Can young theatre-makers perform for 50 hours straight, fuelled by pizza, good vibes and a history of ramshackle, roll-yer-sleeves up grit and determination?
That’s the challenge this weekend for the kids at Australia’s oldest youth-owned-and-led arts company, Shopfront Arts Co-op, as they revive the 50-hour act-a-thon fundraiser that helped keep the Sydney company going through tough times in the late 1970s and 1980s.
The act-a-thon is a slightly bonkers theatrical endurance event (which will be livestreamed for the first time) that captures the scrappy and heroic nature of the Carlton company’s history, now celebrating 50 years. Young artists will perform live in one-hour blocks from works they have devised themselves.
“I’ll be performing in the 3.30am slot,” says Nicole Pignon, who first performed at Shopfront at 13 and is now in her mid-20s. “I don’t know what I’m doing yet but I’ll figure it out!”
Which feels about right. Shopfront has been figuring stuff out since it was formed in 1976 by two theatre directors, Errol Bray and Garry Fry. Among its alumni are playwrights Hilary Bell and Andrew Upton, and actors Jay Laga’aia, Trevor Ashley and Paul Capsis.
It was a different world to some extent. Back in ’76, kids were being warned about becoming square-eyed watching the colour TVs only just introduced to Australia. The prime minister was Malcolm Fraser. The Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act was about to be passed. Abba’s Fernando topped the charts for 14 weeks straight. And in Carlton, then a working-class suburb in south-west Sydney, theatre-loving kids were chasing their various dreams.
