Melbourne Theatre Company’s annual play reading series, Cybec Electric, returns from Thursday 1 March – Saturday 3 March at Southbank Theatre, The Lawler with new writing from eight of Australia’s most promising playwrights.
An exceptional group of writers has been selected to present their work including Alberto Di Troia, Declan Furber Gillick, Dan Giovannoni, Anchuli Felicia King, Samah Sabawi, Natesha Somasundaram, Kylie Trounson and Katy Warner.
Two full plays and two sets of excerpts of works-in-development will be performed as public, semi-staged readings, giving each playwright the opportunity to work with a director, dramaturg and actors to develop and showcase their writing with the critical ingredient of live theatre: an audience.
The series opens with Cybec Scenes 1 on Thursday 1 March. K by Katy Warner sees a childcare entrepreneur blindsided by a violent break-in at one of her childcare centres; Happy Ending by Kylie Trounson interweaves the lives of four women following the murder of a young man outside a Melbourne brothel; and The Great Emu War by Declan Furber Gillick presents a dreamtime resistance allegory that fires a bullet into the heart of this country’s culture wars.
On Friday 2 March audiences will be treated to Cybec Scenes 2, with Natesha Somasundaram’s viciously witty take on modern middle-class family values in Burning Man; Alberto Di Troia’s American road-trip along the holy sites of Britney Spears’ 2007 breakdown in Truly, Madly, Britney; and Dan Giovannoni’s The Body, a pitch-black comedy about nationalism, war and how to gut a chook.
Throughout the series there will be two readings of full-length plays: Them by Samah Sabawi, about a young couple and their baby in a city under siege, and Slaughterhouse by Anchuli Felicia King – a collection of five interconnected monologues on technocracy, office politics and the ethics of consumption.
Cybec Electric curator and MTC Literary Director Chris Mead said, ‘This year’s Cybec Electric plays are ferocious, delicious and thrillingly ambitious. Interrogative in style and theme, often wickedly funny, these plays take a sharp-eyed look at today, and our world well into the future. Cybec Electric is a terrific chance to see restless, alert and provocative new plays by Melbourne’s best young dramatists.’
Cybec Electric forms part of MTC’s ongoing commitment to the development of new Australian writing and is only possible due to the support of Roger Riordan AM and The Cybec Foundation.
Read more about the 2018 Cybec Electric readings and playwrights.
Program
Thursday 1 March
4.30pm
CYBEC SCENES 1
K by Katy Warner
Happy Ending by Kylie Trounson
The Great Emu War by Declan Furber Gillick
7.30pm
Them by Samah Sabawi
Friday 2 March
4.30pm
CYBEC SCENES 2
Burning Man by Natesha Somasundaram
Truly, Madly, Britney by Alberto Di Troia
The Body by Dan Giovannoni
7.30pm
Slaughterhouse by Anchuli Felicia King
Saturday 3 March
3.00pm
Them by Samah Sabawi
7.30pm
Slaughterhouse by Anchuli Felicia King
Venue
Southbank Theatre, The Lawler
Tickets
$10 each
Under 30s $5 each
Bookings
03 8688 0800
Published on 1 February 2018