New year, new opportunities

Hello to you all.

All of us here at the Bulldog Theatre Company hope you all had a great summer season and may you have a fantastic 2010.

The Bulldog Theatre Company is turning 5 this year. Not in our wildest dreams did we think we would be here. In fact, 4 years ago, creating a theatre company was the furthest thing from our minds.

After writing the original Alex & Eve, I approached several theatre companies in the hope they would produce the play but all the theatre companies declined. Frustrated with all the rejection, Helena, Paul, Socrates and myself decided to create our own theatre company with a vision to tell new contemporary Australian stories. It’s been a lot of hard work and a lot of fun along the way, and as we look back 7 productions later, the rejection was a blessing in disguise because we are really passionate about storytelling and enjoy telling stories that reflect our multicultural landscape.

In fact, Alex and Eve came about as a result of many friends of ours who were involved in people of different cultural and religious backgrounds and the problems that came along with these cross-cultural relationships.

2009 was Bulldog Theatre’s biggest year in its 4 year existence. Alex & Eve: The Wedding exceeded all our expectations with an extended sold-out season at the Factory Theatre and culminated in a sold-out show at Enmore Theatre making it the biggest theatrical production of the year and the biggest since Wogs Out Of Work.

In October, Bulldog Theatre had the good fortune of touring interstate for the first time travelling to the Royalty Theatre in Adelaide where we performed the original Alex & Eve to sold-out houses.

We would like to extend all of you a sincere thank you for your extraordinary support in 2009. The reality is, without your support, we cannot tell our stories. Telling relevant, contemporary stories is something we take very seriously. We work extremely hard to honour your support. We hope we have justified the good faith you have shown Bulldog Theatre.

We have an exciting year planned for 2010.

As a result of the success of Alex & Eve, plans are underway to shoot the movie version later this year. We are excited to announce the director of the film will be Peter Andrikidis who has just directed The Wog Boy 2: Kings Of Mykonos and the Underbelly series.

In the last few months, we have been working extremely hard on developing the film script and many great story ideas have been discovered. So we have transferred all these new story ideas into the original stage script of Alex & Eve which has elevated the stage production even more.

So therefore, we will be touring the revamped original ALEX & EVE to Melbourne, Brisbane and Adelaide and will then come home to Sydney for a two week season beginning Thursday June 10th to Sunday June 20th at the Factory Theatre as part of the Greek Festival Of Sydney with ALEX & EVE: THE BABY to follow in May of 2011.

For those who haven’t seen the original Alex & Eve, feel free to click on the below you tube link for a 1 minute trailer of the play.

Tickets for the Sydney season have gone on sale. In an attempt to give our loyal supporters first dibs on the best seats, we will not announce tickets are on sale till March 20th, the opening of the Greek Festival. Our popular 2 for 1 Thursday offer is available as is our “groups of 10 or more” at concession price offer. You can go to www.factorytheatre.com.au or call 9550 3666 for more information.

And we are excited to announce we will now accept submissions from emerging playwrights as we seek to foster new talent. To get more information on our submissions process, you can go to our new website www.bulldogtheatre.com. We will have ticket giveaways for our Sydney season, so do keep an ear out for those announcements.

So there’s plenty to look forward to.

We’d like to take this opportunity to thank our major sponsors M & J Chickens, the Greek Festival Of Sydney, George Khouzame catering and fine foods, the Antenna Network, MKJ financial services, MAS Auto, the Steki Taverna and Detroit Customs. Their support has been overwhelming. If you ever go to any of these companies, let them know you heard about them through Alex & Eve!

There is plenty to look forward to in 2010.

Goodbye for now. Hope to see you at the theatre.

Alex, Helena, Paul and Soc

Posted - 01.01.2010