Category: Melanie Liertz

RAINBOW’S END, is a play by Jane Harrison, author of STOLEN (1998). Both of these plays have become part of the school HSC syllabus. RAINBOW’S END, written in 2005, is an evocation of the lives of three generations of First Nation’s women: the Yorta Yorta nation, in the 1950’s, in the Northern Victoria region of Sheparton and Mooroopna, on the banks of the Goulburn River. It is the gentle and tender telling of some social studies indigenous history. The history of the women seeking justice by voicing the need for better housing for their families, and finding that power through…

THE RETURN OF ULYSSES, with Music by Claudio Monteverdi, using a Libretto by Giacomo Badoaro, was first performed at the Teatro Santi Giovanni e Pacio in Venice in the 1639 – 40 Carnival Season. The opera was rarely performed until the late 20th Century and the work has been reconstructed from many sources. This Pinchgut Opera production has been laboured over by the Artistic Director and Conductor, Erin Helyard, utilising the Orchestra of the Antipodes, with guest artists Fernando Guimaraes, performing Ulysses and Catherine Carby as his patient wife, Penelope. The work originates from the final chapters of Homer’s THE…

Alana Valentine, the writer, notes in the program: Weight bias is a pervasive and destructive form of discrimination. Shaming and bullying people who are living in large bodies is common, callous and counter-productive to their life and health. But equally problematic is an attitude which advocates that people living in large bodies should just be left to their own devices, that when they ask for support and advice they should be ignored. Tim Jones, the Director of this project, is also the Artistic Director/General Manager of the Seymour Centre and as part of his mission in those positions has determined…

Photo by Brett Boardman Griffin Theatre Company presents, GOOD COOK. FRIENDLY. CLEAN. by Brooke Robinson, in the SBW Stables Theatre, Kings Cross. 4 May – 14 June. GOOD COOK. FRIENDLY. CLEAN. is a new Australian play by newcomer, Brooke Robinson. It was short listed for the 2017 Griffin Award. Sandra, a 58 year old finds herself with a two week deadline to find new rental sharehouse accommodation in Sydney. Over nine scenes we travel with Sandra to a series of meetings – interviews – in her search for that refuge. She ends her journey in a shared hostel environment curled,…

Photo by Marnya Rothe Sport For Jove (SFJ) and The Seymour Centre present, Sophocles’ ANTIGONE, in a new adaptation by Damien Ryan, in the Reginald Theatre, at the Seymour Centre, Chippendale, Oct. 6 – 22. In the Canberra Theatre Centre 27 – 29 October. Riverside Theatres Parramatta 9 -12 November. In the foyer one is posed a question to consider before entering the ANTIGONE theatre: “HOW DO THE UNWRITTEN LAWS OF PERSONAL CONSCIENCE SURVIVE WHEN SET AGAINST THE LAWS OF A SOCIETY AND A NATION?”  Something to ponder in 2016. Sophocles’ play ANTIGONE, was written c. 441 BC in Athens. In…

Photography by Marnya Rothe The Seymour Centre and Sport For Jove present, EDWARD II written by Christopher Marlowe, in the Reginald Theatre, at the Seymour Centre. Christopher (Kit) Marlowe born in 1564, died in 1593. Queen Elizabeth I herself was said to have pronounced Christopher Marlowe’s death sentence (‘prosecute it to the full’) at court. He died from a puncture wound above the eye at the house of a widow in Deptford. The Queen’s Coroner attributed the killing to a quarrel over ‘the reckoning’, a bill for food and drink, but many have long suspected that the murder had other…