Mark Deans – February 2 2020

Mark joined Back to Back Theatre in 1989. He has extensive credits in theatre, film and television with featured roles in Neighbours, Blue Heelers and Oddlands. Mark is a comic performer of rare talent and exquisite timing, a “modern day Chaplin” (Adelaide Advertiser). He has created some of the most memorable characters in Back to Back Theatre’s repertoire. Recent works include the development of Tour Guide (Austria) The Democratic Set, Food Court and Ganesh Versus the Third Reich. He is currently polishing his superhero skills for work-in-development Laser Beak Man. Back to Back’s earlier play, Ganesh versus the Third Reich, dealt with Nazism and eugenics; first performed in 2012, it won a Helpmann award for best play and toured internationally, including in the United Kingdom.

Photo: Jeff Busby

Food Court – Co-written with Rita Halabarec, Nicki Holland, Sarah Mainwaring, Scott Price
Australian Script Centre, 2008; 90 minutes, 3 female, 2 male
Part concert, part theatre show, Food Court features the remarkable vision of Back to Back Theatre and the music of The Necks, who improvise a driving score for each performance. Set in the lush minimalism of an illuminated white void, the story of one woman’s humiliation is played out in a psychological space constructed from light and sound. Luminously fragile, Food Court is a near death experience in a suburban wonderland where a small fatality of dignity takes place between The Asian Hut and The Juice Bar. The Melbourne Festival co-commission is an unpredictable rollercoaster of image, sound and emotion, the scripted performance is underscored by a single musical track played live from the orchestra pit by The Necks, one of the great cult bands of Australia.
“Every now and then a show comes along and reminds you that theatre is a burning glass, that it can be an art that focuses experience into an emotional thermic lance which sears through the intellect into the tissue of deep feeling, right where it hurts.” – Alison Croggon, Theatre Notes

Photo: Jeff Busby

Ganesh Versus the Third Reich – Co-written with Marcia Ferguson, Bruce Gladwin, Nicki Holland, Sarah Mainwaring, Scott Price, Simon Laherty, Brian Tilley, David Woods, Kate Sulan; Composer Jóhann Jóhannsson
Australian Script Centre, 2011; 90 minutes
Poignant, beautiful, disarming, full of vulnerability and sly transparency, the story begins with the elephant-headed god Ganesh travelling through Nazi Germany to reclaim the Swastika, an ancient Hindu symbol. A second narrative is cleverly interwoven – the story of a young man inspired to create a play about Ganesh, god of overcoming obstacles. He is an everyman who must find the strength to overcome the difficulties in his own life, and defend his play and his collaborators against an overbearing colleague. The show invites us to examine who has the right to tell a story and who has the right to be heard. It explores our complicity in creating and dismantling the world, human possibility and hope. Ganesh Versus the Third Reich is a work for the near future, seemingly impossible to make.