Rita Kalnejais – July 9 2017

Dry July – alcohol free month to raise funds for people affected by cancer.

Rita is an actor, playwright and screenwriter. Since graduating from the Victorian College of the Arts she has appeared in numerous productions for Sydney Theatre Company, Company B Belvoir, Malthouse Theatre and Griffin Theatre Company and in a variety of short films. Rita has been a resident playwright at Sydney Theatre Company. Her other works include Fidelity, a play about the intimacy between Jeanne d’Arc and Charles VII; the short plays, Whistling in Bed and How To Get Very Clean; the serial play B Street (co-written with Tommy Murphy and Charlie Garber); the children’s play StarStory; the screenplay Cottontop which won her a scholarship at Sydney Film School; and a short film Great Acts of Kindness: Acts 2 and 4 which she wrote, directed and co-produced. Rita’s essay exploring grace and transcendence on stage, Humans Being, is published in the book celebrating Belvoir Theatre’s 25th Anniversary, edited by Bob Cousens and she has written two short stories, LoveStory and How to Breathe Through Someone Else’s Mouth.

Babyteeth
Currency Press, 2012; ISBN 9780868199269
Full length play; 3 female 4 male
A group of more or less ordinary Sydneysiders go about their lives: Anna makes toast, Henry dresses for work, Milla catches the train to school, Moses deals drugs. But hovering above this unholy parade of life is the sobering fact that Milla will die before her 15th birthday. Babyteeth looks at the humdrum world around us and sees something radically alive. Dogs, Paganini, figs, an eight-year-old Vietnamese violin prodigy, morphine, clear skies and a Latvian immigrant are amongst the magnificent conflagration of ingredients which make up this wonderful, funny play, written specially for Belvoir.

BC
Australian Script Centre, 2009; ISBN 9780987392923
120 minutes; 3 female 3 male
Cast age: 16 to 18, 18+; Audience age: young adult -adult
Young hairdresser Mary has a romantic interest in store clerk, Joseph. She lives at home with complex family connections: a relationship with her father bordering on taboo; a strained bond with her mother who is undergoing cancer treatment; but an honest, sisterly love for her mentally disabled brother who paints his own landscape with avian fantasies and abrupt tracts of ultra-violent reverie. The family argues over trifles and accepts each other’s failings just like many other families … until Mary is arrested by a higher force. Divine impregnation is the last thing you’d expect and Mary’s life will never be the same again.