Your Daybill

Contents
Credits
Note from the Librettists
Note from the Composer
Note from the Director
Background and History
Timeline
Biographies

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Credits

creative team

Composer & Orchestrator Joe Twist 
Co-Librettists Alana Valentine & Christos Tsiolkas
Director Neil Armfield
Conductor/Musical Director Christie Anderson 
Choreographer Lewis Major
Historical Consultant Tim Reeves
Associate Director Cheryl Pickering
Set & Costume Designer Ailsa Paterson
Lighting Designer Nigel Levings
Sound Designer Jane Rossetto
AV Designer & Operator Sean Bacon
Dramaturg Alan John
Assistant Lighting Designer Simonne Myers
Associate Sound Mick Jackson

Production

Producer Zac Tyler
Production Manager Marg Crompton
Stage Manager Tanya Leach
Assistant Stage Manager Steph Bone
Wardrobe Supervisor Tracey Richardson
Wardrobe Dresser/Maintenance Sue Nicola
Stage Management Secondment Tim McNaught

Performers

Pelham Andrews Mick O'Shea/Cop/Lawyer
Ainsley Melham Lost Boy
Mark Oates Duncan/Dunstan
Mason Kelly Dancer

Orchestra

Helen Ayres Concertmaster
Lara Baker-Finch First Violin
Wilma Smith Second Violin
Alison Rayner Second Violin
Stephen King Viola
Aiden Sullivan Viola
Sharon Grigoryan Cello
Nick Sinclair Bass
Sam Cagney Guitar
Amanda Grigg Percussion
Ryan Grunwald Percussion
Jamie Cock Piano / Keys

Special thanks to all Adelaide Festival Centre
production crew for their work on this production.

Thank you to everybody who has contributed to the development and World Premiere of this significant work, including Alex Hurford, Cheryl Pickering, Emma O’Neill, Tim Reeves, Margie Fischer, Jesse Budel, Nicola Triglau, Melissa Sheldon, Jeremy Sheldon, Nick Cannon, Jeremy Tatchell and William Yang.

Adelaide Chamber Singers

Adelaide Chamber Singers (ACS) has been a significant contributor to music in Adelaide for over 36 years. Founded by Carl Crossin OAM in 1985, ACS is widely respected as one of Australia’s finest chamber choirs. Under Carl’s leadership, ACS performed to critical acclaim around Australia, and around the world, having won several 1st Places at major international competitions, and three summa cum laude awards in Canada, Italy and at Llangollen in Wales. ACS has also performed at the Adelaide, Melbourne and Perth International Arts Festivals and a range of regional festivals around Australia. ACS also frequently steps out of its ‘choral box’ to support and collaborate with a wide range of artists including The Rolling Stones, Hilltop Hoods, Greta Bradman, Kronos Quartet and The Tallis Scholars. 2022 sees former ACS Associate Conductor Christie Anderson take on the mantle of Artistic Director & Conductor.

Artistic Director & Conductor Christie Anderson
Founding Artistic Director & Conductor Emeritus Carl Crossin OAM
Chair Jula Szuster
Marketing Manager Dani Raymond
Business Manager Jo Pike

Soprano
Alexandra Bollard
Victoria Coxhill
Amelia Holds
Imogen Tonkin
Brooke Window

Alto
Rachel Bruerville
Riana Chakravarti
Sophie Schumacher
Emma Woehle

Tenor
Richard Black
David Hamer
Martin Penhale
Kit Tonkin

Bass
Andrew Bettison
Jonathan Bligh
Aidan Foyel
Christopher Gann
Nikolai Leske

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Note from the Librettists

Alana Valentine & Christos Tsiolkas

We are grateful to Neil Armfield for bringing us together. Writing the libretto for Watershed: the Death of Dr Duncan has been an affirmation of the exhilaration of collaboration, a precious sharing of the responsibility we had to do justice to a moment that changed the world. Both of us have experienced homophobia. Both of us are grateful for the legacies of activism and civil rights. We wanted to give voice not only to the tragically murdered Dr Duncan, but also to the many who were part of the revolution that began in Adelaide. Our thanks to Tim Reeves for his attentive scholarship.

