Matthew (Matt) Crosby and I person known each different for some time—our paths archetypal crossed when, arsenic manager of Multicultural Arts Victoria, I worked with Crosby connected a task involving 1 of our starring artists, modern Butoh performer Yumi Umiumare.
We’ve recovered each different again, 20 oregon much years later. The NIDA-trained histrion is 1 of the fewer Suzuki Method masters successful Australia and a surviving conduit betwixt Western and Asian theatrical canons. He has worked crossed Australia’s theatre ecology since the 1990s, and continues to make caller work.
The instrumentality to aged haunts
We met astatine Mario’s successful Fitzroy, an aged haunt and 1 of the fewer stables near connected Brunswick Street — a spot where two older men tin still consciousness their past.Crosby is directing Falling Heads, for the Thursday Group, which debuts this Wednesday. He then heads to Odense, Denmark, for a play astatine Teater Momentum successful 2025–26.
An archetypal work, Falling Heads says Crosby was inspired by Akutagawa Ryūnosuke’s 1917 abbreviated story The Story of a Head that Fell Off, it merges dialogue, a cappella, dance, shadiness play, and reportage and explores “fake news, authoritarianism, war, and the tension betwixt caput and body.”
It is simply a “co-devised fable astir estranged twins Tomasz and Steph, who take opposing sides successful warring tribes,” says Crosby.
“Our story concerns two warring tribes—it’s not humanities successful immoderate way, it’s a fable astir what happens when a radical of a akin civilization split.”
Falling Heads has echoes of past Greek narratives from warring Achaeans and Trojans, Sparta and Athens, modern ones successful Gaza, Ukraine and galore different wars. Civilisations calved of war and seldom astatine peace.
Ancient thespian ghosts swim successful memories
Crosby orders breakfast—his movements and tone, subtle, light, curated, precise, and considered.
“One poached ovum connected toast with spinach,” helium says. A cleanable breakfast, nary excess. Spartan Samurai. His wiry framework is the effect of a beingness devoted to Japanese-inspired question theatre arsenic overmuch arsenic to genetics. He is an elegant thinker, speaker, actor, and theatre-maker.
You tin see, and astir consciousness Crosby instrumentality to Greece, to a shard of memory, from the aboriginal 1990s, when touring with The Drought by Greek Australian playwright Tom Petsinis.
“We played successful 1 of Thessaloniki’s modern theatres, a large play – when the play ended, I jumped connected a ferry and headed out, yet landing astatine the past theatre of Thasos, connected the headland overlooking the harbour.”
“It was a beauteous spot, a small amphitheatre with conifer trees increasing from the assemblage seats—stone present dilapidated by clip and history. They were renovating it, but I crawled done the cyclone obstruction and snuck onto the stage. It was astir the clip I’d conscionable finished performing successful [Barrie] Kosky’s Faust.
“In Thasos, I felt the ghosts of actors from millennia past calling maine in. I fto fly!”
Suddenly, a gruff mason appeared and scolded Crosby, telling him helium wasn’t allowed to beryllium there.
“I said, ‘Come on, man, I’m an actor.’ The aged mason thought for a moment, then sat down and watched maine bash Mephistopheles from Faust.”
The mason was a earthy custodian of theatre—a Greek, Thasos was his and Greece’s—and successful recognising the Crosby arsenic an actor, helium acknowledged his tradition and innate close to enactment connected that hallowed past stage.
“There I was, feeling similar I’d stepped backmost 2,000 years, to the birthplace of theatre—an speech betwixt myself and this aged mason.”
Made successful Japan – the Suzuki connection
Crosby successful the 1990s, trained and worked with the renowned Suzuki Tadashi, groundbreaking playwright, theorist, and educator, laminitis of the Suzuki Company of Toga, Japan. Suzuki developed the Suzuki Method of histrion training, a rigorous subject emphasising carnal control, breath, and the body’s cardinal relation successful performance.
Suzuki’s Macbeth for example, was a stark exploration of illusion, guilt, and memory. The story centres connected an ageing antheral who believes helium is Macbeth, haunted by his supposed crimes. Condensed to an hour, it focuses connected cardinal scenes and monologues, framed by Suzuki’s invention of a ‘Farewell Cult’—robed figures successful Ray-Bans carrying staffs topped with sheep skulls—who take the spot of the witches and impulse the antheral to fto spell of “the burdens of memory, past and adjacent words themselves.”
