'Endings, becomes more powerful with each day that passes, as Saulwick’s uncategorizable performance shapes and reshapes itself in my neural circuitry.'
- Talk Performance, Vancouver

Part chamber concert, part performance work, Endings is a meditation on cycles and the ending of things. Using portable turntables, reel-to-reel tape players and live performance, Endings finds form for experiences both ordinary and extraordinary that cluster around death, dying and afterlife.

Endings is built in part from one-on-one interviews: people's stories, reflections, and voices. These recordings are cut on to bespoke vinyl records and embedded within a richlytextured electro-acoustic sound design that is operated, accompanied, and extended through live performance and song. The performance also features the songs and vocals of acclaimed singer/songwriter Paddy Mann (Grand Salvo).

Voices of the living emerge ghost-like from records, performers converse live with the taped voices of past conversations, tape loops carve round and round through the space, and song floats across the familiar crackle of records ending.

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'It's not so much about grief or loss as death's strange intimacy'. ****4 stars, Rebecca Harkins-Cross, The Sydney Morning Herald.

'Unconditionally stunning and a superb piece of performance rooted in death but speaking to us of comforting, creative life.'
Gscene, UK

'Endings is an elegant, economical production that delivers on its promise to stay with you long after you leave.' ****4 stars Kate Hennessy, The Guardian

'Endings is a receptacle for the tremendous power of loving relationships lived right to the end.' **** 4 stars THE STAGE, UK

Commissioned by Arts House & Performance Space. Produced by Freya Waterson.

ARTISTS

Concept/text/performance Tamara Saulwick

Set/lighting design: bluebottle - Ben Cobham

Sound composition/performance Peter Knight

Song/songwriting/performance Paddy Mann

Dramaturgy Margaret Trail

Technical Manager/ audio engineering/ operation Nick Roux

Costume design Harriet Oxley

Production management/ lx op Emily O'Brien

PRESENTATION HISTORY

On the Boards, Seattle Feb 2018

PuSh International Festival of the Arts, Vancouver Jan 2018

Dublin Theatre Festival Oct 12-14, 2017

Brighton Festival, UK May 2017

Canadian Stage's biennial Spotlight series in Toronto, April 2017

Arts House, North Melbourne Town Hall, Melbourne, May 2015

Sydney Festival - Performance Space at Carriageworks, Jan 2015

AWARDS

2015 Green Room Award winner: 'Design & Realisation'.

Nominated for:

Best 'Contemporary & Experimental Performance' Green Room Award.

'Best New Australian Work' 2015 Helpmann Award

Photos: Heidrun Lohr & Sarah Walker.

Endings has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory board and supported by the Victorian Government through Arts Victoria. Developed with the assistance of an Arts House development grant as part of the Arts House CultureLAB UNDONE series 2013, and CultureLAB 2014.