Carving in Snow

La Boite is one of several established theatre companies around the country housing programs that support ‘independent theatre’, a term commonly held to mean theatre made by groups of artists coming together, often with little infrastructure and few resources, to make work they passionately believe in. In his Philip Parsons Memorial Lecture delivered on Sunday, the Artistic Director of Queensland Theatre Company, Wesley Enoch, called such programs ‘immoral’. In essence, he claimed that established theatre companies use independent theatre companies as sources of unpaid labour. He quoted figures for a recent La Boite Indie show that were incorrect. Wesley's reprimand drew responses from Melbourne Theatre Company here , and Griffin Theatre Company here . Wesley spoke about La Boite specifically, though disappointingly he misled his audience on the facts. As it applies to La Boite, I think his view is misjudged. It’s very easy to create agitation when you suggest th

John’s groans had become almost whispers. Every time he stopped breathing we all sat upright holding our breath. ‘John, you’re tricking us,’ Lois said. This went on for some time, his breathing becoming shallower, quieter. He began blowing saliva bubbles. His mouth filled with saliva which started to run down his chin. Bob grabbed a tissue and started to wipe it. There was the sweet smell of faeces in the air. Not a lot of dignity in death, eh? John stopped breathing. He was dead. I walked out along the colonnade. The sun was shining. Such a beautiful day. Then I was hit by grief. The tears came and kept coming. Snot ran out of my nose as though it was being wrung out of me. I wish you were here to help get me through this. I’m not going to see you again, am I? A pigeon was startled by me and took flight. Was that John? I wish you were here. I shut my eyes and felt him put his arms around me from behind. I wanted to lean back and put my head on his chest but he wasn’t the

When Louis Nowra's Inside the Island received a savage review in the Sydney Morning Herald, Patrick White hand-delivered an outraged letter to the editor in support of the play and its author. When it was not published, White paid for it to run as an advertisement in the newspaper for two weeks. White later cooled to Nowra, as he did with so many others, and would sometimes refer to the playwright as 'Louis Kiama'.    White was probably unaware that Nowra left his degree at La Trobe University over a dispute with his professor concerning his dislike of White's novel The Tree of Man .   Louis Nowra in Kings Cross with his very clever chihuahua, Coco Louis Nowra was yesterday presented with the Patrick White Literary Award , this year worth $23,000, for his ‘prolific, passionate, principled contribution to Australian literature across many fields’. The annual Award was established by White who used the money from his 1973 Nobel Prize in Literature to establish

What is the state of what Mark Twain called the cradle of the human race, the birthplace of human speech, and the mother of history? More than half of India’s population is under the age of 25, with 65 percent under 35. The challenges and opportunities that presents are enormous. It could drive India's flagging economy for a century, overtaking China which is now past its peak. But if the world's largest democracy can't educate, train and feed this burgeoning population, then there is peril. India is home to a third of the world's poor and to half of the world's 30 million slaves. A third of the population lives under the poverty line of US $1.25 a day. I find this frightening. How will India face the consequences of a marginalised youth population existing on a scale unprecedented in modern history? Meanwhile, on Tuesday India launched a mission to Mars. The Mars Orbiter Mission, known as "Mangalyaan" in India, successfully began its 400 million-km

L ast night I went to Opera Queensland's production of Otello , directed by Simon Phillips and conducted by Queensland Symphony Orchestra Chief Conductor Johannes Fritzsch. It's an opera I've been fond of for many years, so it gave me great pleasure to freshly admire Verdi's great achievement. There are around 300 operas made from Shakespeare's plays. Only three are of the first rank: Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream , and two of Verdi's - Otello and Falstaff . Verdi, who celebrates his 200th anniversary this year, adored Shakespeare, even though he could not read English. He devoured new translations. Famously, he sat with King Lear beside his bed for years, but could not find an operatic solution. I suspect that the failure of almost all Shakespearean opera often has to do with an unwillingness to dispense with the poetry. The plays are already brilliantly full and require no further music - a reason why non-poetic texts often make th

Eryn Jean Norvill as Juliet and Julie Forsyth as the Nurse.  I saw Kip Williams' Sydney Theatre Company production of Romeo and Juliet on Friday night. The play, one of Shakespeare's early experiments with tragedy, is a good test of a director. It's a flawed work, relying too much on plot and too lit tle on the substance of its titular characters. Juliet can shine, but Romeo rarely does. Often, we spend most of the second half of the play longing to get to the crypt and be done. There can be a lot of shouting. Too often, we grin at the vagaries of Verona's postal service rather than lament lives lost young. The play requires an inventive director. Kip's production has a lot of good ideas and makes the play work better than it often does. 

