MATTHEW PREST
DREAM SHAKE
Support Material
the team
Nitin Vengurlekar
Position: Centre
Nickname: 'Tricky Hands'
Nat Rose (captain/coach)
Position: Point Guard
Nickname: 'The Admiral'
Teik-Kim Pok
Position: Power Forward
Nickname: 'Mr Fixit'
Malcolm Whittaker
Position: Shooting Guard
Nickname: 'The Saboteur'
Kevin Ng
Position: Small Forward
Nickname: 'The Iceman'
reference images
90s Boy Band 'The Backstreet Boys'
NBA Players - 'The Twin Towers' Ralph Samson (left), Hakeem 'The Dream' Olajuwon (right)
previous work
WHELPING BOX - Created by Matt Prest, Branch Nebula, Clare Britton 2012-14
WINNER of Helpmann Award 2014 Best Visual/Physical Theatre Production and Green Room Award 2014 Outstanding Contemporary Performance.
ABOUT: 'Whelping Box' used a style of task-based performance and questioned masculine identities in an absurd and playful way. These elements and the process of devising the work will be extended in the development of DREAM SHAKE.
"In its celebration of masculine physicality, Whelping Box breathtakingly delineates the pleasures, pain and contradictions of play, initiation, bonding, competition, risk and self-mythologising. Within a carefully choreographed framework, Wilson and Prest repeatedly push themselves to the limit, testing their bodies in sustained acts of endurance, living out the very condition they have committed to celebrate and critique." Keith Gallasch, Realtime, Dec 2012.
SILO - Directed and Devised by Matt Prest, 2016.
ABOUT: SILO was an original work devised with 3rd Year Acting students, when Matt was invited as Theatre Fellow at University of Wollongong.
This ensemble piece looked at how power shifts within a group, particularly when there is no clearly defined leader or hierarchical power structure. Our influences included self-help groups (like EST from the 1970s), The Living Theatre, cults, hippy communes, and new age mysticism.
The work combined task-based performance similar to that in WHELPING BOX, with a non-narrative exploration of character. These elements and the methods for directing this devised process, will be built on further in the process of making DREAM SHAKE.
BELOW: Images from SILO, May, 2016.
