Embraced by the Aussie hip hop community, both Sietta and Joelistics are renowned for powerful performances and a soulful connection with their audiences. In this unique show, they share the Asian Australian stories that have shaped their musical careers.

This is no simple stroll down memory lane. Joel’s story begins with his Grandmother, Edie – maitre d’ at Australia’s first nightclub Chequers, where a fatal shooting changes her family’s destiny forever. And James’ father - a village boy from the Philippines ventures to the city to be a preacher. He woos his pen pal in faraway South Australia – not just with letters but cassette recordings of his sermons. Through fractured family histories, elopements, estrangements, even sham weddings, they give us compelling and unpredictable insights into the contemporary Asian Australian experience.

Beautifully enhanced by rare home movie footage, family photographs, and original live music performance, IN BETWEEN TWO navigates the rich territory between two cultures, two generations and two musicians reaching their peak.


“…by far the most exciting live performance of the Festival.”

EDWINA LUNN, Artistic Director, Darwin Festival 2014

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WHY WE NEED YOUR SUPPORT

In Between Two is a new show based on a performance that Joel and James put together for Darwin Festival 2014. That show, In Between Sounds, integrated snippets of storytelling into their hip hop gig. The show was so well received, it was invited to Mapping Melbourne in December 2014.

In the meantime, Joel and James approached theatrical storytellers William Yang and Annette Shun Wah of Performance 4a, a company highly regarded for the innovative ways it is bringing Asian-Australian stories to the stage. Through intensive workshops they drew out much deeper and more substantial stories, that move centre stage for In Between Two, with the objective of presenting the new show in an intimate theatrical setting enhanced by immersive music, image and real-time video design. 

As with Performance 4a’s acclaimed works Stories Then & Now and Stories East & West, the stories are told with projected images – evocative personal family photographs and rare home movie footage. These form the basis of the poignant visual design of the work and advances Performance 4a's mastery of this interdisciplinary form.

In preparation for multiple pubiic performance opportunities in 2016,  Performance 4a had aimed to embark on the development of the design in November, as well as rehearse Joel and James' performance. The change in funding circumstances meant that this aspect of the production remains unsupported, with insufficient finances to pay all the creative team involved, including new collaborators - set/costume designer Eugyeene Teh and video artist Jean Poole.  That's where you come in!  Your support will make it possible to fully realise the potential of this show.

During this next creative development, Joel and James also aim to compose new original music and lyrics, inspired by their interrogation of their families’ personal tragedies, conflicts and triumphs.

Last but not least, director Suzanne Chaundy will be finding the harmony in all these elements. As an acclaimed theatre and opera director, Suzanne relishes bringing her experience into what will be a unique mash-up of story and hip-hop.


CREATIVE TEAM


JOEL MA – writer/performer
Rapper, writer, spoken word artist, multi-instrumentalist and producer, Joel Ma is recognised as a unique voice in the Australian music scene. In 2002 he founded seminal alt-rap group TZU, which built a solid reputation around their electric live performances and inventiveness in the studio across three albums, Position Correction (2004), Smiling At Strangers (2005) and Millions of Moments (2012). Along the way they picked up nominations for the Australian Music Prize, J Award and APRA Award. Joelistics’ anticipated debut album Voyager arrived in 2011. Written with just a laptop between China, Mongolia and Europe, it opened up a new lane in hip hop. The Age wrote, “Joelistics’ love of beat poetry takes his narratives and vistas to a level as vivid as any great Australian poet.” His second album Blue Volume was one of the Sydney Morning Herald’s Top 20 albums of 2014. Rolling Stone described it as “a celebration and mourning of the current state of the world, voiced by a smart, incisive writer.”


JAMES MANGOHIG – writer/performer
With his groups SIETTA and DAMN MORODA, James Mangohig has established himself as a respected and sought-after producer and bass player. He has worked with artists such as Daniel Johns (Silverchair), Jessica Mauboy, Drapht, Gurrumul, Briggs, 360, B2M, TZU, KLP, Manuel Dhurrkay (Saltwater Band), Sunameke and many others. In 2014 Universal Music flew him to LA for three weeks of intensive producing and songwriting and he has been invited to attend the 2015 Bali Songwriting Summit. He is also in demand as a DJ with a reputation of rocking crowds whether in his hometown of Darwin or huge festivals across the country.



