Home Cooking Theatre Company
All plays are available for fair use.
For Performance Rights, contact Suzanne Spunner
Melbourne Aesthetic Feminists: Interview with Suzanne Spunner and Meredith Rogers about Home Cooking Theatre Company.
Two articles about Home Cooking Theatre Company - by Merrilee Moss in Theatre Australia and Andrea McGloughlin in LIP magazine
Andrea Lemon (Thea Proctor) and Meredith Rogers (Margaret Preston) Photo: Joyce Agee
NOT STILL LIVES
1982
A two act play for two women set in a gallery space and based on the life and work of the Australian Modernist artists, Margaret Preston and Thea Proctor.
Artists book of Not Still Lives made by author
See also the film, TEA & PICTURES
Zoe Stock and Julia Harari as Margaret Preston
I AM ALIVE
2006
A monologue for two performers. An adaption of Margaret's Preston's autobiographical essays- ‘Why I became a Convert to Modern Art’, The Home, Vol.4, June 1923 and ‘From Eggs to Electrolux’, Art in Australia, 3rd series, No 22, December 1927.
Commissioned by the National Gallery of Victoria Public Programs presented at ‘Margaret Preston Art and Life’, NGV.
Meredith Rogers and Carmelina Di Guglielmo Photo: Ponch Hawkes
Poster for return season
RUNNING UP A DRESS
1986
A play for two women or more. A Mother daughter dialogue. Our mothers, our selves and a raw selvege between.
“My mother made me in her own image on her Singer sewing machine. No fancy stitches, all plain sewing, wont come apart at the seams, no loose threads her daughter. My baby made me a mother. A dress is made, sewing skills passed on and femininity inculcated. Made from memories, fairytales, and instructions in tailoring manuals and sewing patterns”.
The Play was commissioned by the Literature Board of the Australia Council for Home Cooking Theatre Co and first performed in Melbourne, 1986 for the inaugural Spoleto International Festival (which became the Melbourne International Festival) at the Atheneum Theatre. The production toured nationally afterwards.
The book of the play was published by McPhee Gribble, Melbourne 1988, and republished in the anthology, ‘Australian Women’s Drama: texts and feminisms’. Edited by Peta Tait and Elizabeth Schafer, Currency Press, Sydney 1997.
Keywords
Mother daughter relationships, growing up female, sewing, dressmaking, fabrics, sewing notions, fairytales, questionaires, interviews. Chanel, Quant, Dior, Mary Kelly, Winnicott, Betthelheim
Cover: McPhee Gribble book
William Kelly, Child’s Car Seat, from ‘A Contemporary Tragedy’, 1988
SAFE ‘N’ SOUND - The driver as mother
1987
A radio play for one female voice based on becoming a mother and learning to drive - an animation of restraint and obsession and the deepest anxieties.
Commissioned by Ted Hopkins for ‘Automania in the Carpark’ in Kings Parkade, Melbourne in 1987 and broadcast live on 3RRR FM.
Later at 24 HR Art, Darwin as a Performance and Installation for the exhibition, ‘Drive She said’ in 1989 featuring Annie Gastin and recorded for ABC Darwin and broadcast on Radio National.
It Must just be our area’ was performed outside the Melbourne Town Hall. around the Hills Hoist erected on the grass.
IT MUST JUST BE OUR AREA
1985
A play for three women and three men performed outdoors. Set in various suburban Melbourne backyards around a Hills Hoist and commenting on the attitudes and behaviours of Victorians across classes and stages of life to gardens, gardening, the environment and outdoor leisure activities.
Commissioned to celebrate Melbourne’s 150th anniversary, for the Swanston Street event when the entire thoroughfare was grassed.
EDNA FOR THE GARDEN
1989
A play for three women and one man. Performed in a garden in five movements.
Traces the life and work of Edna Walling, Australia’s pioneer landscape designer. Based on the writings of Edna Walling.
Performed in the Fitzroy Gardens, for FEIPP (Free Entertainment in Public Parks). ‘Edna for the Garden’ was the first site specific outdoor performance to be staged in one of Melbourne’s best known public parks.
CONTEXT
Keywords
Edna Walling, Ellis Stones, Jean Galbraith, Nellie Melba, Bickleigh Vale, Burnley Horticultural College, garden design, garden tools, stone walls, garden rooms, roadside planting.
THE PIANIST PLAYED SECOND FIDDLE
1988,1999
A two act play for a pianist and violinst, three women and two men.
Based on the life of Hepzibah Menuhin. A sonata for piano violin and merino continuo.
About the so-called, magic quartet formed when Hepzibah and Yehudi Menuhin married a brother and a sister from Melbourne- grazier Lindsay and socialite Nola Nicholas- in 1938, on the eve of the war and what happened to them all afterwards.
Under the title, ‘The Accompanist’, it was developed by Home Cooking Theatre Co and presented as a public workshop performance at the Orchestra Studio, VCA, Melbourne in 1988.
Later reworked with additional material under the title above.
AFTERWARDS AT COMO
2000
A one act play for two female actors. A site specific play set in late 1955.
The action takes place outside and inside in different rooms and entirely within the house ‘Como’. Combines a tour of the house, the history of the Armytage family, a ghost story and story of the battle by architect Robyn Boyd and the director of the NGV Daryl Lindsay to save the house, which led to the formation of the National Trust in Victoria.
Commissioned by Como Historic House and the National Trust of Victoria, with a grant from the Literature Board of the Australia Council.