Breakout Residency Public Showing: Jess Clough-MacRae

The Free-range Residency showing of Trimates as part of The Mill's Breakout Residency program:

When: Friday 9 July, 5.45pm sharp for a 6pm start.

Where: The Mill, 154 Angas Street, Adelaide

Duration: 1 hour

Includes a welcome by The Mill's Associate Producer, Peta Spurling-Brown, followed by excerpts of Trimates and a post-show discussion.

About the showing:

Trimates (working title) is inspired by the work of the pioneers of primatology, Drs Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey and Biruté Galdikas.

Through a highly physical representation of the great apes, Trimates will explore the different ways that chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans communicate, whilst also telling the stories of the three women who studied them. Using text, movement and mime, this show will explore the parallel lives of the great apes and the pioneering scientists, in a bid to understand our complex relationship with the natural world.

Jess Clough-MacRae: "During the Free-range residency, we’ve been focusing on bringing the apes to life and finding their characters and their way of telling this story. At the moment they feel like the protagonists. We are also experimenting with text and the human impact on the apes lives and looking at the broader form the show will take, following the narratives of three individual scientists with similar but diverging journeys. We have a lot of questions to ask and a lot of answers to suggest, so we’d love to have you along to the showing to explore some of these ideas and images together."

About the artists:

Jess Clough-MacRae is a British/New Zealand performer, director, and movement director currently based in Adelaide. She studied at the University of East Anglia, the Bristol Old Vic Made in Bristol Programme and the École Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq.

She founded award-winning Clownfish Theatre and has toured their show Attenborough and his Animals in Australia, the UK and Europe, with sell out runs in Adelaide, Perth and Edinburgh Fringe. Attenborough and his Animals won a weekly award for Best Theatre at Adelaide Fringe 2021. Jess is also a member of award-winning Cut Mustard Theatre and has recently performed with Tessa Bide Productions.

Jess was the assistant director on the Bristol Old Vic’s recent production of Cyrano and associate movement director on The Merry Wives of Windsor at Shakespeare’s Globe and Touching the Void at the Bristol Old Vic.

Jess is an experienced theatre practitioner and has run workshops for children, teens, and adults, in schools in the UK and Australia and for the Bristol Old Vic Young Company, the Theatre Royal Bath and Shakespeare’s Globe.

Photo: Jess Clough-MacRae & Jonathan Tilley 'Attenborough & His Animals'. Credit: Toby Jeffries.