More apologies for the lack of blog action of late. You know the drill: uni, grad show, honours applications, it's all been piling up and sadly reviewing has lost out a little. But don't worry there's going to be an update storm anyday now...
However, I did want to mention Version 1.0's the Bougainville Photoplay Project before the week got too old. I will have a full review coming soon, but as it's only got this week left in its current run at the Old Fitz I wanted to take this opportunity to encourage anyone who's thinking about going to go. If you only see one show this week and it isn't Angels In America at PACT (our grad show) then you should see the Bougainville Photoplay Project... It's quite simply a beautifully crafted moving theatre experience that should be had by all. Just in case you missed my incredibly subtle linkage you can find all the information here:
The Bougainville Photoplay Project
http://www.versiononepointzero.com/index.php/projects/the_bougainville_photoplay_project1/
Angels In America
http://www.uow.edu.au/crearts/performances/UOW068184.html
If any of you do come to our show this week, be sure to stay around and say hi afterwards. Hopefully there'll be some more stuff to read soon. Thanks for sticking with us through the downtime!
Cheers,
Simon
Monday, October 26, 2009
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Sorry for the lack of excitement...
Hi All,
This is one of those lame "sorry we haven't updated the blog a lot lately, we're really busy" messages. Mark and I are being kept pretty busy by our uni degree at the moment so unfortunately we probably won't be able to get any new reviews up until next week. Get ready though, we have the big This Is Not Art report coming up as well as hopefully a review of Gethsemane and perhaps some comments on Streetcar... The UOW season is now well under way so we also might get around to writing about those shows as well. This is if we can fit this all in between finishing our last session of study and putting on a grad show.
In the meantime, here is some shameless advertising for our uni and our graduates... enjoy!
Bake Sale For Art have another Monthly Friend coming up, and this time it's being presented by our friends over at Quarterbred. Here's the flyer and press release. Or you can just use the handy link on the right hand side of our site to go straight to their blog.
The author is dead.
The aura is dead.
The critic is dead.
God is dead.
Theatre is dead.
Art is dead.
Bela Lugosi is dead.
But hey, let’s not get overly maudlin. The theme for this Monthly Friend, ‘Dead or Alive’, questions our conception of how ideas, forms, texts and spaces may ‘live’ or ‘die’. Are these bold proclamations of death premature? (The author is still very much alive in mainstream theatre and literature, at least.) And what is the flipside of death? When the author dies the audience becomes alive, and that ain’t so bad is it? Monthly Friend October also celebrates the merging of live and not-live forms. Contemporary arts need not these distinctions! So ah, let’s all take a leaf out of George Romero’s book and let the dead live again. And let the living dead suck the brains out of the living, so that the living die and eventually become the living dead and go out looking for more living. Hope to see you there.
Meanwhile, the UOW season has already begun! Over this week and next we've got two second year shows. Check here at the Faculty website for further details of Dario Fo's Trumpets & Raspberries, and Catherine McKinnon's As I Lay Dreaming. If the beach wasn't already a good enough reason to visit Wollongong, you've now got two more incentives...
Hope to see you all soon,
Simon
This is one of those lame "sorry we haven't updated the blog a lot lately, we're really busy" messages. Mark and I are being kept pretty busy by our uni degree at the moment so unfortunately we probably won't be able to get any new reviews up until next week. Get ready though, we have the big This Is Not Art report coming up as well as hopefully a review of Gethsemane and perhaps some comments on Streetcar... The UOW season is now well under way so we also might get around to writing about those shows as well. This is if we can fit this all in between finishing our last session of study and putting on a grad show.
In the meantime, here is some shameless advertising for our uni and our graduates... enjoy!
Bake Sale For Art have another Monthly Friend coming up, and this time it's being presented by our friends over at Quarterbred. Here's the flyer and press release. Or you can just use the handy link on the right hand side of our site to go straight to their blog.
