Lloyd Beckmann, Beekeeper
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Lloyd cordially invites you into his granny flat to get some grub, wet your whistle and learn a thing or two about life, the land and beekeeping.
Enter a world of clutter; books, tapestries, framed grandchildren and a touch of Fred McCubbin on the walls. Come in for a coffee or a frosty Four X if you’d prefer something stronger.
Based on a true story, this is the tale of a Queensland battler as told through his grandson’s eyes. Tracing family history, inheritance and the ripening of age.
“The show is in fact a complex meditation on memory and the scraps and fragments that ultimately constitute history. It exposes how the act of remembering is not only a reclamation but an act of imagining. Imagination, in the best Proustian tradition, is helped along by sensory triggers: taste and smell matter as much as hearing and sight. The emotional tenor is calibrated by a supple and effective lighting and sound design, which allows Stitz to shift between direct, unadorned performance and a heightened theatricality.
It’s charming for its conceit, which literally invites the audience into the experience (it’s something to see a theatre full of people unselfconsciously craning their necks to look at a family photograph, as if they really were visiting an old relative). But its achievement is in its tact, which leaves the unanswerable questions unanswered.“ – ALISON CROGGON, THEATRE NOTES
Previous Seasons: La Mama Theatre and Canberra Theatre Centre
Devisor/Performer Tim Stitz
Devisor/Director Kelly Somes
Lighting Design Bronwyn Pringle
Composition/Sound Design Liz Stringer & Neddwellyn Jones
Aroma Design Jodie Ahrens
Production/Stage Manager Jessica Smithett
Publicity Eleanor Howlett
Dramaturg/ Director’s Mentor Jane Woollard
Performance Mentor Max Gillies
INFORMATION FOR PRESENTERS
info@twobluecherries.com
Reviews of Lloyd Beckmann, Beekeeper
“…this is a wonderful piece of theatre… the design is as affectionate and generous as the rest of the show, a wonderful evocation of a visit to an elderly relative’s home (complete with lollies and drinks and countless couches and cushions and armchairs). It’s one of those rare evenings where the little La Mama space is totally transformed into something else. Hurry up and see for yourself as it’s selling out fast.” – JOHN BAILEY, THE AGE
“I can only hope that my grandson, who will be 25 when I am ninety, will present as warm, delightful and down-to-earth a homage for me as Tim Stitz has done for his grandfather, Lloyd Beckmann. Beekeeper could easily have been a merely personal, sentimental memoir of the hard life of an Aussie battler. But Somes’ direction with lighting by Bronwyn Pringle and sound by Liz Stringer and Neddwellyn Jones keeps the sentiment inside a clear boundary of reality…Tim Stitz allows us into his memorial for the past in a quite remarkable way, and leaves us to wonder what we are gaining or losing as we move on into the new world order of the 21st Century…In this way the grandson pays homage to the grandfather, the present recognises its roots in the past.” – FRANK McKONE, CANBERRA CRITICS CIRCLE