Bill Ten Eyck as Wally Stern

Popular stage and film actor, Bill Ten Eyck, plays Wally Stern in Robert Gough's comedic fable, An Elephant in the Room. A true performer bound to capture your imagination, Bill is now matched with a most challenging and charismatic character: Wally Stern, the irrepressible everyday man who seeks a life less ordinary in a world that demands wealth and prosperity.

In An Elephant in the Room Wally confronts some modern day dilemmas in a most endearing way. Even Lucy, the aspiring actress, is taken aback by Wally's confounding ingenuity. But what happens when passions overfloweth in the name of avarice? Can Wally make the deal of a lifetime without compromising his own ideals?

Can the 21st century contain such a man of likable contradictions??

Stay tuned for more intriguing details...

AN EXTRACT FROM THE PLAY

Hi Everybody,

Thanks once again for all the interest, both home and abroad, in reading the script.  Our advisors have requested that we do not float the script on the internet until after the play’s first run at Theatre Works, St Kilda, Victoria, July 8-25, 2010.

However, due to the amount of requests received, we’ve decided to publish a few extracts leading up to the first run. 

Here's the first extract...

* * *

Wally Stern, 48, Australian wholesale fridge salesman, has found a box of old 16mm films and a projector in his warehouse. He mounts one of the reels and watches with great curiosity.

SPX - FILM PROJECTED AND THE INDIAN STORYTELLER

The INDIAN STORYTELLER holds some chain and rope and gestures with the rope and chain as he recites the verse of “The Baby Elephant”.

STORYTELLER: Child Elephant of Indostan

Our Babe from Gods descended!

When small and curious will wander far

As nature has intended,

So with mighty chain and sturdy tree

Baby Elephant is apprehended.

Small Elephant is the friend of Man

And to Man the Gods did say, 

To chain the Baby’s foot to tree

For Baby runs away,

But soon he learns by chain and tree

That Elephant by man must stay.

The Elephant grows huge and strong

With memory stronger still, 

Could flimsy rope hold so strong a beast 

Against its mighty will? 

For rope cannot but memory can

Memory of chain and tree,

Forget he can’t - The Elephant

Therefore never shall be free! 

WALLY switches off the projector and flicks on the main light.

The personal line rings and WALLY answers promptly.

WALLY: Hello, Wally’s Ware… Howyadoin’ Alan again... Kelvin, Lord William Kelvin, hence Kelvinator. British thermodynamic physicist invented the Kelvin scale of temperature… Ooohh, sometime late 1800s I think. 1870? or thereabouts… No, Fahrenheit was a German and he invented the mercury thermometer… Centigrade is the freezing point of water at zero and the boiling point at 100… “Cent” after Latin centum, hundredth, easy one… (Laughs) H’mmm no worries mate… Nah, it’s good to have a yak… Yep, they’ll go out this afternoon, that’s if I ever get off the phone... See ya mate.

WALLY does a few dance steps across the floor. Whistling and singing...

* * *

Above picture: Blind Men and the Elephant, cover detail, (1972)  

Lillian Quigley, illustrated by Janice Holland

Comedy, drama, fable...?

Hi everybody,

Thanks for all the interest! A few people have asked the question: “What exactly is the genre of the play...? Comedy, drama, fable…?"  Good question... as Australians often say!

An Elephant in the Room incorporates quite a few genres. However, it is easiest described as a black comedy with fables.

A well known example of a black comedy is George Bernard Shaw’s Androcles and the Lion which is a comedy about feeding Christians to the lions. It’s also a fable as I don’t think Mr. Shaw (GBS) intended us to believe that the lion would actually remember Androcles as being the man who pulled the thorn from his foot some months before.

Androcles and the Lion does, however, raise the point that some of us would rather be eaten by lions than repent against the Christian faith. Some of the Christians choose death in preference to lighting a candle and re-converting back to the faith of the Roman Sun God.

It is this curious human phenomenon that GBS used the fable of Androcles as the metaphor to iterate… and did so with much comedy for our entertainment.

To me, entertainment is an important factor when I pay cash for my theatre ticket and gamble on my enjoyable night out!

Best to you all, 

Robert