Adelaide Fringe 2011: Rocket Town (Theatre)

Starts on Tuesday 22 February 2011 & ends Saturday 12 March 2011.
Location: Adelaide Fringe, The Science Exchange. Program: Adelaide Fringe.
Bookings have closed for this event.

Welcome to Woomera. It has a rocket park in the centre of town. It has a military test range the size of England. And now it has you.

This new play explored the characters’ relationships to the scientific heritage of this unusual and remote town. It explored what it means to be young in the middle of weapons-grade nowhere.

Developed in South Australia by UK playwright Emily Steel.

Parental guidance required. Rated 15+

View media release – Welcome to the Middle of Weapons-Grade Nowhere (17 February 2011)

Rocket Town Teaser

Have a look at the Rocket Town website

Reviews of the show:

Response from an ex-resident of Woomera:

Great acting! Loved the whole thing. You will think that someone was recording every conversation and action that we did as teenagers in Woomera, and where and what our parents were doing! ***** 5stars

Review from Adelaide Theatre Guide:

Review by Fran Edwards

A play about living in Woomera? Well, why not? More specifically this is a play about young people living in Woomera, or existing. The plot actually explores a lot more than this, examining the nature of friendship and the effect that an artificial environment can have.

Emily Steel, the writer/director, has put together an interesting concept, developed well with believable characters. The character development is evident in the lines, which are authentic and balanced.

Dee Eaton portrays Jess, a fifteen year old who has been ‘trapped’ in the town for several years, with sympathy but without guile. A strong performance from this young talent.

She is well complemented by Sam Calleja in the role of Josh, gawky newcomer. Probably the harder of the two roles to carry off, Calleja matches Eaton’s talent and the two work well together.

All is presented on a simple set, with minimal but effective lighting.

In an interesting and intimate venue this was a surprising and rewarding effort.

Rating: 4 stars (out of 5)

Rip It Up

Rocket Town
The Science Exchange Thinking Space, Tuesday 22 February, 2011
Being fifteen is hard enough wherever you are: too young for pubs, too cool for school. But what about those teens whose parents move them to a desert town with no cinema, where people move on hurriedly and forget to write? British playwright Emily Steel’s humorous and poignant meditation on teen angst finds the perfect setting in Woomera: a rocket town embracing the awesome power of human invention and achievement yet isolating those inhabitants too young, or too uneducated, to understand the science. Jess is a cool cat who drinks and refuses to get close to anyone, Josh the new kid on the block, gawky and geeky but proudly persistent in befriending Jess. Their unlikely alliance is framed in authentic speech – inspired by real conversations with Woomera youth – but for some elderly ears the dialogue was a touch too realistic. The rest of us had a blast.

Final Word: Lift-off!
Jenny Roesler

The Advertiser

WELCOME to Woomera, Outback South Australia, a town slowly coming to terms with its own insignificance. The population has shrunk from thousands to hundreds in a few decades.

Woomera was once a top-secret place of critical national and international importance, for testing long range missiles and rockets and later, launching and tracking spacecraft.

Not so long ago it became better known for the detention centre. It’s a tough place to grow up.

Fifteen-year-old Jess (Dee Easton) says you make your own fun, but everyone leaves in the end. She’s an angry young woman with a drinking problem who has vowed never to have another friend, for fear of losing them to the big city.

But Josh (Sam Calleja) has just arrived in town with his mother, a physicist who is going to work on the range.Will they become friends, or lovers? The wonderful script by young playwright Emily Steel is both witty and poignant, the character acting superb. And the simple set is perfect; you can almost see the stars.

Clare Peddie

4 stars

Review by Adelaide ArtBeat

Being 15 is rough for anyone, but imagine being 15 in the middle of outback Australia where there is only one other person your age and everyone in the town knows exactly what you’ve been up to. Imagine exactly how hard it would be the keep things from your parents then? Set in Woomera, the base for rocket testing testing in the 50s and the site of a decommissioned detention centre, Rocket Town is the story of being young in a small remote community. A community that appears seems to be slowly fading into the desert.

Written by Welsh playwright, Emily Steel, Rocket Town was created in collaboration with the RiAus. Rocket Town follows the friendship of Jess and Josh, the only 15 year olds in Woomera, one a geek and the new kid in town, the other with Woomera street smarts.

The friendship of Jess and Josh is beautiful thing (I was going to say flower but that is a little clichéd) to develop out of a place founded for testing destruction. A place where there is a cemetery with an unusually high number of dead babies buried in its earth. Where two individuals who would normally never find themselves as friends form a strong bond with location and age the only commonalities.

For once, it’s nice to see interactions between two teenagers that aren’t who is going out with who, or who is wearing what, or who is going to which party (Yes I’m referring to Gossip Girl or Dawson’s Creek or The OC, hell, I’ll even add Skins). It’s entirely refreshing to watch two teenagers who aren’t insipid, narcissistic or consumed by shopping and who quite frankly have some quite real issues to contend with.

Local actor Dee Easton does a brilliant and nuanced job as the sassy know-it-all Jess. Sam Calleja starts off overplaying the role of Josh but settles down pretty quickly as the play progresses. The piece is performed with the audience arrayed around the performers, making us feel as though we are the proverbial fly on the wall during the interactions between these two teenagers. But unlike a fly, you feel everything with these two, laughter, fun, discomfort, anger, the intimacy of the venue and the talent of Easton and Calleja draw you in.

Now the Adelaide Fringe Festival provides a smorgasbord of shows to pick and choose from. Some are international delicacies, others are local but without local flavours, this is first one I’ve seen that has a truly South Australian flavour. This show is one of my highlights for the 2011 Adelaide Fringe season, I loved this production, its charm, its characters, but mostly its voice, a voice telling a local story.

Rocket Town – Adelaide Fringe 2011

Adelaide Fringe 2011
Rocket Town opens to emotional reviewsRocket Town a play by Emily Steel opened last night at the 2011 Adelaide fringe to I believe a full house. The play based on the experiences of two “teenagers” growing up in remote outback town explores their troubles and joys and worries living in such a transient town.
Dee Easton plays the part of Jess,she has been in the town for 2 years and has just discovered that the family will not be returning to the city.
Sam Calleja plays Josh, he is new to town and excited by its prospects and stars.
Audience members have been Tweeting and reporting on FaceBook this morning about their surprise at the detail and hidden knowledge portrayed in the play.
“It was like I was in a time warp”, one commented. Feeling that the play had transported her back to the time she had lived in the town of Woomera, South Australia.
To gain that level of detail Emily traveled to Woomera and spent the time to chat with some of the current locals. Returning with the cast so they could also absorb that “Woomerite feel”.
Posted by Gumby Roffo