Our choice has been to develop a musical and poetic language that is always ecstatic, even amidst deep sadness, and that is celebratory even when angry. The oratorio is traditionally sacred music. We hope it will be thrillingly transgressive for audiences to hear this form being used to affirm that queer desires do not have to be exiled from faith and transcendence. Joseph Twist’s passionate music claims that space for our words, and our community, in the most ravishing way. Christie Anderson liberates from the Adelaide Chamber Singers a sound of such limitless beauty that it is a balm and communion and celebration of our mutual endurance. In writing Watershed for performance, we have cherished the hope that history is most potent when it is experienced in the ecstasy of heart and mind and body, when it is shared communally and when we bring our souls and our senses together in a theatre. 

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Note from the Composer

Joe Twist

The process of creating music for Watershed has been overwhelming. Getting to know this man and the many repercussions of his tragic, mysterious death, it is clear that this story means so much to so many people. While commemorating Dr Duncan’s death, we reach beyond to explore the way homophobia affects us all, and we endeavour to give voice to those who have been forgotten, represented in particular by The Lost Boy. With all of this in mind, it is my hope that the music of Watershed conveys all the themes and emotions of this story through a diversity of interwoven musical styles throughout the journey. Mystery and sensuality leads to intensity and drama; lamenting gives way to anger; celebration of civil rights finally being granted leads to intimacy and love. This kaleidoscope of emotion is captured so deftly by Alana and Christos’s poetry, so I’ve endeavoured to express them musically with appropriate fluidity of musical styles. Tinges of Bach, Britten, Adams and Sondheim are synthesised and juxtaposed by music that draws inspiration from Billy Joel, Pink Floyd, even heavy metal bands like Korn. 

Styles aside, musical ideas return throughout, including a simple chorale melody dedicated to Dr Duncan as well as various musical gestures that reflect the river and its mysterious significance. It is my hope that the diversity and accessibility of Watershed’s music will afford future performances by choirs of all kinds, so that we may all continue to share in this important story that touches us all. 

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Note from the Director

Neil Armfield AO

Two years ago, Feast Festival’s Helen Sheldon brought an idea to Rachel and me of commissioning a music theatre work to commemorate, 50 years on, the death of Dr Duncan. I took that idea to Christos Tsiolkas and Alana Valentine and Joe Twist, and here we are today about to reveal this work we have been passionately, lovingly developing over the last 18 months.

Adelaide and Australia were transformed by the outrage of Duncan's death and the inquiries that it provoked. The subsequent decriminalisation of homosexuality in 1975 saw South Australia leading the country (and, indeed, the English speaking world) in homosexual law reform.

But in 2022, when when we are reeling from the months (years actually) of debate and political horse-trading of the rights of gay and trans children (not to mention teachers) in relation to the notional Religious Discrimination Act, we wonder, in spite of Marriage Equality and various state-led recognitions of equal rights, just how far this country has come from institutionalised homophobia. How willing are we to accept, to embrace, difference and to stand up for what is right?

This work is inflected by those questions. But at its heart is the burning shame and rage that, 50 years on, the men responsible for Duncan's death are still living in our midst. They know who they are. So do others.

Will we see justice in our lifetime?

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Background and History

Tim Reeves, Historical Consultant

George Ian Ogilvie Duncan was born in London and known as ‘Ian’ from an early age. He was educated in Melbourne before gaining a doctorate at Cambridge University. In 1972, aged 41 and an orphan, he returned to Australia to take up a lectureship in law at the University of Adelaide. He brought with him an international gay travel guide which included Australia’s capital cities.

At a time when male homosexual acts were criminal throughout the country, the southern bank of the River Torrens in Adelaide was a beat: a meeting place for gay men. At around 11pm on 10 May 1972 – and within seven weeks of arriving – Dr Duncan and another man, Roger James, were thrown into the river by a group of men. James suffered a broken ankle; Duncan drowned.

