Patrick Pittman

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Prompter

In collaboration with Sam Fox and Hydra Poesis. World Premiere at the Arts House in Melbourne in August 2013.

“Brecht would have been proud of the emo­tional dis­tanc­ing and invi­ta­tion to thought­ful engage­ment deliv­ered to the audi­ence.“
— Stage Whispers

“A work that in its speci­ficity uncovers truths without cast­ing blame or preach­ing a mes­sage. A work that, once seen, will linger like a spec­tre on angled glass.“
— Theatre People

“It asks ques­tions about what it means to ask questions—of oth­ers, of our­selves, of our envi­ron­ment and the dis­tanc­ing nature that this can pro­mote.“
— Melbourne Observer

“An inves­ti­ga­tion of jour­nal­ism as enter­tain­ment and var­i­ous conun­drums of alien­ation and of empa­thy that the infor­ma­tion age can inspire.“
— The Age

“Long, overblown and more than a lit­tle silly.“
— The Australian

After four years in development, Prompter, my debut the­atre work, writ­ten in col­lab­o­ra­tion with direc­tor Sam Fox and Hydra Poesis, was staged at the Arts House Meat Market in Melbourne in August 2013.

Rather than me try to explain here what we were play­ing at (some­thing about post-colonial legacy, the nature of truth in the mod­ern media cycle, ideas of dis­as­ter and medi­a­tion), here’s a lit­tle doc­u­men­tary the ABC made on the play, wherein I say some mod­er­ately intel­li­gent things about it.

And here, more bizarrely, are Sam and myself on live national break­fast television.

For this project, I had the priv­i­lege of dra­maturgy from the great Australian play­wright Stephen Sewell, a com­poser signed to the Warp label, and input and feed­back from a phe­nom­e­nal group of actors, pro­gram­mers, set design­ers and other col­lab­o­ra­tors. Development of the play was funded by the Australia Council, the WA Theatre Development Initiative, and oth­ers, no doubt.

The play, being about media, gen­er­ated a stack of media inter­est. This is a col­lec­tion of some of my ram­bles and rants: