The Nest Ensemble
WE WORK AS A COLLABORATIVE ENSEMBLE
We embrace a postmodern collaborative framework we call Impulse Training which addresses constructs such as the multiplicity of stories and selves, power, social and cultural discourses and the exquisite use of language. This is our approach to ‘thickening’ the space between the actors on the floor, rather than focusing on psychological perspectives, which is often the focus of modernist acting training.
Our actor training is about training the impulse in order to be fully present and fully alive to the multiplicity of living and performing.
We make the implicit explicit.
We embrace transparency.
We avoid power hierarchies within the rehearsal room where possible.
We devise work using collaged text, visual art, poetry and original musical scores.
We encourage each artist to bring all of themselves into the rehearsal room, in contrast to the more traditional practice of ‘leaving it at the door’.
We desire the actor to be fully present at all times; therefore it does not make sense to split an actor’s private and professional lives.
www.thenestensemble.com
Multi-award-winning theatre company devising new and inspirational works since 2004
Below are the Nest Ensemble shows co-written and performed
by Margi Brown Ash
Our lastest season, Wanderings, is a play about families, transitioning, and love, with its first season at Queensland Theats part of the Inaugural Door 3 Program 2024
Wanderings
Concept Zac Callaghan
devised/created/written
by
Margi Brown Ash
Zac Callaghan and
Leah Mercer
https://pridefoundation.org.au/stace-callaghan-and-margi-brown-ash-awarded-pfa-x-apt-grant/
supported by Pride Foundation, Queensland Theatre
and Arts Queensland
Matilda Award Nominations, 2024
Lord Mayors Award for Best New Australian Playby Margi Brown Ash, Zac Callaghan and Leah Mercer
Best Set Design by Rozina Suliman
Best Performance in a Leading Role Margi Brown Ash
Margi, Zac and Leah talk about the play and how it came about (beginning images are the same as the VoxPox but then go on to be a cast/creative discussion)
TRAVIS ASH, LEAH MERCER, MARGI BROWN ASH AND BENJAMIN KNAPTON, SOME OF THE CREATIVE TEAM FOR THE BELONGING TRILOGY (HOME, EVE AND HE DREAMED A TRAIN.
PHOTO BY STEPHEN HENRY
He Dreamed A Train
Brisbane Powerhouse, QLD (2014, 2017)
Theatre of the Oppressed Conference, USA (2014)
Co-Written and Performed by Margi Brown Ash
Directed/Produced by Benjamin Knapton
Co-written/Composed and Performed by Travis Ash.
Winner: SWEET Program, Brisbane Powerhouse
Nominated: Silver Matilda Award for Best Technical Design
Nominated: Best Leading Actor: Margi Brown Ash
Nominated Best Supporting Actor: Travis Ash
https://artsreview.com.au/margi-brown-ash-stages-rare-double-act-exclusively-for-brisbane-audiences/
“Actors Margi Brown Ash and Travis Ash have an understandably outstanding on-stage trust and rapport. Neither seeks to outshine the other, but both sparkle in their own ways. Margi has this energy and passion you feel is almost punk or jazz in its risk taking and unpredictability. Yet once she does or says something, you’re utterly convinced by her.”
JOEY THE MECHANICAL BOY
The Blue Room Perth
Co-written by Margi Brown Ash and Leah Mercer
Directed by Leah Mercer
Performers Margi Brown Ash and Phil Moilin
Winner Multiple Blue Room Awards
Winner: Performing Arts WA (PAWA) Awards (2015): The production received six nominations, with Dr. Leah Mercer winning Best Director.
Nominations: The play was nominated for Best Production and Best Script in the 2015 PAWA Awards.
DAVID ZAMPATTI
The West Australia
Margi Brown Ash and Philip Miolin
in
Joey the Mechanical Boy
In their award-winning 2012 show Eve, writer-performer Margi Brown Ash and writer-director Leah Mercer told the sad story of the now-forgotten Australian writer Eve Langley. The biographical details, though, were just a jumping off point for their exploration of Eve's rapture and for Ash's remarkable performance.
Their new play, Joey: the Mechanical Boy, also deals with real events and people.
Philip Miolin - almost unrecognisable… delivers a career performance as Joey…blindingly lucid…Miolin's performance … accurate and impressive.
Tessa Darcey's claustrophobic, ramshackle set, Karen Cook's strikingly precise lighting and Joe Lui's dense, edgy soundscape echo Joey's interior landscape, adding greatly to the show.
And, best of all, Ash's longstanding collaboration with Mercer brings her back to Perth. She's powerful and utterly convincing as both Joey's mother and Bettelheim; her transitions flawless, her voices precise, her physical and emotional control exquisite. She's quite something.
Eve
https://vimeo.com/153873753
Metro Arts, QLD (2012)
The Blue Room, WA (2012)
Brisbane Powerhouse, QLD (2017)
Written and performed by Margi Brown Ash
Storyteller performed by Zac Callaghan (Metro Arts, 2012)
Philip Moilin (The Blue Room, 2012)
Travis Ash (Brisbane Powerhouse, 2017)
Musicians: Moshlo (Metro Arts, 2012)
Rodney Alderly (The Blue Room, 2012)
Travis Ash (Brisbane Powerhouse, 2012)
Directed by Leah Mercer
Designer: Aaron Barton (Metro Arts 2012, Brisbane Powerhouse, 2017)
Designer: Tess Darcy (The Blue Room 2012)
Winner: Blue Room Awards: Best Performance
Winner: Blue Room Awards: Best Production (Members’ Choice)
Winner: Gold Matilda Award
“Eve is a deeply considered, richly constructed celebration of a determinedly extravagant life, and questions our perceptions of degrees of madness, eccentricity, and the creative spirit.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJ0A2ME3EMs
Metro Arts, QLD (2011)
La Boite Theatre Company, QLD (2012)
Queensland Theatre Company, QLD (2015)
Co-producer, co-writer and performer: Margi Brown Ash
Director: Leah Mercer
Actor/Musican/Composer/Co-Writer:: Travis Ash
Set Designer/Visual Artist: Bev Jensen
Winner: Gold Matilda Award (for Margi Brown Ash’s Body of Work)
Nominated: Matilda Awards Best Set Design
HOME
An absolute delight
Sonny Clarke
HOME - La Boite Indie
Margi Brown Ash is as charming as they come, and her latest production Home (Co-Devised & Directed by Leah Mercer) is an absolute delight…
As [Margi] starts with her favourite story you instantly become that wide-eyed child sitting in the kitchen of your favourite Aunt; her voice swings with power and lulls in sorrow as the fates of the characters are told. The stories continue to stream, in and out of Margi’s past, with seamless time-travel through her decades as she travails the road to America, to motherhood, to acting, to hash laced brownies on the set of ‘Number 96’. It’s impossible to avoid the outward expression of emotion here and we laughed out-loud and giggled at her antics, for she is the consummate entertainer. Then as Margi struggles to let go of the ashes of her mother I became weepy with remembrance. Every audience member connects for different reasons at different times and this keeps the energy of the room at a constant high.
Scenes from her own home are littered with the debris of other broken homes; refugees, war veterans and displaced survivors also present their tales in small speeches and soliloquy performed by Brown Ash’s own talented son, Travis Ash (Co-deviser & Composer), who also accompanies her performance with evocative piano melodies. These are the tales from which Home was born;
The stage is a simple but clever affair; clear Perspex creates ghosts of windows and a door suspended, almost levitating as memories do… Bev Jensen (Visual artist, Designer) also provides powerful images that project onto the soft, white, nest-like curtains that contain us.
Margi’s energy is unbelievable. She skips and scuttles and sprints around the stage for an hour and half without interval and it’s pleasing to say that no interval is needed. When the play ended and the invited cast members had taken their bow, there was a pause – we didn’t want to leave.