The murder shocked the community with allegations that police, engaged in their regular activity of ‘poofter bashing’, were involved. Three vice squad officers – Constables Francis John Cawley and Michael Kenneth Clayton, and Senior Constable Brian Edwin Hudson – refused to answer all questions put to them at the inquest, were suspended and later resigned from the police force. The coroner’s finding was death due to violence on the part of persons unknown.

Premier Don Dunstan approved the appointment of detectives from New Scotland Yard to re-examine the case. Their report – completed in October 1972 but only released publicly in 2002 – described the attack in extraordinary terms: as ‘merely a high-spirited frolic which went wrong’. While they also concluded that the three vice squad officers had taken part in the killing – possibly with others – the Crown Solicitor had decided there was insufficient evidence to proceed with a prosecution. The detectives returned to Britain where they were later jailed for offences there.

Within 11 weeks of Duncan’s death, a private member’s bill to decriminalise male homosexual acts was introduced into South Australia’s Legislative Council by a courageous Liberal and Country League member, Murray Hill. A weakened bill was passed, and further attempts at full decriminalisation were made in 1973 and 1975 through private member’s bills introduced into the House of Assembly by a forward-thinking Labor member, Peter Duncan (not related to Dr Duncan).

On 17 September 1975, South Australia became the first state or territory in Australia to achieve decriminalisation. This was under a Dunstan Government, the Premier having moved along similar lines a decade earlier while Attorney-General but been blocked by the Labor Caucus. The 1975 legislation was also the first in the English-speaking world to eliminate any distinction in the criminal law between heterosexual and homosexual acts, including an equal age of consent.

The Duncan case was reopened in 1985 following claims by a former vice squad officer, Mick O’Shea, of a police cover-up. Subsequently, the three officers linked to the affair were charged with Duncan’s manslaughter. Hudson was not brought to trial, unlike Cawley and Clayton who were acquitted in 1988. A police task force recommended to state parliament two years later that no further action be taken unless new evidence was forthcoming.

The death of Dr Duncan remains one of South Australia’s most notorious unsolved murders. But it was the trigger for momentous changes in the state’s law when male homosexuality was still such a social taboo. Tasmania was the last jurisdiction nationally to embrace gay law reform in 1997.

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Timeline

1972

May 10  |  Dr Duncan drowns
May 20  |  Media revelations that the police have been questioned over death
May 27  |  Place of murder identified as well-known homosexual beat

Jun 07   |  Inquest commences
Jun 21   |  Open letter sent to MPs urging decriminalisation of male homosexual acts
Jun 29   |  Constables Cawley and Clayton refuse to answer questions at inquest
Jun 30   |  Cawley, Clayton and Senior Constable Brian Hudson suspended from SA Police and later resign

Jul 01    |  Advertiser prints editorial headed "Legalise Homosexuality"
Jul 05    |  Coroner finds that Duncan's death was due to violence by persons unknown
Jul 06    |  Murray Hill announces intention to introduce decriminalisation Bill
Jul 26    |  Bill introduced into Legislative Council
Jul 27    |  New Scotland Yard detectives called in to reinvestigate Duncan case

Oct 02   |  New Scotland Yard report completed: not released publicly until 2002
Oct 18   |  Significantly weakened Bill introduced into House of Assembly
Oct 24   |  Announcement of decision that there are inadequate grounds for prosecution 
Oct 25   |  Bill passes both Houses of Parliament

1973

Sep 19  |  Peter Duncan introduces 1973 Bill into House of Assembly

Nov 21  |  Bill fails by one vote
Nov 28  |  Bill reintroduced but defeated again

1975

Sep 17  |  South Australia becomes the first state or territory in Australia to decriminalise male homosexual acts

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Biographies

Joe Twist
Composer & Orchestrator

Composer/arranger Joe Twist receives numerous commissions and performances of his music from choirs in Australia and around the world, including the Choir of Trinity College Cambridge, Chanticleer, Voces8 and many others. Twist also works extensively in music for film and television including the successful animated series Bluey, as well as arrangements and orchestrations for many major motion pictures produced in Hollywood. He has created music for such renowned international artists and ensembles as Moby, The Wiggles, The Idea of North and Kate Miller-Heidke, to name just a few. Twist’s works appear on numerous commercial recordings, including his own album Dancing with Somebody.

