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Drawing on vaudeville, burlesque, silent movies, European clown and slapstick, Big Business is an action packed show bursting with humour and pathos.

Paul, Barry, Ray, and Pierre are flawed and lovable characters, living and working together in delightful dysfunctional harmony. They eat, sleep, work and play in a bizarre world where time has been suspended and makeshift contraptions support the making of tea and their all-important cottage industry.

With wry humour, Big Business explores the nature of the sacrifices made in the pursuit of ‘bigger’ and ‘better’ in their own unique, eccentric, engaging and fun way.

Madeleine Flynn and Tim Humphrey will be playing live with a score for amplified table and exercise bike, record player, radio, piano, toypiano, harmonica, trumpet and retro electronics.

“Brilliant purveyors of physical comedy, dexterously employing detailed characterisaton and slapstick…” Sydney Morning Herald 2003

The Business is Glynis Angell, Penny Baron, Clare Bartholomew and Kate Kantor. Renowned for their impressive non-verbal theatre and inventive complex characterisations, The Business presents shrewd, beautifully crafted performance works including The Concert (winner of the British Council Oz Export Award, Melbourne International Comedy Festival), The Business…As Usual (Best Comedy, Melbourne Fringe Festival) and One Man’s Business (winner of the Comedy Festival Foreign Exchange Award).

Big Business is the first Full Tilt production to have begun its creative life with the program, with the collaboration beginning in 2006.

Check out the videos HERE

“The Business is, without doubt, one of the most genuinely inventive shows you are likely to see in this year’s Fringe.” Metro (Edinburgh Fringe Festival) 2003

Venue: Fairfax Studio, the Arts Centre
Dates: Thursday 8 – Saturday 17 May
Times: Wednesday – Saturday at 7.30pm, Saturday 17 May at 2pm
Preview: Wednesday 7 May
Tickets: Full $28, Conc/under 26 $23, Student Rush $15, Groups 6+ & Preview $20
Bookings: theartscentre.com.au* or 1300 136 166* or Ticketmaster outlets or the Arts Centre Box Office (*transaction fee applies)

           

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Glynis Angell is an actor, theatre maker, director and teacher. Glynis co-wrote and performed in her show Haul Away - Best Female Performer (Independent Theatre), Best New Australian Play nomination, Green Rooms Awards 2006. Recent theatre acting roles include Letters From Animals, Asylum and The Time is Not Yet Ripe (Winner Best Ensemble (Independent Theatre) Green Rooms Awards 2006) for Here Theatre. Film/TV credits include Waiting at the Royal Winner 2001 Banf International Film Festival Best Film Made for Television, The Interview, An  Angel at my Table, Blue Heelers and Something in the Air. Glynis is Co-Artistic Director of improvisation theatre company Melbourne Playback Theatre.
»Read More

Penny Baron has been working as a performer, deviser and director for the past sixteen years. Penny trained with Dance Arts Dance Company in Dunedin, NZ 1988, and graduated from The John Bolton Theatre School in 1992. She has studied Clown, Le jeu and Text with Phillip Gaulier in London 1996 and Improvisation extensively with Al Wunder, Theatre of the Ordinary.
 Penny is a member of Born In A Taxi physical theatre company, Born In A Taxi has a long history performing works indoors, site specific, and outdoors both nationally and internationally . Penny is a founding member of The Rhonda Movement comedy trio and The Business clown quartet.
 As theatre maker, and performer with these companies and independently Penny’s awards have included the 1992 and 1993 Melbourne Fringe Best Short Work Award for Pessenka, and Tight Shorts, 1996 Moosehead Award, 1999 ABC Best Fringe Comedy Award for The Business…As Usual, the 2003Inaugural British Council Oz export Awardin the Melbourne International Comedy Festival for THE CONCERT and most recently 2005 Most Outstanding Production Melbourne Fringe Award for Not Dead Yet a collaboration between Rawcus Theatre and Taxi.
 Since 1995 Penny has regularly toured to Festivals in the UK, Asia, New Zealand and European Street Theatre Festivals, as well as performing regularly at home in the Adelaide, Melbourne International Arts Festivals and Fringe Festivals. »Read More

Clare Bartholomew is a Melbourne based freelance actor, deviser, and director. She works as a Clown Doctor at Children’s Hospitals’ in Melbourne and around Australia and is also a Training Advisor for The Humour Foundation (Clown Doctors) nationally. Clare won the Comedy Festival Foreign Exchange Award, Moosehead Comedy Award for her solo show One Man’s Business. Clare has taught clown and physical performance at various places inc: Victoria University, The Starlight Foundation, Circus Oz, The Tasmanian Circus Festival, Slipstream Circus and The Women’s Circus. Most recently she was the special guest act for the award winning The Burlesque Hour on its Eastern European tour and Melbourne Spiegeltent season and also completed a highly successful seven-city tour across Canada with Die Roten Punkte (The Red Dots) with her company, Tobias & Bartholomew. »Read More

Kate Kantor is a director, teacher , writer and performer of physical theatre. She has been a member of many companies, including Primary Source, The Hunting Party, the TeaBags Marching Band, Strange Fruit, Circus Oz and Melbourne Playback Theatre.  Kate has also worked extensively in community theatre, as the Artistic Director of The Return of the Sacred Kingfisher Festival at Ceres, and of the Moon Lantern Festival in North Richmond, and with many other diverse communities. »Read More

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Director - Ian Pidd

Ian Pidd is a freelance director of theatre and events. He was for four years the Artistic Director of the acclaimed Back to Back Theatre with whom his productions included Boom Town, the Green Room nominated Mind’s Eye and a number of award winning short films.

