Bonnywood Rising

Bonnywood Rising is a live-cinema performance project produced by Grayson Cooke and the SCU School of Arts and Social Sciences for the Arts Northern Rivers multi-arts project If These Halls Could Talk. In this project, Grayson Cooke worked with 100 members of the Bonalbo community to celebrate the histories – the true histories AND the slightly embellished ones – of the Bonalbo & District Memorial Hall.
 
Community halls play many roles for their people – as meeting places, as theatres, as rehearsal spaces, as sports clubs and, importantly, as cinemas. In Bonnywood Rising a cinematic history is imagined for the hall, weaving a yarn that places the Bonalbo Hall at the centre of the largest Australian regional film corporation you’ve never heard of.
 
Bonnywood Rising is presented as live-cinema, bringing together a film screening with live narration by Ewingar resident Alan Highfield, and live music by Amphibian. Part Melodrama, part Western, part Historical Epic and part Complete Fabrication, Bonnywood Rising is a celebration of the ingenuity, the resilience, the spirit and the humour of the peoples West of the Range.