Performance Dates
10 Aug 2001 – 1 Sept 2001August 2001
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September 2001
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1 September
Details
- Playwright
- Boubil and Schonberg
- Director
- David Hollywood
AddressSpringwood Civic Centre
A Global phenomenon! A 21st Century perspective! Les Miserables in a contemporary setting! How can that be? And will it work?
Les Miserables has a resonance beyond the narrow corridors of time. Does it really matter if it's set in Paris in 1832?
Sure, the costumes are pretty...but is it the pretty costumes that make us cry?
Out of the Blue will strive to bring the story to life and to make a real connection with it's audiences...
No more mop caps! And some of the students will be women! Cosette no longer in puritan attire!
The inspiration for Out of the Blue's contemporary approach to Les Misérables comes from two sources - The recent events in Palestine - the death of a young Palestinian boy in his father's arms - and the quote from Hugo describing Valjean's view of the pyramid of civilisation.
"...whenever he turned his head and endeavoured to raise his eyes, he saw, with mingled rage and terror, forming, massing, and mounting up out of view above him with horrid escarpments, a kind of frightful accumulation of things, of laws, of prejudices, of men, and of acts, the outlines of which escaped him, the weight of which appalled him, and which was no other than that prodigious pyramid that we call civilisation."
Victor Hugo
In Out of the Blue's production, audiences are confronted by the illusion of the pyramid - a composite of the accumulation of cultural debris from all four corners of the globe. This pyramid, a tower of Babel, will crack open to reveal a rotting core that spews out the miserable creatures at the core of this world. And as revolutionary zeal takes hold, fuelled by an enthusiastic student uprising, the entire structure is collapsed to form the barricade.
This production goes to the core of the work and draws on it's symbolism. The students are drawn from the corners of the globe with references to the uprisings in East Timor, Palestine, China and more.
Are we any closer to a world beyond the barricades in the twenty-first century?
For most of us, in our comfortable middle class enclaves, we are spared having to confront the miserable people of our own time. Except for a few unreal glimpses on the news you could be forgiven for thinking everything's going along just fine. I'm not sure that the other 90% of the world's population would agree...
And what about the references to Paris etc. Does it really matter? Are we any less affected by what we see or hear?
Where are the barricades today? Open your eyes and you'll see - they're everywhere!
"Citizens, the nineteenth century is grand, but the twentieth century will be happy...men will no longer have to fear, as now, a conquest, an invasion, a usurpation, a rivalry of nations with the armed hand, an interruption of civilisation depending on a marriage of kings, a birth in the hereditary tyrannies, a partition of the peoples by a Congress, a dismemberment by the downfall of a dynasty, a combat of two religions meeting head to head...they will no longer have to fear famine, speculation, prostitution from distress, misery from lack of work, and the scaffold, and the sword, and the battle...Men will be happy...."
Enjolras at the Barricade (Hugo)
August 10, 11, 17, 18, 24, 25, 31 and September 1 at 7.30pm
August 12, 18, 25, 26, and September 1 at 1pm
August 19 at 6pm
Les Miserables has a resonance beyond the narrow corridors of time. Does it really matter if it's set in Paris in 1832?
Sure, the costumes are pretty...but is it the pretty costumes that make us cry?
Out of the Blue will strive to bring the story to life and to make a real connection with it's audiences...
No more mop caps! And some of the students will be women! Cosette no longer in puritan attire!
The inspiration for Out of the Blue's contemporary approach to Les Misérables comes from two sources - The recent events in Palestine - the death of a young Palestinian boy in his father's arms - and the quote from Hugo describing Valjean's view of the pyramid of civilisation.
"...whenever he turned his head and endeavoured to raise his eyes, he saw, with mingled rage and terror, forming, massing, and mounting up out of view above him with horrid escarpments, a kind of frightful accumulation of things, of laws, of prejudices, of men, and of acts, the outlines of which escaped him, the weight of which appalled him, and which was no other than that prodigious pyramid that we call civilisation."
Victor Hugo
In Out of the Blue's production, audiences are confronted by the illusion of the pyramid - a composite of the accumulation of cultural debris from all four corners of the globe. This pyramid, a tower of Babel, will crack open to reveal a rotting core that spews out the miserable creatures at the core of this world. And as revolutionary zeal takes hold, fuelled by an enthusiastic student uprising, the entire structure is collapsed to form the barricade.
This production goes to the core of the work and draws on it's symbolism. The students are drawn from the corners of the globe with references to the uprisings in East Timor, Palestine, China and more.
Are we any closer to a world beyond the barricades in the twenty-first century?
For most of us, in our comfortable middle class enclaves, we are spared having to confront the miserable people of our own time. Except for a few unreal glimpses on the news you could be forgiven for thinking everything's going along just fine. I'm not sure that the other 90% of the world's population would agree...
And what about the references to Paris etc. Does it really matter? Are we any less affected by what we see or hear?
Where are the barricades today? Open your eyes and you'll see - they're everywhere!
"Citizens, the nineteenth century is grand, but the twentieth century will be happy...men will no longer have to fear, as now, a conquest, an invasion, a usurpation, a rivalry of nations with the armed hand, an interruption of civilisation depending on a marriage of kings, a birth in the hereditary tyrannies, a partition of the peoples by a Congress, a dismemberment by the downfall of a dynasty, a combat of two religions meeting head to head...they will no longer have to fear famine, speculation, prostitution from distress, misery from lack of work, and the scaffold, and the sword, and the battle...Men will be happy...."
Enjolras at the Barricade (Hugo)
August 10, 11, 17, 18, 24, 25, 31 and September 1 at 7.30pm
August 12, 18, 25, 26, and September 1 at 1pm
August 19 at 6pm
Bookings
This production has concluded. Contact details are not available for past events.