tag:theconversation.com,2011:/uk/topics/adelaide-festival-15027/articlesAdelaide Festival – The Conversation2024-03-12T02:44:44Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2234552024-03-12T02:44:44Z2024-03-12T02:44:44ZArt of the moment: experiencing Marina Abramović and Laurie Anderson at the Adelaide Festival<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581127/original/file-20240311-20-ls9siy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=5%2C51%2C3828%2C5702&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Andrew Beveridge/Adelaide Festival</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Ruth Mackenzie is the new artistic director of the Adelaide Festival of Arts, and for her first Adelaide gig she has brought in two heavyweights: performance artist Marina Abramović and avant-garde artist and musician Laurie Anderson. Both were major events, very much of the moment. </p>
<p>The Marina Abramović Institute’s Takeover featured nine performance artists over four days.</p>
<p>To begin at the beginning, audience members are instructed to arrive at 11am each day. We are ushered into a compelling virtual presentation, where Abramović inducts us into being a participative community. </p>
<p>She tells us performance is the most difficult of the art forms, that you need to abandon time and surrender to the moment. Then she runs the audience through a series of Tibetan breathing exercises to make us attuned to reading the mysteries and personal language of performance artists.</p>
<h2>Durational performance</h2>
<p>Mike Parr’s Portrait of Marina Abramović is the most extreme. A blind painting event, his eyes remain closed for the entire 12 hours. His aim was to paint four black squares, one on each side of a constructed white cube gallery space, in homage to Russian constructivist painter <a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/kazimir-malevich-1561/five-ways-look-malevichs-black-square">Kazimir Malevich’s 1915 Black Square</a>.</p>
<p>Like Malevich, Parr says his blind painting is the creation of nothingness with a view to a rebirth. But he departs from Malevich: Parr is currently driven by the reality of the shocking events in Gaza, as set out in the painted text which starts on the walls of the show: “free Palestine” and “Gaza is a Warsaw ghetto”. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581122/original/file-20240311-28-59z6cf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="You can just see the word 'Gaza' from behind red paint." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581122/original/file-20240311-28-59z6cf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581122/original/file-20240311-28-59z6cf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581122/original/file-20240311-28-59z6cf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581122/original/file-20240311-28-59z6cf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581122/original/file-20240311-28-59z6cf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581122/original/file-20240311-28-59z6cf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581122/original/file-20240311-28-59z6cf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Mike Parr’s work started with words looking at the war in Gaza.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Andrew Beveridge/Adelaide Festival</span></span>
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<p>These sentiments are amplified in his “vision” statement distributed at the performance. His impassioned text says: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>the Jewish diaspora rise up to join hands, to relinquish the obscene policies of its political leadership […] to demand justice, freedom, prosperity for the Palestinian people and an end to the oppression and antisemitism of the apartheid.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Over the next 12 hours, Parr paints four black squares – at times from perilously high up on a ladder – to be covered with red paint in homage to Abramović’s former Yugoslavian communist background, then covered again with black. The painted squares, complete with drips of red paint running down to the floor, remained after the performance for viewers to ponder their meaning, along with a video of the entire event.</p>
<h2>Place and Country</h2>
<p>Less sensational but equally demanding was the durational performance by Collective Absentia, a Bangkok-based group in a work entitled Our Glorious Past, Our Glorious Present, Our Glorious Future: Our Glorious Spring. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581126/original/file-20240311-24-zwa8vu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A man sits with a covered head." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581126/original/file-20240311-24-zwa8vu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581126/original/file-20240311-24-zwa8vu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581126/original/file-20240311-24-zwa8vu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581126/original/file-20240311-24-zwa8vu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581126/original/file-20240311-24-zwa8vu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581126/original/file-20240311-24-zwa8vu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581126/original/file-20240311-24-zwa8vu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">One performer meditated on non-violent forms of resistance to ongoing political events in Myanmar.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Andrew Beveridge/Adelaide Festival</span></span>
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<p>A member of their collective sat with his head covered and immobile in the middle of a passage-way, meditating on non-violent forms of resistance to ongoing political events in Myanmar. </p>
<p>All attendees at the event had to walk past and around this performance. Most stopped and connected with the sentiment of non-violent forms of resistance. One person even sat directly opposite the performer and meditated.</p>
<p>Christian Thomson’s postcolonial performance, Wait in Gold, involved him slowly and methodically pinning gold painted native daisies to every item of his exterior clothing so that he transforms from human into a larger flower form connected to Country. In this moving performance, he is responding to the denial of a voice as a result of the 2023 referendum outcome, and seeking refuge in the safety of Country.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581124/original/file-20240311-20-59z6cf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A man covered in gold flowers." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581124/original/file-20240311-20-59z6cf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581124/original/file-20240311-20-59z6cf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581124/original/file-20240311-20-59z6cf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581124/original/file-20240311-20-59z6cf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581124/original/file-20240311-20-59z6cf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581124/original/file-20240311-20-59z6cf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581124/original/file-20240311-20-59z6cf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Christian Thomson seeks refuge in the safety of Country.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Andrew Beveridge/Adelaide Festival</span></span>
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<p>In Indonesian performance artist Melati Suryodarmo’s absorbing durational work, Amnesia, she slowly covers a large black board with a set of chalk markings. At each mark made, she utters “I’m sorry”. </p>
<p>The mark making is interspersed with her taking off her black shirt, placing it with other discarded shirts, and sewing a new one to put on. At other times she abandons mark making and moves across the floor, writhing as if in deep remorse, again uttering “I’m sorry”. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581123/original/file-20240311-18-mi9d2h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A woman draws counting marks on a wall." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581123/original/file-20240311-18-mi9d2h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581123/original/file-20240311-18-mi9d2h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581123/original/file-20240311-18-mi9d2h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581123/original/file-20240311-18-mi9d2h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581123/original/file-20240311-18-mi9d2h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581123/original/file-20240311-18-mi9d2h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581123/original/file-20240311-18-mi9d2h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Indonesian performance artist Melati Suryodarmo’s absorbing durational work, Amnesia.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Andrew Beveridge/Adelaide Festival</span></span>
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<p>The promotional material accompanying her performance points to the work as an inner exploration of “untold narratives and forgotten realities of the past”. Her felt emotion in the performance is deeply persuasive, but I kept wondering about the amnesia from which Suryodarmo is recoiling: is it a deeply personal journey, or more?</p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/marina-abramovic-retrospective-celebrates-the-grand-dame-of-performance-art-but-questions-the-genres-future-214415">Marina Abramović retrospective celebrates the grand dame of performance art – but questions the genre's future</a>
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</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Encounters with AI</h2>
