Year: 2013

  Sydney Festival and Sydney Opera House present a live presentation of 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY with the Sydney Symphony and Sydney Philharmonia Choirs in the Concert Hall at the Sydney Opera House. When I was 20 I saw 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY at the Plaza Theatre in George Street in CINERAMA! I saw it 5 or 6 times. I had not any idea what it was about. It was quite simply mesmerising. The images. The soundtrack. The scale of it in Cinerama was, in the correct sense, awesome. The critical response at the time was mixed, but we didn’t…

I am writing this in London after a couple of weeks in Berlin, Sweden (Stockholm and a friend’s farm for Christmas!) and Brussels (Ghent, Bruge and Antwerp). Much to talk about. However, here is my messy Look Back for 2012. 1. Let me start with some of the new AUSTRALIAN WRITING: THYESTES by Thomas Henning, Chris Ryan, Simon Stone and Mark Winter. Presented by Belvoir Street. Truly daring and theatrically thrilling. TRUCK STOP by Lachlan Philpott. Presented by The Q Theatre and the Seymour Centre.Following on from SILENT DISCO (2011) this sociological examination of cultural behaviour in the suburbs of…

  Sydney Theatre Company presents MARRIAGE BLANC by Tadeusz Rozewicz, adapted by Melissa Bubnic at Wharf 2. The Sydney Theatre Company, this Production at least, has forgotten to tell us, in their program notes, anything about the actual originator of this material, the writer, Tadeusz Rozewicz. Everybody else, BUT, not the writer. The adaptor even, BUT, not the writer. This is not an unusual event in Sydney theatre going. The writer is often forgotten in the flowering of the enterprises on our stages. Respect is not always discernible. (The director has never been neglected in the program notes, as far…

Photo by Heidrun Lohr Belvoir, ILBIJERRI Theatre Company and version 1.0 present BEAUTIFUL ONE DAY, in the Upstairs Theatre at Belvoir St Theatre. BEAUTIFUL ONE DAY is a collaboration with Belvoir (Devisor,Eamon Flack), ILBIJERRI Theatre Company (Devisor/Performer, Rachael Mazza) and version 1.0 (Devisor, David Williams). It is a verbatim exercise researching, organising and presenting interview and found materials concerning the now notorious, November 2004 death-in-custody incident of an aboriginal man on Palm Island and the long aftermath of a pursuit of justice. It is also “a show about the irrepressible life and times of Palm island.” This show began well.…