Category: Stephen Curtis

  BLACK CAPITAL DAY and I AM EORA, World Premiere, presented by Sydney Festival 2012 in association with The Balnaves Foundation in Bay 17 at Carriageworks. According to the stylish corporate brochure and publicity material for the Sydney Festival 2012 : Carriageworks in the heart of Redfern is the place to be for our FAMILY AND CULTURE DAY on Sunday, January 8. The official opening ceremonies for BLACK CAPITAL start at midday with a Welcome to Country, kicking off a colourful and fun-filled program of storytelling, music, art performance and food. The doors open on Brook Andrew’s TRAVELLING COLONY of…

  Presented by the Seymour Centre in association with Riverside Productions, TRANSPARENCY by Suzie Miller at the York Theatre, Seymour Centre. Suzie Miller won the 2008 National Kit Denton Fellowship for writing with courage for TRANSPARENCY. This is the play’s Australian Premiere, having, previously been seen in Belfast in a season at the Ransom Theatre Company. TRANSPARENCY tells the story of a man, Simon (Glenn Hazeldine) who is trying to live an honest life while forced, by his actions (assistant to a child murder) as a 10 year old child, to live under an assumed identity – to live with…

Advice for every writer: Write what you know. In the program notes from Tommy Murphy: “Memory is like writing a play. After about a year of writing, something clicked in the story and I was surprised to discover that much of the play is in fact underpinned by disputed memories. Perhaps this is a likely conflict in a family, among people who may have opposing interpretations of their shared history and shared identity. The voices in this play stem from people I know and love but as soon as they found their way to the page they were characters bending…

Photo – Savage River – Travis Cardona Griffin Theatre Company presents a World Premiere of SAVAGE RIVER by Steve Rodgers. A co-production with Melbourne Theatre Company and Tasmanian Theatre Company at the SBW Stables Theatre, Sydney. Savage River is set in a remote area on the west coast of Tasmania; “Hour–north from Zeehan. A ways south of Arthur River. Savage is two hours east….. (and west?) The Republic of South Africa.” Kingsley (Ian Bliss) , a deeply, psychologically, injured man, has fled with his half caste son, Tiger (Travis Cardona) to the wilderness, in an attempt to protect the boy…

Opening in Melbourne in late February, Tom Stoppard’s ROCK AND ROLL, opened at the Sydney Theatre April 14th. It is sad to realise that this is the first new play by Stoppard that Australian audiences have seen since ARCADIA some 13 or 15 years ago. This is what? The result of the Impoverishment of the Arts in Australia? Impoverishment of Financial Support or Intellectual Thought ,or Artistic Vision? I hope it was the first. We recently had Mr Stoppard in Sydney to give a talk. It was a full house with an eager audience. How embarrassing that we have not…

In February in Sydney the local scene reasserts itself after a Festival Season-the third Sydney Festival led by Fergus Linehan-this year lots of Circus, Dance, Contemporary Music and little challenge. So it was a pleasure to anticipate THE VERTICAL HOUR by David Hare. A Hare/Shavian challenge of Ideas and Character. The Sydney Theatre Company (now led by Cate Blanchett and Andrew Upton) begins its 2008 Season with this. This play of ideas gives moderate pleasure – its arguments have been well covered in many other mediums (the play is 18 months old!!) so it is not full of confrontation or…