Event and Ticketing Details
Dates & Times
Thursday 18 May
6:15 PM - 7:15 PM
‘She felt herself choking and tore at her frilled lace collar. “Miranda!”’
Fainting spells, frilly collars, mystery, hysteria and a truly awesome backdrop – Joan Lindsay’s Picnic at Hanging Rock might be 50 years old this year, but it remains a point of Australian cultural obsession. The book – written by Lindsay in just four weeks back in 1967 – has inspired a film, a radio play, stage adaptations, fashion spreads, music videos and a new miniseries coming out this year.
Why do we keep coming back to Lindsay’s eerie tale of a Valentine’s Day school picnic gone wrong? Perhaps it’s the ambiguity around fact and fiction; perhaps it’s the striking combinations of imagery or maybe it’s the maddening obscurity of the ending.
At this celebration of Lindsay’s iconic novel, we’ll discuss the true story that inspired Lindsay, the troubling history of Hanging Rock itself, the strange saga of the book’s excised chapter and why Lindsay’s tale continues to haunt and provoke Australian storytellers today.
Featuring
Helen Morse
Helen Morse is well known to theatre-goers for decades of work in the classics, contemporary plays and music theatre. Helen played the French teacher in Peter Weir’s film of Picnic at Hanging Rock.
She received a Green Room award for Alma de Gröen’s play about Anna Akhmatova, The Woman In The Window, and played Theodora Goodman in Adam Cook’s adaptation of Patrick White’s The Aunt’s Story (MIF and Belvoir). Helen’s many recitals include most recently Jean Anouilh’s L’Invitation au Chateau with PLEXUS Trio (Port Fairy).
Most recently she performed in John by Annie Baker (Sarah Goodes/MTC); Daniel Keene’s Photographs of A (Antechamber/Neon); Wit, Dreamers, The Rain, The Power of Love – devised with Paul English and violist Isabel Morse (Fortyfivedownstairs); and Michael Gow’s Once In Royal David’s City (Belvoir); KAGE’s Sundowner (national tour); Love.War.Death.BREL (Adelaide Cabaret Festival); Tim Winton’s Signs Of Life, Joan Didion’s The Year Of Magical Thinking (Kate Cherry/BSSTC) and Robyn Archer’s Architektin (STCSA).
Helen’s stage work includes: Ivanov, Duets for Lovers & Dreamers (Fortyfivedownstairs); Prophet &Loss (Here Theatre); Frozen, A Little Night Music, Arcadia, The Tempest,The Selection, The Marriage of Figaro, Our Country’s Good, The Recruiting Officer, The Crucible, The Cherry Orchard, Hedda Gabler, Twelfth Night (MTC); The Breath of Life (Hit Productions); Death & The Maiden (STC/national tour); A Midsummer Night’s Dream, ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore, Under Milk Wood (STCSA); Duet for One (National tour); Private Lives, A Happy and Holy Occasion (HVTC); Not I (Belvoir); Nick Enright’s Good Works (Kim Durban/Playbox); Michael Gow’s Europe (MTC/national tour) and Away (Playbox); and the role of Katherine Mansfield in Alma de Gröen’s The Rivers Of China (STC & MTC).
Janelle McCulloch
Janelle McCulloch is the author of 20 books, including a memoir and four books about Paris. Most of her books fall in the design/architecture/garden genres; however she has also written a novel and two biographies.
She has worked as a journalist in London, a magazine editor on several design and lifestyle titles in Australia and a book editor for an international architecture publisher. She lives in Australia, but spends a lot of time in the US and Europe, where most of her work is based.
Tom Wright
Tom Wright started as a member of Barrie Kosky’s Gilgul Theatre in the early 1990s, then with Michael Kantor’s Mene Mene in the late 1990s.
He has worked as an actor and director at the Melbourne Theatre Company, STCSA, Sydney Theatre Company, Playbox, La Mama, Company B, Anthill, Gilgul, Mene Mene, Bell Shakespeare Company, Chunky Move, Black Swan Theatre, Chamber Made Opera and the Adelaide, Sydney, Edinburgh, Vienna, Perth and Melbourne Festivals.
He was Artistic Associate at Sydney Theatre Company 2004–2008 and Associate Director of STC 2008–2012. He joined Belvoir as an Artistic Associate in 2016.
He has written a number of plays or adaptations, including A Journal of the Plague Year, The Caucasian Chalk Circle, The Castle, Ubu, This Is a True Story, Lorilei, Medea, Babes in the Wood, Puntila and His Man Matti, Tense Dave, The Odyssey, The Lost Echo, Criminology (with Lally Katz), Tales From the Vienna Woods, The Misanthrope, The Women of Troy, The War of the Roses, The Duel, Baal, Optimism, Oresteia, On the Misconception of Oedipus, The Histrionic, Black Diggers, The Good Person of Szechuan, The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, Picnic At Hanging Rock and The Elephant Man.
Productions of his work have been mounted in Pakistan, Belgium, China, New Zealand, Canada, the US and the UK.
The radio version of his play Lorilei won the Gold Drama Award (British Radio Academy) and BBC Radio Drama Award in 2007. His adaptation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, The Lost Echo, won five Helpmann awards in 2007, including Best Play. His adaptation of Shakespeare’s History Plays, The War of the Roses, won six Helpmanns in 2009, including Best Production. Black Diggers won the 2015 NSW Premier’s Literary Award for Best Play.
Helen Withycombe
Helen Withycombe is the Wheeler Centre's Head of Programming. Before this, she was Programming Manager. Prior to joining the Wheeler Centre team, Helen had worked in the publishing industry for more than 10 years, most recently as a senior editor at Hardie Grant Books.