Riptide Projects
PLAY WITH ME for Channel 7 Crab Fest (March 2019)

Invited to perform on the children’s stage, the ensemble devised a structured mainly physical improv show with interactive elements around the idea of playing inside a dream.

“Enter a world of colour & fun where anything is possible-even magic. Created live before your very eyes, this new performance explores life as game that we all must play. You may even be invited to join in!”

Director: Ruby Liddelow
Live Musician: Brooke Bujega

BLUE PORTAL ROAD for Fringe World Festival (January/Febuary 2019)

You’re tangled in your bed sheets. You can see the door, the window and the trees outside. You try to move, but you just can’t…and then it begins. A gate-way into a million worlds opens in front of you. You slip gladly into another universe, and another and another, losing yourself completely. What happens when you can’t find your way home? Blue Portal Road is a sensory exploration of the desire to escape.

This interdimensional exploration of ‘stuck-ness’ was created, performed and directed entirely by members of Mandurah’s Riptide Youth Performance Company.

Director: Clea Purkis
Sound Designer: Tay Broadley
Stage Manager: Lexie Sleet
Project Mentors: Bernadette Lewis & Katt Osborne

THE 1S THE 0S AND EVERYTHING IN BETWEEN (September 2018)

Millions of connections are taking place right now, all at once, in this moment. We are chatting, creating, debating and selling more than ever before. We are connected, but are we close?

The 1’s, The 0’s, And Everything In Between invites you into a vortex of digital conversation, construction and communication. Written by award-winning WA playwright Chris Isaacs, this new play explores how the changing ways in which we communicate with each other is simultaneously bringing us closer together and pulling us apart. This exciting new play has been co-commissioned by Riptide and the Australian Theatre for Young People and was supported by The Australia Council for the Arts.

The premiere production is proudly supported by Drug Aware and Country Arts WA, the Department of Local Government, Sport and Cultural Industries and the Mandurah Performing Arts Centre.

Writer: Chris Isaacs
Dramaturg: Jane FitzGerald
Director: Katt Osborne
Assistant Director: Lexie Sleet
Designer: Laura Heffernan
Assistant Designer: Kinya Van Der Polder
Sound Designer: Brett Smith
Lighting Designer: Karen Cook
Stage Manager: Sean Hartley
Assistant Stage Manager: Jim Thompson
Acting Mentor: Stuart Halusz

 

WALK WITH ME at Stretch Arts Festival (May 2018)

The ensemble created the final development of their site specific performance piece called WALK WITH ME, this time based around a new map of Kieth Holmes Reserve, dubbed a futuristic tour of the ruins of Mandurah. Audience members were guided through a wasteland by a mute tour guide who handed out headphones and instructed participants on how to use the bag of handy survival tools they were provided with as they listened to a track written and recorded by Riptide which helped them experience the landscape through the eyes of the next generation.

Funded by the State Government’s Royalties for Regions Program administered by the Department of Local Government, Sport and Cultural Industries (DLGSC) Culture and the Arts (WA) in consultation with the Department of Regional Development.

Director: Kathryn Osborne
Designer: Emily Stokoe
Sound Designer/Technician: Brett Smith

CARDBOARD KINGDOM – FringeWorld festival (January/Febuary 2018)

DREAMS ARE JUST BETTER. Close your eyes and take a moment to imagine it. You live in an idyllic kingdom. Here you can do anything, be anything, create anything. But how do you adjust when monotony and drudgery of the 9-5 seeps in? When this place, your home, is invaded?

Created, directed, written, performed and designed entirely by Mandurah’s youth performance company, “Cardboard Kingdom” is a playful piece that explores both the defiance and danger of living outside the boundaries of the ‘real’ world. The work was presented by The Blue Room Theatre Summer Nights and the Mandurah Performing Arts Centre and is set for a remount in April 2019 at Fairbridge Festival and You Are… youth festival.

Director: Ruby Liddelow
Mentors: Dr Alan Hancock, Katt Osborne
Stage Managers: Jim Thompson & Kirra Lee Martin
Sound Designer/Musician: Benjamin Vaughan

WALK WITH ME at the WA Regional Arts Summit (October 2017)

The ensemble revisited their performance piece called WALK WITH ME, this time based around audience members taking a journey down the edge of the MPAC moat, watching and interacting with performers who were stationed in the water. The work included several characters who made up different chapters of the journey which was conveyed to the audience through headphones and ultimately explored the message that love is love. This work aimed to give audiences a joyful, fun and surprising experience for locals to see their town differently and through the eyes of its young people.