Alana Valentine
Co-Librettist

Alana Valentine won the 2021 Australian Writers Guild Award for Music Theatre for her libretto Notre Dame, was nominated in 2020 for her libretto Flight Memory and was also nominated in 2019 for her co-written libretto, with Ursula Yovich, for Barbara and the Camp Dogs. BACD also won Helpmann Awards in 2019, including Best Original Score and Best Musical, and 2020 Green Room Awards, including Best Original Score and Best New Australian Work.

In 2022, Alana is Co-writer/Dramaturg with Stephen Page on Bangarra Dance Theatre’s Wudjang: Not the Past and Wayside Bride will be presented at Belvoir St Theatre in April.

Christos Tsiolkas
Co-Librettist

Christos Tsiolkas is the author of seven novels, several of which have been made into films or television series. His works have won the Age Fiction Prize, the Melbourne Best Writing Award, the Commonwealth Writers' Prize, the ALS Gold Medal, the Australian Booksellers Association and Australian Book Industry Award for Book of the Year, and the Victorian Premier's Literary Award for Fiction. He has been shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award and the Voss Literary Prize, and longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. His most recent novel is 7 ½. He is also a playwright, essayist and screen writer.

Neil Armfield AO
Director

Neil Armfield’s work in theatre includes: I’m Not Running, National Theatre (NT); Cloudstreet Belvoir, NT and world tour; Diary of a Madman in Russia, Australia and NYC; Exit the King in Australia and on Broadway; The Book of Everything in Australia and NYC; The Judas Kiss in Australia, UK and US; The Secret River Australia tour, Edinburgh Festival and NT. In opera, Brett Dean’s Bliss and Hamlet at Glyndebourne and Adelaide Festival and various operas for companies including ENO, Royal Opera House, Chicago Lyric Opera, Zurich Opera, Bregenz Festival, Opera Australia, Canadian Opera, Welsh National Opera, Washington National Opera and Houston Grand Opera. Neil recently directed Rameau’s Platée for Pinchgut Opera. He directed the feature films Candy (2006) and Holding the Man (2015).

Christie Anderson
Conductor/Musical Director

Christie Anderson is a singer and award-winning conductor and Artistic Director of youth choir school Young Adelaide Voices and a founding member of the EVE vocal trio. In 2022, Christie embarks on a further exciting creative challenge as the new Artistic Director of the multi-award-winning Adelaide Chamber Singers. Christie has sung, conducted and presented in many festivals in Australia and around the world. 

In addition to Watershed, Christie’s recent Adelaide Festival collaborations include Memorial (Brink Productions/Aurora), Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Young Adelaide Voices) and The Pulse (Gravity & Other Myths/Aurora) for the Adelaide Festival. She enjoys it all.

Lewis Major
Choreographer

Lewis Major is a sheep shearer-turned-choreographer who honed his skills in dancemaking over a decade spent working with seminal contemporary dance makers Akram Khan, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, Russell Maliphant, Hans van den Broeck (Cie Soit/Les Ballets C de la B), and Aakash Odedra, amongst others. Unabashedly audience-driven, the ethos that drives his work is local focus, global outlook. He runs the South Australia-based project company Lewis Major Projects, presenting surprisingly real dance works in multiple mediums to diverse audiences across the world. The company has created 17 different works, both independently and on commission, and presented them on six continents to widespread critical and commercial success. 

Tim Reeves
Historical Consultant

Tim Reeves completed a Bachelor of Arts degree with first-class Honours at the University of Adelaide, with a thesis on the impact of Dr Duncan’s death on gay law reform in South Australia. His book, The Death of Dr Duncan, has just been released by Wakefield Press. His other books are 100 Canberra Houses: A Century of Capital Architecture and Winning Homes: 75 Australian House Design Competitions. He is at work on Adelaide Modernism: 101 Houses.

