Carving in Snow

Sometimes a person, or a nation, isn’t very good at expressing what’s at core. It’s why we have artists. An actor sacrifices a moment of their own life in order to give us a story of ours. A playwright scaffolds that sacrifice. The 50 stories of ‘Dear Australia’, a project of Playwriting Australia that livestreamed from 30 organisations between 2-5 July, express a moment in history when a pandemic changed everything. They tell of the cracks that opened up, and of the darkness and light revealed. They are, in turn, confronting and comforting. Together, they are a revelation and celebration of Australian voices. They deal with where our nation is and where it might need to go. I can’t think of another manifestation of theatre in Australia that has enjoyed such a remarkable coalition of forces working so whole-heartedly towards a common goal. How did we get there? To get an even 50 playwrights, we thought we’d ask 25 organisations from across Australia to each select two pla...

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...