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The Tangled Garden

THE TANGLED GARDEN at Sidetrack Theatre

Aussie-Indonesian Collaboration Brings Love and Laughter, Sydney August 2007.

Two childhood friends are reunited after years apart. Ariel, the fairskinned son of wealthy landowners returns to the village of his birth.He quickly renews his friendship with Ujang, the son of a family of poorfarmers. A chance encounter with a beautiful young woman leads to thetwo good friends losing their hearts and later their heads. She falls for both -- but loves one for his body while marrying his friend for hismind. Set in the mountains of West Java, The Tangled Garden stirsphysical comedy, magic and humour into a captivating mix of bravado,absurdity and tropical delights.

The Tangled Garden is the product of an exciting collaboration betweenSydney's Sidetrack Performance Group and Komunitas CCL from BandungIndonesia.Written by Don Mamouney, the play was inspired by Thomas Mann's novella
The Transposed Heads and Sundanese mythology. It was directed anddesigned by Carlos Gomes, and came to Sydney's Sidetrack Theatre directfrom sell-out seasons at Jakarta and Darwin Festivals. It stars AlexBlias, Gusjur Mahesa, Maryam Supraba, Dedi Warsana & Monica Wulff withmovement direction by Iman Soleh, video installation by Assad Abdi andsound design by Yadi Mulyadi.

CCL and Sidetrack albeit from very different cultural situations share very similar ideas and ambitions for theatre. Both combine having astrong local community base from which they reach out to the world. Bothhave a history of working cross culturally and both are tenacious intheir pursuit of innovative approaches to contemporary theatre.

In 2004 Sidetrack Performance Group worked in Indonesia to create the highlysuccessful show Sawung Galing, which toured to Yogyakarta, Surabaya,Bandung and Jakarta playing to audiences of 3000 to 6000 people per show. It was during the process of creating Sawung Galing thatSidetrack's artistic director, Don Mamouney, met Iman Soleh at KomunitasCCL. Iman invited Don to consider a further collaborative theatre workin Indonesia with Komunitas CCL. It was eventually agreed that TheTangled Garden would be the new show and that it would be directed bythe acclaimed Brazilian-Australian director Carlos Gomes.

www.sidetrack.com.au
The Tangled Garden is supported by the Australia Indonesia Institute

For media info, photos & interviews contact Geoff Sirmai, Watchdog
Communications on (02) 9389 3907 or geoff@watchdog.com.au