I'm making the same mistake over and over...
14 years ago
It could be the first line of a bad joke: "A big-time theatre director is sitting at the bar when three amateur actors/directors/writers walk in …" It was, however, no joke for Nick Coyle, Claudia O'Doherty and Charlie Garber, of the start-up theatre crew Pig Island, when the Belvoir St Theatre head honcho Neil Armfield turned around from the bar and asked if they would like to restage their latest show, Simply Fancy, downstairs at Belvoir.
Coyle, O'Doherty and Garber were performing their self-penned, -directed and -acted play at the Old Fitz Theatre in Woolloomooloo in November last year when Armfield was a surprise guest for closing night. "Afterwards, we went into the bar and he was having a drink," O'Doherty told SiT. "We had met him before so we went up to talk to him … he seemed to like the show and he asked if we would bring the show to Belvoir."
Last year the group won Best Independent Production at the 2007 Melbourne International Comedy Festival with The Glass Boat; this year they hope to do the same with Simply Fancy, a surreal comedy about a family trying to find fruit for a birthday. After meeting at Sydney University in 2003, the group wrote and produced their first play, The October Sapphire, in 2004, performed it at small theatres around Sydney in 2005 and took it to the New York Fringe Festival in 2006.
"We wanted to act and produce original plays," Garber said of forming the group, adding that being self-directed allowed them to make changes to the script and performance, if they all agreed. "We have disagreements," O'Doherty said, "but they never come to blows." After opening on Friday in the downstairs theatre, Simply Fancy plays at Belvoir until February 3.
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