United Solo Theatre Festival

The 17th Annual United Solo Theatre Festival

Featuring shows from across the country and around the globe,  the world's largest solo theatre festival is entering our seventeenth season!

Schedule of Events

7pm: The Fabulous Life of Lina Prokofiev - Starring Faye Bendrups

Lina Prokofiev: an aspiring concert artist born in Madrid, glamorous, gregarious, independent, cosmopolitan and free. As a child, she travelled the world with her opera-singing parents, completed school in New York and spoke more than 6 languages fluently.

Her ambitions changed forever when she met the virtuoso pianist and composer Sergei Prokofiev at a concert he gave in Carnegie Hall. She supported Prokofiev through his early struggles, raised their two sons, abandoned her career for his, and stayed loyal to his memory until her death at the age of 91.

Lina's story evokes aspects of a world in a state of flux; regime change, division, war in Europe, forced detentions, disappearances. Her life began to unravel in 1935 when Prokofiev was persuaded to return to the USSR. In 1948, as a foreigner, Lina was denounced as a counter-revolutionary spy and sentenced to 20 years hard labour in the Gulag. But she never gave up. In Lina's words: “Life is fabulous! If you never stop fighting!”.

Australian writer/performer Faye Bendrups uses lyrics and music of Lina's concert repertoire to illuminate her story. A minimalist sonic backdrop –ever evoking the spectre of Prokofiev- is played by Argentine musician Guillermo Anad on viola.

8:30pm: Step And Repeat - Starring Jillian Macklin

Jill is an actor who was steadily climbing the hill of her own career only to find herself and her pail of hopes and dreams tumbling down to the valley of her inner hell: overlooked and unemployed. With nothing seeming to move in her favor and having exhausted all options, she decides to return to the familiar; she goes home. With this move comes the challenges of facing the fear of failure, figuring out how to pivot and navigating the sometimes suffocating love of family. In order to rise from it, she has to sit in it. Then, hopefully find a way to return to her love of the art, even though it doesn't love her back.