STELLLAAAA!

It's heating up for us alleycats now! Rehearsals are just around the corner, and our fabulous director Kat Henry will be working tirelessly to bring our four scripts to life.

We're going to be spending a lot of time with Kat, and we thought you'd like to know who we're spending all of our time with :)

MEET KAT (meow!):

My name is Kat and I have a production company called Stella Electrika.  Stella lets me do anything I want as an artist so it's sometimes difficult for people to pin it down and say that it's this or that.  It's pretty contemporary like that - in the truest sense of the word: I do what I feel like doing NOW, and, of course, NOW is changing all the time.  At various "nows" in the past Stella has produced multi-media, multi-disciplinary performances, like The New Dead: Medea Material at La Boite in 2010, made a music video and a short film, collaborated with artists to create an outdoor, live, interactive photographic installation, and very recently Stella was the producing parent of a piece in Adelaide called Deliverance where 3 performers (including Kat) stepped into a 5x6 metre outdoor space with nothing - no provisions, no shelter, no clothes - and stayed in that space with out leaching for 240 hours.  That's 10 days in which they issued an invitation to their audience to bring them what they thought they'd need to survive.  It was such a thrilling success and the people of Adelaide became super engaged with their plight, indeed bringing them what they needed to survive, plus a whole lot more.  Read more about it on the Deliverance blog here. 

Deliverance

In June this year Brisbane audiences will have the chance to see Stella's long-awaited new production based on the tale of Orpheus and Eurydice.  More details very soon, but this has been in development for a couple of years, from being short-listed for the Queensland Premier's Drama Award in the first year that multiple-disciplinary works were sought, to its development at Hot House's Month in the Country initiative last year, and now finally on the Brisbane stage. 

I'm super excited to be working on the Alleyway Project.  It seems a good fit for what I feel like doing right NOW, which is hanging out in a Brisbane Alleyway (one that I know very well) and working with actors and writers to create a really neat night of theatre.  See you there.

The Alleyway Collective

Right now I don't live anywhere. I'm trying this thing which I first trotted out in December, 4 months ago now, and which I'm taking day by day, and that is to not live anywhere. I didn't really realise it was happening at first but I had the opportunity to do a residency in the country and my lease was coming to an end so I bundled all my things into storage and set off in my car. Its gets confusing for Australia Post, my Dad, and sometimes my employers, but for me it's a great fit for now. In the past 4 months I have hung out in Albury-Wodonga, Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne, and Adelaide. By the time I got to Melbourne I had left even my car behind, releasing me further from being grounded anywhere, and once I got to Adelaide I stepped naked and sans any material belongings at all, or even any attachment to habits, routines and expectations, into a rectangle of grass for 10 days, and felt lighter than I ever had. So now I'm going where the work is: Alleyway next month, Opera Queensland just gone, Queensland Theatre Company coming up, a creative development in Sydney and Melbourne very soon... asking myself what it is to live lightly.

Thanks Kat :) we can't wait to do the dirty with you and strip these scripts BARE.

xo The Alley Cats