“Theatre is a space in which the waking mind can address its illnesses; where paradox isn’t hypocrisy and mortality isn’t ignored; it is a sanctuary where monstrous apparitions can be viewed at arms length and laughed at; it is the shared pretence of momentary madness…”

--Henrietta Kuscht, Manifesto for the Ill, 1929

S a n c t u m   T h e a t r e is a Melbourne-based, visual performance company presenting ‘folk theatre’ in everyday spaces.

S a n c t u m   T h e a t r e aims to establish a fluid dialogue through time, blood and place – an animism for the twenty first century.

S a n c t u m   T h e a t r e:

Sanctum Theatre was launched in 2006 with its’ inaugural production, Lament: candles & compost, at the Abbotsford Convent. Lament was a meditation on transubstantiation, a story about resurrection through decomposition. Lament was the first performance to be staged at the Abbotsford Convent after opening as a cultural precinct and was supported by Arts Victoria and the City of Yarra. It was described by The Age as, "...full of striking images…shadowplay and puppetry were absorbingly innovative,” and by Inpress as a, “startling work that is at once confronting and yet comforting.”

Since then Sanctum Theatre has presented The Plains: a play, an adaptation of Gerald Murnane’s The Plains: a novel (Patrick White Award 1999, NSW Premier’s Award 2007), via the paintings of Philip Hunter and the music of Sebastian Jorgensen. A filmmaker travels from his coastal exterior ‘towards the heart of some remote private plain’.

Sanctum Theatre presented three new shows in everyday spaces in Brunswick last year through the Zero Projects 2009 season, 'an animism for the twenty first century'. These included:

• bower: a family portrait - a clandestine performance about homes and homelessness, nests and memory;
• flight - an immersive event in the artist's home that takes you beyond the polite veneer of a suburban wake to reveal the residue of sorrow;
• and Wealth of Nations - both a celebration and parody of the systems that shape our modern world…"Enter the carnival of democracy, ride the rollercoaster of free trade, and prepare for an evening of exuberant exchange..."

S a n c t u m  Z e r o  P r o j e c t s:

Z e r o   P r o j e c t s are theatrical journeys devised in collaboration with specific communities in everyday settings.

Z e r o   P r o j e c t s re-animate and re-mystify the local landscape in the communal imagination. Through story and ritual place becomes 'alive' to us.

S a n c t u m   G a l l e r y:

S a n c t u m   G a l l e r y is a nomadic gallery. To date it has presented the exhibition Silent Revolution where Jasmine Powell documented three months of domestic life through one thousand photographs displayed in her home (2007).

l a c h l a  n   p l a i n   s t u d i o s:

The work of Sanctum Theatre is supported by the work of the studios of Lachlan Plain, artistic director of Sanctum Theatre. For further information visit www.lachlanplain.com.

H e n r i e t t a   K u s c h t:

Sanctum bases its’ practice on the ideas outlined in the writings of Henrietta Kuscht: 'proto-aquatic visualisation', 'para-lateral expulsion' and 'polymoronic manifestation'. Click here to download a short biography of Henrietta Kuscht.

"[The movement] in the direction of emptiness,

DEFORMITY,

non-form,

is an ILLUSION-CRUSHING process

and the only chance to touch on reality."

--Tadeusz Kantor (1963)