Baal Returns

BAAL@Fremantle Festival (Brecht Night)

Date: 19 Nov 2011 (Sat)
Time: 9pm
Venue: Fremantle Town Hall


Baal is returning, for one night only, at the Fremantle Festival on Saturday, the 19th of November.


Come, bring your family and friends, enjoy the festivities.

Preview reception

We've got our first review in after last nights preview show. It's the premiere tonight and we're on till Saturday. Book your tickets now!

...The play has been segmented, with five directors, each tackling a piece in their own individual style. The compound result from Melissa Merchant (Act 1), Tim Brain (Act 2), Mikala Westall (Act 3), Serge Tampalini (Act 4) and Ralf Rauker (Act 5) is presented impeccably, with no jarring changes of pace or technique.

The script is along the lines of BBC1 tv’s highly successful version of this raw, revolutionary prose in 1982, which starred David Bowie as Baal and Zoë Wanamaker as Sophie.

One begs the fact, if you are going to put on a such a raw production, then you must realise that it is most frustrating for theaudience to watch a highly edited and modified version suitable only for ten-year-olds. Thirty years after the BBC, Serge and Ralf - two highly respected directors and producers - in tackling a controversial subject like ‘Baal’, have correctly demanded a huge amount from their fellow directors and the cast. The sex scenes were handled cleverly and the actors gave daring and convincing performances. The team have all rallied to the call, and given it their all. This generosity of spirit and commitment shows the respect they have for each other, along with the desire to do Brecht’s very complex, but commendable, work justice.

As mentioned in the synopsis, the characters change with each Act and director. To help us follow the storyline and retain the pace, the costumes (Bryony-Angel Wilson aided by Peta Kuchel, Holly Pritchard and Chantel Bell) have been kept the same style and colour for each character....

Read more here. We have it on our media review page as well. 

And Baal has arrived

He's here! We're ready to entertain you, to give you a show you'll never forget. To celebrate, there's some new photos at our photos page!

Book your tickets! Tell your friends! Spread the word!

"Young, naked, immensely marvellous, like Baal loved it, when he lived with us"

A week will Kill the meek

One week to go people. We have new pictures up on the Photos page.

Have you ordered your Tickets yet?

And we're covering this!

Of Posters, Banners, Bookmarks, Newspapers, Stickers and Baal

All around Perth, our Posters, Stickers and Bookmarks are starting to pop up. These things appearing all the way from Freemantle to Mandurah, CBD to Rockingham.

The Banner in front of Nexus Theatre

The back of the Baal bookmarks

The front of the Baal bookmarks

If you think that's a lot of bookmarks, it doesn't touch the surface of how many of them are going around

Yes. That's a gym locker room. Won't say which one though

And these stickers are popping up everywhere as well. We are not accountable for them being put up everywhere. We just give them out and have plausible deniability if they pop up near your area.

Our Media Reviews page has a link to an article from the Mandurah Coastal Times previewing Baal, with focus on our first Baal, Steve Capener, a Mandurah resident.

There'll be an interview with Steve, one of our directors Ralf Rauker, and one of our actors Moana Lutton, that will be shown on 'The Couch' on the 28th of November at 3. Do check it out. 

We also have a radio interview on RTRFM 92.1 on the 24th of October at 3 PM, featuring another director, Mikala Westall and of our actresses, Jessica Allen.

9 days to go people? Have you booked your tickets on the Tickets page?

And finally, do check out our Cast and Crew Profile page, to see who plays what, who does what, and who they think their own personal Baal is (and yes, I know. There's a lot of Charlie Sheens there)

Cult of Personality

Listen to the song.

Now look at the pictures.

Baal builds a myth that surrounds him, like Keith Moon. This is the story of the real Baal.

New Pictures and something new to listen to

Three weeks away. Have you booked your tickets yet? No? Wanna know why you should book them soon?

Well, we've got new pictures up at the Photos page.

Here's one of those new pictures.

And if you notice, there's a little play button on the right. Play that. It'll hypnotise you into ordering some tickets.

No it won't actually. We're not at Hogwarts. No matter how much one of our directors looks like Alan Rickman.

But do order your tickets soon! Three weeks away.

P/S: If you're wondering where Murdoch University is, we have a map at the Tickets section.

