Lab Kelpie

A brand new comedy-drama looking at the gloriously dysfunctional Australian family, this is modern storytelling at its best!

Spencer tells the story of a tight-knit family led by single-mum matriarch Marilyn and her three adult children: wayward daughter Jules, mouthy coulda-been Ben and AFL golden-boy Scott. About to meet the young son – Spencer – he never knew he had, Scott and the family have returned home to help mark the occasion.

With the surprise reappearance of the father they barely remember, Ian, the entire family is forced to work together to clean up both the house and their own fractured relationships as the clock ticks down to Spencer’s arrival and the sausage rolls begin to disappear…

Exploring themes of family, identity, masculinity and depression, Spencer asks us to consider how much our family defines who we are, and whether we ever really grow up…

Written by emerging playwright Katy Warner, Spencer is a brand new work celebrating the Australian voice. It was shortlisted for Playwriting Australia's 2015 Playwriting Australia New Play Development Program and was a finalist in the 2014 Max Afford Playwrights’ Award.

Spencer will undergo a final development period in September 2016 before enjoying a 3-week season at Chapel Off Chapel in Melbourne during May 2017.

We were already a fan of Katy and her work for some years before she completely surprised us by presenting us with Spencer out of the blue. Although it was a complete departure from her trademark writing style at the time, we were won over as soon as we read it.

Because Lab Kelpie is a micro company of just two people, it has taken us two years to get to the point where we can finally repay the faith Katy showed in us back then. 

Many of you will already know the struggle Australian playwrights face trying to progress their careers and have their work be seen by audiences, let alone mainstage audiences - as Patricia Cornelius so beautifully explains here - but female playwrights in particular continue to face an uphill battle to have their voices heard.

Spencer continues Lab Kelpie's commitment to producing a brand new Australian play every two years. Playwrights like Katy are the future of our industry; they each have a unique voice and perspective that they bring to the stage, and we think it's vital to support emerging playwrights like Katy so that we don't lose them to other industries.

HELP US DOUBLE OUR MONEY!

Thanks to Creative Partnerships Australia’s MATCH program, every dollar you give to this campaign will be matched dollar for dollar, provided we reach our campaign target of $7,000!

This gives us a unique opportunity to help seed the development and presentation of a brand new Australian work, support an emerging playwright and a team of mid-career artists and continue our goal of attracting more people to experience the wonder of independent theatre for the first time!



To help us reach our funding goal we are offering a range of reward packages from preview, season and opening night tickets to our quirkier options like having your image featured as part of our set design!

We also have some great branding opportunities for our corporate friends, so please pass on our details to any business you think might be interested as we're very flexible with what we can offer.

As an added bonus for supporting our Spencer campaign all our donors will be invited to our public reading at the end of our development week in September, giving you a chance to go behind-the-scenes and see the progress of a new work in action!

If we can meet our campaign target of $7,000* and turn that into $14,000 through our MATCH grant, those funds will be divided up as follows:

- 80% towards artist fees ($11,200)
- 20% to a kick-arse marketing campaign ($2,800)

ARTIST FEES

Our artists (director, playwright Katy Warner and five performers) will all take part in a one week development slated for September this year, and a six week rehearsal and performance season in April and May 2017.

80% of our funds raised will allow us to bring some security to our artists by providing a guaranteed income for their time - a luxury rarely afforded to independent artists who too often are forced to work under co-op arrangements with little to no prospect of a financial return.

This helps Lab Kelpie deliver on our goal of supporting more artists and contributing to a more sustainable independent theatre sector.

MARKETING

To get more people to experience the wonder of theatre you need to market it - and market it well! As well as taking a lot of time researching, planning, designing and shooting our marketing campaigns, there are significant costs associated with delivering good marketing. 

That's why we have allocated 20% of our funds to help us achieve this. 

Funds used for our marketing will cover such things as:

- Hiring a photographer for publicity shots with our cast
- Hiring a videographer to film a promo video with our cast and creatives
- An ad spend allocation for both website banner and social media advertising campaigns
- Printing and distribution of promotional material (flyers, posters and program)
 
*(the extra $525 is to cover bank charges and Pozible fees of 5%)

Our two main challenges for this project are securing additional funding to ensure we can pay all our performers the minimum equity PCA rate (and equivalent for creatives), and growing our audience base by encouraging new people to experience theatre for the first time.

FUNDING

To deal with the issue of funding we already have several grant applications pending outcomes. We know that by securing our Pozible target of $7,000 and doubling those funds through our MATCH grant we will have sufficient funding to cover the development in September 2016 and the three-week rehearsal period, and that we have 12 months to try and secure the additional funding we need to met our goal of minimum equity PCA rates for performers and equivalent for creatives.

NEW AUDIENCES

Four shows and four years later Lab Kelpie now enjoys a strong and dedicated following - but our challenge will be to continue our goal of bringing new people into theatre to grow not only our own audience base but that of the independent theatre sector as a whole. This will require us to "think outside the box" in terms of marketing, and really put audience needs at the forefront of everything we do. We are confident that our commitment to marketing and the importance we place on it will help us continue to attract new audiences.



Images & Videography thanks to the excellent Pier Carthew.