<p>In a different vein, Laurie Anderson’s exhibition I’ll be your mirror is an encounter with AI. Taking phrases from her song O Superman and her late husband Lou Reed’s song I’ll be your mirror, Anderson has generated intriguing text which hangs in five panels in the Adelaide Circulating Library, the city’s original lending library.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581121/original/file-20240311-20-vh3bcl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A large text and two portrait photographs inside a library." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581121/original/file-20240311-20-vh3bcl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581121/original/file-20240311-20-vh3bcl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581121/original/file-20240311-20-vh3bcl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581121/original/file-20240311-20-vh3bcl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581121/original/file-20240311-20-vh3bcl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581121/original/file-20240311-20-vh3bcl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581121/original/file-20240311-20-vh3bcl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">I’ll be your mirror uses AI building off songs from Laurie Anderson and Lou Reed.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Roy VanDerVegt/Adelaide Festival</span></span>
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<p>The AI generated conversations between Anderson and Reed, who passed away in 2013, oscillate between the surreal and the eerie with phrases such as</p>
<blockquote>
<p>There’s a mirror in the room <br>
And when I look at night<br>
It reflects nothing back to me. <br></p>
</blockquote>
<p>The Bible is on display and open at <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Psalm%2084-88&version=NIV">Psalms 84-88</a>, but hanging above the Bible is AI generated text based on biblical phrases, displayed as Genesis 1: 26-31. </p>
<p>A section from that text reads: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Some nights now Noah dreams he sees his boat leave the dock<br>
It’s just another day on planet Earth <br>
Only this time it’s with an animal friend. <br></p>
</blockquote>
<p>As an adjunct to the exhibition of 21st century textual artefacts set amid 19th texts, Anderson held a virtual public conversation with the machine generating gurus she worked in Adelaide – the takeaway message being what machines generate depends on the input. </p>
<p>The exhibition is utterly intriguing, but novice viewers need an introduction to what they are about to encounter.</p>
<p><em>I’ll Be Your Mirror is on display until March 17.</em></p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/from-duchamp-to-ai-the-transformation-of-authorship-in-art-210059">From Duchamp to AI: the transformation of authorship in art</a>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/223455/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Catherine Speck, with Joanna Mendelssohn, Catherine De Lorenzo and Alison Inglis, has received funding from the ARC to investigate Australian art exhibitions. </span></em></p>Ruth Mackenzie’s Adelaide Festival of Arts has two heavyweights, performance artist Marina Abramović and avant-garde artist and musician Laurie Anderson.Catherine Speck, Emerita Professor, Art History and Curatorship, University of AdelaideLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2245202024-02-29T00:30:44Z2024-02-29T00:30:44ZAustralian writers festivals are engulfed in controversy over the war in Gaza. How can they uphold their duty to public debate?<p>A string of controversies are engulfing Melbourne Writers’ Festival, the Perth Festival’s Writers’ Weekend, the Sydney Opera House’s All About Women and Adelaide Writers Week. There’s a high-profile resignation, calls to cancel speakers and allegations of the spread of “historically untrue” facts and of normalising violence. </p>
<p>All, in one way or another, have been generated by divisions over the war in Gaza.</p>
<p>Writers’ festivals are in a fraught position. They navigate the frontier between social media’s echo chambers of outrage and the traditional public square’s conventions, where restraint, reason and tolerance in the face of opposing views are the basis for civilised debate.</p>
<p>How is it all playing out, and what are the consequences for the public exchange of ideas?</p>
<h2>‘Historically untrue’?</h2>
<p>At <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/national/gaza-conflict-engulfs-melbourne-writers-%20festival-as-leaders-quit-over-program-row-20240222-p5f757.html">Melbourne Writers Festival</a>, the deputy chair of the board, Dr Leslie Reti, has resigned over a poetry session that will involve Aboriginal and Palestinian poets reading their work.</p>
<p>The session is guest-curated by Koori-Lebanese writer Mykaela Saunders. It is based on the proposition Aboriginal and Palestinian people have a shared experience of having been colonised, becoming victims of atrocities by the colonising power. </p>
<p>Melbourne Writers Festival artistic director Michaela McGuire has confirmed the dispute is centred on <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2024/feb/27/melbourne-writers-festival-deputy-chair-resigns-aboriginal-palestinian-solidarity-poetry-event-gaza-conflict">a line of program copy that reads</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Aboriginal and Palestinian solidarity has a long history, a relationship that is more vital than ever in the movement to resist colonialism and speak out against atrocities.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This is a historically contentious proposition. Dr Reti, a retired Jewish clinician, said he respected McGuire’s curatorial independence, but described the material in the draft program as “historically untrue and deeply offensive”.</p>
<p>Prominent Aboriginal scholar Professor Marcia Langton, of the University of Melbourne, has also rejected proposed similarity between the experience of Aboriginal and Palestinian people, <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/national/gaza-conflict-engulfs-melbourne-writers-festival-as-leaders-quit-over-program-row-20240222-p5f757.html">saying</a>, “there is very little comparable in our respective situations, other than our humanity”.</p>
<p>Saunders was one of 132 Indigenous activists, artists and intellectuals who signed <a href="https://therednation.org/statement-of-indigenous-solidarity-with-palestine/">a petition released on October 27 last year</a> that claimed: “The past two weeks of horrific violence in Gaza resulted from 75 years of Israeli settler colonial dispossession”. </p>
<p>McGuire has defended her decision not to change the copy for Saunders’ event, titled Let it Bring Hope, saying “I completely support the right to self-determined programming”. </p>
<p>She <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/melbourne-mornings/melbourne-writers-festival-split-over-war-in-gaza/103512224">told ABC Radio on Monday</a>: “This entire event is about Aboriginal and Palestinian solidarity. It’s not for or about anyone who doesn’t subscribe to that, and so it doesn’t make any sense to not mention that in the event copy.”</p>
<p><a href="https://www.theage.com.au/national/gaza-conflict-engulfs-melbourne-writers-festival-as-leaders-quit-over-program-row-20240222-p5f757.html">Last year</a>, the Melbourne Writers Festival board decided “while writers should be free to express their views, the festival should not take a public position on the war”.</p>
<p>The Age <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/national/gaza-conflict-engulfs-melbourne-writers-%20festival-as-leaders-quit-over-program-row-20240222-p5f757.html">reported on Monday</a> that Fiona Menzies, the festival’s interim chief executive, also resigned over the festival’s program. But Alice Hill, chair of the board, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2024/feb/27/melbourne-writers-festival-deputy-chair-resigns-aboriginal-palestinian-solidarity-poetry-event-gaza-conflict">told the Guardian</a> that Menzies had resigned “for personal reasons, and would continue her relationship with the festival in a consultancy capacity”.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/a-palestinian-authors-award-ceremony-has-been-cancelled-at-frankfurt-book-fair-this-sends-the-wrong-signals-at-the-wrong-time-215712">A Palestinian author's award ceremony has been cancelled at Frankfurt Book Fair. This sends the wrong signals at the wrong time</a>
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<h2>Normalising violence?</h2>
<p>In Perth, the argument was over the inclusion of Jewish singer-songwriter Deborah Conway in the opening night of the Perth Festival’s Writers’ Weekend last week. In <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/radionational-breakfast/israel-gaza-arts-protests-deborah-conway/103231158">an interview on ABC Radio National</a>, she had questioned whether Palestinian children killed by the Israeli Defence Forces were really children. (“It depends on what you really call kids.”)</p>
<p>Conway contextualised her remarks to me this week, saying: </p>
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<p>I was trying to tell listeners, in the cut and thrust of a live interview situation, that when Hamas put guns in the hands of their adolescent sons to point at the enemy, Hamas steals their childhood, turns them into fighters & then turns them into casualty figures. It’s unbearably cruel. I wasn’t talking about babies or little children, nor was I defining what I think to be a child, it goes without saying that the deaths of innocents are always tragic.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In an <a href="https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfUvUWq0GLIbhstqVzFMsxguiWjawr__aTI-CeKuZQoZUfJng/viewform">open letter to the festival</a>, more than 500 writers and arts workers said that by including Conway, the festival was putting safety at risk and giving a platform to someone whose comments on the radio “seek to normalise the ongoing genocide enacted by the state of Israel against the Palestinian people”.</p>
