Got a message today from the sweet Amy Johnson (you might know her from her Wentworth: Code Black FB group). She has kindly provided scans of her “A Room of One’s Own” booklet for my site. Thank you hun! These pics are gorgous! Much love to you!
EDIT 18/11: Pamela is ok (no broken rib) and is back on stage tonight! Thanks to Belinda Dyer for letting us know 🙌🏼❤️🙌🏼
Elissa Blake tweeted that “The Dance of Death” was cancelled tonight at the Belvoir St Theatre because Toby Schmitz (who plays Kurt) accidentally cracked Pamela Rabe’s rib on stage.
Wishing her a speedy recovery and hugs ♥️😢 You’re loved, Pam!
Photo by Don Arnold/Getty
The BelvoirST uploaded some beautiful rehearsal photos (24/10/2018) of Pamela Rabe, Colin Friels and Toby Schmitz for The Dance of Death which starts on the 10th of November.
Click above fore more images
There were also some new Pam photos posted on Instagram and Twitter during the last few days. She’s such a sweetheart!
Credit from left to right:
1 sajawazzii: When the freak drops by work. @wentworthonfoxtel @wentworthshowcase #pamelarabe #joanferguson #thefreak #nicelady!
2 catherinecoxy: Life COMPLETE!!! Love Wentworth and met ‘The Freak’ (aka Joan Ferguson) at the airport this morning 🙌 Pamela Rabe, such a good sport!
3 shareenaclanton: I ran into this gorgeous woman yesterday…A wonderful night of laughter and yarns. Love you Pam. X
4 Ves: A fan pic of when #PamelaRabe was in Tassie! Credit to Dani.
5 + 6 Ves: Some fan pics of #PamelaRabe from when she was in the UK earlier this year. Credit to Roselyn.
I’ve added more info and photos from “The Glass Menagarie” in the Theatre section
A beautiful, slightly haunting play, The Glass Menagerie follows a family as it falls apartalong with the dreams that had given them some ragmented substance. Amanda Wingfield is a single mother played by the great Pamela Rabe. Her son Tom, (Luke Mullins) is an aspiring poet who works in a warehouse, her daughter Laura is studying to become a secretary. They live in a small apartment pent up with fantasies and urges, rage and wounded tenderness. It is not a magnificent existence, but each has one true idea for a better life. Enter the Gentleman Caller …
Click on the picture above for more info
MTC released a new video for Photograph 51 (directed by Pamela Rabe) today.
Rosalind Franklin was one of the great scientists of the 20th Century. In 1952 she used X-ray diffraction photography to examine the intricate structure of DNA, but her trail-blazing work was never recognised. The scientific establishment at King’s College London simply could not cope with her genius, her self-confidence or her stern disregard for authority. Threatened by her brilliance, Franklin’s rivals scandalously stole her research and were awarded the Nobel Prize for discovering the double helix.
A massive hit on the West End, Anna Ziegler’s Photograph 51 relives the chase to find ‘the secret of life’ amidst all the inherent ambition, sexism and isolation of the 1950s, while shining a spotlight on an unsung hero. This intriguing new play is a moving portrait of a brilliant British scientist, and a delicate exploration of what is sacrificed in the pursuit of science, love and a place in history.
MTC favourite Nadine Garner (Di and Viv and Rose) returns to the stage as the fiercely independent Rosalind Franklin, directed by Pamela Rabe (Jumpy) for this Australian Premiere production.
Next year will be great as we can see Pamela Rabe on the Sydney Theatre Company stage again in the play “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof“ by Tennessee Williams. She’ll play Big Mama together with Hugo Weaving (Big Daddy) and Zahra Newman (Maggie the Cat). For more info, video and photos click here
She’ll also direct “Photograph 51” by Anna Ziegler, starring Nadine Garner as Rosalind Franklin, for the MTC. For more info click here.
Pamela Rabe is on the phone, the morning after opening night of the new production of Ibsen’s Ghosts at Belvoir. Without a trace of actorly effusion, she says: “I’m really looking forward to settling it in.”
The show’s previews have afforded the cast, which includes Robert Menzies alongside Rabe, opportunity to tweak the work extensively, a process she likens to “popping grapes”.
