RECALIBRATE

DATES
1 - 5th March, 2023

VENUE
The Lab, Light Square

Three generations of women, one shameful mistake and identities forever recalibrated

Nominated for the 2022 Jill Blewett playwriting prize, Recalibrate is a project that breaks new ground both in its content and delivery.

Carmel, a philosopher of the ‘third age’, is holding on to her university position by a tenuous thread; her daughters disappoint her incessantly and her undergraduate students remind her of all the ways in which feminism has failed. When upstanding ‘good wife and mother of three’, Mary is responsible for a shameful and seemingly out of character error of judgement, her hedonistic sister is begrudgingly led back to Adelaide from ‘no fixed abode’ to pick up the pieces. As the women’s lives entwine in unexpected ways, the foundations on which their identities have been created implode.

Written by Lucy Combe, directed by Elena Vereker, filmography by Natalie Moss

Featuring: Jacqy Phillips, Kelly Vincent, Emma Beech and Katie O’Reilly

Content Warnings: course language, drug use, references to suicide and self-harm.

Row 1, L - R: Jacqy Phillips, Emma Beech, Katie O’Reilly & Kelly Vincent

Row 2, L - R: Elena Vereker, Lucy Combe, Natalie Moss & Taia Doyle

Jacqy Phillips – Carmel

Jacqy began her career in 1977 and since then has worked prolifically for stage and screen.  For many years she lived and worked in NSW and played the original Irene in Home and Away.  She has performed multiple times in shows for Sydney Theatre Company, Riverina Theatre Company, Hunter Valley Theatre Company, State Theatre Company of South Australia, Brink Productions, Foul Play, Tutti Ensemble, Slingsby and Patch Theatre to name a few.

Recent film credits include Red Dog, Wolf Creek 2 and The Babadook. She is one half of the musical duo, Tin Can Alley.

Kelly Vincent – Tessa

Kelly Vincent is a writer, actor and an advocate living on Kaurna land. At age 20, they won the State Theatre’s Young Guns Award for young playwrights for Gravity. They have written, produced and performed in multiple productions in SA and nationally. At 21, they became Australia’s youngest Member of Parliament and first-ever appointed specifically on the platform of disability rights.

Kelly has worked as a neurodiversity and disability policy adviser in multiple government departments as well as Access and Inclusion Officer for the 2020 Adelaide Fringe season and Project and Policy Officer for an LGBTIQA+ advocacy organisation. Then Kelly realised they could combine their passions of accessibility and arts, and in 2020, they co-founded True Ability, a disabled persons’ theatre company, where they are Creative Director.

Emma Beech – Simone / Young Carmel

Emma has been making theatre shows and telling stories all through her childhood.  Since then, she graduated from Flinders Drama Centre, worked in theatre & screen plus developed a practice making theatre shows from intimate conversations with strangers.  Emma has made theatre across a broad range of genres with rigorous makers from Adelaide, to Melbourne, to Spain to Denmark, for over 15 years and has worked with or been commissioned by the Adelaide Festival, Arts House, Brink Productions, Carte Blanche, Country Arts SA, DreamBIG, State Theatre SA and many times with Vitalstatistix.

Katie O’Reilly – Mary / Young Meredith

Since Graduating from Flinders Drama Centre in 2000, Katie has worked interstate, locally and overseas for both stage and screen. She has performed with Irish Theatre Company, Sunday’s Child. Co-founder of the acting duo, The Dusty Reds, Katie regularly performs new work by established and emerging playwrights through Theatre for the Time Poor. She has worked on Neighbours and Stingers for Australian television and starred in the hit Irish series, Fair City for television station RTE. For SAPT she has performed in The Middle Way, Watchlist and Bordertown, staged seasons and audio plays.

Elena Vereker – Director / Dramaturg

Elena is an award-winning director and creative producer of large scale, site-specific events, image-based and aerial performance. Elena graduated from NIDA in 1997 and has worked with companies and festivals in Melbourne, Adelaide, Sydney and Brisbane. She has created several high-profile events including for the Commonwealth Games Cultural Festival (Melbourne 2006 and Gold Coast 2018). As the inaugural Creative Producer for Federation Square she directed and produced numerous works. She headed up Melbourne Fringe Festival (2004-2005) and was the Creative Producer for the outdoor program for the Brisbane Festival (2009).

Elena is a co-founder and Director of Insite Arts supporting the creation and touring of new, groundbreaking work in collaboration with independent, culturally diverse artists from multiple genres, across Australia and to the world.

Lucy Combe – Writer / Producer

Lucy is a playwright and teacher, as well as being Creative Producer of South Australian Playwrights Theatre (SAPT). She has been involved in theatre and performance since completing her bachelor of Drama Studies from Adelaide University in 1999. Subsequent production work included the founding of Newfangled Productions and writing/directing of several plays including Searching for Solace. Lucy completed a Diploma of Creative Writing from Birkbeck, University of London and spent many years in the UK working in Arts-based roles. Her play, The Middle Way, was produced by SAPT in 2019, and subsequently as a four-part audio serial for the Auscast Network.

For Playwriting Australia, Lucy wrote the monologue, Flesh, for their Dear Australia project. The Middle Way and Flesh are both published through Australian Plays Transform.  In 2021/2022, she worked as script developer/producer for SAPT’s African Australian musical, The Deep North, at The Lab, Space Theatre and on tour through Country Arts SA.  Her latest play, Recalibrate was shortlisted for the 2022 Jill Blewett Playwriting prize.

Natalie Moss – AV Producer

Natalie is an emotionally engaging storyteller who identifies the best in people and narrative.  She has recently returned to Australia after over twenty years working in the UK screen and television industry.  She has been director and producer on countless productions for multiple departments within the BBC and has also worked as a Development Producer for Hopscotch Films.  In 2014, she won a BAFTA for developing and producing observational documentary series Being 16 for BBC3.  Since 2017, she has been working as series producer for TWIG, developing, creating, and producing media based educational resources which are distributed worldwide.

Taia Doyle – Stage Manager

Taia is a recent graduate of Flinders University, completing her Bachelor of Media Arts, and Honours Degree in Media & Enterprise in 2021. She began working on productions in high school, stage managing the school musical, Little Shop of Horrors. From there, she went on to study Live Production at Adelaide College of the Arts before continuing on to University. She has experience working at events all across Australia as audio visual crew, along with being involved in local productions such as Marie Clarke’s Jekyll & Hyde. She was the production assistant and lighting operator for the original production of The Deep North for the 2021 Adelaide Fringe Festival.  She then worked as Stage and Technical Manager for The Deep North in 2022 at the Adelaide Festival Centre and on tour across regional SA.