26 February - 14 March 1982
Trams are an extraordinary form of transport. You leap on one and depending on your luck, sit or stand next to someone who could be anything from an M.P. to a wharfie, then leap off again. STORMING MONT ALBERT BY TRAM is about people who leap on and off trams.
The play is also essentially about trams. The vehicle you are now sitting in is about fifty years old. It uses no petrol and therefore causes no pollution. It’s simple electric motors ensure that it will be around and have a useful life for many years to come. How many cars, trucks or busses are fifty years old and still going strong? Melbourne’s trams are an essential part of our inheritance. They are unique in Australia and almost the rest of the world, Every tram journey (when it’s not too crowded and you -feel like an anchovy on fried school kids) is a near mystical experience. There you are trapped with thirty or forty strangers for a fixed time in a fixed space and there’s nothing you can do about it. It’s either the cosy reassurance of something like a Sydney ferry or the gut wrenching, experience of a ride on the big dipper at Luna Park. Either way it’s a unique experience, and everyone has a story of something memorable that’s happened to them on a tram… here are a few of ours…
A group of commuters meet for the first time on a Number 42 travelling from Mont Albert to the City. Most of them are just looking for a simple night out on the town. But things don’t turn out quite like any of them planned this is the starting point for the new play adapted from the prize winning short story by Paul Davies.
The play actually takes place on a moving tram. The audience board a specially chartered No. 42 at the Mont Albert Terminus Corner of Whitehorse and Union Roads Mont Albert, and become spectators to a bizarre sequence of events based on an actual incident observed by the author early last year.
The first half of the play ends at the Collins and Elizabeth Street intersection where facilities for interval are provided courtesy of the Hotel Australia. Thirty minutes later the audience re-boards the tram and witness the second act en route back to the Mont Albert Terminus.
Written and Created by
PAUL DAVIES
Directed by
MARK SHIRREFS
Performed by
PAUL DAVIES, PETER FINLAY, CAROLYN HOWARD, TONY KISHANE, HANNIE RAYSON, PETER SOMMERFELD, GRAHAM STEPHEN, BRETT STEWART
