Melbourne. Arts. Fashion: Dreamers

For the first time in over a decade, fortyfivedownstairs is delighted to bring together again this extraordinary creative team – writer Daniel Keene and director Ariette Taylor with designer Adrienne Chisholm – to present the Australian premiere of Dreamers at fortyfivedownstairs from 6 – 30 November 2014.

Mary Lou Jelbart, fortyfivedownstairs founder and artistic director, said it’s difficult to express just how exciting it is that Daniel Keene and Ariette Taylor are again working together to present Dreamers in Australia, “The collaboration between these two talented artists produced some of the most unforgettable theatre I have ever seen.”

Daniel Keene and Ariette Taylor previously worked together in the highly successful and ground breaking Keene/Taylor Theatre Project that ran for five years from 1997 until 2002; and together they presented 17 seasons of works with a total of 47 productions, including full length and short plays (four of the last five seasons were presented at fortyfivedownstairs in 2001 and 2002).

“Daniel Keene continues to write plays that are powerfully relevant to contemporary life – his work constantly grows from a powerful sense of social justice, that speaks to the heart as well as the head.  It is a gift to Australia that this theatrical partnership has been renewed.” Mary Lou Jelbart explained.

Building upon this extraordinary collaboration, Dreamers (originally commissioned for the French theatre company Tabula Rasa in 2009) is a play about the struggle against intolerance, racism and exclusion. The central character, Anne, is in her sixties. She begins a relationship with a much younger man of a different race and she must face an avalanche of prejudice and disapproval.

Daniel Keene says that Dreamers also addresses the problem of isolation – particularly the lives of older people, “It is a view of the underside of contemporary Australian life. In Australia at present debate is discouraged, exclusion is promoted, intolerance is accepted and complexities are ignored or erased.”

“Theatre is a place for complex social conversations, somewhere to broker understanding and to hopefully generate inspiration and discussion – we hope that Dreamers contributes to achieving those ends,” Daniel Keene said.