Carving in Snow

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 ...

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...

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...