In a creative theatrical show, Timothy Wynn will direct, for the very first time, a production piece titled 'Cosi' at the Beenleigh Theatre.
As one of the first local theatre plays that he saw as a teenager, he never really thought that he would be the one directing it. “As I’ve gotten older I’ve really come to understand and appreciate the play a lot more and really, more so now than I did when I was younger, I understand what the play is trying to say,” Timothy says. “I am a bit nervous because I’ve never directed for Beenleigh Theatre Group before, so it’s my first time directing and running a play for them for the first time too, so I’m not really sure what their audiences expect, so that’s an added layer in it for me.”
The story of 'Cosi' follows a young university graduate named Lewis Riley. He’s fresh out of university from studying for an arts degree and hasn’t been able to find his feet quite yet. He finds himself taking the first job that he can get, which happens to be a therapy project at a mental asylum. The asylum requires him to come in and do some sort of pantomime, a more variety show with the mad men at the institution, in order to give them a sense of purpose and bring them out of their shells.
“Once Lewis arrives he realises how in over his head he is and also the fact that one of the patients Roy is hell-bent on doing an opera by Mozart called 'Così fan tutte' and won’t settle for anything less. Lewis gets caught up in this and does a series of compromises from that point, learning a few lessons along the way,” Timothy says.
The play is set in 1971 at the time when the Moratorium against the Vietnam War was happening in Melbourne. Lewis’s girlfriend and best friend in the story were quite politically active in a sense, and don’t take too kindly to him creating a play about fidelity, which is what 'Così fan tutte' is about, when there are more important agendas he should be pursuing.
It follows the journey and explores his relationships with each of the patients, will they or won’t they get to opening night? How many personal relationships will still be in tact at the end of it?
“I kind of feel like Lewis in a way, coming in to direct a play to a group of actors that I don’t really know in a place that I’ve never been to before and all that, so it kind of is a life imitating art kind of thing," Timothy says. “I’m hoping that the audiences are going to come and ultimately see that we are all kind of the same no matter what we are... Whether we’re from a different country or we love the same gender, love a different gender, are crazy or whatever, we’re all still kind of human.”
“It’s a comedy, I wouldn’t really call it a ‘laugh out loud’, but it is at times more of a sweet, heart-warming, feel good kind of show I think,” Timothy says.
