THE NEO-FUTURISTS GO DOWN UNDER FOR ‘SWEET CHILD OF MINE’
The Neo-Futurists open their 25th anniversary season with Sweet Child of Mine. The show opens Friday, September 6 at 7:30 p.m. at The Neo-Futurarium, 5153 N. Ashland.
Presented by The Neo-Futurists and award winning Australian theater company The Last Tuesday Society, Sweet Child of Mine is a contemporary performance exploring modern perceptions of art and family in Australian society.
Incorporating performance techniques and hybrid conventions utilized by young Australian artists, it fuses together theater, dance and video to create a unique portrayal of Australian culture in the twenty first century.
Performed by award-winning performance artist Bron Batten and her father Jim, Sweet Child of Mine is an unforgettable experience, which draws upon the traditional European artistic influences of Australia’s colonial history, fused with the diverse contemporary culture of today’s Australia.
This dynamic combination creates an exciting and responsive piece of theater, whilst reflecting the dry humor and ironic wit that is synonymous with ‘The Land Down Under’.
The Neo-Futurists are thrilled to present this award-winning and uplifting work by one of Australia’s leading young artists. With original sound design from Edward Gould, Sweet Child of Mine unites traditional performance conventions and contemporary Australian theater practice in a stunning fusion of modern discipline and unique antipodean energy.
Megan Mercier states, “The Neo-Futurists were immediately smitten with Bron, both in what we saw in her work and who we found her to be as a person. It was like finding a long, lost Neo-Futurist sibling. 9,000 miles away within another culture, we saw someone like us struggling with the same social and personal challenges that come from pursuing a career as an artist.”
Bron Batten (Performer/Deviser) Bron is a Melbourne based theatre-maker and performer. Her work has been seen at The Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Next Wave Festival, The Melbourne International Comedy Festival, Adelaide Fringe Festival, Perth Fringe World, On Edge Festival in Cairns, The Village and The Falls Music Festival in both Lorne and Tasmania. She has been the Co-Creative Producer (with Richard Higgins) of the successful independent theatre company The Last Tuesday Society since 2008, which provides regular performance opportunities for emerging and established artists. The Last Tuesday Society has been presented at venues and festivals locally, nationally and internationally with an upcoming production at The Malthouse in July 2013. Bron recently received funding from The Australia Council for the Arts to undertake professional development residencies and improvisation training in Chicago and New York and is currently a performer with the award winning children’s theatre company Polyglot.
Batten developed the performance work Sweet Child of Mine in collaboration with her parents for the 2011 Melbourne Fringe Festival where it won the award for Best Experimental Performance. Sweet Child of Mine has since toured to The Adelaide Fringe Festival where it received a Special Commendation for Best Theatre, and Perth Fringe World where it was nominated for Best Theatre Production. Sweet Child of Mine enjoyed a return season at The Melbourne International Comedy Festival before an international tour to Chicago in September 2013.
Jim Batten (Performer) is an extrovert whose appearance on Channel Nine’s variety show ‘New Faces’ in 1966 singing ‘Strangers in the Night’ has now reached legendary status. Unfortunately his commitments to his family meant that his artistic career was short lived, but his contemporary dance performances at family twenty firsts and weddings are unforgettable to all that see them. Since becoming a performer in Sweet Child of Mine at the age of sixty, James has toured with the show to Sydney, Perth and Adelaide and is about to embark on the second Melbourne season as part of The Melbourne International Comedy Festival.
He has also made appearances in cult performance event The Last Tuesday Society at The Buffalo Club and The Northcote Town Hall.
The Sweet Child of Mine staff includes: Edward Gould (Sound Designer),Glen Walton (Production Manager and Operator) and Gerard McCulloch(Outside Eye Direction).
THE NEO-FUTURISTS
The Neo-Futurists, performers of Too Much Light Makes The Baby Go Blindand creators of over 60 other original, full-length productions, are a collective of wildly productive writer/director/performers who create immediate, non-illusory, interactive performance presented at head-slappingly affordable prices.
The Neo-Futurists are partially supported by the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency, Alphawood Foundation, Arts Work Fund for Organizational Development, Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelly Foundation, The MacArthur Fund for Arts and Culture at The Richard H. Driehaus Foundation and a CityArts grant from the City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events..