What happens to memories when there is a different side to the same story?
Lost in Venice, at the Potato Shed Saturday August 6, examines changes in fortunes and changes in attitudes with the City of Lights as the backdrop.
Shortly before his death retired businessman and former amateur film maker (and life-long resident of Brunswick, Melbourne) Ron Vincent handed his box of super 8 films to his young granddaughter with instructions to look after them.
He could never have imagined that 25 years later (50 years after they were created) some of his films were deemed to have historical significance and would be preserved by the National Film and Sound Archives in Canberra.
Neither could he have anticipated that his granddaughter would have written Lost in Venice about his ill-fated trip to Italy with his friend, a man well known in the 1960s Melbourne culinary scene.
Lost in Venice not only tells the story of the trip, it explores ‘the man’s world’ from the 1950s to a new world on the brink of the cultural and social revolution of the 1960s.
Exploring the great divide between men and women, female archetypes and the shadow Lost in Venice weaves a tale of love, regret, tragedy and fate. The play contains many of the actual treasures collected from Ron’s travels as well as his super 8 film documenting an era when luxury travel, ‘safari’ style trips as well as hunting (for culling, food and trophies) were considered the norm.
Using cabaret to tell the story, the piece also explores the art of burlesque. Once strictly a man’s affair, burlesque is now largely controlled and enjoyed almost exclusively by women. As the producer of the national touring show The Paris Underground Cabaret the writer of Lost in Venice has witnessed thousands of women relishing that their door is finally open to viewing Burlesque.
Exploring the social change Lost in Venice is unapologetic, uncensored and also pays homage to the writer’s grandmother who could never have imagined the social and economic freedoms bestowed unto her granddaughter.
One show only 8pm Saturday 30 July. Book at geelongaustralia.com.au/potatoshed
