Funny show about a better world set to open at “reborn” La Mama

La Mama throws open its doors this month with a fresh suite of Australian shows, including a biting new satire about the state of the world from Carlton company Elbow Room.

Marcel Dorney “couldn’t be more excited” about the opening of his company’s new show, SAINTS, at La Mama’s Courthouse theatre on February 7.

Despite being based in Carlton for 16 years, Elbow Room haven’t performed at La Mama before and Dorney says they are “proud to be a part of the courageous rebirth that the theatre is undergoing”.

The work, “about wanting a better world and being confronted with the price for things improving,” resonates deeply with La Mama’s themes, he says, “the questions they’ve been interested in asking, right back to1967.”

It is also a satire that is “vicious and often hilarious”.

“Like [streaming shows] Succession or Pluribus or Atlanta it’s got something on its mind but it’s first and foremost fun; it’s entertaining,” Dorney told Inner City News.

The play is one of eight hitting the stage in La Mama’s new Presents series, running from February to May.

The theatre’s CEO Caitlin Dullard said she could find the right production to appeal to any potential audience member if she had half an hour with them to work it out.

“There’s younger people talking about sex, there’s sophisticated storytelling about the state of the world, there’s the relationship between AI and community, there’s First Nation stories,” she said.

“It’s all new Australian work. We’re going to do only new, only Australian work now.”

Flinging open the doors after a year-long break in performance triggered by the failure to win Creative Australia funding, La Mama has been buzzing since it re-opened in January.

“We feel ready to go, there are a lot of people around. There are lots of artists doing their thing and yeah, the energy is palpable,” Dullard said.

Applying as much creative energy to the institution’s survival as its programming, the CEO and her colleagues have forged a new model for the theatre, which involves new seasons dedicated to artist development and “partnership outreach”, with funding from philanthropists and businesses attached.

We’ve got a model that I believe is the right balance between sustaining our future and honouring the community of artists that we’ve had for decades, Dullard said.

The model maintains La Mama’s free coffee and “80 per cent of box office to the artist” policies and “doubles down on artist freedom.”

Over the longer term, though, the company will struggle without an underpinning of government funding, which is harder and harder to come by, according to Dullard.

“I’m not confident in the future of funding for theatre in this country, in this state, in this city; I’m really nervous about that,” she said.

But on the basics the CEO is secure.

“There’s this kind of truth that the artists keep making work and in the small space of our world, the audiences keep coming,” she said.

“From a local, Carlton perspective, people are coming to the theatre almost every night of the year.”

“It’s a bit underground, a bit on the edge, a bit on the fringe, but it is really vibrant for those who are kind of in the scene.”

And for those who aren’t, theatre is something that’s worth a try.

“It’s a very unique and personal and human experience,” Dullard said.

“Theatre speaks to the heart and to the communal experience of feeling part of something.

“There’s something kind of collectively magical about being in the room.” •