Our current production:

HOME ECONOMICS

A five-course black-comic disgust-ation.

Splattered stories about sex, food, and history, laced with LSD. From blood-soaked business dinners to boy-love bakery classes… The acclaimed Little Ones theatre collective presents a tasty, confronting evening of boundary-pushing performance, with characters who REALLY play with their food.

They say that food brings people together, and Greene’s episodic satire does this. But this is not the wholesome family dinner. In “Home Economics” our darkest fantasies are brought to the table: pulling apart domestic facades and exposing the slimy underpinnings.

Playing as part of Melbourne Fringe @ The Store Room until October 10th.

Written by Declan Greene

Directed by Stephen Nicolazzo

With: Russ Pirie, Josh Futcher, Cat Commander, Carly Hulls, Chris Roberts, and Pip Edwards.

CRITICAL RESPONSE:

“Greene and Nicolazzo both demonstrate provocative talent in their creation of “Home Economics.” Their audience is presented with a platter of food for thought that may not make you want to eat but leaves you hungry for more from this successful partnership. ” BUZZCUTS, Express Media

Follow the link to read full review:

http://www.expressmedia.org.au/buzzcuts.php?buzz_review_id=371

“…the teaming of director Stephen Nicolazzo and writer Declan Greene works wonderfully, serving up an array of vignettes that are funny, crude, perverse and surprisingly poignant.” SPARK ONLINE

Follow the link to read full review:

http://sparkonline.com.au/?p=2458

“I loved its spluttered chocolate, meat smeared, onion biting, cock-sucking indulgence.” SOMETIMES MELBOURNE/AUSSIE THEATRE.COM

Follow the link for full review:

http://sometimesmelbourne.blogspot.com/2009/10/melbourne-fringe-2009-home-economics.html

By Jessica Olanda, for Arts Hub.com.au

Little Ones Theatre is about to once again take Melbourne audiences to a new and captivating world. The company’s upcoming production The Kids Are Alright is a sexually energized, melodramatic, disco dancing adventure. (more…)

THE KIDS ARE ALRIGHT
CREATED BY RICCI-JANE ADAMS AND STEPHEN NICOLAZZO

“A dance is the devil’s procession, and he that entereth into a dance, entereth into his possession”  -St Francis De Sales

THE KIDS ARE ALRIGHT explores post-apocalyptic adolescence: a world where sexual enlightenment, the pulse of a heartbeat, and the fate of the stars are in the hands of naughty girls and future boys. Told in two epic parts, this sparkling fantasy exposes the hormonal desires of youths who have nothing left in the world but their gut and primitive will to have, hold, and survive.

Part pop event, part melodrama, this new work is an adrenaline fuelled fantasia where Sirens are disco dancing Donna Summer’s hungry for young hearts, bad girls are relegated to solve the energy crisis, and the elements, agent provocateur of change.

Three girls must bring light back to the earth by snatching stars from the sky. As punishment for their criminal acts, the girls can only achieve redemption by catching the one and only star left in the universe that can power the globe for a lifetime.

Two boys lost at sea are the only survivors of flash floods globally. Their relationship is fraught but for the secret feelings they harbour for one another. Enter, a mythological man-eating monster from the deep: a hungry Siren who seduces the young boys with her song and a bargain too good to refuse.

From Little Ones Theatre, this is the world premiere of a blood pumping, toe tapping, and cathartic theatrical experience.
With: Russ Pirie, Pip Edwards, Josh Futcher, Siobhan Hyland, Catherine Commander, Sarah Nicolazzo, and Carly Hulls.

Tuesday 1st September (Preview), 7.30pm
Wednesday 2nd September-Saturday 5th September, 7.30pm
Sunday 6th September, 6.30pm

Northcote Town Hall
189 High Street
Bookings:
(03) 9481 9500
www.northcotetownhall.com.au

The premiere season of Ricci-Jane Adams’ “The Joy Before Thinking” has been and gone, performed at Theatreworks from October 14th-18th for a small season of five shows.

Directed by Stephen Nicolazzo, and featuring performances by Pip Edwards, Tracey Mathers, Simon Morrison-Baldwin, and Alison Richards, the piece explored “the disappearance of pure joy and excitement from our adult lives; the desire to soar above our daily routine; the domination of mobile phones; and the politics and language of authority” (Rebecca Cook InPress). Initially developed in 2005 as part of the playwright’s thesis, “The Joy Before Thinking” has become more of a collaborative effort over the last three years, stemming from writer, director, designer, and performers response to the text. From Daina Voinescu’s set design to Richard Lipp and Danny Cisco’s sound design, the play “created a perfectly frightening and oppressive larger world” (according to Cook). This would not have been possible if it weren’t for the consideration of each theatrical element playing a vital role in the staging of the text. One needs to create a whole world on stage and theatre-makers can’t achieve this without the vision being created both externally and internally, emotionally and physically.