<p>This provoked a response from Dr Nick Dyrenfurth, executive director of the John Curtin Research Centre, a left-of-centre think tank, in which he said Conway’s “crime of being Jewish” was the reason <a href="https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/festival-slammed-for-promoting-%20deborah-conway-after-palestine-comments,18359">this attempt was being made to “deplatform” her</a>.</p>
<p>In Sydney, a petition protesting against the appointment of the feminist author Clementine Ford as a co-curator of the Opera House’s <a href="https://www.sydneyoperahouse.com/all-about-women">All About Women</a> festival has garnered about 6,700 signatures since it was started on 6 February. Ford has programmed three events at the festival.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.australianjewishnews.com/petition-against-%20opera-house-appearance/">petition alleges</a> Ford’s public communications since the attacks by Hamas on Israel on 7 October 2023 have made “a direct and harmful” contribution to the “hateful climate” that has developed in Australia since those attacks, exemplified by a <a href="https://www.news.com.au/national/australian-jews-suffer-738-per-cent-spike-in-antisemitic-abuse/news-story/33ed1f60ff568d31ce399b325bbc03a2">738% increase</a> in anti-Semitic incidents, as recorded by the Executive Council of Australian Jewry.</p>
<p>Ford has not called for violence against Jewish people.</p>
<p>The MP for the Sydney seat of Vaucluse in the New South Wales Parliament, Kellie Sloane, and some Jewish community leaders have raised their concerns about Ford’s curatorship, following her involvement in <a href="https://theconversation.com/doxing-or-in-the-public-interest-free-speech-cancelling-and-the-ethics-of-the-jewish-creatives-whatsapp-group-leak-223323">the alleged “doxing”</a> of about 600 Jewish writers, artists and academics. This involved the social media sharing of personal details, including names and professions, leaked from a WhatsApp group, without their consent.</p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/doxing-or-in-the-public-interest-free-speech-cancelling-and-the-ethics-of-the-jewish-creatives-whatsapp-group-leak-223323">Doxing or in the public interest? Free speech, 'cancelling' and the ethics of the Jewish creatives' WhatsApp group leak</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
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<p>The president of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, Daniel Aghion, <a href="https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/political-and-jewish-leaders-raise-clementine-ford-%20curatorship-red-flag-after-creatives-doxxing/news-story/aae6e8abdd09fb3393711c3c3c9bb544">was reported as saying</a> it was “baffling” someone who had caused this kind of harm should be appearing at one of Australia’s “most prestigious forums”.</p>
<p>Some Jewish leaders, including Anti-Defamation Commission chairman, Dr Dvir Abramovich, want Ford <a href="https://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/south-australia/jewish-leaders-have-called-for-clementine-ford-to-be-banned-%20from-adelaide-writers-week/news-story/8252b039c71c87c80afae3fe012d03f9%20So%20far,%20none%20of%20the%20protests%20have%20resulted%20in%20any%20of%20these%20people%20being%20banned.">banned from the Adelaide Festival’s Writers’ Week</a>, which starts this weekend, on 2 March.</p>
<p>Louise Adler, director of Adelaide Writers Week, <a href="https://www.adelaidenow.com.au/entertainment/adelaide-festival/adelaide-writers-week-2024-festival-hit-with-new-backlash-as-organisers-strongly-defend-program/news-story/c56fcae109190ffa206c55119d756b59">resisted calls to remove Ford</a> from the program, saying “I chose Clementine Ford because of her writing on contemporary Australian sexual politics and about her current book about marriage, which I thought was interesting.” She called her views on “other issues” on social media “immaterial”.</p>
<p>South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas <a href="https://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/south-australia/jewish-leaders-have-called-for-clementine-ford-to-be-banned-from-adelaide-writers-week/news-story/8252b039c71c87c80afae3fe012d03f9">declined to get involved</a>, saying he would not be a “premier that engages in censorship at arts festivals”.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/are-calls-to-cancel-two-palestinian-writers-from-adelaide-writers-week-justified-200165">Are calls to cancel two Palestinian writers from Adelaide Writers' Week justified?</a>
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</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Freedom of speech challenged</h2>
<p>Each of these cases presents a challenge to freedom of speech, for different reasons and in different ways.</p>
<p>Writers’ festivals are opportunities for the public to see and hear from people who are presumed to have thought deeply about complex issues, and who have written about them. They are also forums for the writers themselves to challenge and be challenged on their points of view.</p>
<p>In a world conditioned by the emotive views and intolerant habits of social media, where those who hold opposing views are often seen as irredeemable and even illegitimate, it requires a demanding intellectual effort to adjust to the world of the public square.</p>
<p>There, by convention, opposing views are tolerated, even respected, and questions are decided by reasoned argument based on evidence – rather than emotive, sometimes insulting, rhetoric.</p>
<p>The current debates around these festivals show our society is a fair way from making this adjustment.</p>
<p>In the Melbourne case, the problem arises because of a contestable claim in the draft program that “Aboriginal and Palestinian solidarity has a long history, a relationship that is more vital than ever in the movement to resist colonialism and speak out against atrocities”.</p>
<p>Whether or not there is a long history of solidarity between Aboriginal and Palestinian people – which Professor Langton, for one, rejects – might be debated. But the wording of the draft program presents the debate as already decided in the affirmative. That might represent the view of curator Mykaela Saunders and some other First Nations people, but clearly not all of them.</p>
<p>In the Perth case, Conway’s statement questioning whether the children killed by the Israel Defence Forces are really children is, for the most part, demonstrably false, as we see nightly on the television news. This does harm. A falsehood pollutes the community’s information pool. </p>
<p>In the Sydney and Adelaide cases, Ford’s participation in the Whatsapp leak is likewise harmful. The leak violated people’s privacy and put people’s safety at risk. The harm principle sets the boundary at which the individual’s right of free speech gives way to the larger public interest in harm prevention.</p>
<p>The case in principle against Ford is particularly strong because of the obvious harm caused by the public dissemination of people’s private information. The fact that she is not programmed to speak about the war in Gaza at her events – she is speaking about her anti-marriage book in both <a href="https://www.sydneyoperahouse.com/all-about-women/play-the-girl">Sydney</a> and <a href="https://www.adelaidefestival.com.au/events/2024-writers-week/i-do-i-don-t/">Adelaide</a> – makes no difference to this point of principle. In practice, however, banning her would risk making her into a martyr. </p>
<p>None of these festivals have responded to public pressure to change their programs, speakers or even the wording of their copy. Better still, rather than banning speakers or changing programs, festivals could arrange to include challenges on these controversial actions and words. For example, someone in Ford’s position could be invited to make the case for the WhatsApp leak and be challenged on its violation of privacy principles.</p>
<p>That way, the festivals would do their job of promoting debate. A festival where the outcome is a foregone conclusion, or where the openmindedness of the organisers is in question, is just another echo chamber.</p>
<p>Against that, there is the question of public safety, which has been raised by those who wanted Conway banned in Perth and Ford in Adelaide. The exact threat to public safety is not spelt out, but the debate shows we urgently need to learn to better negotiate this frontier between social media and the world of flesh and blood.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>This article has been amended to clarify the context of Deborah Conway’s remarks during her earlier radio interview.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/224520/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Denis Muller does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Writers festivals navigate the fraught frontier between social media’s echo chambers of outrage and the civilised public debate of the public square. What’s the way forward in this heated atmosphere?Denis Muller, Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Advancing Journalism, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2025022023-03-24T02:18:36Z2023-03-24T02:18:36ZAt the 2023 Adelaide Festival, the best works shimmer with a brutal honesty on incarceration, exile – and Nikolai Gogol<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517322/original/file-20230324-18-qz4ve3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=35%2C11%2C7763%2C5074&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Sheep Song.
