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Shakespeare’s R & J

“In an exclusive boy’s boarding school, where students are forbidden to read Romeo and Juliet, four students put on a secret production of the play which brings violence, betrayal, lust, love and mortality into their own lives.” This is an all male Romeo and Juliet set in this particular location to capture the sense of “sexual hysteria” that Mr Calarco believes the Shakespeare play, is, in many ways about. The adapter Joe Calarco goes on to say in his notes to his text: “Put those boys in a school where Catholicism reigns, patriarchy rules, and where simply reading Shakespeare is…

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Mathinna

Stephen Page, the Artistic Director and Choreographer of this Dance/Drama talks of being “Inspired by a young girl’s journey between two cultures, Mathinna traces the history of a young Aboriginal girl removed from her traditional life, adopted into western colonial society to be ultimately returned to the fragments of her original heritage. Mathinna became the archetype of the “stolen child”. The original idea sprang from the viewing of Mathinna’s portrait by Thomas Bock painted in the nineteenth century. It is in the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery in Hobart. It is an affecting painting. It and other sketches of the…

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Billy Elliot

Billy Elliot The musical is set in the North east of England in the tumultuous years of 1984/1985. This was the time of Margaret Thatcher’s Government’s confrontation with the National Union of Mineworkers and the torrid events that resulted from a nationwide miner’s strike. Lee Hall the creator of the Book and Lyrics of the show, talks about his own childhood, growing up in Newcastle and discovering through poetry at school that he dreamt of being a writer and “that he decided that he needed to go somewhere that writers went and so I set my heart on Cambridge. And…

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Gallipoli

Several years ago I regarded the best THEATRE company in Australia was The Australian Opera Company. This was when Moffat Oxenbould was at the helm. The reason I thought of the Opera Company as the best theatre company was because of its daring commitment to new work. The chance of failure was enormous. To commission new work and then to mount it was a great risk and endeavour. Especially an Opera, the costs (Size of cast, chorus, orchestra, set, costumes, crew) let alone the possibility of failure were prohibitive but they had the courage to do it. I saw work…

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Codgers

  This is a new play that has been nurtured by the Riverside production arm called BREAKOUT. (Robert Love and Camilla Rountree). It had a workshop season at Riverside last year. The play is set in a suburban gymnasium where are group of old friends, CODGERS, meet, exercise, have a community sing in the sauna and then a follow up chin wag out on the terrace with a cup of coffee and home made savoury biscuits (cheese and chutney). The action of the play passes over several weeks. It is a two act conventionally constructed entertainment with a great deal…

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The Bland Project

To go to the theatre on a Friday night after a week of mentally and emotionally charged work can be a very testing choice. I arrived at Carriageworks a little tired and more than jaded. When I left the Carriageworks after the performance I had been stimulated back to a very alert and maybe even rapturous state of being. Such can be the power of art. The Bland Project was initially developed in 2006 through a Critical Path residency at the Drill hall. Now after a two year further development it is been performed at Performance Space. “Performance Space animates…

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