A terrifying,  joyful glimpse at the Australia of the future under increasing surveillance, state control, and government programs to eliminate hope. Just by tapping your mobile phone.  The children are disappearing. Buildings are in lockdown. Helicopters are flying overhead. And adults are slowly losing their minds. “The Joy Before Thinking” attempts to spread The H Factor, the government’s official term for the children evaporating into thin air, and poses a question to its audience that is entirely personal. What does the H Factor mean to you? What does this letter mean? And why doesn’t the world of the play have it anymore?

BRIGHTSIDE: A review, September 17th, 2007

Meet Jim who can’t undo bras, so he won’t let his women wear them. Who is afraid of blood so his women are constantly pregnant. Who parented most of the kids in the known world, and continue to pop them out. We don’t meet Jim at all, instead we hear and see from his progeny, his fans and his detractors. Welcome to Brightside where the fruit is fresh, the women are fertile and the trees keep on growing.

Using a set composed entirely of hard rubbish, a car made from a sofa, a fridge and your imagination, The Little Ones new work presents five separate vignettes of life in Brightside.

Exaggerated without charicature, Bec Ferretti’s two years pregnant Mary was exquisitely noncommittal and ripely comic. Alex Aldrich, Kali Hulme, and Lauren Bok’s Three Furies inspired maid, mother and crone triptych were gloriously lugubrious, writing amongst wood chips and rotten fruit.

Costumed in a ragtag bundle of pinny dresses, too-short pants, an array of tighty whiteys and a fistful of sexy lingerie, Emma Kingsbury’s designs complement the set, the lighting and the hippy ethos to a T. The highlight for me however was probably the set design- lavish, kitsch, layered and intricately arranged, the actors interact with and transcend their physical surroundings in almost equal measure. Perhaps the set could be developed to have even  more of an overt role, with such dynamic, complex presence it’s almost crying out to be heard as a narrative voice, or given a scripted role of its own.

Who needs a central narrative, or clear chronology to tell a story? Dan Giovannoni and Stephen Nicolazzo’s script create warm sunny afternoon pockets of wonder around a central concept while never giving too much away.

 -Nyunkia Tauss, Union House Theatre

Follow the link for a clip from the world premiere production of Playground.  The clip features Carly Hulls and James Tresise.

 playground-clip.mov

 A Review for Brightside presented by Little Ones Theatre, 2007

featured on www.theatrealive.com.au (proud supporter of independent theatre in Melbourne)

Iconoclast.

1. One who attacks and seeks to overthrow traditional or popular ideas or institutions.

2. One who destroys sacred religious images.

The iconoclastic Brightside attacks and seeks to destroy popular 1960s notions of free love, the benefits of mind-expanding drugs and the joys of communal living - ideas that to many are sacred, almost religious and institutionalised (albeit in a frozen past that many baby boomers continue to remember fondly, while lamenting the increased potency of modern marijuana that now literally blows their own children’s minds - not like the good old days, nudge-nudge, when grass was milder, wink-wink).

Continued…

(more…)

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Soon, tickets for our production “The Joy Before Thinking” by Ricci-Jane Adams will be available online at www.theatreworks.org.au

The rehearsed reading of Ricci-Jane Adams’ “The Joy Before Thinking” at 45 Downstairs on July 14th 2008 provided key creatives and audiences an opportunity to view this new work in a physical form before its final staging in October.

Read by: Kylie Trounson, Tracey Mathers, Alison Richards, and Simon Morrison Baldwin.

Directed by Stephen Nicolazzo

Many attended to show their support and gave much appreciated feedback on the project.  Special Thanks to Mary Lou (Artistic Director @ 45 Downstairs),Platform Youth Theatre (for kindly allowing us to perform in their stage space), Tess Duddy, Daniel Yim, Ricci-Jane Adams, Rosie Collins, and the cast for their efforts.

If you follow the link below, there a few photographs from the performance of Alison Richards, Simon Morrison-Baldwin, and Tracey Mathers in action.

(more…)

Little Ones Theatre is an ensemble of theatre-makers encompassing writers, directors, actors, and designers dedicated to bringing original, tender, and soulful Australian work to Melbourne stages. We want to make theatre with heart.

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