As Performance Director of Snuff Puppets Ian has created large-scale performances in Europe, Japan, Korea, Singapore, and Brazil and in many parts of Australia. He most recently directed Nyet Nets Picnic, a large outdoor performance with a group of senior indigenous artists, which played to huge crowds in central Melbourne and at the ASSITEJ festival in Adelaide.

He is Co-Artistic Director of The Village, a festival of gorgeous short works, which has an annual incarnation in Melbourne, and has also had seasons in regional Victoria and Tasmania.

Ian has directed a number of large scale Community based projects including Material World (an Installation for Fed Square made in collaboration with asylum Seekers), The Bonegilla Experience (a multi art form festival with mature migrants) and co directed The Western Ring Cycle (a series of theatrical bus journeys created with diverse communities in Melbourne’s West.

Ian has an ongoing series of projects based in Yogyakarta, including Snuff Puppet events for the Yogya festival and a major project with celebrated Indonesian Architect Eko Prawoto.

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Musical Note

Our interest in working with The Business began with our work with Clare Bartholomew in 2002 on the score for her solo work, One Man’s Business. In Big Business we make a curious sound world from objects, which activate sound, traces of sound from other times, and melodies, which sound halfway familiar in genres, which are almost recognizable.

Madeleine Flynn and Tim Humphrey are award winning Australian sound artists, composers and performers working collaboratively since 1993. They have a long-term practice with dancer/choreographer Tony Yap, and they direct the megaphone project, an installation that investigates the human voice and intimate listening in public spaces, which was selected for APAM. In October 2007 they created john cage’s musicircus for the Melbourne International Festival of the Arts. They have recently been awarded an ANAT National Award Synapse Residency at the Garvan Institute in Sydney where they are working on the sonification of genetic material. www.madeleineandtim.net

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Lighting Design - Marko Respondeck.

Marko. He loves the potential that a light bulb yields. In Germany he spent his adolescence rigging par cans for rock’n’roll. Post his arrival in Australia and long years at the VCA, he’s become far more solemn and philosophical about his work. His modus operandi of shadows has indeed developed so much that he created opportunities to work with important Australian companies ranging from drama via contemporary dance/physical theatre to circus... and beyond.

Sincere thanks for the opportunities... Melbourne Workers Theatre, Storeroom, Y-Space, Sandra Parker, Legs On The Wall, Stalker Theatre Company, Ilbijerrie Theatre Company, Kage Physical Theatre, Stompin Dance Company, The Candy Butchers, NICA, Theatre at Risk, Circus OZ, a.m.)

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Knock-about Consultant - Stephen Burton

Stephen has worked in the entertainment industry  for more than  twenty -five years.  He is currently  working with  NICA while ‘moonlighting’ for the BUSINESS and “Gadgets” and ‘Team Loco’. He has directed, trained and taught for Circus Oz, Bizurcus, Dislocate, The Flying Fruit Fly Circus, Rock ‘n’ Roll Circus, The National Institute of Circus Arts, The Collapsable Man, Marg and the Beast, The Ukulele Ladies,Belfast Circus School, Horned Moon, A Scam and A Strongman, Coco and Guido, The Business,Throwdown,Catharsis,Candy Butchers, Love TV,A Little Bit Tricky,the Orchestra,Kindred  Circus,Laughing in the square. He has performed with Circus Oz, Dislocate, The Essendon Policewomen’s Marching Band, Slow Love , A Midsummer Night”s Dream, The Maurice’s, The Flying Felafels, The Miserables, The Comedy Company, Bananrama etc, etc, etc.........

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Production and Stage Management - Emily O'Brien for trafficlight

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Designer - Danielle Brustman

Since completing a BA  (Interior Design) at RMIT in 2001, Danielle has worked as a set and costume designer for theatre and film. Design credits include: The Black Swan of Trespass (Malthouse 2005), Pink Denim in Manhattan (Next Wave Festival 2006), Circus Girl (Flying Fruit Flies 2007), The House of Application (Melbourne Fringe Festival 2005) and Confessions of a Troubled Mind (Arena Theatre Company 2005.)

Danielle has recently designed and art directed for music videos with bands The Whitlams and Eskimo Joe.

In 2006, she was nominated for a Green Room Award for Black Swan of Trespass and group recipient of the Melbourne Fringe Festival Excellence in Design Award for the House of Application.

In 2006 she was invited to be a speaker at the AGIDEAS Design Conference held annually at the Victorian Arts Centre.

Danielle has recently designed for two new creative developments with Stuck Pigs Squealing and has just finished production designing for the short film 'Lovers walk.

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Designer – Corey Thomas

Corey Thomas has a long list of credits to his name, including “Lady of St Kilda”, commission for the Commonwealth Games, “The Rainman” commission for City of Port Phillip, Installation Artist Lifelounge, Cockatoo Island, Sydney & Docklands, Melbourne and “Red Light Winter” set design Griffin Theatre, Sydney

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