Lady Eats Apple – Holland Festival

A bored God creates the world, hoping for a little worship. Adam and Eve appear in a dark paradise. An uneasy romance takes place between the empty seats of the theatre. Lady Eats Apple is a journey through an impressive dream landscape. The Australian Back to Back Theatre's ensemble mixes the comedy of existence with the tragedy of our inevitable death. After the success of Ganesh Versus the Third Reich, performed in the Netherlands in 2012, the group is back with their biggest production yet. They explore the contradictions of human existence in their own inflatable theatre. Programme

With Lady Eats Apple, the Australian group Back to Back Theatre will be making its debut at the Holland Festival. The performance is one of the most ambitious and spectacular productions that the group has made in the course of its thirty-year history. The spark that led to the creation of Lady Eats Apple came from Simon Laherty, one of the actors from the Back to Back Theatre ensemble.

He wanted to make a tragedy. This struck a chord with Bruce Gladwin, the group's artistic director, who created a work that had death as its starting point. The group carried out a series of interviews with people who had had near-death experiences. These people's recollections form the basis of the performance, which takes place in an impressive inflatable setting that will take up a large part of the theatre. Gladwin describes it as a 'large, visual theatre piece that tries to create the unconscious as a landscape; a series of voids that the audience is not only watching, but within.'

The story, which starts with Adam and Eve and the beginning of time extends to the present day. According to Gladwin, it is crucial that it mainly takes place in the heads of the members of the audience. In the Australian magazine Broadsheet, he explains that, 'It’s quite an open work,' which looks at 'what limitations are placed on us as individuals, and by who.'

Back to Back Theatre has been making theatre since 1987, under the leadership of various artistic directors, but its cast has always been made up of actors with mental disabilities. The performances develop from a process of workshops and intensive improvisation sessions. The group has built an international reputation and tours all over the world. One of the company's most recent successes is Ganesh Versus the Third Reich (2012 in the Rotterdamse Schouwburg), which newspaper De Volkskrant described as'a genuine and fascinating blend of reality and fantasy that seems to come about as you're watching it, often forcing you to hold your breath.' That performance dealt with the earth and the abuse of power. This is a recurring theme in the work of Back to Back Theatre, and is also a focus of Lady Eats Apple.

Gladwin emphasis that Back to Back Theatre is more than a theatre group for disabled people. The work that they produce relates to topics that are bigger and wider than that alone. Gladwin explains, 'For me our objective is really to just make great art.' Lady Eats Apple had its world premiere at the Melbourne Festival in 2016.

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credits

direction Bruce Gladwin devisors, performers Scott Price, Sarah Mainwaring, Mark Deans, Romany Latham, Brian Lipson, Simon Laherty set design Mark Cuthbertson projection design Rhian Hinkley light design, technical director Andrew Livingston, bluebottle music Chris Abrahams sound design Marco Cher-Gibard sound system design Nick Carroll sound mixing Lachlan Carrick dramaturgy Kate Sulan, Tamara Searle, Melissa Reeves costumes Eugyeene Teh stage manager Alice Fleming assistant stage manager Lucy Harrison production manager Dans Maree Sheehan mechanical design and fabrication Kinetic Sets head of production Ally Harvey executive producer Alice Nash production Back to Back Theatre assisted by Australian Government‘s Major Festivals Initiative, Confederation of Australian International Arts Festivals Inc., Melbourne Festival, Adelaide Festival, Perth International Arts Festival, Carriageworks, Wiener Festwochen, Theater der Welt, The Keir Foundation, Thyne Reid Foundation with the support of Lord Mayor’s Charitable Foundation co-commissioned by Holland Festival with support in its development by Arts Centre Melbourne, Geelong Performing Arts Centre

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