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Tim Standing/Daylight Breaks/Adelaide Festival</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Few Adelaideans remember a time before the Adelaide Festival. Formed in 1960 as a civic enterprise and financed against loss by prominent Adelaide businessmen, the festival today remains arguably the most robust international arts festival in our region.</p>
<p>For me, the Adelaide Festival is where I overcame my Melburnian fear of Adelaide as Australia’s serial murderer capital and the uptight “City of Churches”.</p>
<p>When I became South Australian, I saw how signature international festival productions had left a lasting imprint here. Many remembered freezing in an Adelaide Hills rock quarry to witness the nine-hour epic staging of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mahabharata_(play)">The Mahabharata</a> by Peter Brook at the 1988 festival.</p>
<p>And when Pina Bausch’s <em><a href="https://www.pinabausch.org/work/nelk">Nelken</a></em> (Carnations) came to the 2016 festival, the lobby post-show was abuzz with people recalling the 1982 festival performance by her legendary Wuppertal Dance Theatre.</p>
<p>For artists and educators, encountering such works can alter the trajectory of our lives. For audiences, they can open doors of perception and create deeply embodied memories that never leave us. This is no small thing.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/polaroids-of-the-everyday-and-portraits-of-the-rich-and-famous-you-should-know-the-compulsive-photography-of-andy-warhol-200081">Polaroids of the everyday and portraits of the rich and famous: you should know the compulsive photography of Andy Warhol</a>
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</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Local creations</h2>
<p>The 2023 festival is curated by Neil Armfield and Rachel Healy, who stepped down as co-artistic directors in mid-2022.</p>
<p>Given the scale of the programming and because its core identity remains associated with theatre, dance and opera, I endeavoured to witness everything on that side of the program.</p>
<p>One of Armfield and Healy’s many accomplishments during their tenure was increasing the percentage of local and Australian work. Given the long history of high-quality, innovative and relevant work generated by Adelaide-based theatre for youth companies, it was heartening to see world premieres from Windmill Theatre Company/Sandpit and Slingsby in the program.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517310/original/file-20230323-18-n41gme.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A glass house." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517310/original/file-20230323-18-n41gme.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517310/original/file-20230323-18-n41gme.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517310/original/file-20230323-18-n41gme.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517310/original/file-20230323-18-n41gme.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517310/original/file-20230323-18-n41gme.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517310/original/file-20230323-18-n41gme.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517310/original/file-20230323-18-n41gme.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Hans and Gret is clever and engaging, full of unexpected surprises.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Claudio Raschella/Adelaide Festival</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Hans and Gret brought together playwright Lally Katz, Windmill’s theatre team and the technology and experience design makers at Sandpit. </p>
<p>Their contemporary, highly interactive adaptation placed Hansel and Gretel in a suburban Australian gated community. Clever and engaging, it was full of unexpected surprises. </p>
<p>This show, and Slingsby’s The River That Ran Uphill, with its hand-made aesthetic and compelling storytelling, are equal to the best of theatre for youth anywhere.</p>
<p>For the Sydney Theatre Company’s production of <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-production-to-satisfy-sydneys-darkest-imaginings-sydney-theatre-companys-strange-case-of-dr-jekyll-and-mr-hyde-185596">The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde</a>, adapted and directed by Kip Williams, a team of black-clad techies and camera operators projected the comings and goings of the play’s two actors, Matthew Backer and Ewen Leslie, in a seamless combination of live theatre and cinema. </p>
<p>With screens behind and above the onstage action, and long narrative passages delivered breathlessly and without a pause, I found it all quite exhausting. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517312/original/file-20230323-26-gcre0y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A man on stage, surrounded by screens." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517312/original/file-20230323-26-gcre0y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517312/original/file-20230323-26-gcre0y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517312/original/file-20230323-26-gcre0y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517312/original/file-20230323-26-gcre0y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517312/original/file-20230323-26-gcre0y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517312/original/file-20230323-26-gcre0y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517312/original/file-20230323-26-gcre0y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A team of black-clad techies and camera operators projected the comings and goings of the play’s two actors.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Daniel Boud/Adelaide Festival</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/a-production-to-satisfy-sydneys-darkest-imaginings-sydney-theatre-companys-strange-case-of-dr-jekyll-and-mr-hyde-185596">A production to satisfy Sydney's darkest imaginings: Sydney Theatre Company's Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>For my money, the outstanding Australian work in this year’s festival was Marrugeku’s production of <a href="https://theconversation.com/we-are-a-nation-of-jailers-jurrungu-ngan-ga-is-a-whirlwind-of-bodily-resistance-173987">Jurrungu Ngan-ga [Straight Talk]</a> at the Dunstan Playhouse, conceived by Dalisa Pigram and Rachael Swain with Patrick Dodson.</p>
<p>State-sanctioned Indigenous and refugee incarceration was the focus of this visceral and captivating work. Eight performers, distinctive in individual presentation and styles of movement, invoked the tedium and boredom of incarceration as well as brief moments of hope and dreams of flight.</p>
<p>The work’s brutal honesty, enhanced by staging and lighting that suggested confinement and surveillance, was punctuated by moments of joy, humour and collective solidarity, confidently taking the audience through difficult terrain.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517313/original/file-20230323-20-bbt4nk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Dancers on stage" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517313/original/file-20230323-20-bbt4nk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517313/original/file-20230323-20-bbt4nk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517313/original/file-20230323-20-bbt4nk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517313/original/file-20230323-20-bbt4nk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517313/original/file-20230323-20-bbt4nk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517313/original/file-20230323-20-bbt4nk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517313/original/file-20230323-20-bbt4nk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Jurrungu Ngan-ga [Straight Talk]‘s brutal honesty was punctuated by moments of joy, humour, and collective solidarity.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Andrew Beveridge/Adelaide Festival</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/we-are-a-nation-of-jailers-jurrungu-ngan-ga-is-a-whirlwind-of-bodily-resistance-173987">'We are a nation of jailers': Jurrungu Ngan-ga is a whirlwind of bodily resistance</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>International offerings</h2>
<p>This year’s high-culture, big-ticket international item was Verdi’s Messa de Requiem. The epic music and dance production featured 36 dancers from Ballet Zürich, the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, a choral ensemble of 80 and four soloists. </p>
