An outdoor audio experience blending music, voice and the environment, inviting audiences to listen to the ocean at dawn.
Sea Stories is coming to Dixon Park Beach this spring, running from 26 September to 4 October. It's an outdoor audio experience created by Naarm-Melbourne theatre maker and dramaturg Roslyn Oades, and it's part of New Annual's sixth edition, which spreads theatre, music, visual art, circus and cabaret across beaches, ocean baths, pubs, galleries and public spaces around the city. This particular version was commissioned by New Annual for Newcastle.
It's a bit of a hybrid: part meditation, part storytelling, and an audio love letter to the ocean. Oades built it from interviews with water-loving Novocastrians, using those voices to explore the 'flow state'—that feeling of being completely immersed in water and how it can unlock resilience, clarity and connection. The piece blends music, voice and the environment into a communal listening experience, and it's the voices of Jeanette Lacey, Joe Clayton, Monique Murphy, Arwin Arwin, Ken Lambert and Peter Gillam that you'll hear through your headset.
The setup is simple: you settle into Dixon Park Beach before sunrise with a chair or a picnic blanket and a headset, and watch the dawn break as the audio plays around you. The whole thing runs about 40 minutes, so you're in and out well before the morning rush. It's suitable for ages 14 and over.
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It runs on 26, 27, 28, 29, 30 September and 1, 2, 4 October, with each session from 5:10 to 6:05am at Dixon Park Beach, 19 Ocean St, Merewether. Tickets are A$10.00.
