project documentation
About the show
Gold Satino invites you to look past nipaluna/Hobart's shiny cityscape, into the Domain, from the boat ramp to the carparks, to find a more unsettled topography.
RUTHLESS is interested in the dark undertow of an almost city, into scrubland at nighttime. It is a journey through a psychosocial hinterland.
Meet someone in a newly redesigned theatre foyer. Get onto a bus. Drive down towards the water. Past the apartments and pubs and takeaway shops. Something more sinister is brewing behind the boat ramps and the dank undergrowth of the territory between. You are alone at night in a place you don't recognise, even though it's your home.
Two queer bodies smashing watermelons, meditations on violence, a recurring hot pink balaclava. Gold Satino brings their filmic guerilla theatre to Hobart to make you look at your city with fresh eyes.
RUTHLESS is about being well, being afraid, being “relaxed and comfortable” in the face of threats or fears we can’t see or name.
RUTHLESS premiered in Front Beach Back Beach on the Mornington Peninsula to a sold out season and was nominated for the Green Room Award for Best Ensemble in the Contemporary and Experimental Performance panel.
CREDITS
Writer/Directors Meredith Rogers & Davina Wright
Composer & Sound Designer Glynn Urquhart
Performers James Baxter, Meredith Rogers, Claudia Nugent, Glynn Urquhart, Xavier O’Shannessy, Shell O’Meara and Hannah Tappy with Dan Koop.
Producer Xavier O’Shannessy
Curated by Dan Koop
Commissioned by Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery and Public Art Commission
Appearing in Front Beach Back Beach
Produced by Bureau of Works
the shape of the performance
The audience arrives at Martha Cove, a man-made luxury marina and resort town set in the previously working class Safety Beach area.
They meet on the street in the manicured kind-of paradise in front of yachts and sparkling water. They are greeted by friendly folks in white boiler suits. A minibus pulls around and they are instructed to get in. On the bus a soundtrack plays and the audience are driven to unexpected locations where they witness short scenes narrated by an atmospheric score and sometimes live music.
RUTHLESS takes the audiences to locations both immediately recognisable and completely unexpected: the Safety Beach boat ramp, the underpass below a man-made water bridge for yachts, empty car parks, beside a boat stacker, abandoned fields, roundabouts and footpaths.
some audio
We see two performers standing in a field. One is holding a golf club. The other dances. The one with the golf club smashes the watermelon. Debris hits the bus window. What does it feel like to smash a head?
The bus pulls into a large open-air car park. On approach you can see people in white coveralls talking to each other and setting out lights. They stand still, each in front of flood light. Claudia takes off her shirt and looks at you. Ross runs in and touches up her hair. Meredith directs, holding a large hunting torch. The bus stops. Someone sprints up to Claudia. Stops. Puts her over their shoulder and carries her to another spot. She is limp. He puts her down as if she were a corpse. The people in coveralls start running side to side taking flood lights with them. They stop. You are left with the image of Claudia on the ground.
Images by pier Carthew
about gold satino
Gold Satino is an award winning queer performance collective that has been pushing the boundaries and risking arrest since 2011. Our mission is to re-imagine what theatre is and can be. We want work made for kids to be every bit as exciting and creatively dangerous as work for adults.
In 2015 we won the Innovation Award with Suburbia at that year’s Melbourne Fringe Festival. Our next show, Dion, won Best Production and the Live Works Live Art Award at the 2016 Melbourne Fringe and the John Chataway Innovation Award and a Weekly Award for Best Theatre at the 2018 Adelaide Fringe.
This is Grayson was commissioned by Melbourne Fringe Festival in 2018 and won the Green Room Awards for Innovation in Site Responsive Theatre and Best Work for Young Audiences. The show was also nominated for Best Production and Best Performance (Ensemble). Seduction was nominated for the Green Room Award for Visual Design at the 2020 awards.
We make site specific, nonlinear, experimental, and immersive theatre. We devise original works that move audiences outside of traditional performance spaces and encourage spectators to explore suburban landscapes with fresh eyes—those places you walk past on you lunch break but don't notice anymore.
The suburbs are their own theatre, surreal, creepy, heart warming, cold, we just make you look. Gold Satino eats up bystanders and throws them into their shows. Someone putting their bins out in their slippers, a couple walking their dogs, a woman riding home.
We want to occupy forgotten spaces with queer art and show audiences work that is bold in its intimacy and vulnerability.