The longest running student theatre festival in Australia is back! La Trobe Student Theatre and Film’s beloved Moat Festival will bring together five student-run shows over two exciting weeks, from March 18 to April 10 at Bundoora Campus.
Moat Fest will include:
Directed by Lakshmi Ganapathy,
Based on the Channel 4 series ‘Taskmaster’, created by Alex Horne.
For one night only, five STF personalities, old and new, will compete in a series of ridiculous and hilarious tasks, testing their creativity and sometimes their patience…
Their dignity is on the line – and it’s all for the viewing pleasure of you, the audience!
Lakshmi Ganapathy delivers a Student Theatre spin on Alex Horne’s internationally beloved panel game show, in a riotously funny Moat launch not to be missed.
HOSTS: Fergus Black and Lakshmi Ganapathy
CONTESTANTS: Brigid Charis, Liam Jones, Alan Lam, Nathan Milne, Amy Parker
Friday 18 March, 7pm
Menzies Theatre, Menzies College DH Building
Written by Tom Holloway
Directed by Claude Sarmiento
An uneaten bowl of cereal. A misunderstood touch. Unsaid words. Missed chances.
Three simultaneous inner monologues intertwine and weave through each other to tell a story of a Man, a Woman, and a Girl; their home broken by loneliness and a craving for closeness.
Tom Holloway’s Red Sky Morning depicts a melodic tragedy of everyday life for a broken family. It orchestrates three voices who, throughout the course of a day, reveal the frustrations that come with the yearning to reconnect with each other.
Cast: Kat Eyres-Herd, Antonia Gazzana & Lauren Treloar
Tuesday 22 March – Saturday 26 March, 8pm
The Playroom, Union Building
Written by Tanaka Kundai Bofu
Directed by Audrey Page
Meet the Emesitinas: Julian, Janice, Jylon. They’re a close-knit family unit going through all the normal family stuff: the return of their estranged sister, the sudden death of a family member, and Julian’s undiagnosed OCD.
Tanaka Bofu’s play challenges the stigma surrounding mental health in matrimony with all the curve balls that life throws our way. Meet the Emetisinas takes the audience on an emotional and highly comical roller-coaster through family bonds and teaches us that we need to show up for ourselves and for the ones we love.
Cast: Natalie Bauce, Tanaka Kundai Bofu, Sophie Evans, Cody Mathieson-Lowe, Eren Sevki Dundar & Erica Wilson
Wednesday 30 March – Sunday 3 April, 8pm
The Studio, Union Building
Directed by Fergus Black and Geremy Dimla
In 2020, we saw the creation of the Six Lines Project – a group of creatives who wrote a six-line script to a new prompt each week. In 2021, the first Six Lines Showcase explored a small handful of these scripts. Now, a full year and over 305 scripts later, the freshest faces of Student Theatre are back to tackle the weird and wild world of the Six Lines Project.
Writers: Evie Oster, Amy Parker, Dan Hutchings, Tiarni Maree Simpson, Kat Carrington, Fergus Black, Geremy Dimla
Cast: Elly-May Dreier, David Hennessy, Teeny Miles, Kit Mulcaster, A.Nesbit & Allira Wilson
Thursday 31 March, 8pm
Menzies Theatre, Menzies College DH Building
A Staged Reading
Written by Noorca Marendra Massardi, translation by Cobina Gillitt and Evan Winet
Directed by Chloe Jones and Cole McKenna
Our journey will now begin.
Here is our protagonist: ordinary, plain, simple, conventional. As is with all of God’s other recent creations, this one has been created especially as means of entertainment.
Written in the context of Suharto’s 31 year dictatorship, Via Negativa is a strange and satirical exploration of hierarchy, patriarchy, and religion. It is a meeting point of bureaucracy, philosophy, and theology.
Saturday 2 April, 7pm
The Playroom, Union Building