Therèsa Borg co-founded Melbourne production house TEG Entertainment Store/Life Like Touring for whom she wrote and directed over 20 family musicals. Her directing credits, amongst others, include Sweeney Todd, starring Anthony Warlow and Gina Riley at Her Majesty’s Melbourne and The Light In The Piazza at Arts Centre Melbourne.
Borg’s latest directorial work is presenting Titanic The Musical in Concert at the Melbourne Town Hall.
When Therèsa Borg was approached to direct Titanic The Musical: In Concert, she admits she had to consider taking on the project.
“It’s a disaster story and its also heavily male centred, in a way – the three leads are all men and like everyone else I’m trying to be conscious of what stories I choose to tell. For me, the reason we keep coming back to this story, is because yes, it was a catastrophe at the time, but it’s really an ongoing story of human hubris; of our capacity to imagine ourselves bigger than nature, and the idea of perhaps only God is perfect. If God exists everything else in the world is imperfect, particularly humans,” Borg explained.
Titanic The Musical will be performed as a concert presentation for just four performances this weekend, but Borg has spent a good six months preparing. She acknowledged there is no shortage of information available for research.
“I have to know it backwards, in every capacity. I feel like the director’s job is to know more than everyone else. That’s what my job is, and not to necessarily impose that on people, but to be available to the company if they need me for information.”
Her job also requires consideration of the venue and the staging of the musical as a concert presentation.
“I think the audience will be delighted. It’s a premium venue for audience experience. The acoustics are sublime! It sounds like Blanc de Blanc Champagne in there!” laughed Borg, who added that she has a particular weakness for this brand of Champagne if anyone needs to know!
Presenting Titanic The Musical: In Concert is an impressive cast, headlined by Anthony Warlow.
“He’s a pretty impressive captain, and you know what, he really is the captain of the ship. It’s wonderful to see him, as always, lead the company, with grace and dignity. It’s one of the great things about this company, it’s very inter-generational. In seniority, we have Anthony (Warlow) and Martin Croft and Natalie Gamsu. We have LIsa-Marie Parker and Johanna Allen. We’ve got people with lots of rungs on the board in the company, and then we’ve got a couple of people whose first show it is. Having Anthony around to show, not just how to be the brilliant performer that he is and how to manage on the floor, but how to communicate gracefully in a room is wonderful. He’s a leading man,” explained Borg.
What attracts audiences to Titanic The Musical is predominantly the richness of the score.
“The score is glorious and it’s a great showcase of legitimate singing and people all at the top of their game.”
But the story of Titanic itself also draws people in to this musical adaptation of the story.
“We understand the resonance of this story. This is the story of some people who built the largest thing in the world at the time. It was 11 storeys high, in a time when the highest sky scrapers were 12 and 13 storeys high. We keep coming back to this story of building something that is magnificent and impossible and knowing that this attempt at dominion always ends in disaster. I think we keep coming back to be reminded of that,” reflected Borg.
Titanic the Musical: In Concert is presented at the Melbourne Town Hall for just four performances from November 4th to 6th.
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