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Two Worlds Collide
The world of film and theatre merge and genres are mixed up in the Griffin Theatre Company’s new production, Quack.
The year is 1880. In an outback town in Broken Hill, the people are falling ill. Fanny, a young aspiring writer, wants to escape. But when a new doctor with a new vision for the town arrives, she decides to stay. It seems like a good idea... until the zombies take over.
This is Quack, the latest production in the Griffin Theatre Company's 2010 season. Written by award winning Australian playwright, Ian Wilding (October) and directed by Chris Mead (The Modern International Dead), the play is described as a "mash-up of A Country Practice, Deadwood and Shaun of the Dead."
Mead, who worked closely with Wilding in developing the script, tells FILMINK that the play originally started off as political satire. The inclusion of zombies came about after they toyed with the idea of the sick townspeople eating the healthy.
"We were trying to work out what was wrong with them and then I thought, ‘If they're eating each other does that make them zombies?' And that liberated us in terms of a structure but also the possibility of what this thing could be," recounts Mead.
And so Quack was born! Though not a zombie-film buff at the time, Mead is now an expert on all creatures of the undead after watching more than 30 zombie films as part of his research.
"We really went into the genre," he explains. "We delved into the idea of how these films worked and how we could make it work in theatre as well. This is a project that marries what's great about the zombie film but also what's really good in theatre."
For Mead, working on a play that has been so heavily influenced by a film genre has been an exciting experience. "What's fantastic and really fun about this project is that everyone gets zombies, and it also allows us to do all that great exploitation of film stuff because we've got blood, gore, guts and pus!" he enthuses. (Warning: Those in the front row, you may get a little dirty).
To celebrate this fusion of film and theatre, the Griffin Theatre Company has launched Between the Lines, a new venture aimed at enhancing the theatre experience of audience members.
Theatre-goers will be able to enjoy special screenings of zombie classics like George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead, as well as a marathon of hit-television series Deadwood and a ‘best-of' compilation of iconic Australian drama, A Country Practice.
Sam Strong, Griffin's Artistic Director, describes Between the Lines as a new and original way of creatively engaging with the audience. "An essential way of doing that for us is to kind of turn the time and space experience of the show into an event," he explains. "So we're staging a whole lot of stuff around our main themes in the plays and looking at ways of diversifying what we do here."
Mead hopes that Quack and Between the Lines will help dispel the myth that theatre is ‘boring and dull'.
"The one thing I love to do with theatre is to make it as accessible as possible, and that's not about simplifying or reducing it. It's about opening the doors and really trying to reach out and show people what theatre can do."
Quack and Between the Lines will be running from August 27-October 2. For more information, visit the Griffin Theatre Company's website.