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Hello There, We've Been Waiting For You

26 – 28 February 2019
7.30pm – 9.30pm AEDT
Io Myers Studio
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A small-town-girl with big dreams joins forces with a budding journalist looking for his big break in this coming-of-age, nostalgia-drenched play set in the desert town of Truth or Consequences, New Mexico.

It’s 1950s America and the thrill of television is all-consuming, "and that's where the fun comes in!". Willing contestants face public humiliation, actual slime, and endless live-to-air TV pranks that put a town on the map forever.

But off camera the townspeople search for the truth, a boy is missing, and a mother is going slowly mad. The young pageant girl practices her special skills while potential contestants spout confessional stories to win their 15 minutes of fame. Who will speak the truth or pay the consequences?

This darkly humorous play by Louris van de Geer speaks to our troubled relationships with fame, our fragile notions of identity and our struggle to be someone. Focussing on a small town in the USA that changed its name from Hot Springs to Truth or Consequences after a TV show competition, we zoom in on a community - full of dreams, aspirations and hopes that may not be fulfilled.

Written by Louris Van De Geer
Directed by Tessa Leong
Performed by students of the UNSW course ARTS2122: Performance Production

 

Performance dates and times:

26 Feb 7.30pm
27 Feb 7.30pm
28 Feb 7.30pm
1 March 7.30pm
2 March 2pm

 

Speakers

Tessa Leong

Tessa Leong wrote directed and starred in her first show in year one assembly: it was about Martians. Tessa is a founding member of isthisyours?, an Adelaide collective making new performance. In 2009, isthisyours? won the Adelaide Fringe inSPACE Development Award with their work Make Me Honest, Make Me Wedding Cake. In 2010, isthisyours? premiered Best We Forget at the Adelaide Fringe Festival, which then in 2012 featured in the Tamarama Rock Surfers Season in Sydney and then was curated as part of the Under The Radar Brisbane Festival. In 2014, You Wanna Talk About It premiered at the Adelaide Fringe and won the Melbourne Fringe Tour Ready Award. isthisyours? have been selected as part of the HotHouse Month in the Country Residency, Adhocracy and Incubator at Vitalstatistix, Country Arts SA Forged Residency and the MAPS SA program for independent artists.

Tessa also works with artists Emma Beech and James Dodd as part of The Australian Bureau of Worthiness. The bureau is a micro-residency model which asks people 'What makes your day worth it?' The work has been made in Port Adelaide, Geelong, The Falls Festival, Viborg (Denmark) and Goolwa (Kumuwuki, 2012).

Tessa has tutored, directed and mentored at University of Wollongong and Flinders University of SA on creative and academic projects. Her work with Sydney Theatre Company, Ontroerend Goed, Griffin Theatre Company, Vitalstatistix, State Theatre Company of SA, Restless Dance and Force Majeure continues to feed her love of new and challenging work. Tessa was a 2013 Griffin Theatre Studio Artist and in 2014 was chosen by the Australia Council for the Arts to attend the Avignon Festival to participate in an international conference for practicing artists.