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Monday 15 July
Tuesday 16 July

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Backstage at the Backstage Musical   
Dr. David Megarrity presents his paper Backstage at the Backstage Musical. He will explore how the layers of meta theatricality in the backstage musical subgenre capture and represent contemporary challenges faced by people working in the performing arts.

Desiree Garcia (2021) notes that “Backstage musicals maintain their generic specificity, however, with the ultimate upholding of entertainment, insisting that despite everything, the show must go on”. Dr. Megarrity asks the question: what happens when the show literally can’t go on? and that’s where new musical CALL TIME begins. A team of artists and technicians trapped in a window between matinee and evening performance trying to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. Its opening moments are bows, its final image is curtain up. Reversals, obversals and multiple layers characterised a writing process demanding a musical within a musical. 

CALL TIME connects precarity in the performing arts with the literary, musical and performative characteristics of the Backstage Musical. Led by music, this performative presentation focusses on key decisions and critical incidents in a funded creative development of new musical CALL TIME (Megarrity/Treston/Vincent), a process of construction where music was allowed to lead, rather than follow narrative. 


Dr. DAVID MEGARRITY
Dr David Megarrity is a writer, composer, musician and performer creating at the intersection of music, performance and projected image. Recipient of a Lord Mayor’s Performing Arts Fellowship, his performance inventions include Backseat Drivers (Queensland Theatre), Ukulele Mekulele (La Boite) The Empty City, Bear with Me and String: An Odd Evening with Tyrone and Lesley (Metro Arts/Queensland Cabaret Festival) 

His works have played at the Sydney Opera House, around Australia and abroad. Publications include plays for young people such as Gate 38 (APT) and anthology Destinations (Playlab). He’s been finalist in the George Landen Dann Award, Inscriptions Edward Albee Scholarship and Rodney Seaborn Playwrights Award. 

David’s picture book The Empty City (Hachette) was selected by the Children’s Book Council of Australia as a Picture Book of the Year ‘Notable Book’. His stage adaptation, for which he composed both music and script was finalist in the Queensland Premier’s Drama Award (QPDA) and premiered at the Brisbane Powerhouse. David won the QPDA for his play The Holidays, premiering at Queensland Theatre and published by Playlab. 

Having played in many bands and composed songs and soundtracks for stage, screen and radio, David has released 13 albums of original music in various audio incarnations. Recent music-driven performances include faux folk duo Warmwaters and ukulele/double bass duo Tyrone and Lesley who performed Tyrone and Lesley in a Spot at the Brisbane Festival. Their albums Optimism and Have No Words were both dubbed Ukulele Record of the Year. 

David’s short film collaborations won a number of awards and nominations, including Official Selection Cannes International Film Festival. Senior Lecturer in Drama at the Queensland University of Technology, and specialist in research led by creative practice, his PhD focussed on Composed Theatre – theatricalising music and musicalising theatre. He is a recipient of the Vice-Chancellor’s Award for Excellence (Innovative and Creative Practice) and the Australian Guild of Screen Composers Johnny Dennis Music Award. 
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