425 - A Slingsby Life Of Wonder With Andy Packer

When a South Australian theatre company that began with The Tragical Life of Cheese Boy – performed more than 800 times worldwide – prepares to take its final bow, it doesn’t fade quietly. Instead, Slingsby is staging its most expensive and ambitious production yet: A Concise Compendium of Wonder, a triptych of three interconnected shows housed in a custom-built structure in the Botanic Gardens during the Adelaide Festival.In this episode, we settle into Slingsby’s Hall of Possibility in Parkside with artistic director and CEO Andy Packer for a wide-ranging conversation that explores the company’s distinctive aesthetic, their commitment to treating young audiences with intellectual honesty, and why nostalgia creates the perfect emotional space for processing difficult truths. In the South Australian Drink Of The Week, we taste the company’s signature Hall of Possibility Tea – a bespoke blend featuring licorice root, organic lavender, red rose petals, spearmint and peppermint that Andy describes as both “invigorating and calming. “The musical pilgrimage features the Slingsby Ensemble performing “Song for the Adolescent Seal” from their 2018 Adelaide Cabaret Festival show Songs for Those Who’ve Come Across the Seas – a piece Andy realised he’d forgotten to mention during our conversation, despite being extremely proud of it. You can navigate episodes using chapter markers in your podcast app. Not a fan of one segment? You can click next to jump to the next chapter in the show. We’re here to serve! The Adelaide Show Podcast: Awarded Silver for Best Interview Podcast in Australia at the 2021 Australian Podcast Awards and named as Finalist for Best News and Current Affairs Podcast in the 2018 Australian Podcast Awards. And please consider becoming part of our podcast by joining our Inner Circle. It’s an email list. Join it and you might get an email on a Sunday or Monday seeking question ideas, guest ideas and requests for other bits of feedback about YOUR podcast, The Adelaide Show. Email us directly and we’ll add you to the list: [e-mail] If you enjoy the show, please leave us a 5-star review in iTunes or other podcast sites, or buy some great merch from our Red Bubble store – The Adelaide Show Shop. We’d greatly appreciate it. And please talk about us and share our episodes on social media, it really helps build our community. Oh, and here’s our index of all episode in one concisepage. Running Sheet: A Slingsby Life Of Wonder With Andy Packer 00:00:00 Intro Introduction 00:03:12 SA Drink Of The Week The SA Drink Of The Week this week is Brewed by Belinda Hall of Possibilitea. Belinda Hill of Brewed by Belinda created this bespoke blend specifically for Slingsby, capturing both the company’s aesthetic and the practical needs of artists in creative process. The brief: create something both invigorating and calming. The blend looks almost theatrical. Organic lavender, red rose petals, organic blue cornflower petals creating visual layers in the pot. Licorice root provides the grounding bass note, with spearmint and peppermint lifting everything. There’s aniseed hiding in there too.Andy explains the tea’s role in Slingsby’s creative practice. During those inevitable moments developing new work when “you get very lost,” the tea provides structured pause. “People go off and do different things and I’ll have a cup of tea and I might go outside for a little while. Usually you find the solution.” What’s crucial is that Hall of Possibility Tea won’t get bitter or overly steeped. “There’s no black tea leaf or anything like that. It just gets better.” Andy keeps a flask throughout rehearsal days, taking sips during fifteen-minute breaks. As we taste, the experience unfolds in layers. Initially, the mint notes dominate. Then the aniseed emerges from backstage, as Andy puts it, “ready for you, it knew you were coming, it was just waiting in the wings.” By the end of our tasting, all the subtle players have made their entrance. No single flavour dominates. They’re holding hands across the palate like a well-mannered audience at a Slingsby show. Slingsby has been gifting this tea to presenting partners around the world since 2019. After performances overseas, small tins of Hall of Possibility Tea remain behind, tangible tokens of the connections Slingsby creates between communities. 00:13:08 Andy Packer Andy Packer describes A Concise Compendium of Wonder as “the perfect bookend” to Slingsby Theatre Company’s twenty-year journey. We’re sitting in the Hall of Possibility in Parkside, where families have gathered to experience work that never softened darkness for young audiences, never offered easy answers. In a few weeks, after the final curtain falls on this ambitious triptych at the Adelaide Festival, Slingsby will cease creating new work. The company that began with The Tragical Life of ...