Director: Katt Osborne
Assistant Director: Ruby Liddelow
Sound Designer: Zal Kanga Parabia

< TAGGED > – Script Development (June – November 2017)

<TAGGED> (now known as The 1s, the 0s and Everything In Between) is a new work that explores how we attempt to find real connection within a constantly shifting digital landscape. The piece was to be written by Perth-based playwright Chris Isaacs and devised in conversations and workshops with Riptide.

In the digital world we are constantly rebuilding, re-editing, re-writing our stories to be perceived by those watching.  The pressure to build these identities, the number of people who could see them, has grown exponentially.  We are at age now where the great philosophical line of our times is ‘I share, therefore I am.’ On a personal level <TAGGED> looks at how this heightened construction of who we are differs to what we are, but in a broader sense the impetus comes from wanting to examine what this construction does to our interactions.

Writer: Chris Isaacs

Director: Katt Osborne

Dramaturg: Jane FitzGerald (Australian Theatre for Young People)

Funding and Commissioning Partners: The Australia Council for the Arts and the Australian Theatre for Young People.

WALK WITH ME at Stretch Arts Festival (May 2017)

The ensemble created a performance piece called WALK WITH ME, based around a new map of Mandurah. The work included an eclectic range of site-specific performance work that will include music, movement, poetry and participatory experiences. Audience were encouraged to meet at MPAC and follow the devised map to installation performance pieces stationed at alternatively named landmarks. This work aimed to give audiences a joyful, fun and surprising experiences for locals to see their town differently and through the eyes of its young people.

Director: Kathryn Osborne
Project Mentor/Provocateur: Kelli McCluskey (pvi collective)
Assistant Director: Scarlett Farrell

SOME KIND OF DISASTER – Fringe World Festival (January/Febuary 2017)

On the tipping point at the end of the world, SOME KIND OF DISASTER  was a playful and poignant epic journey that cut a path between the elemental truth of nature and the mysteries of human experience. From extreme weather disasters to hang outs and bowie, we paint a picture of the world facing the youth of today. This adventurous work was directed by the 2016 WA Young Arts Achiever of the Year Kathryn Osborne and created from the real experiences of Mandurah’s Riptide Ensemble with award-winning storyteller Allan Girod.

The development of this work was supported by Country Arts WA’s YCulture Program to promote the Drug Aware message. The presentation of this project was assisted by the Australia Government through the Department of Communications and the Arts ‘Festivals Australia’ Program.

Director: Katt Osborne
Assistant Director: Scarlett Farrell
Sound Designer: Brett Smith

QUEEN LEAH (September/October 2016)

To commemorate the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death Riptide Youth Performance Company created a fresh and playful reinterpretation of the bard’s classic tragedy, King Lear. This tale of family, power and justice was told with youthful pizazz, wit, silly string, and skateboards.

The project focused on skills development of young and emerging ensemble of theatre makers as well as the final product. Funding from Country Arts WA and the Department of Culture and arts has given Riptide the opportunity to have high quality mentorship from Barking Gecko’s Artistic Director (and Shakespeare expert) Matt Edgerton and WAAPA’s voice expert Luzita Fereday.

Director: Katt Osborne
Assistant Director: Scarlett Farrell
Sound Designer: Brett Smith
Assistant Sound Designer: Zal Kanga Parabia
Lighting Designer: Joe Lui
Designer: Sally Phipps
Assistant Designer: Ruby Liddelow

JOURNEY TO OXYGEN (September 2015)

Journey to Oxygen is a film that was written, devised, produced and performed by Riptide Contemporary Youth Performance Company, based on the theme of the fragility of the prehistoric thrombolites at Lake Clifton in the South West of Australia. Two groups of young people – the dancers and the research & film team worked on filming, creative planning, and technical support, and devising a performance piece based on the theme. Annamaria Weldon, celebrated WA poet, gave the participants a poetry reading on site of some of her works inspired by the wildlife in the area, and talked with them about what the area meant to her.

Director: Helen Duncan
Choreographers: Rebecca Neech (nee Boddy) & Scott Gailbraith
Sound Design: Zal Kanga Parabia
Funding Partners: MPAC & CANWA