Bats have symbolised everything from insanity to good luck. A new book explores their place in our collective imagination.
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The female dwarf, disability, and beauty
The Conversation, CC BY23.2 MB (download)
For centuries, women with dwarfism were depicted in art as comic or grotesque fairytale beings. But artists are challenging these portrayals and notions of beauty and physical difference.
Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey broke all the rules of science fiction cinema, and allowed the audience to experience a uniquely philosophical film about the evolution of human consciousness.
The republic of letters was an intellectual community that took shape in the Enlightenment. And just like writers’ festivals, it had rules about who could speak.
In the Sydney Theatre Company’s premiere production, white guilt festers as part of the shame, the ongoing, percolating wound that is the plot-space of contemporary colonisation.
It is 50 years since anthropologist W.E.H. Stanner gave the Boyer Lectures in which he coined the phrase ‘the great Australian silence’. How far have we come since?
Buffy the Vampire Slayer, a cult classic, was a series with a diversity problem. News of a new season provides an opportunity for a different kind of storytelling.
In La Boite’s premiere production, 19-year-old Lysa unleashes a one-woman protest inspired by recent women’s marches around the world.
In remote Northern Territory, most Aboriginal people have been buried in unmarked graves. Archaelogists are carrying out painstaking detective work to help communities find their loved ones’ remains.
Trump Baby is the latest in a long history of visual protests. But is this ‘cheap shot street theatre’ truly effective, or should we ask more of protest artists?
Even if mermaids aren’t real, they’ll likely feature in human stories for many years to come. Very few mythical creatures are found in so many diverse cultures, across so many years without changing.
The performing arts is the canary in the coalmine of the gig economy.
This week is the 200th anniversary of Emily Bronte’s birth. If reading Wuthering Heights - her only published novel - feels like a suspension in a state of waking nightmare, what a richly-hued vision of the fantastical it is.
Opera Australia’s new production of Aida features movable LED panels with digital scenery. It’s part of a revolution transforming the art form.
Michael Atherton’s new book traces the history of pianos in Australia from the First Fleet to modernity. Despite concerns over its demise, the instrument is unlikely to disappear any time soon.
The Age Charter of Editorial Independence – the first document of its type in Australia – first emerged in 1988. It was defended time and again over the following three decades.
More than 100,000 records of live performance are on a database of our theatre history. They tell of corroborees, the first play staged by white settlers, and long-gone gracious theatres.
There is still a lot of misunderstanding about what being transgender means and how it relates to drag.
The Romantics - including poets William Blake and William Wordsworth - lived in the 18th century, but their passionate ideas about imagination and nature are still influential today.
Dead Lucky tackles issues around worker exploitation, gambling, international students and domestic violence. But it is let down by underdeveloped characters.
A wood and glass case invented in the early 19th-century transformed the movement of plants around the world. In Melbourne, several thousand people greeted a primrose on its arrival from England.
A successful adaption of Lars von Trier’s film Melancholia breathes new life and energy into its female characters.
Ninja Warrior is the latest attempt to appropriate an ancient artform for a mass audience. But the ancient ninja moved in silence. Anonymous, he never bothered to develop signature dance moves.
John Russell, who was destined to become an engineer, instead became an artist in fin de siècle France – and a friend of Van Gogh, Monet and Rodin.
Murasaki Shikibu, the author of The Tale of Genji, served in the Japanese imperial court. She transformed her experiences into an intricate narrative fusing fiction, history, and poetry.