<p>Choreographed by Christian Spuck with Johannes Fritzsch conducting, classical ballet was paired with Verdi’s stirring and emotional oratorio, a reflection on life, death and eternal judgement.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517314/original/file-20230323-24-rnfbs6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Two ballet dancers." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517314/original/file-20230323-24-rnfbs6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517314/original/file-20230323-24-rnfbs6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517314/original/file-20230323-24-rnfbs6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517314/original/file-20230323-24-rnfbs6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517314/original/file-20230323-24-rnfbs6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=539&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517314/original/file-20230323-24-rnfbs6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=539&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517314/original/file-20230323-24-rnfbs6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=539&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Messa de Requiem paired relatively conventional ballet with a dynamic and dramatic musical score.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Carlos Quezada/Adelaide Festival</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Although the dynamic onstage chorus contributed greatly to the overall visual spectacle, I was not convinced that the relatively conventional, classical boy/girl dyad of classical ballet was best suited for such a dynamic and dramatic musical score.</p>
<p>Given the political and military conflicts that continue to shake our world, not surprisingly two international works were staged by groups comprised largely of displaced persons and exiles.</p>
<p>Remote Theatre Project presented Grey Rock, written and directed by Palestinian playwright Amir Nizar Zuabi. A bereaved husband and former TV repair man living with his daughter in the occupied West Bank sets out to create a rocket capable of landing on the Moon. </p>
<p>Far from being fantasy, the work offers an unblinkered exploration of the psychological toll confinement inflicts on individuals and communities.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517315/original/file-20230323-25-nr74wu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Three actors on stage." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517315/original/file-20230323-25-nr74wu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517315/original/file-20230323-25-nr74wu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517315/original/file-20230323-25-nr74wu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517315/original/file-20230323-25-nr74wu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517315/original/file-20230323-25-nr74wu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517315/original/file-20230323-25-nr74wu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517315/original/file-20230323-25-nr74wu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Grey Rock offers an unblinkered exploration into the psychological toll of confinement.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Carlos Cardona/Adelaide Festival</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>More harrowing in content and manner of presentation was Dogs of Europe, presented by the Belarus Free Theatre, a company of political exiles living in the United Kingdom. In their adaptation of Belarusian exile Alhierd Bacharevič’s 2017 novel, Russia has become an anti-democratic superstate, brutally ruling over eastern Europe behind a new Iron Curtain.</p>
<p>There was wild, anarchic energy in this youthful cast, with much played big and to excess. The show offered chilling insights into what a world without poetry or poets might look like, one in which people “are only interested in pictures” and “have stopped talking to one another”.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517316/original/file-20230323-18-v5nrpg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A priest kisses the hand of a soldier." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517316/original/file-20230323-18-v5nrpg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517316/original/file-20230323-18-v5nrpg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517316/original/file-20230323-18-v5nrpg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517316/original/file-20230323-18-v5nrpg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517316/original/file-20230323-18-v5nrpg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=710&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517316/original/file-20230323-18-v5nrpg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=710&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517316/original/file-20230323-18-v5nrpg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=710&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">There was wild, anarchic energy to Dogs of Europe.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Adam Forte/Daylight Breaks/Adelaide Festival</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The acclaimed Belgian theatre collective FC Bergman staged perhaps the festival’s most perplexing work. The Sheep Song sets out a parable in which a lone sheep separates from his flock and seeks to become human — something he can never fully achieve. </p>
<p>This is a strange, cruel and melancholic world, in which the unexpected becomes continually expected, and where ultimately the surreal and the “normal” coexist.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517317/original/file-20230323-24-bbt4nk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Four humans and a sheep on its hind-legs." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517317/original/file-20230323-24-bbt4nk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517317/original/file-20230323-24-bbt4nk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517317/original/file-20230323-24-bbt4nk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517317/original/file-20230323-24-bbt4nk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517317/original/file-20230323-24-bbt4nk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517317/original/file-20230323-24-bbt4nk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517317/original/file-20230323-24-bbt4nk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Sheep Song gives us a strange, cruel and melancholic world.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Tim Standing/Daylight Breaks/Adelaide Festival</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>A Little Life, presented by International Theatre Amsterdam, was the most challenging work presented this year. Directed by Ivo van Hove, known for his Roman Tragedies at the 2014 festival, the play was based on Hanya Yanagihara’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/review-a-little-life-by-hanya-yanagihara-48928">critically acclaimed novel</a>.</p>
<p>The play begins with a group of young men in a New York City loft bantering playfully and with ease. Although the actors speak in Dutch, they convey a comfortable intimacy. From the start, it’s clear one of them has a terrible secret.</p>
<p>Containing every possible trigger warning, the work deals with extreme trauma, including horrendous accounts of sexual and physical abuse and realistically staged acts of self-harm. The play unfolds like Greek tragedy, with recollecting past trauma not leading to healing but instead to more pain.</p>
<p>Yet this is ultimately a play about love, and how love is not always enough to tether the people we love to this life. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517318/original/file-20230323-26-bbt4nk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A man reads a magazine." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517318/original/file-20230323-26-bbt4nk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517318/original/file-20230323-26-bbt4nk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=436&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517318/original/file-20230323-26-bbt4nk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=436&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517318/original/file-20230323-26-bbt4nk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=436&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517318/original/file-20230323-26-bbt4nk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=548&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517318/original/file-20230323-26-bbt4nk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=548&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517318/original/file-20230323-26-bbt4nk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=548&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A Little Life deals with extreme trauma.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Adam Forte/Daylight Breaks/Adelaide Festival</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/review-a-little-life-by-hanya-yanagihara-48928">Review: A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>On a lighter note, but no less rigorous in presentation, was Revisor, created by Crystal Pite and Jonathon Young for Kidd Pivot, the same core creative team that brought the sensational and searing <a href="https://theconversation.com/betroffenheit-when-the-mind-and-body-get-stuck-74058">Betroffenheit</a> to the 2017 festival. </p>
