Chronicles of a Sleepless Moon unfolds in the dead heart of Australia, in a small, dusty, outback town. Two men, a butcher and a doctor, become embroiled in a devious and most sinister plot. Noticing the ever-growing number of missing bovine in the district, the local newsman is hot on their heels, typewriter in tow, to report on the story of the century. Together they traverse the Australian desert ten thousand leagues beneath the surface of the earth in an organic subterranean vehicle!
Celebrating the spirit of Aussie explorers such as Burke and Wills and DIY backyard inventors around the country, Chronicles of a Sleepless Moon is a surreal and bizarrely funny tale of adventure for all ages, exquisitely crafted and riotously told.
As the audience walks into the theatre they are faced with scattered clutter, a myriad of junk from times gone by: meticulous miniature lit-up models of a town, unknown worlds and creatures from suitcases and, of course, the very machine that will take the protagonists underground. Dusty old instruments lie waiting in a dimly lit corner. When the performance starts it becomes clear that the set is the fourth performer: a painstakingly built maze of trap doors, shadow boxes, projectors and found objects, essential to the narrative yet rarely employed for their original purpose.
the Suitcase Royale
the Suitcase Royale is a multi-artform performance ensemble dedicated to creating new works of the imagination with an eye to detail and an ambition to construct complex performances that impart the simplest of tales.
The company's first work Felix Listens to the World - a love story of sorts - secured a Development Award from Playbox Theatre (now Malthouse Theatre) in August 2004 and won the Melbourne Fringe Festival's Best Performance Award in September that year. The show has since toured Australia and North America to critical acclaim. It was also presented at the Melbourne International Festival of the Arts 2005.
Chronicles of a Sleepless Moon was commissioned for the 2006 Next Wave Festival and premiered as part of the Melbourne Commonwealth Games Cultural Festival. Subsequently, Chronicles has been presented at Adelaide Fringe 2007 (securing a nomination for Best Theatre Production by an Emerging Company), in Sydney, at Edinburgh Fringe and recently had its US premiere at the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust's Australia Festival.
The collaborative creation of original works is the hallmark of the Suitcase Royale. Their style 'Junkyard Theatre', utilises a large variety of performance styles and employs multiple art forms including performance, dance, puppetry, text and set design. Incorporating filmic techniques both in performance and short animation, the Suitcase Royale revive the aesthetic of classic cinema utilising both digital and celluloid mediums. The company also composes and performs original music for their shows as well as creating digital soundscapes. It is a unique ensemble-based style of theatre-making that approaches the work as a whole, with the aim of making highly developed, multi-faceted, narrative-driven theatre.
Contact:
Fiona Pride
Red Wall
PO Box 1104
North Fitzroy VIC 3068
Mob 0400 909 673
fiona@redwall.com.au
www.thesuitcaseroyale.com