It's probably true that one's early endeavours are more fondly remembered . M emory smoothes the edges of rough biograph y. One of my very first major productions was the first production of Nick Enright's Blackrock . Nick and I were friends - both born in Maitland (along with John Bell and Ruth Cracknell , weirdly) - and we spent some time developing this play at Sydney Theatre Company . Cate Blanchett acted Rache l in the early workshops, and the first cast included a fresh Joel Edgerton, Angela Punch McGregor, Simon Lyndon, Kym Wilson, Rebecca Smart, Paul Bishop, Dan Wyllie, Teo Gebert, Kristina Bidenko, John Walton and Julie Godfrey. It's a piece of which we were all very proud. Yesterday, a new project was launched called Reading Australia , initiated by the Copyright Agency. It aims to promote and expand knowledge of essential pieces of Australian writing. In July, the Australian Society of Authors’ (ASA) Council selected an initial 200 Aus

In late May in The Weekend Australian,  Rosemary Neill lit a fire that seems to still be burning. There have been various breakouts since then, including here , here , here and here , each fueled differently.  Today, The Weekend Australian fans more flames, publishing letters by director Aubrey Mellor and playwright Peter Fleming (alarmingly headlined 'Can Ralph Myers be taken seriously? ') . I t also report s on playwright David Stevens' dissatisfaction with how Australian playwrights are treated, and on a recent forum at NIDA chaired by playwright Stephen Sewell titled 'Rolling in Their Graves - Working with the text of a dead author' .  Roland Barthes, of course, famously argued 'The Death of the Author' in a 1968 essay. He died in 1980. This 'debate', and I use the inverted commas with purpose, has had unusual longevity. The framing has often been poor: auteur vs author, director vs playwright, adaptations vs new plays, Simon Stone vs A

The fragile Greek government, seeking to prove that it's serious about austerity, last week shut down the state broadcaster. This message from the musicians of the shut-down national radio and television centre in Athens was published by Norman Lebrecht : "Dear friends, these are our colleagues from our National Radio Orchestra and Chorus, performing in tears, in their rehearsal room, yesterday night. The room, albeit hot and humid as the air-condition is not working, is packed with people, while thousands are watching outside on the video wall. Both the orchestra and chorus were shut down along with the state radio and tv channels three days ago. 2650 families are now with no job. Please spread the news, we need your support… Let us keep the art alive! Let us keep democracy alive!"   Greece has failed to see that austerity economics have never worked. It's a debunked approach favoured by those who mistakenly liken the finances of nation states to dome

I dropped into the Australian Theatre Forum in Canberra for its last day on Friday. I attended all of ATF 2009 in Melbourne, but none of ATF 2011 in Brisbane. I adored the experience of that first ATF and so really wanted to experience just a little of what ATF 2013 had to offer. Upsides? Sounds like there were at least three highlights, each of which I missed. Firstly, there were the opening day keynotes. Medical anthropologist and social historian Lenore Manderson and futurist Kristin Alford , founding director of Bridge8, kicked off. Their question was “Do we even have a future?” Many found it very stimulating to begin with the thoughts of two scientists. Then David Milroy, the first Artistic Director of Yirra Yaakin Aboriginal Theatre, gave a stirring and good humoured account of the growing appetite for black stories and a provocation for how we work together as a theatre community. Many I spoke with were moved and inspired.   The second highlight was a day two ke

Ahead of the Australian Theatre Forum in Canberra this week, The Australian newspaper today floated a couple of articles to get people talking. Firstly, Rosemary Neill followed up her Weekend Australian report on what appears to be a surfeit of adaptations on the Australian stage with an incendiary opinion piece on how in "some areas of the theatre there is an astonishing lack of respect for dramatists". She quotes Andrew Bovell as describing the growing popularity of refurbished foreign classics as "lazy", "easy" and "conservative", and takes swipes at Simon Stone, Andrew Upton and Malthouse Theatre. There should be a place for such adaptations, and a place for new plays. I don't know how anyone could reasonably argue otherwise. Indeed, such adaptations have always been part of our theatre menu, although perhaps not as obviously as now, and auteurs and authors have always shared the cooking. The question is one of balance.

Nicole Kidman placed her hand on my knee. I blushed. She said to relax and not to worry. We were in her trailer at Fox Studios during filming of Baz Luhrmann's Moulin Rouge , just shortly before Christmas 1999. Kim Williams, then head of Fox Studios, was also there, along with Angela Bowne SC. Who knew what would happen? Nicole put her money on the table, and asked Kim to match it. Kim immediately did, but then to his continuing credit offered to call David Leckie, then head of the Nine Network, asking that Nine match it too. As ever, Kim was true to his word. David happily agreed, and then a few days later the Australian Theatre for Young People had close to half a million dollars over three years. I recalled this moment at the 50th Anniversary gathering of ATYP at The Wharf in Sydney on 23 February. It was a moment that enabled transformation. I had been appointed Artistic Director of ATYP earlier that year and knew of the challenges facing a company that needed, and was inv