<p>In equal measure thrilling, astonishing and bewitching, this dance theatre piece adapts Nikolai Gogol’s 19th-century play <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/The-Government-Inspector">The Government Inspector</a>.</p>
<p>When a low-level functionary shows up at a government department in a provincial town and is mistaken for an undercover operative, local powerbrokers seek his attention and favour. Mayhem ensues as they offer him fistfuls of money while urging him to overlook reports of “mass graves” or “missing dissidents”.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517319/original/file-20230323-28-v5nrpg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Dancers around a desk." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517319/original/file-20230323-28-v5nrpg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517319/original/file-20230323-28-v5nrpg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517319/original/file-20230323-28-v5nrpg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517319/original/file-20230323-28-v5nrpg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517319/original/file-20230323-28-v5nrpg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517319/original/file-20230323-28-v5nrpg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517319/original/file-20230323-28-v5nrpg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Revisor is thrilling, astonishing and bewitching.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Andrew Beveridge/Adelaide Festival</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/betroffenheit-when-the-mind-and-body-get-stuck-74058">Betroffenheit, when the mind and body get stuck</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Ingeniously, all character voices are voiced over. This frees up the dancers to totally embody the words as all energy goes into the physical expression of those words, generating a performance style characterised by <a href="https://narrative-environments.github.io/CourseCompendium/Defamiliarisation.html">estrangement</a> that is oddly very Gogol-like.</p>
<p>This is a sensational production, an example of a superbly successful collaboration where the artistic whole exceeds the sum of its parts.</p>
<h2>Understanding the world</h2>
<p>Looking at festivals in other capital cities, even before COVID hit, The Melbourne International Arts Festival was to be replaced with Rising, a lively and edgy cross between Hobart’s funky Dark Mofo Festival and Paris’ Nuit Blanche White Night.</p>
<p>Sydney’s festival is now a delightful celebration of Sydney in summer. Brisbane’s excellent festival lacks a significant strand of international programming, while Perth Festival, the nation’s oldest, has increasingly focused on film and the visual arts.</p>
<p>In the larger national festival ecosystem, the Adelaide Festival retains an unbroken line back to the original intent of those who set it up more than 60 years ago: to bring audiences a curated program of exciting new works we would otherwise never be able to see.</p>
<p>We see the world differently through such encounters.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/bjork-was-the-big-ticket-name-but-perth-festivals-heart-was-found-in-bikutsi-3000s-afrofuturist-musing-on-african-resistance-202029">Björk was the big-ticket name – but Perth Festival’s heart was found in Bikutsi 3000’s afrofuturist musing on African resistance</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/202502/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>William Peterson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Adelaide Festival is arguably the most robust international arts festival in our region.William Peterson, Adjunct Associate Professor, Auckland University of TechnologyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1875192022-08-04T20:19:28Z2022-08-04T20:19:28ZCancelled culture comes back: the Edinburgh Festival turns 75, alive and well after two years of pandemic disruption<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/477524/original/file-20220803-10966-2sucpf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=22%2C0%2C5037%2C3497&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>After two years of pandemic programming, with performers and audiences moved into virtual online venues, the <a href="https://www.eif.co.uk/">Edinburgh International Festival</a> celebrates its 75th anniversary this year with the best possible birthday present – the return of a full programme of live performances.</p>
<p>Part of Edinburgh’s immense cultural legacy has been to inspire similar events around the world to innovate to sustain their infrastructure – including in Aotearoa New Zealand and Australia, whose own festivals are modelled on the Scottish original. </p>
<p>But COVID has had a massive impact. All arts festivals have had to quickly cancel and “unproduce” live events, or offer online alternatives, as restrictions on mass gatherings and international travel undermined their very reason for existence.</p>
<p>While organisers and performers have shown ingenuity and resilience, they are very aware that digital technology cannot replicate the joy of live performance. All the more reason to celebrate its return 2022.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/477525/original/file-20220803-11251-narxlc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/477525/original/file-20220803-11251-narxlc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/477525/original/file-20220803-11251-narxlc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/477525/original/file-20220803-11251-narxlc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/477525/original/file-20220803-11251-narxlc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/477525/original/file-20220803-11251-narxlc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/477525/original/file-20220803-11251-narxlc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Four years after its 1960 Edinburgh debut, comedians Alan Bennett, Peter Cook, Dudley Moore and Jonathan Miller filmed Beyond the Fringe for the BBC.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Getty Images</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A launch pad for talent</h2>
<p>As the world’s leading festival city, Edinburgh today hosts 11 events throughout the year, six of them in summer. These have launched the careers of countless unknowns who have gone on to become household names.</p>
<p>The playwright Tom Stoppard premiered Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead in 1966, and British theatre greats Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, Alan Bennett and Jonathan Miller all appeared in a single year, 1960, in their Beyond the Fringe production. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/edinburgh-festivals-how-they-became-the-worlds-biggest-arts-event-63460">Edinburgh festivals: how they became the world's biggest arts event</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Two decades later, in 1981, Hugh Laurie, Stephen Fry and Emma Thompson, along with their Cambridge Footlights peers, received a Perrier Award (precursor to the Edinburgh Comedy Awards). More recently, in 2013, Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Fleabag received a Fringe First award for new writing before being reinvented as the hit television series. </p>
<p>Consequently, Edinburgh has come to be seen as a necessary rite of passage for theatre, circus and comedy performers from around the world, including Australia and New Zealand. Each year, the Fringe lures artists hoping to become the next <a href="https://www.stuff.co.nz/entertainment/tv-radio/300282220/starstruck-tvnz-onto-a-winner-with-rose-matafeos-reverse-notting-hill-sitcom">Rose Matafeo</a> or <a href="https://www.scotsman.com/arts-and-culture/edinburgh-festivals/art/comedian-hannah-gadsby-bringing-douglas-her-new-stand-show-scotland-1404662">Hannah Gadsby</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/477527/original/file-20220803-25-24jedk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/477527/original/file-20220803-25-24jedk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/477527/original/file-20220803-25-24jedk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/477527/original/file-20220803-25-24jedk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/477527/original/file-20220803-25-24jedk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/477527/original/file-20220803-25-24jedk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/477527/original/file-20220803-25-24jedk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Circus Abyssinia perform at the launch of this year’s Underbelly, an offshoot of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe that produces shows and events around the world.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Getty Images</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Edinburgh’s global influence</h2>
<p>Edinburgh’s reputation as a festival city began with the Edinburgh International Festival of Music and Drama in 1947. Conceived as a cultural salve to the social wounds of WWII, its founders aimed to rejuvenate European culture, restore postwar diplomatic relations and rebuild the Scottish economy.</p>