Tim is participating in this year’s Adelaide Writers' Week on Wed 9 Mar. You can view details here.

Cheryl Pickering
Associate Director

Cheryl Pickering is a director, creative producer and singer, with a current focus on cross-art form and socially engaged classical vocal music performance. Cheryl’s work includes productions for the South Bank Centre London, English National Opera's Studio Night series, the Bath International Festival, the Tate Gallery St Ives Festival, Symphony Hall Birmingham, Greenwich Maritime Museum, the Adelaide Festival, the Adelaide Cabaret, Come Out and Fringe festivals, the Port Fairy Spring Festival, State Opera South Australia's education and outreach programs, and Arts in Health programs in the UK and Adelaide. Cheryl recently submitted her PhD dissertation on ethics, authenticity and aesthetics in the creation of socio-political multi-art form work. She currently lectures in classical voice and performance at the Elder Conservatorium, University of Adelaide.

Ailsa Paterson
Set & Costume Designer

Ailsa Paterson completed the Bachelor of Dramatic Art in Design (NIDA) in 2003. She has designed productions for many Australian companies including State Theatre Company South Australia (Resident Designer 2019), Queensland Theatre, State Opera South Australia, Slingsby, Patch, Ensemble Theatre, Sydney Dance Company, Griffin, BSharp, Pacific Opera and Darlinghurst Theatre. Recent highlights include Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf (Sydney Festival, State Theatre Company South Australia, Queensland Theatre), The Boy Who Talked to Dogs (Slingsby/Adelaide Festival/State Theatre Company South Australia), Gaslight and Ripcord (State Theatre Company South Australia), and Myth (Gravity and Other Myths/Blue Soup Productions). Ailsa worked in costume on The Straits (ABC), LAID (ABC), Underbelly: A Tale of Two Cities, Underbelly: The Golden Mile, Blue Water High, The Last Confession of Alexander Pearce, Ten Empty, The Boy from Oz Arena Spectacular, Priscilla, Queen of the Desert The Musical and High School Musical. Ailsa was the recipient of the 2011 Mike Walsh Fellowship.

Nigel Levings
Lighting Designer

Nigel Levings has lit opera in St Petersburg, Paris, Washington, London, Cardiff, Berlin, Baden Baden, Innsbruck, Bregenz, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Dallas, Adelaide, Sydney, Melbourne and Toronto. He is a Fellow of the Illuminating Engineering Society.

Awards include a Helpmann Award, a Green Room Award, an Ovation, a Dora Mava Moore, two Outer Circle Critics Awards, a Drama Desk and a Tony.

Recent work includes A German Life (Adelaide Festival 2021), 170 Days in Nanjing (Jiangsu Performing Arts, China), Hydra (Queensland Theatre), Les Miserables (Queensland Conservatorium), Memorial (Brink Productions/Adelaide Festival), Romeo et Juliette (Korean National Opera, Seoul) and Ragtime (The Production Company).

Jane Rossetto
Sound Designer

Jane Rossetto is a graduate of the School of Audio, Diploma for Sound Production and AC ARTS Diploma Live Theatre and Events – Sound. Jane’s very first paid theatre show was State Theatre Company South Australia's Hedda Gabler with Robyn Nevin AM. Starting out in 1998 as a radio microphone technician, she was lucky to work on classic musicals like CATS and Les Miserables. Jane has worked extensively on a variety of shows for many companies and arts organisations. Design credit highlights include Memorial (Brink Productions), Cloudstreet (State Opera South Australia), Metro Street (State Theatre Company South Australia), The Ring cycle 2004 (State Opera South Australia), and WOMADelaide 2010-2012 and 2019-2021.

In her current role as Head of Sound at Adelaide Festival Centre, Jane manages a talented team of sound engineers.

