Overview

"""Living Rooms"" is the fifth play in the Picture Play series by Paul Davies. It was originally produced by TheatreWorks as a site-specific work in 1986. The play takes place entirely within an historic mansion known as ""Linden"" situated at 26 Acland Street, St. Kilda, Melbourne. It deals with three key periods in the building's history: family mansion (1900), boarding house (1972) and art gallery (1988). These three scenes, set in three separate rooms (Drawing Room, Flatette and Gallery) are played simultaneously as the three separate audience groups rotate through the building. Thus, each group witnesses the whole play but in different orders. Finally all characters and audience members come together for a final, surreal scene in the hallway. The play deals with how St. Kilda originated as a wealthy Victorian suburb, then declined to a seedy, downmarket hub for drugs and prostitution until finally becoming regentrified in the late twentieth century."

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Reviews

"""It seems that you are in a time warp and that you're walking into some rich history book... witty humorous and quite profound"" Lidia Giarratana ""Writer, actor and director Paul Davies has ingeniously constructed a play which breaks down the normal constraints of time and place in theatre.... This is community theatre at its best, socially relevant, artistically challenging, thought-provoking in the contemporary issues it raises."" Helen Thompson (The Australian) ""Apart from the incredible precision required to mount this production as smoothly and coherently as they have, and the skills to perform the material with the energy and cunning that they have displayed, TheatreWorks have also had the wit to exploit that most marvelous amalgam of theme, atmosphere, location and contemporary relevance so vital to the success of community theatre. Living Rooms in short, has been without doubt the most interesting play in town for some nine weeks."" Geoffrey Milne (Centre Stage) ""The complexity of how these events relate to each other is captivating and enchanting - so much so that you could view the events in any order and still understand."" ""This piece of innovative location theatre deals with the tragedy of misused moments... energetic and convincing the script is sharp and extremely witty. Davies premise is that the value of idealists at the turn of the century and during the Whitlam years were never realized, leaving a vacuum of empty rhetoric."" Jacqui Macdonald. ""Something more than a history lesson ...I found the location aspect of theatre in this TheatreWorks production, fascinating to say the least."" Karen Murphy (Melbourne Times)"

It seems that you are in a time warp and that you're walking into some rich history book... witty humorous and quite profound Lidia Giarratana Writer, actor and director Paul Davies has ingeniously constructed a play which breaks down the normal constraints of time and place in theatre.... This is community theatre at its best, socially relevant, artistically challenging, thought-provoking in the contemporary issues it raises. Helen Thompson (The Australian) Apart from the incredible precision required to mount this production as smoothly and coherently as they have, and the skills to perform the material with the energy and cunning that they have displayed, TheatreWorks have also had the wit to exploit that most marvelous amalgam of theme, atmosphere, location and contemporary relevance so vital to the success of community theatre. Living Rooms in short, has been without doubt the most interesting play in town for some nine weeks. Geoffrey Milne (Centre Stage) The complexity of how these events relate to each other is captivating and enchanting - so much so that you could view the events in any order and still understand. This piece of innovative location theatre deals with the tragedy of misused moments... energetic and convincing the script is sharp and extremely witty. Davies premise is that the value of idealists at the turn of the century and during the Whitlam years were never realized, leaving a vacuum of empty rhetoric. Jacqui Macdonald. Something more than a history lesson ...I found the location aspect of theatre in this TheatreWorks production, fascinating to say the least. Karen Murphy (Melbourne Times)

Author Information

"Paul M Davies is an award winning screenwriter, editor and playwright who sharpened his quill on over a hundred episodes of Teledrama from classic Crawford series such as Homicide (1974-5), The Box (1975-76) The Sullivans (1976-78) and Skyways (1979), to Rafferty's Rules (1985), Blue Heelers (1997), Pacific Drive (1996), Stingers (1998-2003), Something in the Air (1999-2001) and Headland (2005). He also helped spark the site-specific performance revolution in Melbourne in the 1980s with TheatreWorks' production of his first play Storming Mont Albert By Tram (1982). What became known as The Tram Show played across a dozen years to packed trams in both Melbourne and Adelaide, travelling a total distance that would have taken the show halfway round the world. Its success lead to an outbreak of 'location theatre' in Melbourne throughout the 1980s including three other plays in real places: Breaking Up In Balwyn (1983, on a riverboat), Living Rooms (1986, in an historic mansion) and Full House/No Vacancies (1989, in a boarding house). These works became the subject of his book Really Moving Drama. Both The Tram Show and On Shifting Sandshoes (1988) were awarded AWGIES, along with Return of The Prodigal (2000) an episode of Something In The Air (ABC). Paul co-wrote the feature Neil Lynn with David Baker in 1984, and the docu-fiction Exits (1980) with Pat Laughren and Carolyn Howard. He also worked on a number of ""speculative"" documentaries with director John Hughes. Thes include Traps, All That Is Solid and One Way Street, Fragments for Walter Benjamin. His novel, 33 Postcards From Heaven was published by Gondwana Press in 2005. Numerous articles, reviews, stories and interviews have been published in Metro, Cinema Papers, Cantrill's Filmnotes, Popular Entertainment Studies and Australasian Drama."

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