It’s a phrase she picked up from director Annabel Arden, the co-founder of British touring theatre Complicité, during rehearsals for The Art of War at the Sydney Theatre Company, where Rabe was a member of the short-lived Actors Company from 2006 to 2009.
“When a thing is starting to congeal and galvanise, suddenly the little moments that you need to attend to become really apparent,” she says. “You learn a lot about the story you’re telling collectively, and the audience is helping you tell that story.”
Ghosts is one of Ibsen’s knottiest works, one “that has no bottom”, according to Rabe. She stars as Mrs Alving, a survivor of violent abuse at the hands of an unfaithful husband, dead for 10 years when the play begins.
We meet the widow drawing up plans for an orphanage with the assistance of the doctrinaire and judgemental Pastor Manders, played by Menzies. Getting the place insured won’t be necessary, he says; it might look like faithlessness. No prizes for guessing what happens next.
Pamela Rabe would be one of the more unlikely stars of a hit television series about a women’s prison, Wentworth.
She is at the serious end of fine stage actors in Australia and has established a name for herself, late career, as a theatre director as well. She has come to Adelaide to take a lead role in a trilogy of plays by one of the 20th century’s most revered but most challenging playwrights, Samuel Beckett.
Wentworth is a complete contrast. It modernises the original Aussie hit TV series Prisoner into the 21st century. Rabe plays the nasty-piece-of-work prison governor’s role originally developed by her old friend Maggie Kirkpatrick all decades ago.
“I have really enjoyed doing that, learning a lot, having great fun and stepping into Maggie Kirkpatrick’s considerable shoes — and black gloves,” says Rabe. Wentworth, screening on Foxtel, has been a runaway success in Australia as well as in the US, UK and 20 other countries. A third season has been announced, and German television is making a German version of the series. The series took up most of Rabe’s time last year and she will start back on set after the Adelaide Festival season of the Beckett Triptych with State Theatre Company.
IN SPOTLIGHT: Pamela Rabe and Sandy Gore star in Footfalls
Rabe says this trilogy is refreshingly different from other versions that have put together Beckett’s short plays for stage and broadcast. “Because of the nature of the pieces they are often festival fare,” she says, “and they seem to get hogged by international artists a lot. So within Australia to be allowed the opportunity to perform in them is rare. I think the last time I performed Beckett was in university.
“Other than Waiting for Godot, a lot of what we see on tour are trilogies of short pieces that tend to be done by a single famous artist doing all three.” In this case the roles are shared by three leading Australian stage actors, and there is a rare chance to mix Beckett’s writing for women with his male characters who have a recognisably Irish male attitude to women.
Rabe is in Footfalls, with Sandy Gore providing the voice-off. Paul Blackwell is on stage in Eh Joe, with Rabe providing the voice-off. The main piece, Krapp’s Last Tape, will feature Peter Carroll.
“So this time we will have three pieces that collide in wonderful ways,” she says. Footfalls is generally acknowledged as an exploration of mother and daughter relationships, but when I ask Rabe about her relationship with her mother, she refuses to talk about it. “There’s no shortage of academic theses about what Beckett is and what he means,” she says, “and they are many and conflicting. I have no desire to give an academic thesis on what the play is about.
“I want to do the play and let it exist. As you know, Beckett is very prescriptive in providing the blueprint or road map in the way he wants it to be shaped.
“It is as though you are living inside a mind, a facet of his mind. But he is a showman, a man who loved vaudeville, and you don’t need a PhD to enjoy it?’
In Footfalls, Beckett insists on the character’s steady, monotonous pacing, nine steps up and back, a metronome to the passage of time between a daughter, her mother and a further presence. “These particular Beckett pieces are about decay and memory, and the construction of the narrative of one’s life and existence,” says Rabe.
“The idea is to create a place where the audience feels they can surrender over to a different kind of space, for a very short period of time.”
SEE: BECKETT TRIPTYCH, STATE THEATRE’S SCENIC WORKSHOP AND REHEARSAL ROOM, FEBRUARY 20- MARCH 15
Source: The Advertiser | 19 Feb 2015