Episode 2: Theatre, text and adaptation with Toby Malone

Here Goes Nothing Podcast

In this, the second episode of Here Goes Nothing, we delve further into the artform i love most, connect to and cherish - theatre.

Theatre has been there for as long as I can remember. It is an important part of who i am and my life and though I haven’t made a show in a really long time, I play my part as audience member as best i can.

A lifetime of watching theatre can turn you into a deep cynic and hard to please, but there’s nothing greater than the experience of powerful, engaging and uplifting theatre. I love theatre that challenges, surprises and pushes you, and i also love a good musical.

In this episode, we chat with the person that has lived the same childhood as me, was there for all of my earliest experiences and led me into my career and obsession with theatre. My brother, Dr Toby Malone.

Toby is currently the Research Impact Librarian at Toronto Metropolitan University, a career move he took after 10 years as an academic and Dramaturg. Toby started his career as an actor before moving to Toronto and completing his PhD at the University of Toronto. Toby has been in Toronto now for 22 years and has a beautiful family including my superstar niece, Bridie and nephew, Cormac.

Most recently, Toby has undertaken the task of creating WAKE: A Cold Reading of Finnegans Wake from beginning to end. A highly entertaining podcast that has Toby and his writing partner slogging through the text. It’s well worth a listen.

Toby and I go through a wide ranging chat in this episode and I’ve added all the links below. Enjoy.

Links from the chat

• Chess The Musical

• Les Miserables

• Phantom of the Opera

• Canberra Youth Theatre

• Our family of musicians - Don Blue, Lindsay Blue, Lyndon Blue, Maddy Blue. Here’s one of their many acts, Heathcote Blue:

• Cats, the longest running show on Broadway

• Only to be beaten by Phantom of the Opera on Broadway

• They didn’t want people to sing-a-long Wicked

• Scotch College Drama

• University of Dramatic Society (UDS) of the late 90s included

  • Tim Minchin

  • Toby Schmitz

  • Gen Hegney

  • Belinda Bromilow

  • Jimmy Evans

• Queens University, Kingston

• David Mamet

That’s me, third from the left as Stage Manager. In a show by Dan Walls in Old Gold’s Gym (now a sports bar) in Northbridge around 1999

• Cormac Malone’s music - Big Posy

• Toby’s PhD in theatre studies

• Kill Shakespeare - 20 Feb 2020 Oswego NY

• Quarry Amphitheatre

• Importance of Being Earnest at The Dolphin Theatre

• Proteus Unleashed at The Rechabites Hall - Artrage 1998. This was before the internet was used widely so it was difficult to find any reference to it!

• Bertolt Brecht

• Charles Marowitz

• Alfred Jarry

• The Futurists

• Tommaso Marinetti 1920s was fascintating

• Stratford Festival Canada

• Restoration version of Richard III - Colley Cibber

• Shakespeare in Love with Joseph Finnes

• Touchstone in As you Like It

• Conspiracy theories that Shakespeare didn’t write Shakespeare

• Stratford upon Avon

• Christopher Marlowe

• Shakespeareans v Marlovians

• Like, they’re obsessed

2004 production of Hamlet with Tim Minchin directed by Claire Hooper

• Cutting Plays for Performance

• Dramaturgy

• Shakespeare in the Park Toronto

• Comedy of Errors

• Midsummer Night’s Dream

• Romeo & Juliet

• Public domain

• American College Theatre Festival

• ‘Let’s Cut All the Lawyers’ Henry VI part 2

• Routledge

• King Lear

• The Tempest / Enchanted Island

• All the Light We Cannot See excellent novel and terrible TV adaptation

• Richard Dawkins - The Selfish Gene

• David Garrick, actor

• Singing in the Rain

• Laurence Olivier

• Toby’s Podcast - WAKE: A Cold reading of James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake

• Trent Dalton

• Boy Swallow’s Universe TV series

• A Fraction of the Whole

• Angels in America

• Not I - Samuel Beckett

• Baz Luhrman's Romeo + Juliet

• Franco Zafferlli’s Romeo and Juliet

• Hayley Steinfeld Romeo & Juliet in 2013 adaptation

• Finnegans Wake by James Joyce

• Robert Le Page’s Dragon’s Trilogy at Perth Festival 2004

• Gabriel’s at Perth Festival

• Wicked the Movie

• Sleep no More in New York

• War Horse show and book

• Cloud Cuckoo Land

• Bookbinder of Jericho

• Dictionary of Lost Words

• The Bear:

  "The Bear" and Making Art (and Making Life)

• Barry