The nature of the experiments of a science laboratory launched into Earth's orbit was kept top secret.
Skylab was in action from 1973 to 1979 when it fell back down to earth. In this Yirra Yaakin and Black Swan State Theatre Company show, fantasy meets reality and the impossible becomes possible.
Yirra Yaakin Artistic Director Kyle J Morrison tells us more.
This year marks the 25th anniversary for the Yirra Yaakin, what have been the highlights for you as an actor, writer and of course Artistic Director?
When I was 17 we were doing children’s theatre work that went out to schools as part of the Respect Yourself, Respect Your Culture message. It was since then that I’ve been inspired to work within culture to tell our stories. The faces of those kids and seeing them accept their culture and their stories immediately inspired me to want to do this for the rest of my life. Doing those children’s plays as a 17-year-old at Yirra Yaakin has put me on this path forever. As a director, I think it was the ability to really mess with form and to look at our contemporary theatre in a different way, and 'So Long Suckers' was the opportunity to be able to do that. Only at a contemporary arts organisation can you look at contemporary theatre and contemporary spirituality in a way that challenges ideas around how we see our spirituality and our contemporary paradigm.
Black Swan and Yirra Yaakin have been associates in the past but this is the first co-production, what makes this special for your team?
'Skylab' allows us to look at science fiction, spirituality, consciousness as well as normality on our stage. It allows us to explore conspiracy theories and ideas around Dreaming which all kind of collide and come together in this show. Partnering with Black Swan has allowed us to bring all of these elements of spirituality, contemporary theatre and technical use of theatre together. I’m really looking at creating a contemporary idea of Perth theatre and we couldn’t have really aimed for this level of production without the support and partnership with Black Swan.
Are there any tips for working with children in the play?
I think it’s 'find the right children'! And I really think we’ve done that. I’m really excited about the six children that we’ve got to play these three roles, not only with the show and their performances in 'Skylab' but I’m also really excited about the future of our industry with young artists like that coming through. If you pick the right kids and inspire them to tell their story, they will do it. Kids these days are incredibly spiritual and incredibly conscious of the world that’s around us. I reckon these six kids are going to blow people’s minds!
Image © Cameron Etchells
How did the idea of 'Skylab' come about? Is it a true story?
Melodie Reynolds-Diarra and I have been talking about spirituality and consciousness for about 20 years now. Science fiction is something I’ve always been a big fan of. I’m a big 'Star Trek' fan, a big 'Star Wars' fan, 'Lost In Space' etc…. You know, all of those ideas. Also, the ideas around dreaming, and spirituality and consciousness. They’re conversations that Mel and I have had for as long as I can remember and now we have a vehicle that comes to us (from the sky!) and it helps us to start to unpick some of these ideas around consciousness and spirituality. As we’re talking about spirituality and we’re also talking about science fiction, I see the show really as a contemporary Dreaming story.
The play can be described as Magical Realism, with many references to the eighties television show, 'Monkey Magic'. What do you think this style will add to the production?
When I was a kid, 'Monkey Magic' was the only thing on TV that wasn’t Anglo culture. It was the only thing that represented some other culture, some other spirituality, some other dreaming. Sandy and Pigsy are like archetypical dreaming characters within a lot of our dreaming stories. It was the first time I could see on TV something that wasn’t white Anglo Saxon Christian culture and so, we gravitated to it like it was the only show that was for us… You know, the cultural safety in this show is really crazy… It’s a Chinese dreaming story, reproduced by a Japanese studio then dubbed over with really bad Chinese accents! In hindsight, it’s lots of levels of awful! But what it actually did was give us access to some level of spirituality, consciousness and culture that we didn’t have anywhere else. In 'Skylab' we’re going to be looking at that old '70s studio style of magic realism seeing how we can honour that way of storytelling. I think there are so many synergies with 'Monkey Magic' and contemporary Dreaming that people will get a sense of how as kids we saw 'Monkey Magic' as a Dreaming story for us.
