Fractions (staged reading)

Theatre artists, performers were invited to participate in a staged reading of Marcel Dorney’s award-winning play, which was subsequently presented at the Bread & Roses Theatre, on 14th February, 2016.

“A really good piece, I think and the reading was great. The decision to have everybody play everybody worked wonderfully well, I think. The use of the scarves helped, but we could probably have stayed with it even without them. We knew, liked and cared about the characters enough that I feel we would have tracked them. Thank you for an enjoyable (and thought-provoking) evening.

“Why FRACTIONS?” Winner of the 2010 Queensland Premiere’s Drama Aware, Dorney’s play, based on the real-life events surrounding the burning of the Library of Alexandria in 410 AD is thrilling, poetic and powerfully prescient for our times.

“Why THEATRE?”

As theatre critic John Lahr has said:
“In a time of terror – such as our time – the theatre’s promotion of ideas and feelings takes on a significant extra social valence. The terrorist’s ambition is not just to kill people but to kill thought, to divide the society against itself, and, in doing so, force it to implode from within. As the general mood of retreat and the many political false steps of Western democracies indicate, the strategy of terrorism is working better than we like to admit. Terrorism makes a spectacle of absurdity, in which pain unmakes the world. Theatre, which attempts to understand our pain, makes a spectacle of meaning and coherence. Now, more than ever, theatre is not only a demonstration of courage but an engineer of it.

“Marcel Dorney – playwright”Marcel Dorney

Marcel Dorney is a playwright, screenwriter, director, and dramaturg, with 31 full-length professional credits as writer and/or director, including eleven with Elbow Room, which he co-founded upon moving to Melbourne in 2008. Marcel is currently Elbow Room’s co-Artistic Director.
His recent credits include We Get it, presented by the Melbourne Theatre Company as part of NEON Festival of Independent Theatre, The Motion of Light in Water (commissioned by HotHouse Theatre) and The Tragedy of King Richard III (co-written with Daniel Evans), La Boite Theatre and
His awards include: Prehistoric (playwright/director/composer); Best Performance, 2014 Melbourne Fringe Festival; Best Writing (Independent Theatre), 2015 Green Room Awards; Fractions (playwright); 2011 Queensland Premier’s Drama Award; 2012 Gold Matilda Award; After All This (director/co-writer); Best Performance, 2011 Melbourne Fringe Festival; Best Director and Best Ensemble (Independent Theatre), 2012 Green Room Awards. He has also been an associate writer of Malthouse Theatre (Writer/Director Initiative, 2016); Red Stitch Actor’s Theatre, Melbourne, 2009-10; and Griffin Theatre, Sydney, 2005-6.
Marcel holds a Masters of Performance Creation (Directing) by Research from the Faculty of the VCA, University of Melbourne, where he currently teaches Concepts and Creativity. Since 2016, he has also worked as a consultant for Queensland Theatre as part of their inaugural National Artistic Team.

Francesca has worked on a wide range of theatre and film productions and likes to choose projects that challenge an audience or tell the stories no one else is telling including the critically acclaimed ‘Women of Twilight’ at The Pleasance, London; an all female play about a home for unmarried mothers in 1950’s London. Most recently Francesca worked on ‘Hansel and Gretel’ with the physical theatre company Lyngo theatre and prior to that she played The Mother in ‘Waking Beauty’ in Dublin and at The Ovalhouse; an LGBT retelling of the classic Sleeping Beauty fairytale from The Minerva Collective.

Claudio is an international actor, trained in Physical Theatre and winner of Best Upcoming Actor at the Malta International Theatre Festival for his first solo performance. He is co-founder of WiseCrackers which he explores comedy in. He has recently movement directed Studio 18’s ‘Inez Kienet Perf’ and has acted in ‘Augustus and his Smile’, ‘Rhinoceros’, ‘Taming of The Shrew’, ‘Don Juan’ and many others.

Lucy Ford trained at the Academy of Live and Recorded Arts (ALRA) and with the NYT. Whilst in training she played the roles of Masha in Three Sisters, Tilly in Jumpy, and Pat in Unprotected. Since graduating she has performed with Vienna’s English Theatre, touring Austria and Italy in a modern adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s ‘The Canterville Ghost’ and she has recently enjoyed working with the Globe director Caroline Byrne on a re-imagining of ‘The Two Gentlemen of Verona’. Lucy is a highly skilled singer and Clarinettist, and regularly performs with vocal harmony group London Contemporary Voices, supporting an eclectic and award winning range of singers including Tom Odell and Luke Sital-Singh. In her spare time, Lucy enjoys travelling and photography, as well as learning new skills, and is determined this year to learn to salsa dance.

Camilla is a recent graduate from the Academy of Live and Recoded Arts.

Previous credits include: ‘MARGAM’ Independent horror film directed by Aurélia Marine currently in post-production.
‘Does my sex offend you?’ a research and development movement collaboration at the Barbican Pit directed by Ita O’brien.
‘The divine Chaos of Starry things’ a piece of new writing written by Paul Mason, staged as a Rehearsed reading at the White Bear theatre Pub; Produced by Sarah Langridge from ‘Watch your Head Theatre. Directed by Ita O’Brien.