<p>Its success soon prompted a wave of similar events around the world, including the original Auckland Festival (1949-82), its successor the Auckland Arts Festival/Te Ahurei Toi o Tāmaki (2003), and Wellington’s Aotearoa New Zealand Festival of the Arts (1986). </p>
<p>In his foreword to the 1956 programme, mayor John Luxford hailed Auckland’s festival as following “a less ambitious but no less worthy pattern” to Edinburgh’s. In Australia, too, the founders of the Adelaide Festival in 1960 promoted their festival as a “more modest” version of Edinburgh.</p>
<p>(Fittingly, perhaps, the 75th festival opens with a performance of <a href="https://www.eif.co.uk/events/macro">Macro</a> by Adelaide’s contemporary circus performers Gravity & Other Myths and Australian First Nations dance-theatre troupe Djuki Mala.)</p>
<p>International arts festivals are now annual events in most Australian state and territory capitals. In most cases they are scheduled alongside other arts and sporting events to capitalise on the festive atmosphere and draw visitors to the city. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/a-tale-of-two-festivals-the-history-of-the-edinburgh-fringe-30011">A tale of two festivals: the history of the Edinburgh Fringe</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Cancelled culture</h2>
<p>Nowadays, Edinburgh’s success is largely due to its most famous summer festival, the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Begun in opposition to the perceived elitism and lack of Scottish representation in the “official” festival, it has since pioneered an open-access model that welcomes any artist who can find a venue to host them.</p>
<p>The festivals are economically important, too. Edinburgh’s summer festivals saw a record-breaking <a href="https://www.edinburghfestivalcity.com/about/documents/1106-overview-of-festival-numbers">4.4 million attendances</a> in 2019. In total, the festivals had an estimated <a href="https://www.bop.co.uk/projects/edinburgh-festivals-2015-impact-study">£313 million</a> benefit to the Scottish economy when last measured in 2015.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/what-70-years-of-the-edinburgh-festival-has-done-for-the-arts-and-the-economy-82102">What 70 years of the Edinburgh Festival has done for the arts – and the economy</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>But with success comes inevitable problems. The festivals have also seen complaints from residents about access to public spaces and blocked views of Edinburgh Castle. There has also been <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2022/jul/07/edinburgh-fringe-tries-to-quell-revolt-criticism-2022-festival-comedians-open-letter">criticism of the Fringe</a> for alleged mismanagement, the high cost of participation, and the risk of normalising precarious labour practices. </p>
<p>In 2018, a Fair Fringe campaign successfully pressured the City of Edinburgh Council to adopt charters to improve pay and conditions. But it was the pandemic that presented a genuine existential threat when Edinburgh’s summer festivals were cancelled for the first time in 2020. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1553836187592409088"}"></div></p>
<h2>Live performance returns</h2>
<p>Internationally, arts festivals responded creatively to support artists, venues and crews whose livelihoods have been affected. The expansion of outdoor venues and reduced seating capacities helped provide audiences with cultural connection during an unsettling time. </p>
<p>In 2021, Edinburgh made tentative steps to open up, presenting a restricted programme supported by a free digital “At Home” offering to 350,000 online viewers from 50 countries. In Auckland and Sydney, border closures saw festivals prioritise and highlight local work with their “100% Aotearoa” and “Australian Made” seasons. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/without-visiting-headliners-can-local-artists-save-our-festivals-154830">Without visiting headliners, can local artists save our festivals?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Fringe festivals, too, experimented with online alternatives, although their ability to adapt was largely determined by the level of government support they received. In the end, though, digital festival offerings are largely make-do measures born of extraordinary circumstances. </p>
<p>Not all shows translate well online and not all audiences have adequate digital access. These necessary experiments have sustained the festival ecosystem through the pandemic, but enthusiasm for them inevitably wanes.</p>
<p>As festival goers return to the venues and streets of Edinburgh this month, they will celebrate the magic of being together – performers and audiences – in a shared space for a short time. </p>
<p>The joy of live performance is about presence, the ability to eyeball the performer in front of you, or feel anticipation spread through a crowd. These festivals have offered this experience for 75 years. This year, more than ever, we will cherish it.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/187519/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sarah Thomasson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The survival of the Edinburgh International Festival, and others like it around the world, is testament to ingenuity of organisers and performers. But there’s no substitute for the live experience.Sarah Thomasson, Lecturer in Theatre, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of WellingtonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1753322022-03-21T00:18:33Z2022-03-21T00:18:33Z‘Innovative and thrilling’: Stephanie Lake’s Manifesto is a joy<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/453167/original/file-20220320-23-1wmauj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C5559%2C2984&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Roy Vandervegt/Adelaide Festival</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Review: Manifesto, choreographed by Stephanie Lake, Adelaide Festival</em></p>
<p>Nine drummers, nine dancers, what’s not to love? So ran my imaginary opening line for this review.</p>
<p>But Manifesto, choreographed by Melbourne-based Stephanie Lake is much more complex and satisfying than the mere pairing of dancers with drummers might suggest.</p>
<p>As the show opens, drummers are seated and equipped with a standard drum kit: bass, snare and tom drums and cymbals.</p>
<p>Charles Davis’s classy set is reminiscent of a 1930s <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Busby-Berkeley">Busby Berkeley movie</a>. Drummers occupy raised positions along the back of the stage. Lush, red hanging curtains fill the visual field, with a niche for each drummer.</p>
<p>The work starts with simple beats. Beats don’t necessarily create rhythm. Beats can simply be sounds that seem to come from nowhere and suddenly stop, as they do early in the work.</p>
<p>On the silent beat, dancers freeze in a dramatic tableau, enhanced by Bosco Shaw’s beautifully focused lighting. Single beats turn into a succession. Dancers seem to magically appear from nowhere. Freezing, they create unexpected focal points. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/453166/original/file-20220320-25-xzzvub.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=50%2C0%2C5568%2C3700&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/453166/original/file-20220320-25-xzzvub.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=50%2C0%2C5568%2C3700&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/453166/original/file-20220320-25-xzzvub.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/453166/original/file-20220320-25-xzzvub.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/453166/original/file-20220320-25-xzzvub.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/453166/original/file-20220320-25-xzzvub.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/453166/original/file-20220320-25-xzzvub.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/453166/original/file-20220320-25-xzzvub.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Just when you think a pattern is being established, the work shifts.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Roy Vandervegt/Adelaide Festival</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Gesture and composition direct the eye, often to an individual dancer. But just when you think a pattern is being established, a new sequence of beats and images sears into the retina.</p>
<p>Sounds become increasingly complex, with drum rolls, shallow beats and rolling trills on the snare drum. The clang of the cymbals suggests a storm moving in. Later, drummers make seemingly impossible sounds reminiscent of industrial noise.</p>
<h2>Continuously morphing</h2>
<p>Like the choreography of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Twyla-Tharp">Twyla Tharp</a>, the movements of Lake’s dancers are often recognisable from daily life, though enhanced and embellished. Each successive movement is utterly unpredictable, executed in a delightfully relaxed and fluid manner, with seemingly effortless falls, leaps and catches. </p>
