MEMORIAL
★★★★★ "a transcendent piece of theatre"
The Stage (UK)
Director: Chris Drummond
Associate director & movement: Benjamin Knapton
Music director: Jonathan Peter Kenny
Musicians: Zoe Barry, Louis Cann, Karen de Nardi, Quentin Grant, Jonathan Peter Kenny, Kelly McCusker, Laura Moody, Melanie Pappenheim, Siobhan Owen, Belinda Sykes + Tanja Tzarovska
Producer: Lee-Anne Donnolley
Chorus: Masters Christie Anderson and Carol Young
Composer: Jocelyn Pook
Movement: Yaron Lifschitz
Design: Michael Hankin
Costumes: Renate Henschke
Lighting: Nigel Levings
Sound: Jane Rossetto
CAST
Actor: Helen Morse
Dancers: Tobiah Booth-Remmers, Lina Limosani and Larissa McGowan
Featuring: Aurora and The Festival Statesmen
With members of La La Land, Tutti Choir + Poco Tutti, Choral Grief and the SOSA chorus and many individuals whose names appear in the season program
This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts, its arts funding and advisory body. This project has been assisted by the Australian Government’s Major Festivals Initiative in association with the Confederation of Australian International Arts Festivals Inc., Adelaide Festival, Brisbane Festival and Melbourne Festival.
This project is supported by the Australian Government’s Anzac Centenary Arts and Culture Fund. This project is assisted by Arts SA – Independent Makers and Presenters – Major Commissions Fund. This project is co-commissioned by the Barbican and 1418 Now, WWI Centenary Art Commissions.
For Barbican: Part of 14-18 NOW, the UK’s arts programme for the First World War centenary. Co-commissioned by the Barbican and 14-18 NOW: WW1 Centenary Art Commissions.
WORLD PREMIERE Presented in association with Adelaide Festival Centre.
In this richly layered theatrical experience, Alice Oswald’s extraordinary poem is performed on a grand scale, brought to impassioned life inside Jocelyn Pook’s transporting, otherworldly score.
Out of the darkness, a vast field of bodies emerges. At the centre of this universe, a woman stands as storyteller, her voice conveying the voice of a god, of the elements, of time itself, and of a thousand lives caught in visceral moments of war. All the while, a 215-strong community chorus moves as a haunting and uplifting presence across the stage, which evolves from battlefield to meadow to starlit sky.
Stripping much of the narrative from the Iliad, Oswald’s Memorial is an intense elegy for each of the 215 dead soldiers named in Homer’s epic. Her transformative text is embodied by one of Australia’s most celebrated actors, Helen Morse.
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