Abstract
This chapter surveys the work of the Gilgul Ensemble, an independent theatre company established by Barrie Kosky in 1991 to investigate Jewish identity, history and performance. Across the six-year lifespan of the company, Gilgul created five works that cemented Kosky’s growing reputation as a director and theatre-maker of uncommon vision and boldness. The authors, Yoni Prior and Matthew Delbridge, were members of the original ensemble and the chapter draws on interviews with past ensemble members to consider the idiosyncratic dramaturgy and collaborative working methods that forged the work, and the evolving stage language that developed across the span of the works. The chapter also reflects on the local and international cultural contexts out of which the work emerged, locating it in an historical moment when Australian (and peculiarly Melbournian) theatre artists were responding explicitly to the diversity of the Australian population through investigations of narratives of migration, and the transmutation of languages, accents and traditions of originary cultures. This work tended to the postmodern, multi-modal, multi-lingual and self-reflexive, whilst cannily appropriating and adapting the high theatricality of past performance traditions.
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Notes
- 1.
Recorded conversation between Matt Delbridge, Louise Fox, Elisa Gray, Michael Kantor, Yoni Prior and Tom Wright, 3 July 2020. Unless otherwise specified, all quotations from Louise Fox, Elisa Gray, Michael Kantor, Yoni Prior and Tom Wright are from this conversation.
- 2.
Recorded conversation between Matt Delbridge and Robert Lehrer, 8 June 2020. Unless otherwise specified, all quotations from Robert Lehrer are from this interview.
- 3.
It is hard now to imagine making work in this way, and in these spaces. For good reason, occupational health and safety protocols have become increasingly strict in spaces where performers and audience encounter each other in physical proximity, and on work practices – making or performing—which are demanding or dangerous for performers’ mental or physical health.
- 4.
For example, in order to contribute to marketing the annual season, the company needed to provide a name for the show as well as extensive marketing materials before work had even begun on its making.
- 5.
It is worth noting here that for each performance of Levad , 100 litres of milk (made from milk powder), 100 litres of fake blood (corn syrup, gelatine and food colouring) and 200 litres of Gunge (primarily made from gravy mix) needed to be premade in vats, and then the nearly 400 litres of this horrible mixture pumped out of the holding tank as part of the post-show clean up.
- 6.
RealTime Arts (1994–2017) promoted itself as “a free national arts magazine, focused on innovation in the arts and countering limited mainstream media attention to a wealth of emerging experimental and hybrid arts practices”.
- 7.
The marketing campaign for the Sydney tour of The Exile Trilogy in 1993 was focussed around the key message “This is not ghetto theatre”.
- 8.
For example, despite evident contraventions of conservative Jewish cultural practice, such as a female actor performing the Kaddish (prayer for the dead), it was company policy not to perform on the Sabbath.
- 9.
Jewish director, Samara Hersch created two performance works based on the legend of the Dybbuk: A Dybbuk Event, Malthouse Theatre, Melbourne 12–14 April 2016, and Dybbuks Theatreworks , Melbourne 14–26 August 2018. A Dybbuk Event directly cited the Gilgul production by incorporating a recreated fragment of the original Gilgul work in which Prior appeared once more wrestling with a “dybbuk” dancer concealed under a wedding gown.
- 10.
Documentation of Gilgul work remains sparse and fragmented, limited to production images, some poor video documentation of The Exile Trilogy recorded during its Sydney season, Melissa Rymer’s documentary which incorporates footage of both The Exile Trilogy and The Wilderness Room , critical reviews and some scholarly attention in the writings of Richards and Prior (2002, 2008), Meyrick (2000), and Farrell (2017).
- 11.
The National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA) in Sydney is Australia’s longest-established training institution for actors, directors, designers and stage managers.
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Prior, Y., Delbridge, M. (2021). “Very Much a Laboratory”: Barrie Kosky and the Gilgul Ensemble 1991–1997. In: Phillips, J., Severn, J.R. (eds) Barrie Kosky’s Transnational Theatres. Global Germany in Transnational Dialogues. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-75028-2_2
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