Let us explain

If you look properly at the header above and the poster to the right of the website (I bet a lot of you literally turned your head to the right to see a wall/person/ghost), you'll see that we put a lot of very famous celebrities there. And you're wondering why, aren't ya?

As weeks go by, we discover that Baal resembles a lot of celebrities. And not just any celebrities. Tragic celebrities.

Look at the very first picture. That's Kurt Cobain. Lead singer of Nirvana (Editors Note: Please. Nobody ask us who Nirvana is. If you have to ask, your childhood is not complete). He wrote brilliant songs, brilliant albums, was considered untouchable in the world of music. And his brains ended up on his garage door when his finger pulled a trigger (Some say it was Courtney Love's finger).

For those younger readers, his story is comparable to Amy Winehouse. She's another we all considered a Baal. Most of the cast worship her (Not the writer. He hates her) and her talent.

And she refused to go to rehab. Such a negative person.

(I can hear my bosses screaming at me as I write this. And the rest of the cast. And crew. And readers. And her fans)

It's not just in the music industry that parallels of Baal can be found. Who can forget the late and great Marlon Brando?

He was young, he was immense (literally), he was marvellous. And he was untouchable.

Who do you think is your Baal? Tell us in the comments section.

Introducing, The Acts

To whet your appetite. The 4 acts.

Act 1.

Act 2.

The Cabaret

Act 3

Act 4

There's more of those in the Photos section. There'll be more photos coming up in the coming weeks, a video or two, and more stories to tell as the time progresses. Stay tuned.

On a side note:

Since the very first week of planning, there's been a cast/crew member of this production that has been sick/injured/hospitalised. Two directors have been in the hospital, one of the actresses had an eye infection and had to wear an eye patch, the webmaster whose writing this now had an ankle sprain last week and just yesterday one of the actresses fell to an allergic reaction to something.

Now you know why we call it The Baal Virus.

It ain't no Scottish Play, but it is scary to say the least.

(And yes. Actors are so superstitious we don't even want to type the name out)

His silver tongue was a snake ready to bite

Baal tells the story of the most brilliant, and most uncaring artist in the world. With women (and men) surrounding him everywhere he goes, if he was alive today, magazines would probably talk about him like this.

The cast and crew have thought that Baal could be Kurt Cobain, Amy Winehouse, Charlie Sheen or Michael Jackson. Who do you think could be your Baal? Leave some comments below.

Some Contributions to Building Baal

Andrea Tim

"Has anyone wondered, that when Baal was dying, us feeling sorry for him might have been exactly what he wanted? Could it have been that - since he felt that law-abiding, goodie-two-three-four-shoes were below him and worth no more than spit bins, he thought it would be funny to test people and see how they'd react to his carefully chosen final words?"

Cam

"I think Baal is a creation of others, he corrupts them and they destroy him as a celebrity destroys himself (sometimes) but only with the help of the public around. The characters effecting Baal control the environment around him and maybe even control his inner and outer self."

Carolyn

"A child of the sky, aloof, the observer not in the ivory tower clean but rolling in the filth and loving it. Baal is thousands of years younger, making no excuses for himself in his hedonistic ways. Baal is a truth that we hide away under pretty clothes and social boundaries. Baal is the one who rocks the boat, dedicated to chaos and his own whims.”

Chantel

"I think that a very important part of Baal's immorality lies, not just with his addictive personality, but with the way he interacts with people, his treatment of them and the relationships he forms and disregards."

Christie

"Baal!

What is Baal, who is Baal, am I a version of Baal?"

Grace

"I can see Baal in quite a few people I know, myself included. Baal has a self-destructive nature that I think exists in most of us whether we’re conscious of it or not. I’m really excited to see Baal explored further, the character and the essence."

Holly

"I had a sense of the play being almost surreal, dream like, or nightmare like. With warped expressions of reality, nothing is what it seems, confusion, time goes fast and then slow. A kind of disconnectedness, drugged or drunk existence."

He is coming.

Murdoch University in collaboration with Edith Cowan University’s Contemporary Performance course presents Bertolt Brecht’s Baal - a visually stunning and unorthodox interpretation of the text that brings Brecht’s epic theatre into the 21st Century.