Gil is a loser. He works at McDonalds and still lives with Mother. But that’s all about to change because Gil has an ace up his sleeve: the biggest, baddest barnyard bird the world has ever seen. When Odysseus Rex hits the local cockfighting ring, there’ll be hell to pay… Following acclaimed and award-winning productions of The Crocodile in 2023 and Rhinoceros in 2024, Spinning Plates Co returns to fortyfivedownstairs to bring their ‘Beast Trilogy’ to it’s bloody, feathered conclusion with the Australian premiere of Olivia Duffalt’s play Year of the Rooster. You’ve run with the rhino, wrestled the croc, now prepare thyself… it’s time for the cock.
“We read every play we could find that featured animals or transformations of self,” says Jess Stanley, one half of Spinning Plates Co alongside James Cerché. “There’s so many amazing options out there but none were quite hitting the level of absurdity and satire that we found with The Crocodile and Rhinoceros. But then James read Year of the Rooster and had a gut feeling about it. We were able to bring some colleagues together through an arts grant we were awarded from the City of Kingston and we read through all of our shortlisted options. As soon as we read Rooster, we knew we had our Part Three!”
“The theatricality of Rooster really leapt off the page and we want our shows to feel like something that can only be experienced live in a theatre. There will be actors playing animals, like in Parts 1 and 2, and similar themes: consumerism, capitalism, exploitation, and of course, the violence we inflict upon animals and each other. This is the first American play of the trilogy and it really plays into the myth of the American Dream and the everyday people that get forgotten. This is Tennessee Williams but the rose-coloured glasses are off. We’re in the swamp now.”
Directed by acclaimed actor Alexandra Aldrich (Harry Potter and the Cursed Child) and featuring James and Jess alongside Aya (POTUS, fortyfivedownstars), Natasha Herbert (Hamlet and The Hall, fortyfivedownstairs) and Zac Pidd (Rhinoceros), Year of the Rooster will again see Spinning Plates Co collaborate with multi award-winning designer Dann Barber.
“People associate our shows with a certain style and aesthetic now, largely thanks to the collaboration with Dann,” says Stanley. “All we’ll say about Rooster is that the staging will depart from Parts 1 and 2 in a way that feels exciting for the world of the play.”
“Year of The Rooster is a relatively modern play and while it deals with contemporary issues it is also cut from the cloth of Homer’s Odyssey,” says Cerché. “While it was written and is set in America, Rooster has just as much to say about ‘The Lucky Country’ and its people. Indeed, our cultural obsession with America and its absurdities are doing nothing for our health (physical and spiritual) so it seems right that a piece of entertainment about it be delivered in the same manner. Beautiful and appalling, like a Happy Meal at 3am. This is a work designed to ruffle feathers. There will be laughs and there will be outrage. We welcome it all.”
March 5 – 29