Sean Bacon
AV Designer & Operator

Sean Bacon is an artist at the vanguard of using video and camera technology on the theatre stage. His most recent work includes Platée (Pinchgut Opera), Black Ties (Ilbijerri/Sydney Festival), Heart is a Wasteland (Ilbijerri), A Child of Our Time (Adelaide Festival 2021), The Sound of History (Adelaide Festival 2020) and A Roaring Silence, (video installation at The Leo Kelly Blacktown Arts Centre). Past work includes shows with Belvoir Theatre, Sydney Theatre Company, English National Opera/Young Vic, version 1.0, Australian Chamber Opera, Musica Viva, Experience Harmaat, Branch Nebula and Campbelltown Arts Centre. 

Pelham Andrews 
Mick O'Shea/Cop/Lawyer

After studying in the UK, Germany and Australia, Pelham Andrews has been engaged as a principal artist for Opera Australia, State Opera South Australia, Victorian Opera, English National Opera, Auckland Philharmonia, Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, Sydney Philharmonia Choirs, Queensland and Melbourne Symphony Orchestras and numerous other ensembles.

This year Pelham’s engagements include returns to State Opera for the roles of Colline (La bohème), Judd/Mr. Bonner (Voss) and Baron Douphol (La traviata) and to Queensland Symphony. He’s most recently been heard as Basilio (The Barber of Seville) for State Opera South Australia and in Handel’s Messiah for Melbourne Symphony Orchestra.

Ainsley Melham 
Lost Boy

Ainsley Melham’s most recent credits include Charley in Merrily We Roll Along (Hayes Theatre Co), the title role in PIPPIN (John Frost and Suzanne Jones) and the role of Molina in Kiss of the Spider Woman (Melbourne Theatre Company). His upcoming appearances include Sondheim on Sondheim and the role of Prince Topher in Cinderella (Opera Australia).

Ainsley starred in the title role of the Broadway and Australian productions of Aladdin (Disney Theatrical Productions) and in the Aladdin live capture at the Prince Edward Theatre in London’s West End. He was a cast member of Hi-5 appearing in Australasian tours, the televised Hi-5 House series, the documentary film Some Kind Of Wonderful and the Netflix-released series.

Ainsley has been nominated for Best Actor in a Musical for the Helpmann Awards (2017) and the Green Room Awards (2018 and 2020). Ainsley recently co-founded We The Industry Inc. with Callum Francis. The charitable organisation strives for inclusivity across all disciplines in Australian theatre.

Mark Oates 
Duncan/Dunstan

Mark Oates' credits include the Adelaide and Brisbane Festivals, State Opera South Australia, SINGular Productions, Co Opera, Various People, Aerial Artists Australia, and MOatesArt Productions.

Previous Adelaide Festival appearances are Mozart's Requiem (2020), Bernstein's Mass (featured Street Singer, 2012) and Le Grand Macabre (Ruffiak, 2010).

For State Opera South Australia, Mark next performs Tom in Voss. In 2021, Mark appeared as Beadle Bamford Sweeney Todd and Jack in Love Burns, and opened the year in Carousel. Highlights with the company include The Merry Widow (Njegus), Satyagraha (Arjuna), Orpheus in the Underworld (John Styx), and The Cantor in Maria de Buenos Aires (co-production with Leigh Warren Dancers at the Dunstan Playhouse, Adelaide Festival Centre, and Brisbane Festival).

Mason Kelly 
Dancer

Mason is a freelance dancer currently based in Naarm (Melbourne). In 2015, after training at The New Zealand School of Dance, he joined Dancenorth’s ensemble under the new directorship of Kyle Page and Amber Haines. Whilst at Dancenorth, Mason toured extensively nationally and internationally in award winning works by Kyle Page and Amber Haines, Lucy Guerin and Gideon Obarzanek, as well as other works by Alisdair Macindoe, Ross McCormack, Stephanie Lake, Lee Serle and Kristina Chan.

Mason has choreographed three short works for Dancenorth’s annual choreographic season, Tomorrow Makers. 

In 2021, he joined Australian Dance Theatre, performing works by Garry Stewart (Supernature, South and Objekt), Adrianne Semmens and Tu Huang. He has also performed in NOW this body WHAT by Luigi Vescio (Midsumma Festival 2020), Epilogue by Lewis Major and Grey Rhino by Cass Mortimer Eipper and Charmene Yap (Sydney Festival 2022).

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