Miserable Failure Poured Into Play
Newcastle Herald
Monday April 7, 2003
WHEN Ryan Burrett left the Hunter School of the Performing Arts in year 11 he headed to the Big Smoke and took a job in telemarketing.
He lasted less than a week.
``The place where I worked was pretty soul-destroying," he said.
``There were people who were good at telemarketing and people who failed miserably."
Burrett's brief experience hasn't been wasted.
He has written a play, Cunning Linguists, that looks at the people in a telemarketing office in Sydney.
Like Burrett, some of the characters are young people from the country. And the products they are trying to sell, household industrial cleaners, were what he had to try to persuade people to buy.
Cunning Linguists is being staged by Caravan Theatre, a professional cooperative formed by Burrett and three people who were fellow students at the Hunter School of the Performing Arts: Chandel Mahaffy, Letitia Sutherland and Llawella Lewis.
The play begins a two-week season at Performing Arts Newcastle's The Showroom, 5 Auckland Street, Newcastle, on April 17.
Burrett, Mahaffy, Sutherland and Lewis took different paths after leaving school, then met again in Newcastle in 2001.
With the aid of a $500 Artstart Youth Skills grant, they registered Caravan Theatre Co as a business and staged their first show, "It didn't have to be this way, Brenda!", at the Palais Royale Youth Venue in January last year. Cunning Linguists is the first of four shows, all written by company members, that they will stage this year at The Showroom.
Burrett describes Cunning Linguists, which he is also directing, as a black comedy, although he's reluctant to pigeon-hole it in a specific genre.
Caravan's ideology includes a belief that theatre should have no restrictions, no limitations and should push boundaries.
The four Caravan members, all aged 21, are joined in the cast of Cunning Linguists by Ewan Sutherland, Sarah Robey and Andrew Kavanagh.
Ewan Sutherland is making his first appearance on stage since winning a CONDA in the mid-1990s for his performance in Newcastle Dramatic Art Club's The One Day of the Year. He plays the rather nasty call-centre boss.
The Caravan members aren't restricting their work to the company's shows. Burrett is one of the title characters in Dog Day Moon's current Bouncers and Letitia Sutherland is nearing the end of a tour of Queensland in David Brown's In a mosh pit no one can hear you scream.
In its first week (from April 17), Cunning Linguists will play on Thursday at 8pm, Friday and Saturday at 8pm and 10pm and Sunday at 6pm. Tickets will be $10 and $5 concession.
The second week will see the hour-long show on a double bill with In a mosh pit no one can hear you scream, playing from April 24 to 26 at 8pm and April 27 at 6pm ($17 and $12 concession).
Bookings can be made through Performing Arts Newcastle on 4926 5995.
© 2003 Newcastle Herald