By Louis Nowra
Dir: Garry Thomas

Season: 24 April - 4 May 2013

"... when chasing your dreams it helps to be a little crazy ..."

Winner of a NSW Premier's Literary Award for Drama, 'Cosi' is Nowra's second semi-autobiographical play and is set in a mental institution.. '...Nowra has written a terrific play about theatre, madness, illusion, sanity, life: it's a big, splendidly Australian epic....

The time is 1971; the play is set in a Melbourne mental institution. Lewis is always desperate for work as he states "I need the money". He takes on the role of director.

The venue is a theatre that smells of "burnt wood and mould", the cast are patients with very diverse needs, and the play is Mozart’s “Cosi fan tutte”.

Through working with the patients, Lewis eventually discovers a new side of himself which allows him to become emotionally involved and to value love, while anti-Vietnam war protests erupt in the streets outside.


Cast:
LEWIS - Chris Wood
LUCY - Genna-Kate Ryan
NICK - Jamie Billings
JUSTIN - Barry Tomkinson
ROY - Stephen Ingwell
HENRY - Steve Millar
DOUG - Jesse Hobbs
CHERRY - Karyn Gibson
JULIE - Libby Wilson
RUTH - Aimee Borlase
ZAC - Geoff Kendall


Production Team:
Director: Garry Thomas
Prdn Manager: Susan Cameron
Stage Manager: Craig Woolgar
Sound/Lighting Design: Craig Blaikie
Sound/Lighting Operator: Emma Gordon
Costumes: Carole Payton

By Lucy O’Brien
Directed by Garry Thomas
​
Supported by

"Disturbing truths in compelling production" ... "As Kate, Georgina Stylianou gives a sterling performance ... impressive ... total focus" ... "It is a hard play to take at times but well worth seeing" ....  The Press 12 April

By John Pielmeier
Directed by Garry Thomas
Produced by special arrangement with Samuel French, Inc.

Season: 2 – 11 June 2011

Dr. Martha Livingstone, a court appointed psychiatrist, is asked to determine the sanity of a young novitiate – Agnes - accused of murdering her newborn.

Agnes insists the birth was the result of a virgin conception, while the Mother Superior determinedly keeps young Agnes from the doctor, arousing Livingstone’s suspicions further.

Who killed the infant and who fathered the tiny victim?

Livingstone’s questions force all three women to re-examine the meaning of faith and the power of love leading to a dramatic, compelling climax.

“Agnes Of God” was first staged on Broadway in 1982, and was later adapted for a movie, starring Jane Fonda, Anne Bancroft and Meg Tilly.

“This is a wonderful character driven play,” says director Garry Thomas. “It has been very demanding on the cast, who remain on stage for the entire performance.

All three roles are fully developed, with a terrific back story, and the ending definitely leaves you thinking.”

The play is widely believed to be based on an actual incident that took place in New York in mid-1970.

Cast:
Dr Livingstone, psychiatrist - Nikki Conyers
Mother Superior - Heather Giles
Agnes, a young  nun - Aimee Borlase

By Chris Chibnall
Directed by Garry Thomas

Season: 29 September to 9 October 2010

Three a.m. on a hot midsummer's night in Manchester. A party taking place in a shabby Victorian terrace house.

In the back garden Tony and Ruth meet, thanks to a stolen can of beer. On the floor above, Don and Edie, married fifty years, are having a party of their own. 

As the night progresses, love is definitely in the air: the start for Tony and Ruth, the end for Edie and terminally ill Don who will take death, as they have life, together.
​
Cast:
Edie - Marilyn Ollett
Don - John Boyce
Tony - Stephen Ingwell
Ruth - Stephanie ChangCrew

Crew:
Production Manager - Rebecca Taylor
Stage Manager - Steve Millar
Lighting Design - Callun Lewis

By Samuel Beckett
Directed by 

Season: 22 - 31 January 2009

Waiting for Godot follows two consecutive days in the lives of a pair of men who divert themselves while they wait expectantly and unsuccessfully for someone named Godot to arrive.

They claim him an acquaintance but in fact hardly know him, admitting that they would not recognise him were they to see him.

To occupy themselves, they eat, sleep, talk, argue, sing, play games, exercise, swap hats, and contemplate suicide — anything "to hold the terrible silence at bay".
Waiting...If it were measurable, we might just find that waiting is the nation's single biggest pastime. We all find ourselves waiting for someone or something every day of the year, from buses to helpdesk operators, in supermarket & bank queues everywhere. Almost everywhere you go, you can see people waiting.

We've all seen someone who, at the merest hint of some idle time, whips out the knitting needles and the current work-in-progress. Today it is more common to see people playing soduku or simply plugging in headphones to the flavour-of-the-month electronic device and closing off the outside world entirely.

In the age of instant gratification, is waiting a lost art?

Originally written in French by an Irishman living in Paris, Waiting for Godot takes place in a simpler time – before the advent of cellphones and the internet – but its theme is well known to us all.
It was once famously described as "a play in which nothing happens, twice", by Vivian Mercier in the Irish Times (Feb 1956).

Elmwood Players is thrilled to be presenting this classic play to round out their 60th year. Waiting for Godot was written around the same time that Elmwood Players started holding play readings and performing short sketches. Director Tom Vavasour is no stranger to the Elmwood stage, having acted and directed for the society many times over the past 17 years. He is looking forward to the challenge of making sense of the play's circularity and absurdities, and of the waiting game we all play.


