SA's first musical theatre company brings talent home in debut stage

SA's first musical theatre company brings talent home in debut stage When Joey Haenen graduated with a music theatre degree in Adelaide, he knew he had to move states. "There is no work here and so you've got to move over east, that's where most of the agents are," he said. "You do all your auditioning over there and hopefully you'll land a gig." Haenen moved to Melbourne, like Jazz Garcia who spent a year getting her name known while paying for her passion through a day job in speech pathology. "There's just a lot more musical theatre opportunities in Melbourne, we don't really have anything in Adelaide," she said. The exodus from South Australia to the east coast has been happening for decades, a talent drain Jo Casson was determined to stop. The arts veteran joined forces with others to form Full Circle, the state's first-ever professional music theatre company. "I just decided it's now or never, no-one's getting any younger,"she said. "I discovered in the middle of last year that every other major city has a professional local theatre company and Adelaide didn't." Ironically, it's a full circle moment for the company's choreographer Zoe Komazec-Kermond, who returned from the east coast after a career performing in shows including Cats, Matilda and Mary Poppins. "There is so much talent in South Australia, so much talent and we do sometimes feel like we have to go away in order to achieve what we want to achieve," she said. With such a rich vein of talent, Casson said forming the new company made sense. It has the backing of well-known arts lover and philanthropist Pamela Wall AO, but the company is seeking more support, as well as applying for grant funding. 'Catch Me if You Can' to premiere Full Circle will stage the musical Catch Me If You Can as its opening number, a stage version of the story that Leonardo DiCaprio took to the big screen and earned rave reviews. When the company held auditions, it attracted more than 100 performers for the 25 roles. Haenen was working and had to push his case with an audition video he sent to producers. The 21-year-old rising star's absence from the auditions did not stop him from landing the lead role of Frank Abagnale Jr. "What I love is just being able to get little bits of Joey in each of the characters every time and that's such a great joy," Haenen said. Garcia, who earned a contract among the show's ensemble, said the three-day auditions were exhausting. "The dance call was extremely strenuous, I'd say that was one of the longest kind of dance audition processes I've ever been in," she said. More than 30 creatives and technical crew have been hired with the final cast a mix of South Australians and others returning to the state. "Everyone could sing, everyone could dance and everyone could act, so it made our job really hard to pick our final cast," Komazec-Kermond said. Hope amongst industry pressure Beetlejuice, Waitress, Back to the Future and Dear Evan Hansen were major musicals which cancelled shows recently, with one producer citing increased cost pressures from "touring across vast distances between Australian cities". Full Circle said it was different because it would not have the high costs of touring a show nationally, like many others. "Take a little show out into the regional areas if we can, but we won't be going beyond South Australia, it's designed to be a local professional theatre company,"Casson said. However, Casson said getting productions into the country was a goal in future years. Full Circle wants to stage two musicals a year for the next two years, before increasing to three after that. Those both on and off the stage realised the importance of pulling off the show and demonstrating the company should be here to stay. "It's a huge responsibility and I think we're going to do a really good job," Garcia confidently predicted. Zoe Komazec-Kermond has no doubts. "There's so much buzz in Adelaide at the moment around Full Circle, so it's really up to us to produce the very best version of this show that we can," she said. Catch Me If You Can is at Futures Theatre in Paradise from November 5-7.