RW: The Promise

Throughout 2008, Sydney saw an endless parade of war-themed theatre. This interest, behaving like a genuine trauma, spanned dance, performance and text-based productions alike. Yet more often than not, war in Sydney was discussed the way sex is discussed by 14-year-old virgins: it was simultaneously everything and nothing, an undefined cloud of experience, its consequences [...]

Anatomy Titus, The Work of Wonder: This Review is About the Audience.

1. Almost by accident, I came across the following story:
In [the Serbo-Croatian war in the early 1990s], for the first time in history, the tactic of rape became a strategy. Soldiers took women from their homes, from UN or Red Cross or refugee convoys, and put them in the so called “rape camps.” Young girls, [...]

Apocalypse and circular revenge: A View of Concrete & Family Stories

In Melbourne in 2006, Alison Croggon suspected she may not have liked Gareth Ellis's script of A View of Concrete half as much without Lauren Taylor's direction. In Sydney in 2008, I think she got it right. In Zagreb in 2005, I walked out of a derelict factory, seeing a nightmarish production of Family Stories, [...]

Some useful ideas.

Dated in the future, but a little bit older than that, Zadie Smith's exquisite article, Two Paths for a Novel, from the New York Review of Books, could be a very fine read for your week. It is a comparative review of Joseph O'Neill's Netherland and Tom McCarthy's Remainer, and a long essay on 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 [...]

Rio Saki & Other Falling Debris; with regret

La Mama and Parnassus’ Den Productions present: Rio Saki & Other Falling Debris. Written by Shaun Charles. Directed by Dave Letch. Performed by Daniel Agapiou, Melanie Berry, Cat Commander, Joshua Hewitt, Gina Morley and Gus Murray. Production designed by Christina Logan-Bell. Lighting designed by Christopher Tollefson. La Mama at the Carlton Courthouse, 349 Drummond [...]

The Scoundrel That You Need; or, a welcome addition to our limited (albeit expanding) repertoire

The Scoundrel That You Need. Written by Aleksandr Ostrovsky. Directed by James McCaughey. Lighting Design by Chris Sanders. Audio-Visual Design by Brad Picken. Sound Design by David Membery. Cast includes Stephen Costan, Steve Gome, Miria Kostiuk, Evelyn Krape, Olga Makeeva, Grant Mouldey, Ben Pfeiffer and Elizabeth Thomson. Gasworks, Melbourne, until 24 May.

You know the joke: [...]

How to Disappear Completely and Never Be Found

How much theatrical naturalism is too much theatrical naturalism, asks Jana Perkovic, and wishes there were fewer Irish accents on stage.