The author is dead.The aura is dead.
The critic is dead.
God is dead.
Theatre is dead.
Art is dead.
Bela Lugosi is dead.
But hey, let’s not get overly maudlin. The theme for this Monthly Friend, ‘Dead or Alive’, questions our conception of how ideas, forms, texts and spaces may ‘live’ or ‘die’. Are these bold proclamations of death premature? (The author is still very much alive in mainstream theatre and literature, at least.) And what is the flipside of death? When the author dies the audience becomes alive, and that ain’t so bad is it? Monthly Friend October also celebrates the merging of live and not-live forms. Contemporary arts need not these distinctions! So ah, let’s all take a leaf out of George Romero’s book and let the dead live again. And let the living dead suck the brains out of the living, so that the living die and eventually become the living dead and go out looking for more living. Hope to see you there.
Meanwhile, the UOW season has already begun! Over this week and next we've got two second year shows. Check here at the Faculty website for further details of Dario Fo's Trumpets & Raspberries, and Catherine McKinnon's As I Lay Dreaming. If the beach wasn't already a good enough reason to visit Wollongong, you've now got two more incentives...
Hope to see you all soon,
Simon
Thursday, October 8, 2009
Brand Spanking New (New Theatre)
Opportunities to show new work are both exciting and important. For a start they give everyone a deadline, something to work towards. But most importantly it’s a chance for artists to test out their ideas in front of an audience. It’s all very well for something to work in your brain or on the page, but it’s another thing altogether for it to make that next step to performance. This is why performance opportunities are so important, this is why we here at The Perf are great supporters of initiatives like Bake Sale For Art’s Monthly Friend series, or the recent Applelöft where a bunch of our fellow artists got together in a house to share new ideas. These sort of low risk events help to create a strong community of support for new artists as well as serving as a breeding ground for new talent.
Which brings me to Brand Spanking New, a two-week festival of new writing put together by Augusta Supple at the New Theatre in Newtown. This time it’s the writing that is on show, with both established and emerging writers offering their wares to the good people of Sydney. What was exciting for me was that it was often the names I didn’t know, at least as writers, whose scripts I found the most interesting. Highlights for me across the two weeks were Kit Brookman’s “if i could be anything i would be something different” with director Mark Pritchard carefully wedging the actors into the space, Jonathon Ari Lander’s “Measure” which looked at the aftermath of years of pain in Cambodia, and Sonal Moore’s “White Wedding”, a tender look at marriage in another culture.
But in the end it is not the specific works which make the festival worthwhile. It is the theatrical community coming together to give emerging artists a chance for their work to be seen and critiqued. It is also a chance for new actors and directors to be seen on a Sydney stage. Experiments like this should be the rule not the exception, and hopefully, they will be successfully and spurn more opportunities for new work of all varieties. The second week programme opens tonight, so you've got four nights to get in there and support it.
- Simon
Which brings me to Brand Spanking New, a two-week festival of new writing put together by Augusta Supple at the New Theatre in Newtown. This time it’s the writing that is on show, with both established and emerging writers offering their wares to the good people of Sydney. What was exciting for me was that it was often the names I didn’t know, at least as writers, whose scripts I found the most interesting. Highlights for me across the two weeks were Kit Brookman’s “if i could be anything i would be something different” with director Mark Pritchard carefully wedging the actors into the space, Jonathon Ari Lander’s “Measure” which looked at the aftermath of years of pain in Cambodia, and Sonal Moore’s “White Wedding”, a tender look at marriage in another culture.But in the end it is not the specific works which make the festival worthwhile. It is the theatrical community coming together to give emerging artists a chance for their work to be seen and critiqued. It is also a chance for new actors and directors to be seen on a Sydney stage. Experiments like this should be the rule not the exception, and hopefully, they will be successfully and spurn more opportunities for new work of all varieties. The second week programme opens tonight, so you've got four nights to get in there and support it.
- Simon
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