Suzuki erstwhile said, “In western drama, from the Greeks to Shakespeare, we are usually dealing with protagonists who are very wide astir their desires and goals. … Illusion is founded connected strong desire. … Macbeth is simply a play that shows the effect of this ambivalence.”
“Suzuki was a immense power connected my work,” helium says. Crosby learned however to beryllium “practical and self-reliant” successful autarkic theatre from Suzuki.
“You can’t enactment connected shows with immense sets and designs. The whole amusement indispensable beryllium capable to beryllium packed into a suitcase and performed anywhere.”
Janus similar 1 look to the eastbound and different to the west
Crosby fuses Asian and Western theatrical traditions—Butoh, Suzuki Method, Greek tragedy, European modernism, and absurdism—to try and marque caller narratives.
“These past forms, East and West,” helium says, “all woody with archetypal characters.”

There’s a country successful Falling Heads where the occupying regime, The Sunflowers, clasp a party, and attendees look to beryllium connected acid.
“I person often said the people of that country owes a batch to the absurdist movement—Ionesco, Jarre and others.”
The acappella chants inspired by past Balkan songs, stripped of vibrato, while “The People of the Wild Boars—who are colonised by the Sunflowers—meditate with tonal chanting,” a signifier Crosby developed from work with the Polish radical Pieśń Kozła, oregon Song of the Goat, “code for Greek tragedy,” helium says.
“My view is that, ultimately, if you are doing theatre that centres the trade of the actor, then you are leaning connected Greek theatre traditions,” Crosby says.
In Asian and Western traditions, Crosby says, archetypes and stories are used to ask, “What is right, and what is wrong successful society—ethically?”
“Greek theatre asked what our society agrees is an due way to proceed. The theatre, particularly the amphitheatre, is simply a forum for speech betwixt the play connected stage and the assemblage who considers what is taking place.”
“In our show, the stage is successful the middle, and the assemblage sits connected either side. There’s a interruption successful the traditional narration betwixt actors and audience, which allows us to research archetypal characters. In the original, there’s lone 1 named character—all the others are archetypes: the soldier, the captain, the twins, the oracle. They each go metaphors for what happens when radical tear themselves apart. This is astir each conflicts, each wars—Gaza, Ukraine, Yemen, adjacent the US now.”
Conflict and communion
As a theatre-maker, Crosby seeks what play has sought to do—move, critique, look for truth, communicate, and hopefully scope catharsis, done statement betwixt assemblage and actor. Theatre ever sought to question the morality of powerfulness and ideas, dogmas and values, says Crosby, who’s acrophobic astir the existent polarisation.
“It conscionable seems to person exploded! People take sides, and it’s hard to person dialogue. Ultimately, you think, it could beryllium the demise of the US arsenic a state and civilian war is not caller to the Americans.”
“Theatre is besides astir struggle and war, betwixt people, families, nations, lovers and so on. Regardless of politics, struggle seems to beryllium the eternal quality condition. Even the operation ‘theatre of war’ carries resonance—it’s portion of our being.”
Crosby recalls what Australian playwright John Romeril told him successful the 1990s, “Do you cognize there hasn’t been a time successful the past of humanity when radical haven’t been astatine war?”
“We support making the aforesaid mistakes—losing show of communication, falling into misunderstanding.”
Towards Europe—and back
Falling Heads opens this week connected Wednesday successful North Melbourne. Crosby says he’ll “open the doors to audiences” successful the aforesaid way the stone mason did for him successful Thasos 30 years ago.”
“Regardless of the immense size of some amphitheatres, you ever had a consciousness of intimacy betwixt assemblage and actor.”
More than a director, Crosby is simply a curator magician—in communion with past Greek, Chinese, and Japanese theatre, when it “wasn’t conscionable entertainment—but a ritualised, and often communal experience”.
“Theatre was a way of asking, ‘What is close and what is wrong?'”
The time aft Falling Heads closes, the institution flies to Copenhagen to work with Danish artists successful collaboration.
“I’ve developed strong connections with Asia,” says Crosby, “now want to widen them to Europe—to beryllium the span Australia tin be.”
“I think it would beryllium fantastic to spell to Greece,” helium adds.
“In the existent milieu, our work would find a earthy home.”
Falling Heads opens this Wednesday for a play astatine the Small Hall, 430 Queensberry St, North Melbourne