Carving in Snow

Last week, a film crew landed in my living room. I was to be interviewed for a documentary called John and Tim , being made by Waterbyrd Filmz, about the lives of John Caleo and Timothy Conigrave. Conigrave wrote Holding the Man , a candid and magical memoir of his 15-year relationship with Caleo. I was being interviewed because I directed the theatrical adaptation of the book. In 2005, as Artistic Director of Sydney's Griffin Theatre Company, I commissioned  Tommy Murphy  to adapt the memoir. By November 2006 we had it onstage at the Stables Theatre. We remounted it six times, including at the Sydney Opera House, Belvoir and Melbourne Theatre Company, and most recently in 2010 in London's West End. There have bee n productions in San Francisco and Auckland, with others coming up. For such a particular Australian story, it's a remarkable trajectory. Conigrave was born in 1959 and went to Xavier College in Melbourne, an elite Jesuit school (also attended by Bill Shorten

Last night, La Boite Theatre Company hosted a fascinating forum called Towards Diversity . It linked two areas of current interest in the Australian theatre: gender equity and cultural diversity. Both, of course, speak to one of the leading questions of the forum: What are the forces that prevent our theatres from adequately reflecting the society in which they operate?  These two topics arise at this time because of special circumstances. On 24 April, the Australia Council released a report on Women in Theatre . It highlighted a very real problem of gender equity within Australian theatre. It's been a much spoken about topic since the announcement of Neil Armfield’s final season at the then Company B in September 2009, at which the sight of a stage full of bright young men, and just one woman, got people talking. The second topic springs from the upcoming appointment of a two year, fulltime Theatre Diversity Associate, to be shared between La Boite, Queensland Theatre C