Multidisciplinary artist Jackson Castiglione (Field Theory, ICON, Anything & Everything) makes innovative live experiences that champion the voices of ordinary people. In this new theatrical adventure, One Night Only, he’s teaming up with members of the award-winning Rawcus (Interior, Glass), an ensemble of artists with diverse minds, bodies and imaginations, to tell a tale like no other.
Each night, a different local resident from the City of Darebin stars in the leading role of One Night Only as the ‘Protagonist’, playing out their lives before our eyes. With the Rawcus artists as their supporting cast members, the Protagonist jumps through time, reenacting the pivotal moments of grief, love, heartbreak, joy, conflict and serendipity that have shaped who they are – with us, ‘the audience’ as their witness. Themes of parenthood, ancestry, memory, relationships, birth and death recur, revealing both diversity and universality of experience.
The form of One Night Only is a daring undertaking: the Protagonist is a non-performer, diving in unrehearsed, sharing the journey of their life with an audience for the first time. How will they navigate this adventure? The immediacy and danger of this live, on-stage challenge is a constant source of fascination and tension – and we as an audience are all hoping for them to succeed.
The Protagonists come in many guises – among them we find a dog park acquaintance, an arts worker, and old university friend, a Facebook fan, a TikTok theatre goer, a former child actor, and a person who just loves immersive theatre and wants the full experience. The Rawcus artists take on a role somewhere between genealogist, Stage Manager and Greek chorus. They narrate and assist in acting out the Protagonist’s life. This is an epic task for a new performer each night with cast and creatives making a distinctly different show every single time. One Night Only is both an unrepeatable theatrical experiment, and a community-driven conversation about what connects us as humans.
Jackson Castiglione makes playful, subversive and life-affirming contemporary theatre in collaboration with kids and communities. He loves working with interesting people and creating work that celebrates the ways in which anyone, whether or not they consider themselves to be an artist, can offer something to stimulate and challenge our cultural, social and political ideas and assumptions.
Critically acclaimed Rawcus, known for making works of scale with their large ensemble, take a new direction in this intimate production with just three cast members, whom audiences will get to know in a much more immediate way.
One Night Only builds on the values and processes we see running through each party’s extensive body of work, joining forces here for the first time.
November 26 – 30
