Melbourne lesbian couple produce play exploring life as spectator sport in the modern world.
If you can’t win, what’s the point? We’ve all thought that at some point in our lives, right? Why try if you’re not innately good at something? Why put yourself out there if you know your efforts are bound to be overshadowed by someone else’s? Especially in the digital age, in which your relative failure is constantly quantifiably evident in your lacklustre Facebook likes and Retweets.
Partners in life and art, playwright Morgan Rose and director Katrina Cornwell, have created a new play, Death Match, which explores these very themes.
An explosive new physical theatre work, Death Match tackles the big issues – life, death and ambition – against the backdrop of a sporting arena in front of an audience of spectators.
Rose and Cornwall have collaborated with third year Monash University performing arts students to together question the impulse and desire to win. Death Match will see the ensemble pushed to their limits as they attempt to succeed in four increasingly violent rounds of gruelling physical trial.
Cornwell questions the common phrase ‘winning at life’, “I feel like people take this quote quite seriously. What does it actually mean? How exactly do you win at life and at what lengths do we go to get what we want? Does winning mean living and losing mean dying?”
Rose and Cornwell live together in Brunswick East, and met after Rose fled New Orleans to escape the devastation of Cyclone Katrina – into the arms of another Katrina, Cornwell. Together the pair have created beautiful, thought-provoking, intensely present theatre.
Death Match showing details:
Season 28 Sep – 7 Oct 2017
Times 7pm Tue – Sat
Venue The Coopers Malthouse, Tower Theatre
Address 113 Sturt Street, Southbank
Tickets $10 – $22
Bookings 03 9685 5111 or malthousetheatre.com.au