The Cahoots Company had its genesis at the 1988 Adelaide Fringe as a sprawling troupe of young performers. Anthony Skuse and Gillian Arrighi were the people leading the company and its decade-long project. In 1989, after trimming down the initial cast to just three people, the small company moved into an intensive schedule of touring shows to high schools across the vast region of NSW, Victoria, Tasmania and the ACT. The company maintained their schools touring project 1989-1994, then diversified into making shows for a range of different audiences and environments. ‘Theatre in Education’ (TIE) had been dominated by substantially funded troupes since the 1970s, but by the late-1980s cultural policy and education trends had shifted and schools became an open market, with bookings in schools across eastern Australia hotly contested by small, independent, fast-moving, unaligned troupes.
For the 2021 annual conference of the Australasian Association for Theatre, Drama and Performance Studies, Anthony Skuse* and Gillian Arrighi presented this paper titled “Revisiting the ‘hidden’ and ‘not-yet archives’ of Australia’s theatre for young people,” with an accompanying set of images drawn from the company’s 10-year history.
*Anthony Skuse is Head of Performance at the Actors Centre Australia where he has worked since 1994, teaching Mask and Performance Practice across the three years of the undergraduate degree and directing student productions. He was Associate Lecturer in Performance Practice at the National Institution of Dramatic Art from 2009-2012. At NIDA he taught across all undergraduate disciplines while also teaching into the post-grad programs for playwrights and directors. During his years at NIDA Anthony also directed first-, second- and third-year productions. He has also directed and taught at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts (WAAPA), Australian Theatre for Young People (ATYP), Australian Institute of Music (AIM), and the Academy of Film, Theatre and Television (AFTT). Beyond the higher education sector Anthony works extensively with various theatre and production companies, including Darlinghurst Theatre Company, Ensemble Theatre Company, Griffin Theatre Company, MopHead, Pantsguys, Secret House, and Workhorse Theatre. Maintaining a focus on new work and new interpretations, both in development and productions, Anthony’s credits include: Lorca’s Yerma, (AFTT, Belvoir Upstairs); Alistair McDowall’s Pomona, (KXT, Secret House); Katie Pollock’s Normal (Uncertainty principle); Joanna Erskine’s Air (Old 505); Simon Stephens’ Birdland (New Theatre); Sarah Kane’s 4.48 Psychosis (Old Fitz); Suzie Miller’s Sunset Strip (Uncertainty principle & Griffin, and with Critical Stages National Tour); Charlotte Jones’ Airswimming (The Vaults, London); Tadeusz Słobodzianek’s Our Class (AFTT, Belvoir Downstairs); Nick Enright’s Man With Five Children (Darlinghurst Theatre Company); Christopher Harley’s Blood Bank (Ensemble Theatre); Jane Bodie’s Fourplay & Ride (Darlinghurst Theatre Company); Suzie Miller’s Caress/Ache (Griffin Theatre Company); Jessica Bellamy’s Shabbat Dinner (Rock Surfers, Rocks Pop Up Festival, Griffin Theatre Company); Nick Payne’s Constellations (Darlinghurst Theatre Company); Simon Stephens’ On the shore of the wide world (Griffin Independent); Michael Gow’s Live Acts On Stage (Griffin Independent). In 2010 he presented the paper ‘Bodies transformed: an approach to mask in actor training’ at the ADSA 2010 conference at ANU.
Associate Professor Gillian Arrighi 