing the rights and rules of marriage equality centuries after our greatest poets shot Cupid’s arrows right back at him.

These are two of the world’s perfect comedies, The Importance of Being Earnest, by Oscar Wilde and Shakespeare's only entirely original comedy, Love’s Labour’s Lost, the play most closely tied to his staggering series of Sonnets, to this day the most popular love poetry ever written. Sport For Jove, the company that salvaged the forgotten All’s Well That Ends Well to such acclaim, brings this unknown gem to the stage in a full Elizabethan setting, fusing the sonnets and the play into a passionate study of the act of artistic creation. Summer Season 7 will give these wonderful plays a vigorous outdoor life in the glorious surrounds of Bella Vista Farm and Leura Everglades Gardens.

Also playing as a bonus curtain raiser to Love’s Labour’s Lost throughout the festival season is the brilliant short one-act play Shakespearealism, by acclaimed Australian actor, writer and film director Josh Lawson, directed by Lizzie Schebesta.

Moving indoors, Sport For Jove returns to the Seymour Centre, as its resident theatre company, to stage a neglected 20th Century masterpiece about censorship of the world’s most innocent yet dangerous satirical device – the political cartoon.

Howard Barker’s No End of Blame is a sublimely playful, challenging and pertinent political masterpiece. Set over 6 decades of the 20th Century across Europe’s most significant historical moments, the story pits a passionate, provocative pair of artists, one a painter, the other a cartoonist, against the forces of censorship and insidious state control that corrupt and stifle the human right to freedom of thought and freedom of speech. This brutal and savagely funny play could not be more relevant to our modern world in light of the Charlie Hebdo tragedy and the world’s new brand of warfare, journalism and censorship. A visual and aural feast for the senses, sharp, biting, hilarious and full of variety.

Moving into May, Sport For Jove is remounting its hugely successful production of Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew on the great Hollywood soundstage of the silent film era, in the York Theatre, Seymour Centre and the Riverside Theatre, Parramatta.

Shakespeare’s love stories challenge us very deeply. They tend to be models of disharmony and madness in which trust, patience and finally, hope, are only reached through chaos and pain. They are as troubling as they are funny, and as beautiful as they are disturbing. The Taming of the Shrew captures that paradox perfectly, among the most challenging, confronting and exuberant plays ever written.

In June, Sport For Jove is proud to be staging one of Australia’s defining works of art on the big stage of the York Theatre. Michael Gow’s Away is an extraordinary and moving story of family, community, awakening and forgiveness.

The 30th Anniversary of this seminal Australian work is marked by a powerful and inventive new production. Michael Gow’s epic and intimate story of family renewal, death and awakening is brought to life with an exceptional ensemble cast, offering theatre goers a must-see experience. The coming of age story of Tom and Meg and their families celebrates a lost time and place in 1960s Australia that still expresses our deepest national, social and personal anxieties today. We are thrilled to present this national treasure in a vibrant new production.

Opening in late July, a lifetime dedicated to Chekhov’s work brings Kevin Jackson to direct his greatest play, Three Sisters.  Anton Chekhov’s vision of the Prozorov family is one of the most atmospheric and complete portraits of the ordinary/extraordinary flux of human life and ebbing dreams ever penned and this production combines faith and bold invention for a beautiful and rewarding experience in the theatre.

This production will also be part of The Anton Project, a study over several months of Chekhov’s life and work, including Russian history, dance, writing, and even cooking!  This complete and immersive experience will allow people to become more engaged with the play, the people, and the culture, allowing for a deeper  more appreciative understanding of the work. Anyone will be welcome to this series of talks and events in the months leading up to the production.

The final play in Sport for Jove's 2016 Season brings an exciting new adaptation written by stage icons Andrea Demetriades and William Zappa, along with Damien Ryan and Terry Karabelas of Sophocles' Antigone.

Antigone is a child of war, like too many in our world. She asked a simple question thousands of years ago that remains too difficult for us to answer even to this day, as so many recent events have demonstrated. What do we do with the body of a terrorist, a murderer, who has brought destruction, death and horror to our community when that terrorist is our brother, our own flesh and blood? How do the unwritten laws of personal conscience co-exist with the laws of a society and a nation?

For more information, visit Sport For Jove's website at sportforjove.com.au