Phaedra

Belloo Creative

Company: Belloo Creative & Queensland Theatre

Year the project commenced:2018 
Year it became impossible:2020 
Audience not reached:​​​​​​​7,140 
- Belloo Creative is an an all-female, award-winning Australian theatre company with a mission to bring people and stories out of the shadows. A mission that became far more challenging when everyone was confined to their houses when Australia went into lockdown and theatres closed their doors. - In 2019-2020, Belloo Creative were the company in residence at Queensland Theatre and commissioned to write an original new work to be part of the main-stage season at the end of 2020. The play Katherine Lyall-Watson wrote was a completely new imagining of PHAEDRA.
The future has arrived. Queensland has seceded from the rest of Australia and Prime Minister Theseus rules the nation-state with an iron fist and a rugby ball. He's fighting an ongoing war (the State of Origin) with the Newies across the border while his ambitious wife Phaedra runs the country and looks after Theseus's son, Hip, who has recently returned from boarding school. When things go badly wrong on tour, Theseus returns home to find his son dressed in Phaedra's clothes, his ex-wife on the doorstep and a royal battle in progress. This comedic reimagining of the Greek classic is a political satire for our times, a feminist love song and wake-up call to our home state. By the end of April 2020 the project had become impossible just as the themes it investigated became more urgent.
Phaedra was cancelled on 1st May 2020, but Belloo Creative don't give up on projects and are keeping the seeds of Phaedra alive, hoping to bring it to the stage one day. - “It feels incredibly timely and urgent as we see Australia become a country of separate states, with borders closed and rivalries intensifying. We even have a prime minister who worships rugby ... ”. - Belloo Creative

Writer - Katherine Lyall-Watson 
Director - Caroline Dunphy 
Assistant Director – Nasim Khosravi
Dramaturg - Kathryn Kelly 
Lighting designer - David Walters 
Set & costume designer - Penny Challen 
Sound designer - Brady Watkins 

Phaedra - Angie Milliken
As part of The Impossible Project we have been inviting artists to conceive of, attempt and document an attempt at An Impossible Task or to undertake a conversation with Anna Tregloan where she attempts (the similarly impossible task) of capturing their creative endeavours in sketch form.
As Katherine Lyall-Watson and Caroline Dunphy had embarked on the creation of Phaedra, much of what they created in an imagined version of a dystopian future came to be.  The most horrific fires in memory ravaged the country, the Prime Minister said he would be attending a football match despite a pandemic, there was talk of Queensland being forced to secede from the rest of the country following a divisive election and, by the time Anna Tregloan sat down to talk with the duo all of the state boarders were closed. 
It had been an exhilarating and daunting creative process which led to a complex, darkly comedic and often prescient script.  A script which, of course, never made it to rehearsals.  
Tregloan made a sketched attempt to capture this complexity - naturally it was impossible. 
NEW TASKS AND IMPOSSIBLE OUTCOMES ARE BEING ADDED EVERY WEEK. COME BACK SOON.​​​​​​​
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