SUZANNE CHAUNDY – director
Trained at NIDA as a director, Suzanne has enjoyed a career working between opera, text based theatre and outdoor spectacle. Highly regarded for her talents as a director and producer, Suzanne's opera direction credits include: The Marriage of Figaro and Don Pasquale for the West Australian Opera, La Bohéme for Opera Australia, Cosi Fan Tutte for the Victoria State Opera and for Melbourne Opera (nominated for 2 Greenroom Awards, including best direction) and La Traviata. She directed the international remount of IMG’s West Side Story and Australia’s internationally renowned outdoor performance troupe Strange Fruit. Her productions have been performed in over 300 international festivals and events in more than 40 different countries. Recent theatre successes include Beyond the Neck (Herald Sun’s Top 5 in 2012) and Herding Cats for Red Stitch Actors Theatre. Suzanne directed Der Freischütz to open Melbourne Opera’s 2015 season and will return to direct Maria Stuarda for MO in August/September 2015. She is Artistic Director of the Stonnington Opera in the Park until 2017.


ANNETTE SHUN WAH - producer/dramaturge
Annette Shun Wah is a freelance actor, writer and broadcaster, and is Executive Producer of Performance 4a. Nominated for an AFI Award for her performance in Australia's first foreign language feature film Floating Life, directed by Clara Law; she has also appeared in guest roles on Always Greener, The Young Lions, Packed to the Rafters, Crownies and the feature film Home Song Stories.

She is the writer and director of the mobile phone app and website, China Heart, combining drama, oral history and game playing. For Performance 4a she co-directed (with William Yang) the storytelling shows Stories East & West and Stories Then & Now. In 2011 Annette produced Performance 4a's Asian-Australian performance season, Coolie. Annette also co-devised Performance 4a's food/performance event The Serpent's Table, a sold out critical hit of Sydney Festival 2014, and produced Mayu Kanamori's "Yasukichi Murakami - Through a Distant Lens" for the Darwin Festival


WILLIAM YANG - dramaturge
William Yang was born in North Queensland, his grandparents migrating from China to the Top End in the 1880s. After completing a Bachelor of Architecture at Queensland University he moved to Sydney in 1969 and worked as a freelance photographer documenting Sydney's social life which included the glamorous celebrity set and the hedonistic, sub-cultural, gay community. His first solo exhibition "Syndeyphiles" in 1977 at the Australian Centre for Photography caused a sensation because of its frank depiction of the Sydney gay and party scene.

In 1989 he integrated his skills as a writer and a visual artist. He began to perform monologues with slide projection in the theatre. These slide shows were a form of performance theatre and have become his favourite form of showing his work. The third one, Sadness, wove together two themes: William's discovery of his Chinese heritage and the rituals of dying and death in Sydney. The piece has been extremely successful and like his more recent work has toured all over Australia and the world. He has made ten full length works in all, including China, Blood Links, Objects for Meditation and My Generation. Two of those works have adapted into feature-length documentaries

With Annette, he co-directed the storytelling shows, Stories East and West, and Stories Then and Now.


EUGYEENE TEH - set/costume designer
Eugyeene Teh is a Melbourne-based designer in high demand.  He has designed set and costumes for numerous productions for the Melbourne Theatre Company, Malthouse Theatre, Melbourne International Arts Festival, Sydney Chamber Opera and Next Wave.  Last year, Eugyeene undertook the placement in the Besen Family Artist Program at the Malthouse Theatre.  He has been nominated for three Green Room Awards for Design for the productions Triangle, The Trouble with Harry and Pacific Overtures.

JEAN POOLE - video artist
Jean Poole has performed and produced video material for various events, artists and festivals in Australia and internationally, including concert visuals for Hermitude, live video for Gotye, projections for MONA Festivals and music videos for TZU, Congo Tardis and Audego.  He is particularly interested in real-time video and the relationship between sound and image, especially in a performance context.  This has included an interest in projection mapping and multi-screen projections.

LUCY BIRKINSHAW - lighting designer
Lucy graduated from WAAPA (Advanced Diploma of Lighting Design for Production and Performance) and Curtin University (Bachelor of Arts, Fine Arts) and is a co-founder of the Filament Design Group.  Lucy’s design work spans theatre, music theatre, concert lighting, opera, dance, film and television.  Lucy’s recent designs include Mary Stuart for the Melbourne Opera, Let's Get It On – The Life and Music of Marvin Gaye for Room 8 Productions, Ugly Mugs for the Malthouse Theatre and Griffin Theatre and The Confidence Man for Side Pony Production which is currently touring Australia.

Performance 4a believes that artists must be paid properly for their work.  Your contribution will go towards wages and fees for cast and designers to work on the creative development and rehearsal stages of In Between Two, ahead of bringing it to the stage in 2016.  This will include set design and construction, video production and the composing and recording of new music.

If we are unable to raise enough funds, we will have to put our exciting design ideas on the back burner.
The work won’t reach its full potential as an innovative new form combining storytelling, visuals and hip hop.

If we raise more than the target, it will allow us to fully realise the design concept including video projection mapping and a rich and immersive sound design.