Year: 2008

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…

ATYP in its vision statement sets out “To be the leading Australian youth theatre, inspiring and nurturing imagination, confidence and creativity in young people across the country.” In pursuing that endeavour Tim Jones has invited Meryl Tankard to work with a group of young people on VX 18504 and for Ms Tankard it is a re-visit to a work she created some time ago. It was an opportunity to re-imagine VX 18504 through the experiences of young people. VX 18504 was the army service number of Meryl Tankard’s father. The performance examined the theme of conflict in society from the…

I read this play maybe nine months ago. It is so beautiful to read (in this magnificent translation). I shall quote some excerpts… “I have a baby in my belly. Wahab! My belly is full of you. My belly is full of you. You see? Isn’t it amazing? It’s magnificent and horrible, isn’t it? It’s an abyss. And it’s like freedom to wild birds, isn’t it? And there are no more words. Just the wind! I have a child in my belly. When I heard Elhame tell me, an ocean exploded in my head. Seared.” Some more : “I’m leaving,…

This is a Co-Op production. This play has one actor who plays the HYPNOTIST (John Leary) and has rehearsed it for several weeks with the Director (Tanya Goldberg) “This actor wears Walkman/iPod headphones connected to a wireless receiver–this enables the HYPNOTIST to speak to and instruct a second actor through a microphone without the audience hearing.” In performance there is a second actor who plays FATHER. “The actor playing FATHER can be either male or female and of any adult age. This actor is completely unrehearsed in their role and walk on stage at the beginning with no knowledge of…

  This is a Co-Op production. The play was first presented at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2001 and then subsequently at The Bush Theatre. This production began it’s Australian life at this year’s Adelaide Fringe in March, 2002. The program notes suggest that the play was inspired by the Jon-Benet Ramsay and Jamie Bulger cases. But Peter Morris himself is never that specific in the play itself or in the original program notes. This is a conceit of the Production or Director. He began, he says, with notes of “monologues about tabloidization of youth”. Now he says he doesn’t…

I am a fan of Max Lyandvert’s interests. Fully enthused by his work on the puzzling but intriguing Richard Foreman’s works MY HEAD WAS A SLEDGEHAMMER and NOW THAT COMMUNISM IS DEAD MY LIFE FEELS EMPTY and his sound work on so much of my theatre going in Sydney. Dan Spielman I know as an actor with indelible memories of some of his luminous story telling skills in Barrie Kosky’s recent production of THE LOST ECHO adapted mostly from Ovid’s METAMORPHOSES. It seems that these two artists met and have mutually inspired each other and developed a project that attempts…