Category: To Be Straight With You

    Christmas and the New Year is hurtling towards us. Have the Holiday wishes from me. I thought I would go back over the year and list responses that left impressions upon me. I hope it leads to some ease of conversation for you. I feel that the possibility for good work in the performing Arts has most to do with the writing.The writer as “GOD”. So, that’s where I’ll begin. After drawing up a rough draft and some cogitation here we go. This is mostly in a chronological order of experience. THE SERPENT’S TEETH by Daniel Keene. Two…

  First up in May is Dean Walsh’s BACK FROM FRONT at the Performance Space at Carriageworks. BACK FROM FRONT began as a short solo work called EX-SERVICED in 2002. It was according to Mr Walsh “a personal response to my grandfather’s disclosure of some very disturbing circumstances he experienced “ in the Second World War. This work has now grown to cover a much larger canvass of interest. “a poetic reflection on the cycles of violence from a global perspective to domestic and individual unrest”. Other reflections are “on the loss of innocence” and “about deep hope – a…

I traveled to Adelaide for part of its International Arts Festival. Two works stood out for me. TO BE STRAIGHT WITH YOU, a production by DV8 Physical Theatre, led BY Lloyd Newson from Great Britain. On every level from the verbatim text, the politics, the skills of the performers (especially in their clarity of storytelling whilst dancing or moving even skipping), the video artists and the exhilarating technology that supported it all, this was great theatre.  I often lament that the theatre is too tame and all too often a bourgeois comfort of sedation. It was thrilling to be stirred…