Off the Leash Theatre
OUR GUESTS for the evening on 6th September were Tracey Rabl, President, actor and Director with Off the Leash Theatre (OTL) and Leanne Gooding, Treasurer and regular production manager.
Tracey told us she was born in Warragul and first worked in the Commercial Banking Co. office, now a restaurant behind the taxi rank in Warragul then on to be a tour guide at Darnum Musical Village, before another change into Aged Care. Tracey is now with the Planned Activity Group in Baw Baw Shire. Tracey was involved in musicals but first trod the boards as an actor in ‘Last Cab to Darwin’ with OTL.
OTL was started by Jeannie Haughton in 2010 to create sustainable and challenging performance opportunities for performers and audiences. A focus on Australian works, the company has provided a great diversity of plays, readings, street theatre, installations, training and even a radio play to audiences across Gippsland, commencing with ‘The Return’ by Reg Cribb. But original works by Jeannie Haughton and Bill Frew have also been presented.
Many awards for outstanding achievement have been won by OTL productions in the Gippsland Associated Theatre Inc. (GAT) awards, first with ‘Last Taxi to Darwin’ and then with Jeannie’s play ‘Wild Dogs’. And these performances and others have travelled across Gippsland to venues in such as Pakenham, Stratford and Yinnar.
In 2015, OTL mentored a group of young, local actors in the newly established Impact Theatre,
In 2015, OTL mentored a group of young, local actors in the newly established Impact Theatre, established by Steph Clark, in the production of a play Steph wrote entitled ‘And Now We Wait’.
The group is now established and active in Melbourne.
Jeannie was the driving force behind last year’s local commemoration of the Gallipoli Landing Centenary production ‘Better is Piece’ which combined the talents of OTL, the Warragul Municipal Band and the Warragul Choral. And this year OTL presented their first musical production ‘Next to Normal’ with a small cast of six.
The latest production, to be performed in Middel’s in Drouin, the Railway Hotel and in the foyer of the West Gippsland Arts Centre in Warragul, is ‘Milo’s Wake’, the story of an Irishman who throws his own wake so that his friends can nice things about him …. or not!
A Founder's Spouse, a President, a Treasurer, another resident & actor, an actor also