Lifeforce – The Mother of All Journeys – a new musical
Can you find a way forward before you’ve unlocked the secrets of the past?
That’s the question put by LIFEFORCE (the mother of all journeys) – a new musical that has its world premiere at the 2013 Sydney Fringe from September 6 at King Street Theatre, Newtown.
Writer-composer Joanna Weinberg is the creator, composer and co-writer of the 2013 international feel-good hit film Goddess as well as writer and composer of Every Single Saturday (the soccer parent musical) and The Piano Diaries – which is still being performed around the country in its third year.
LIFEFORCE is the story of Ruth, a successful career woman who realizes on her 40th birthday that she is running out of time to have a baby. At the same time, Ruth’s birth mother, whom she has never met, is starting to make an appearance in her dreams. Ruth has to find a way to resolve the mystery of her past at the same time as find a way to fall pregnant – before it is too late. What follows is an emotional, funny, and contemporary chase through time, conception and memory.
It features 23 original songs – contemporary and accessible – sung acoustically by the cast of six.
LIFEFORCE is directed by Lisa Freshwater (Hi-5, About Face, Every Single Saturday), musical direction and accompaniment by Brad Miller and features an all-star cast including Natalie Lotkin (playing the part which inspired the show), Tyran Parke, Meredith O’Reilly (Addams Family, Les Miz), Monique Salle (A Chorus Line, Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson), Charlotte Kerr and Christopher Horsey .
Joanna Weinberg was moved to write LIFEFORCE (the mother of all journeys) after her best friend tried for five years to have a child. The piece became more clearly formed after Joanna met and befriended a woman who had travelled to Queensland to search for her birth mother – a woman who had given her child up for adoption under mysterious circumstances. The two ideas joined in a piece about longing and desire for family, becoming Lifeforce, (the mother of all journeys.) Natalie Lotkin, a successful musical theatre actress in her native South Africa – now the mother of 9 month old twins – will be making her Sydney debut, singing the lead role of Ruth which she inspired!
Lifeforce opens at King Street Theatre as part of Sydney Fringe on 6 September.