About The Orchid & the Crow – LIVE ON STAGE
This professional performance is brought to Mt Compass by Country Arts SA (Shows on the Road) and Mt Compass Supper Club. Please note that this is a TUESDAY evening and it is a NO BYO show.
Doors and licenced bar open at 6.30pm for pre-show drinks. Performance commences at 7.30pm. This is a 75 minute live drama on stage. Supper and refreshments available pre and post show.
About “The Orchid and the Crow”
Daniel Tobias grew up in a Jewish-atheist household. Reflecting on Daniel’s real life experiences, The Orchid and the Crow is a solo performance: part storytelling, part cabaret, part theatre, featuring original songs from the award-winning writers of Die Roten Punkte. Segueing between rock, pop, and contemporary opera, Daniel effortlessly draws us into the inspiring tale of his almost-death experience.
The Orchid and the Crow – Daniel Tobias puts his real-life battle with cancer on show, in a funny and uplifting way.
Casey Bennetto, who was behind Keating, The Musical and a regular on ABC radio, developed the script with Tobias, and said the talented performer hits all the right notes in the music-driven play.
“It’s a beautiful piece and it’s deeply felt but at the same time very funny and it’s not just about the big C. It’s about belief actually and what we choose to believe,” Bennetto says.
In 2004 athiest Tobias learned he had stage-four testicular cancer and went searching for God, of any persuasion.
Enter Lance Armstrong, the seven-times winner of the Tour de France and cancer survivor – before being exposed as a drug cheat.
“Even though I do talk about my experience going through cancer treatment, it is really talking about how faith affected my outlook, particularly with Lance Armstrong, and how that gave me the strength to go through it,” Tobias told The Border Mail when talking about the show in 2016.
Despite Armstrong’s fall from grace, he still remains an important and inspirational figure as Tobias dealt with the life-threatening cancer diagnosis.
“If someone said to me before 2013 ‘I’ve got a friend going through cancer what should I do or how can I help them?’ I would have just said read Lance Armstrong’s book It’s Not About the Bike,” he says.
“Quite quickly he became the most important person to me other than my family or friends. It was just crucial to my positive outlook.”
Bennetto said he sat down with Tobias and discussed the story he wanted to tell. What evolved is a solo performance that’s part storytelling, part cabaret and part theatre swinging seamlessly between 80s rock, pop and contemporary opera.
He said dealing with such a personal topic was a blessing.
“Dramatically speaking in a way it’s kind of a free kick when the topic is that bleak,” Bennetto says.
“Because there is nowhere to go but lighter the audience tends to be quite grateful for a show that presents a topic like that and doesn’t dwell in sadness for the entire show.”
Thanks to Country Arts SA Shows on the Road and the Mt Compass Supper Club (Mt Compass War Memorial Community Centre Inc.), Orchid & the Crow is being presented in Mt Compass at an exceptionally subsidised price. This can be verified by checking out websites advertising Daniel’s previous performances in other states and overseas.
Reviews:
“Honest, funny, inquisitive and moving theatre-making that strikes many powerful chords.”
CREW MAGAZINE, TORONTO
★★★★ ‘An absolute must-see comedy simply by virtue of tackling religion and cancer without relying on cheap jokes or tastelessness…a fantastic, dramatic, hilarious show.’ (The Music, Melbourne)
"Big beautiful, ugly, crazy life-changing moments. They mostly arrive without warning, uprooting the peace, order and logic of our everyday lives. The Orchid and the Crow is a show about such a life event. In sharing it with us, artist Daniel Tobias shows us quite a lot about how to handle such a moment with strength, creativity and a lot of good humour. I loved this show when I first saw it, because it’s so hard to pin a label to it. It’s a story about family, faith and survival, it feels a bit like a cabaret, or a pocket-sized musical drawn from many genres – but in the end, it all makes perfect sense because it’s very personal and loving. I hope that you enjoy this little gem of a production, and that you’ll remember and draw on its generosity when you find yourself having one of those ‘moments’." (Lyn Wallis, Hothouse Theatre)
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