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Showing posts from 2014

On Moving to an Arts Festival

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Like most Artistic Directors, I’ve always tried to balance the needs of artists and audiences. In history, of course, these needs have never perfectly aligned, and nor should they ever. But the gap between what artists want to make and what audiences want to see is now wider than I’ve ever known it. Part of this tension arrives because we live in an era of participation . The audience, or the general public, is no longer just the consumer; they are now co-creators. We don’t buy albums anymore; we create our own playlists. We don’t watch TV passively anymore; we tweet our responses and vote. Anyone can make a film; you don’t even need film, just your phone. Anyone can compose music; just download an app or upload your song to YouTube. Anyone can write a novel and distribute it on the net, bypassing the traditional publisher. This blurring of the border between consumer and creator unsettles many, for it signifies the destruction of the comfortable distinctions between profession

The Normal Heart: To win a war you have to start one

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I'm really looking forward to The Normal Heart , the HBO film of Larry Kramer's monumentally important 1985 play. The was the first truly great play to address the HIV AIDS crisis: a passionate play of politics and polemics that reinvented the civil rights movement. Ned Weeks, the play's central character and Kramer's alter ego, railed against and changed a world that had fallen silent in the face of catastrophe. One of the play's chief targets was President Ronald Reagan, who infamously did not utter the word "AIDS" until September 1985, four years into the epidemic and five months after this play. It came just a year before Timothy Conigrave 's Soft Targets at Sydney's Griffin Theatre Company, a play that was Australia's first theatrical response.     At first, no one wanted to produce The Normal Heart , but it became a triumph for Joe Papp's Public Theater. The film rights were promptly optioned by Barbra Streisand in 1986. It

On the Occasion of Shakespeare's 450th Birthday

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The remarkable thing about Shakespeare is that he is really very good - in spite of all the people who say he is very good. (Robert Graves) First encounter Scratch a theatre director, and you're likely to find a bit of Shakespeare just below the skin. And so it is with me. One of of my very earliest theatre experiences was of Shakespeare: Derek Jacobi as Hamlet, with the touring Old Vic Company, directed by Toby Robertson. The production played at Her Majesty's Theatre (now apartments) in Sydney for five nights in December 1979. I remember little, other than I found it 'superlative'. My diary records this response. I must have just learned the word. Derek Jacobi as Hamlet, 1979. Later, I realised what a key production and performance this was. Earlier that year, the Old Vic (actually, the Prospect Theatre Company resident at the Old Vic) became the first English-speaking company to play in post-revolutionary China. Jacobi also enjoyed the distinction

How One Man Changed the Arts Forever

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On 31 October 1517, the world changed forever. On that day, the 500th anniversary of which is fast approaching, a Catholic priest named Martin Luther nailed 95 theses to the door of the All Saints’ Church in Wittenberg, Saxony. This church held one of Europe’s largest collections of holy relics, including a twig from Moses’ burning bush, straw from Jesus’ manger, the Virgin Mary's breast milk, and some of the crown of thorns. The church also served as the chapel of the University of Wittenberg, Hamlet’s university of choice. Today, following a 1760 fire that destroyed half the foundations including the wooden door on which Luther posted his protest, the church serves as a place of worship, an archive and museum, and a youth hostel. I think it’s impossible to overestimate the impact of that day, the day that began the Reformation . The Reformation had an immeasurable impact on the arts. In essence, Luther believed that an individual’s relationship with God should