About

Welcome to the Heart of Gold website

Heart of Gold, written by Thea Costantino, is a new, darkly comic musical, produced by Western Australian company Hold Your Horses. Hold Your Horses was founded in 2009 by Thea Costantino, Tarryn Gill and Pilar Mata Dupont to facilitate collaboration between theatre practitioners and visual artists. This website contains information about Heart of Gold and documentation from the 2009 performance season at the Perth Institute of Contemporary Art (PICA) 28 October - 14 November.
Watch this space for Hold Your Horses updates. A Hold Your Horses website is coming soon.

The Heart of Gold Projects, visual art work by Tarryn Gill and Pilar Mata Dupont, are also found in the Gallery section of this site. Tarryn and Pilar created these projects during the five year development of Heart of Gold. They were used as visual and conceptual research for the show, but stand alone as artworks in their own right. They have been exhibited nationally at galleries including Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA) Queensland; Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) Sydney; Perth Institute of Contemporary Art (PICA) Perth; Australian Centre for Photography (ACP) Sydney and Canberra Contemporary Art Space (CCAS) Canberra.

HOLD YOUR HORSES PRESENTS

HEART OF GOLD

By Thea Costantino

Westralia shall be free
Director: Zoe Pepper
Composer / Musical Director: Ash Gibson Greig
Choreographer / Costume designer: Tarryn Gill
Set designer: Pilar Mata Dupont
Lighting Designer: Lucy Birkinshaw
Stage Manager: Nicole Gillespie

Heart of Gold is a new, darkly comic musical set in rural WA, featuring a family unravelled by secrets, a haunted landscape and one boy's fantasy of West Australia forever at war with the Eastern states.

Iris Brown and her children Angus and Violet are a family living in isolation on the outskirts of Paucity. Their solitude is broken by the entrance of Constable Irving Saddle, the only guest to attend Violet's dismal fourteenth birthday party. As Irving's control gradually infects the household, Angus's already unhinged perception of reality is stretched to dangerous proportions. He retreats into a nationalistic fantasy world 'Westralia' defended by a sinister, Ziegfeld-esque female army which embodies the family's dark past. Angus's waking and dreaming lives merge into one another, and Irving uncovers the horrible secret beneath the house.

Director Zoe Pepper [Side Pony Productions: Devil's Gulch, A Dastardly Deed, London; Manic Pony, Artrage] brings her characteristically bittersweet mix of horror and delight to the work, while award-winning composer Ash Gibson Greig [The Lady Aoi, Thin Ice; Who Do You Think You Are, SBS] unsettles the lyrical melody of music theatre with dark and often dissonant orchestrations.
Choreography and set design are by contemporary art duo Tarryn Gill and Pilar Mata Dupont, whose work recently featured in national exhibitions Primavera, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, and Contemporary Australia: Optimism, Gallery of Modern Art, Queensland.

Original Cast performed at PICA 28 Oct - 14 Nov 2009 a Hold Your Horses Production in association with PICA and Side Pony Productions:
Tim Watts (Angus), the creator of 'Alvin Sputnik: Deep Sea Explorer' and winner of 'Outstanding solo show' at the NYC Fringe Festival 09; performer and playwright Shirley Van Sanden (Iris); singer, musician and performer Brendan Ewing (Irving); recent star of 'Oscar', Sarah McKellar (Violet) and the Westralian Army, Natalya Alessi, Oda Aunan, Maree Cole, Lily Newbury-Freeman and Whitney Richards.

"The production is on an epic scale, a full two-act feast of music, dance, satire and drama that almost defies description" Ali Taulbut, The West Australian, November 3 2009

"A beautifully staged rural-gothic extravaganza" Urzula Dawkins, RealTime, Issue 93
See the full review

"It would be wonderful to see Heart of Gold picked up and developed by a main-stage company" Steve Bevis, The West Australian, January 4 2010
See the full review

See our GALLERY for more Heart of Gold photographs by Kim Tran

News

Hold Your Horses Headed to APAM

Thea Costantino, Tarryn Gill and Pilar Mata Dupont of Hold Your Horses will be heading to Adelaide in late February to attend the Australian Performing Arts Market (APAM).
They will be there with support from the WA Department of Culture and the Arts and Australia Council to seek touring options for Heart of Gold.
APAM runs from 22nd - 26th February.
www.performingartsmarket.com.au/