In Development

Camelia

Camelia was a young Egyptian movie star who lived a short but action-packed life in Cairo and Alexandria in the late 1940s. She made many movies, was rumoured to have had an affair with King Farouk, bore a child, and died in a suspicious aeroplane crash in the desert in her early twenties. But who was Camelia really, and what were the forces, social, and political, that swirled about her in this postwar period? This is a new musical in development.

Current project stage

We hosted Hayat Selim, part of our writing team, in Australia in February 2023. Here’s what Helen Musa said about Hayat Selim and Camelia in her 2023 City News article. And from Jessica Cordell in Canberra Weekly.

Also, here’s Hayat Selim on Street Talk.

The next step with this project is to fundraise for comprehensive work on the musical’s premise, then develop script and score. We will build on the great relationships developed as part of Hayat Selim’s recent residency in Australia. The goal will be to get the creatives together in 2025 (when we bring Hayat to Australia for a couple more concerts, pending funding). Then, once the script and score is ready, we’ll move to a first reading stage, then stage the reading at an appropriate venue in our region.

Here’s the 2022 Her Canberra story on our work on Camelia.

Background

Ian Batterham began work on Camelia in 2012, having long been interested in Egypt and the world of this story. His skills as a researcher and extensive background as an archivist provided the ideal platform on which to build this project. Ian invited Dianna Nixon to undertake creative development tasks on the work to look at his early drafts of this music theatre work. He had drafted some dialogue sequences interspersed with ideas for songs, some of which were later arranged for piano and string ensemble by various local composers.

These creative development processes revealed that what was needed was a rigorous approach to developing the dramatic impetus of the work, and creating a sound world that truly represents the time and place in which this story is set. There was also a pressing need to bring cultural awareness to the work, by bringing on creatives with the appropriate skills and background.

Camelia, the persona, has a unique story, and Lilian Cohen (her real name) is a fascinating character. A great work of music theatre is a highly integrated work of art, where music, text, drama, dance, design intersect and work together to create a unique world for the audience. This is how the great and long-lived music theatre works were created, and why they draw audiences for long seasons, and in many countries, and have a very long life. So that is our challenge.

In 2016 and 2017 creative development processes were financed by Ian Batterham, and supported by The Street Theatre. Those processes explored some dialogue sequences and song elements that Ian had created. The team of artists assembled on those creative developments provided valuable insight and suggestions for the work. We ended the process with a clear set of priorities for taking the work forward, including culturally-informed practice.

The concept, the main character, and the world of this work is fascinating and rich with possibility, that was clear. However, we needed to develop a strong ‘why’ for the work, and a dramatic impetus that would be strong enough to justify it being made into a stage musical. We needed to find a team with appropriate and specific cultural understanding, personal experience, and considerable professional experience in composition and lyric writing. Core to that team are the below creatives. Others will join us as the project develops.

Key creatives

Hayat Selim brings exceptional skills as composer, singer and musician. We experienced this first hand during her residency in Australia in Feb 2023. Hayat is a media composer and singer-songwriter from Cairo. Having graduated with a masters in composition for screen from the Royal College of Music, she is now based in London. In 2019 Hayat’s song Mirage (for the short film by Lena Srinivasan) was nominated in the Best Song category of the Jerry Goldsmith Awards 2019. See the embedded video. In 2020 she was commissioned to be the singer and lyricist for Sonuscore and Steinberg’s Ethnic Vocal Phrases virtual instrument library. Hayat writes and performs music for film, games and TV in parallel with her own song releases.

Vidya Makan – Dianna saw Vidya perform one of her own brilliant songs, Hugh Jackman, at Chapel Off Chapel in 2019 as part of the Home Grown series. Vidya then came to Canberra to participate in a music theatre creative development project at The Street Theatre. Vidya was very in demand, until Covid shut the arts down, including bringing the Australian production of Six to a sudden halt, in which Vidya played Catherine Parr. Thankfully, Six was able to tour again, with Vidya on board. Vidya’s skills as lyricist and songwriter, and her deep understanding of music theatre performance bring another very strong element to the team. 2023 saw her musical The Lucky Country premiere at The Hayes, and she was a cast member in Melbourne Theatre Company’s new musical, Bloom, soon to play at Sydney Theatre Company. Vidya spent much of 2024 as Australia’s Eliza in Hamilton.

Vidya directed, produced and wrote the viral sensation I NEED YOU TO SEE ME; a call to action to the entertainment industry for visibility and inclusion, featuring 101 BIPoC and CALD performers aged 18-25. Vidya has been commissioned by the likes of NGV and Chips & Gravy; writing songs for the Screen Australia funded comedic web series She Becomes Her. Other performance credits include: Hayes Theatre’s Merrily We Roll Along, Altitude Theatre’s Once On This Island, Dot/Marie in Sunday In The Park With George (Watch This) earning her a Green Room nomination for Best Performance In A Leading Role, Lady Capulet in Romeo and Juliet (Australian Shakespeare Company), the Australian tour of Green Day’s American Idiot (Shake & Stir). Vidya is a proud graduate of the Queensland Conservatorium’s Bachelor of Musical Theatre and holds minority storytelling at the heart of all of her work.

Work-In-Progress

We held a fundraiser via the Australian Cultural Fund website, which partly financed the artistic residency by Hayat Selim in Canberra in early February 2023. The residency included a performance and Q and A given by Hayat (accompanied by Dianna Nixon), and a screen composition masterclass at the ANU School of Music. artsACT supported Dianna’s work on this project. Find out more about this on the Mirage page.

The next step will be an intensive writing room to develop the story and script in preparation for creating songs, and score. Dianna met with Diversity Arts Australia to discuss ways we can ensure the work is culturally appropriate and that it deals with the story with sensitivity.

Important dates and activities

1/ Thanks to a donation received in 2024, in 2025 Hayat Selim and Vidya Makan will work closely with Dianna Nixon to find the ‘why’ for this musical. Once this is clear, we will assess who else we need on the team to carry the work forward.

2/ Create a synopsis, a dramatic structure, a scene list. With this material the team would then craft the detail of the whole script.

2/ Research the sound world of this drama – determine genre, style, scale of the musical and sound world, integrating elements including the cabaret scene, music of the period, as well as the influence of cinematic scoring and foley sound elements. Once they determine the musical language of the work, craft songs and lyrics, and orchestrate the work.

4/ Creative development and intensive writing process.

5/ Rehearsed reading and investment pitch at an appropriate venue in our region.