Cast:
Estragon, a tramp - Tom Vavasour
Vladimir, a tramp - Stan Hood
Pozzo, Middle class & pompous - Sam Fisher
Lucky, Pozzo's Servant - Neil Hurst
Boy, Messenger from Godot - Campbell Wright

By William Shakespeare
Directed by Sam Fisher

Season: 6 - 16 August 2008

By the pricking of my thumbs…
Something wicked comes to Christchurch this winter season as Elmwood Players delves into the waking nightmare of Scotland’s most infamous hero.
More than 400 years of history have not diminished the engrossing power of Shakespeare’s darkest and bloodiest work: Macbeth has fascinated and enthralled every generation with its gripping depiction of the pitfalls of rampant power-lust and ambition.

This new interpretation, directed by Sam Fisher, combines a contemporary context with all the fascinating drama of a medieval horror. Commander of the modern-day Scottish forces in Afghanistan, a heroic and victorious Macbeth finds himself suddenly plunged into a phantasmagoric realm of witchcraft, carnage and madness that takes him right back to the dark ages — the dark ages both of time and of his soul.

Come in, come in to this dark and forbidding castle on the wild Scottish heath, where fair is foul and foul is fair and all manner of mysterious things hover in the murky air, and watch this pageantry of hell unfold…

Cast:
Duncan (King of Scotland) - Ian Beswick
Malcolm (Duncan's Son) - Mike Jamieson
Macbeth (General of the Army) - Chris Domigan
Banquo (General of the King's Army) - Will Wright
Macduff, a nobleman - Klaus Hermanspahn
Ross, a nobleman - Eric Owsley
Angus, a nobleman - Sophie Rae
A Porter - Ben Allan
A Scots Doctor - Neil Macbeth
Seyton - Jonathan Fisher
Lady Macbeth - Nikki Conyers
Lady Macduff / Apparition 2 - Sandi Ward
Witch 1 - Bailey Hunt
Witch 2 - Jess Stringer
Witch 3 - Jo Owsley
Hecate / Gentlewoman - Chanel Hughes
Apparition 1 / Soldier / Murderer - Taylor Hagen
Lords, Gentlemen, Officers, Soldiers, Murderers, Attendants and Messengers. ​

By Charlotte Keatley
Directed by Doug Clarke QSM

Season: 7 - 17 May 2008

Doris, born in 1900, abandons teaching for marriage and motherhood, nurturing young daughter Margaret through the Blitz. To her mother’s disappointment, Margaret marries an American and becomes a typist, but then meets challenges of her own in her archetypal ‘60s rebel daughter Jackie. Aspiring artist Jackie sacrifices motherhood of Rosie to complete her studies and pursue a glamorous career.

A spirited child of the ‘70s, Rosie, is more than ready to forge her own path through the entrenched family secrets, but how much will it cost?
As each of the women, sometimes hesitantly, sometimes boldly, negotiates their way through the social mores of their time, they will find their greatest strength - and their greatest vulnerability - in these maternal ties.

This warm and tender play weaves back and forth in time, depicting pivotal moments in each of the women’s lives, creating a rich and engrossing family history that will make audiences both laugh and cry.

My Mother Said I Never Should marks a return to an old favourite for director Doug Clarke QSM, who has directed the play twice before. Clarke says he has changed his thought processes, however, and is “treating it as a fresh production”, inspired by Elmwood theatre’s unique staging possibilities

My Mother Said I Never Should has proved a tremendous hit with audiences since its premiere in 1987 at Manchester’s Contact Theatre, where it instantly launched its young author into the ranks of the UK’s top writers and won both the George Devine Award and Manchester Evening News Best Play award.

Cast:
Doris, born 1900, mother of Margaret - Felicity Watson
Margaret, born 1931, mother of Jackie - Marilyn Ollett
Jackie, born 1952, mother of Rosie - Helen Cooper
Rosie, born 1971 - Aimee Perry

By Ronald Harwood
Directed by ​Melanie Camp

Season: 22 October - 6 November 2004

The story of an ageing actor's personal assistant, who struggles to keep his charge's life together

Cast:
Norman - Chris Domigan
Sir - Brian Sullivan
Her Ladyship - Marilyn Ollett
Madge - Helen Castelow
Irene - Erin Hutching
Geoffrey Thornton - John Willoughby
Mr Oxenby - Stephen Austin
Gloucester/Albany - Joyn Boyce
Kent - Graham Williams/Julian Southgate 
Mechanist - Paul Stenhouse
 

By Jimmie Chin
Directed by Marilyn Ollett

Season: 7 - 17 May 2003

Enter the strange and lonely world of Armstrong Armstrong, his mother Pearl, with her ironing exterior, his sister Beryl, who's in charge of the dirty books at the Gas St Public Library, and Gina Gale, the stunning singer with the massive looly bongers.

Everybody wants to be remembered for something - to leave their mark on the world - and Armstrong is no exception.

Not content to be a nobody, his desire to break free from his nothing existence leads him to escape into his own world of movies, writing and the records of his singing idol - Gina Gale.  A world of hope where imagination and reality can be blurred, where truth can be re-arranged.


Cast:
Armstrong - Tom Vavasour
O'Toole - Frank Mars
Venetia - Sharon Nossiter
Pearl - Heather Giles
Beryl - Meredith Hart