atmospheric
3xSisters and independent theatre (a polemic)
3xSisters is an extraordinary production, and possibly the best thing I’ve seen the independent theatre do in Australia yet. Examining Chekhov’s classical play with the confidence that comes with serious effort, large amount of talent, and big budget – as usual with Hayloft Project - it does what independent theatre should do: it insists that [...]
RW: Goodbye Vaudeville Charlie Mudd
Katz’s characters are always vaguely aware of their fictitiousness and, like suburban teenagers, less fight it than try to manipulate their own image, make willful exits, evolve, delude: and yet, they are always trapped in the strict girdle of a Lally Katz play, a self-aware machine of its own, that gallops with the unrelenting mercilessness of the grown-up world. Levels of discourse intermingle, predictable plotlines start and finish against all odds, while the unpredictable ones drift off, and the characters, like the repeatedly erased Daffy Duck in that seminal cartoon, struggle to assert themselves.
Sunstruck
Breaking all rules of good composition, I would like to start on an unrelated note. It leaves me wondering whether the atmospheric density, the sensual coherence, so common in Australian theatre (Liminal Theatre, cabaret, quaint circus, The Heart of Another is a Dark Forest, and many many more), even art in general, from film (The [...]
The Heart of Another is a Dark Forest
As published in Laneway.
Twelve Restless performers are confronted with twelve Rawcus performers, fully-able bodies with those with disabilities of different level and quality, in this fascinating exploration of the mystery of the other. Program notes quote from Kafka:
When you stand in front of me and look at me,
What do you know of the griefs that [...]
Review: Kids Can Get Lost: A Live Instructional Guide on Safe Family Roadtrips
Kids Can Get Lost: A Live Instructional Guide on Safe Family Roadtrips. Devised by Spilt Second. Producer/artistic director: Matthew Kneale. Director: Dan Koerner. Costume designer: Esther Hayes. Sound designer: Rob Stewart. Performers: Paul Bongiorno, Reuben Brown, Josh Cassidy, Shelly Lauman, Ellen Steele, Wazzadeeno Wharton-Thomas. Narration: Simon Godfrey. Season ended.
It is a remarkable testament to the [...]
Meryl Tankard; two stories.
After the untimely death of the brilliant Tanja Liedtke, the just-announced artistic director of the Sydney Dance Company, the company commissioned work from three choreographers, ad hoc, to fill up 2008 while in transition. Meryl Tankard was one. Inuk2 was based on her 1997 Inuk, meaning 'human' in Inuit, a work I haven't seen. By [...]
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