Flashback #9... returning to Heiner Mueller, MEDEAMATERIAL in 1995

It is not often that I am stuck for words. But in describing MedeaMaterial I cannot find language adequate to the experience. It bears as much relationship to what passes for theatre here as chess does to snakes and ladders.
Imogen de la Bere, The Press

A follow-up to the artistic and popular success of HamletMachine in 1991, Free Theatre returned to Heiner Mueller with the development and presentation of a new interpretation of the modern masters work in 1995, MedeaMaterial. The Free Theatre was gutted and transformed into a nightclub complete with a bar in the playing area and television screens and peep holes all around the space. The entire theatre was used for the action - backstage, understage, toilet, workshop, store room - with the actors taking up different interpretations of Mueller's collage of texts (fragments of everyday conversations he recorded) inspired by the Medea and Jason story. Following an overtly ritualistic opening through and around the audience, the action moved to different parts of the theatre. Audiences had to move, drink in hand, to see the diverse Jasons and Medeas taking up different perspectives on the story inspired by the distinct spaces of the theatre - peeping and eavesdropping on couples squabbling as if in a nightclub. The performance document above was produced by cast member Olivia Lory-Kay.

Falkenberg has, once again, set a standard of brilliant imaginative theatre which others can only dream of attaining. But if only they would just dream of it. 
Imogen de la Bere, The Press

​The extraordinary design - set, light and sound - grew out of a collaboration between Falkenberg and Lawrence Wallen. Mark McEntyre, a performer in HamletMachine, also returned to team up with Wallen on the design for the space. This production marked the transition of the Drama Programme at the University into fully fledged Theatre and Film Department with the Stage Three class providing the majority of actors for this Free Theatre production. The ensemble approach was noted by reviewers, the actors exhibiting the physical training and integration of theory and practice discovered through Falkenberg's cornerstone TAFS 301 course, which explored Modern Theatre via experiments with the work of Stanislavski, Meyerhold, Brecht, Artaud, Grotowski, Boal and theoretical touchstones provided by Erving Goffmann and Paulo Friere. The core of the MedeaMaterial cast would go onto be the first postgraduate class for the new Theatre and Film Studies Department, the first dedicated programme of its kind in the country. This would begin, following MedeaMaterial, with the development of research around collaborative work on a core text, starting with Robinson Crusoe.

​The success of MedeaMaterial saw Free Theatre touring to Wellington for the first time in 1996. 

​I remember feeling quite vulnerable and exposed – confronted. As I moved around with the other spectators I suddenly became conscious of the fact that I was part of the performance. I felt strangely isolated and at the same time connected to others who seemed to be experiencing something similar. I recall the lively conversations that followed the performance, conversations I had never had in my previous theatre-going experiences. I felt part of a community. 
George Parker, audience member

The Free Theatre acted, and probably still does, as a laboratory for some of the most creative minds in New Zealand with artistic consequences far beyond the theatre and time of production. The Free Theatre has continued to engage in a dialogue, at an international level, between space, narrative and body that has allowed local students to overcome traditional barriers of intellectual isolation preparing graduates for careers both in New Zealand and on the world stage. This has been made possible by the sacrifice and commitment of its founders and supporters who over the last 25 years have not only delivered an excellent contemporary theatre to Christchurch but have influenced more than one generation of New Zealand artists, filmmakers and thinkers.
Lawrence Wallen, Designer, MedeaMaterial; Head of School, School of Design, University of Technology Sydney