The Memorandium

The Memorandium has just been delivered to your ears via Radio National’s Soundproof programme: CLICK HERE to go to the RN site to download and listen in.

The Memorandium is a show that people love.

The reviews have been wonderful – and  – most significantly, we have had consistent incredible, personal responses from our audiences:

“I just want to say how much I enjoyed The Memorandium, as did the rest of the crew I was with.  It was great.
It resonated with us afterwards at dinner and, being the sentimental sort, for me throughout Sunday. I hope the performers were on a high afterwards – we were!” John D, Kew 2014 season

“Any one living in Melbourne HAS to go and see this show. I went last Friday and was just blown away. Had the best time. I don`t think my eyes have been wider from the visual and just the sheer delight of it all. Still smiling from it! Get out and experience a little bit of magic. This is what I love about Melbourne..seeing shows this good! Just go!” Jodie Mc. Lorne, 2013

“I never knew why my mum gave me & my sister a music box until tonight. Her mum’s last gift to her was a music box & she died when my mum was 7. That has changed so much, for me, and ’cause I brought my mum tonight, for us.” Caitlyn B. St Kilda, 2012

CLICK HERE to watch preview on You Tube

CLICK HERE for full length version

And here are our reviews:

Click here for Arts Hub

“Master storyteller Penelope Bartlau began to lead us through a world of memory and story using spoken word, shadow puppetry, a slide projector, a recorded voiceover, and audience participation”

Click here for Stage Whispers

“This is theatre that reminds you of the power and pleasure, and communal experience, of a great shared story”.

Click here for Theatre Press

“The mood in the audience as we heard these stories went from a room full of strangers to a connected mind, and after the show when you were free to roam through the set we were chatting as if we were old friends”.

The Memorandium 2012 Team:

Penelope Bartlau – Creator, performer, co-director & producer

Jason Lehane – Set designer, lighting designer & co-director

Leah Scholes – Composer, sound designer & performer

Dan Goronszy – Installation design, puppet maker & puppetry director

Caitlin Barclay – Lighting operation & stage assistant

Alana Teasdale – Stage manager & Sound Operator

Kelly Mc Cosker – Installation assistant & letter creator

Elsea Bartlau – Installation assistant

Voice-over memories – Bern & Elsea Bartlau, Jason Lehane, & Fitzroy High students

Synopsis

The Memorandium is an exploration of memory – the stories, feelings, thoughts and impressions that reside within us all: memories which are brought together through imaginative story telling. Hiding in old post-office pigeon-holes are a number of presents and packages – abandoned, lost, forgotten or perhaps never given. In The Memorandium, these presents are unwrapped and passed around and shared with the audience. Together we then create a story, formed and inspired from a collection of memories aroused from the sensation of these old or forgotten objects. Puppets emerge from boxes, suitcases and pigeon holes – as breathtaking as our shared memories and stories.

Funders, sponsors & supporters 2012

With enormous thanks we would like to recognise our our funders, sponsors, supporters and brilliant workers, who helped make this first season of The Memorandium possible :

Funders: Arts Victoria, and The Ian Potter Foundation

Sponsors: Streaka and Arts Hub

Supporters: Fitzroy High School staff (Linda & Matt especially) & students, Heide Museum, Monash Uni Student Theatre, Chris Buzzard and Kwik Copy, Andrew Day, Paul Davies, Catherine at Crimson-Silk-Velvet,Green Pea Boat Studios, Theatre Works staff.

And brilliant work from: Eleanor Howlett @ Sassy Red Publicity, Sarah Walker Photography  & all the marvellous Barking Spider Visual Theatre volunteers

Creator’s note:

I am fascinated by our relationship to objects. My childhood experiences working in deceased estates shaped this fascination, and I am particularly curious about our memories and objects. What are we holding on to? What do we not dare to let go of? And why?

The detritus of our lives leaves a physical patina, and traces our thinking & our psychology, intimately.

Memory, along with the rest of our mind, is highly malleable. Jason Lehane, co-director of The Memorandium, has dared me to explore deeply and to go boldly into dark places with the theme of memory & it’s plasticity. It is this thinking & line of inquiry that brings me to ask: Is memory more imagination or fact?

In The Memorandium your memories will be re-awakened and you are invited to share and engage through the experience of the show – we hope you respond as spontaneously & passionately as do children. We all have stories to tell, but we don’t always have the place, space or time to share them.

 Penelope Bartlau, Barking Spider Visual Theatre artistic director

History  – Past showings & developments

Over 2012 we have had a third development of The Memorandium, with a company residency at Fitzroy High School, where we engaged students in theatre-arts workshops that ran concurrently with the month-long development. Prior to this, The Memorandium had two La Mama “showings”  in August 2011 after two creative development periods. View the August Showing Except on You Tube

Here’s audience feedback from our two 2011 August showings:

“I felt a strong & exciting sense of “What next? What next?” as the stories built”.

“I felt immersed in the storytelling, it felt real for me in the moment. I was able to paint in my mind the goings-on in the story, and to imagine the story being played out for real. Penelope is so calm and relaxed as she tells the stories & how she magically relates them back to the objects and our memories. So quick and intelligent a performer”.

“I loved the audience participation, the hot chocolate & the music – and most of all the potential to see the play more than once and for it to be different every time”.

“I was amazed & immersed by the storytelling skill”

“I wish you were my Mum and could tell me bedtime stories! The point where I was most spellbound was the puppet dialogue at the end. It had the strange effect of making me realise that the performance we were still engaged in watching was also already past and existing as entirely different experiences for each of us. The quietness and darkness of this part brought me in closer and made me forget the rest of the audience; I was amazed at how you could bring such an odd blue haired doll to life. The rest of the performance was fun and I loved how you looked to the audience to grasp a word or a character a few times and then just kept rolling with it”.

“Excellent performance! Thank you!… you bring beautiful soul memories to my thoughts”

“I found it so wonderful to hear the audience talk about their connection to objects.  A very personal and familiar space to be in, with some wonderful forays into absurdity”.

“I love the moment when the puppet talked about the sea – It was magical”

 

“What a magical, wonderous, dreamland-like atmosphere. I felt like Penelope was talking to me – telling stories to me. It was special & intimate”

“Very gripping. Very clever. I wanted to know what was going to happen next”.