Ben Apfelbaum

BILLY ELLIOT THE MUSICAL : MEDIA CALL

Co Producer Louise Withers introduced the Media Call by stressing the relevance of Billy Elliot’s themes.

They included the importance of family, the community and loss thereof, following one’s dreams, the need for tolerance, compassion and understanding and the importance of support and encouragement. The universality of these themes has meant that this musical  has been translated into other languages many times.

Simon Pollard, the Director of this production, stressed the quality of the cast and what a pleasure it was to work with them. He pointed out that the four boys who play Billy on alternate nights  were selected from 200 applicants in a process that commenced in September last year. These boys had to sing, dance, do ballet moves, tap dance and acrobatics, all with a Geordie accent.  He was further pleased, that unlike the tour in 1007 which played in Sydney and Melbourne only, would now play in Brisbane and Adelaide due to a more flexible set. He also mentioned that the ‘Billy effect’ was such that last year more boys applied for the Royal  Academy of Ballet in London than girls.

In order to showcase the talents of each individual Billy five edited excerpts were presented to the media. The stars looked down  and shine when Billy is played by Omar Abiad. ‘Expressing Yourself ‘ where Billy is played by Wade Neilsen, accompanied by Hamesh Monger  playing his best friend Michael. In ‘Angry’ Billy is played by River Mardesic and finally in ‘Solidarity’ Billy is played by Jamie Rogers.

Simon Pollard amusingly pointed out that the language in this production had  been cleaned up . In the film the f word was used 44 times but in this production it was used only 17 times.

On the basis of all the Billys we saw, no matter who you get, you will get a great show.

All pics by Ben Apfelbaum (c)

Published by Ben Apfelbaum

My photography began when my father handed me the proverbial brownie box camera as a child. As cameras developed I went through Fujica and Olympus range finders graduating to my first single lens reflex camera, the Minolta SRT101, the latter being the greatest facilitator to my growth as a photographer. Digital photography has only added to this. I was a regular contributor to Camera Craft magazine (Australian Camera ) for over three years. During Australia’s Bicentennial year (1988) I made it a personal project to document the celebrations. This culminated in the creation of a book of my photos which was published in 1989. The book was called CELEBRATING AUSTRALIA and came with an accompanying calendar. My works have appeared in a number of publications including the coffee book entitled MY AUSTRALIA (1989), publisher Robertsbridge Severn. This book had a preface by the then Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke. I was a co-photographer on a book entitled SYDNEY- DISCOVER THE CITY with text written by Robert Treborlang. Major Mitchell Press was the publisher. Also for two years I was the photographer for calendars celebrating Sydney’s multicultural communities. The two calendars were entitled MULTICULTURAL SYDNEY. My work appeared in a group exhibition held at Sydney’s Town Hall pertaining to the diversity of life in South America to raise money for orphanages there. I have over one hundred photos stored in the New South Wales State Library archive. I had a solo exhibition held in 2007 entitled Ben’s Lens at the Sydney Jewish Museum which celebrated the vibrancy of the Sydney Jewish community. Some of these photos are on the Museum’s permanent display. I have exhibited internationally firstly at the Spruill Gallery in Atlanta Georgia, United States, and in an exhibition entitled Kosher and Co at the Jewish Museum in Berlin. Currently I am a regular contributor to J-Wire and this esteemed publication. To celebrate the opening of a permanent Photography Gallery, the State Library of New South Wales selected 400 shots from its archive of over 2,000,000 images to display in the new gallery. An image of mine was plucked out of the multi million photo archive to be part of the inaugural exhibition.