<p>Movement is at times silly, as in a butt wiggle that makes the kids in the audience squeal with delight, but also sexy, with hips and asses drawing attention to the beauty of human form in motion. </p>
<p>When the dancers come together, we don’t see formations being set up as they’re unfolding so fluidly and rapidly. Everything shifts constantly, continuously morphing: a series of collective shapes and forms that can’t be predicted. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/453168/original/file-20220320-17-1xmwhlg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/453168/original/file-20220320-17-1xmwhlg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/453168/original/file-20220320-17-1xmwhlg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/453168/original/file-20220320-17-1xmwhlg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/453168/original/file-20220320-17-1xmwhlg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/453168/original/file-20220320-17-1xmwhlg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/453168/original/file-20220320-17-1xmwhlg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/453168/original/file-20220320-17-1xmwhlg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The dancers are sometimes silly, sometimes sexy.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Roy Vandervegt/Adelaide Festival</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Beats turn into longer rhythmic sequences as bodies are held aloft, on the floor, flying across and off the stage, constantly shifting. Moments of high drama increasingly come fast and furiously. </p>
<p>At times dancers appear to be fighting to regain control of bodies, as if the body has a mind of its own. </p>
<p>As the drumming builds and the energy heats up, the men doff their shirts. It’s as if a series of perpetual motion machines have been activated. </p>
<p>In another sequence, choreography focuses on the hands and arms manipulating the body in uncomfortable and disturbing ways. It is reminiscent of the choreography of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pina_Bausch">Pina Bausch</a>, but unlike Bausch’s work, Lake’s dancers are not being acted upon by others, but touch their own body as if it is not their own.</p>
<h2>Anything can happen</h2>
<p>As dancers roll, fly, and bounce off the floors individually and in pairs and small groups, it is clear how Lake’s choreography highlights the individual strengths of her cast. Similarly, composer Robin Fox has successfully marshalled a clearly differentiated set of drummers with diverse skill sets and sounds. </p>
<p>Racing toward the final coda, dancing becomes increasingly hyperkinetic. With jumping kicks, the work takes on an almost gladiatorial, confrontational quality. </p>
<p>Just as quickly, the movement switches into a kind of whirling dervish mode, enhanced by the swaying light fabric of Paula Levis’ costumes. These costumes drape, move, flow, and enhance movement, drawing attention to the diverse body styles of the dancers and turning dancers into characters we can track.</p>
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<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Lake’s choreography highlights the strengths of her dancers.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Roy Vandervegt/Adelaide Festival</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the work’s penultimate moment, a heart beat brings all the dancers together, then apart, then together.</p>
<p>A rhythmic sequence is introduced and repeated, a kind of military tattoo the audience can discern and unconsciously anticipate. The dancing takes on an increasingly ecstatic quality and we’re with them on the beat.</p>
<p>There is a purposeful contrast between the precision and repetition of the martial, parade-like beat, and the free and playful – even sexy – spirit of the dancers, increasingly moving into a state of wild abandon. </p>
<p>Dancers move down to the lip of stage as total mayhem results. One streaks naked across the stage. The work ends at an absolute fever pitch. When I saw it, the audience leapt to their feet, compelled to rise and shout.</p>
<p>Manifesto is a beautifully and carefully crafted work, one that continually keeps the audience in a state of not knowing what will happen next. </p>
<p>Anything can happen in this tightly crafted, remarkably innovative and thrilling work. And it does.</p>
<p><em>Adelaide season closed. Manifesto will play at Rising: Melbourne in June.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/175332/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>William Peterson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Choreographer Stephanie Lake brings together nine dancers and nine drummers in this thrillingly original work.William Peterson, Adjunct Associate Professor, Auckland University of TechnologyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1753312022-03-15T03:51:39Z2022-03-15T03:51:39Z‘Beautiful and deeply impactful, a kind of deep communion’: Sex and Death_ and the Internet is a gift<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/452033/original/file-20220314-119643-1j7ghha.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C16%2C5568%2C3684&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Roy Vandervegt/Adelaide Festival</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Review: Sex and Death</em>_ <em>and the Internet, directed by Samara Hersch</em></p>
<p>My last experience as an audience of one at an Adelaide Festival show was the Belgian theatre company Ontroerend Goed’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2013/mar/04/smile-off-your-face-ontroerend-goed-review">The Smile Off Your Face</a> in 2013. </p>
<p>Strapped to a wheelchair, we were led from room to room blindfolded. When the mask was taken off we were confronted with a series of unexpected and sometimes shocking encounters. </p>
<p>Unlike the Belgian’s wacky work, which featured multiple performers, the encounter in Sex and Death_ and the Internet is strictly between you and one other person. It is also far gentler – though no less powerful. </p>
<p>“Performers” here are simply people being themselves. Listed as “protagonists” in the program, the 17 seniors participating in the project possess a willingness to ask and answer some of life’s most delicate questions.</p>
<p>Billed as an opportunity for frank conversations, the pre-show publicity prepares us for an encounter along the lines of truth or dare, <a href="https://iview.abc.net.au/show/you-can-t-ask-that">You Can’t Ask That</a> or a Catholic confession. </p>
<p>To choose to participate in such an encounter with one’s self and a stranger is itself an act of self-selection.</p>
<h2>Totally disarming</h2>
<p>Conceived and directed by Melbourne-based performance maker Samara Hersch with key artistic collaborators Bec Reid (dramaturgy) and Ponch Hawkes (photography), participants select a time to be paired with a senior. In the weeks prior to the show participants are asked to send in a photo of themselves taken at least ten years ago.</p>
<p>Participants are given instructions on where to meet and told to arrive no more than 15 minutes early. Upon arrival, an attendant seats us, provides us with a headset, and asks us to listen to a short audio file with our eyes closed. </p>
<p>We hear children responding to a series of questions. Many answers are unexpected, even shocking in their insight, occasionally funny, and ultimately totally disarming. I find myself crying and the show hasn’t even started. Fortunately, there’s a box of tissues nearby.</p>
<p>A gentle, kind woman (who I later recognise as Hersch) lets me collect myself and leads me into a narrow, heavily draped, dimly lit room. Lit dramatically, I seat myself at a small desk in front of a computer monitor. Beside it sits a pad of paper. Some clear and simple verbal instructions are given.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/452036/original/file-20220314-101106-13m6zii.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/452036/original/file-20220314-101106-13m6zii.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/452036/original/file-20220314-101106-13m6zii.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452036/original/file-20220314-101106-13m6zii.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452036/original/file-20220314-101106-13m6zii.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452036/original/file-20220314-101106-13m6zii.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452036/original/file-20220314-101106-13m6zii.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452036/original/file-20220314-101106-13m6zii.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The encounter takes place alone and through a screen.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Roy Vandervegt/Adelaide Festival</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>What unfolds next is a face-to-face encounter with a senior at an undisclosed remote location. </p>
<p>After two years of COVID, we are all used to talking to people on screens. </p>
<p>Set up as a game, participants ask set questions of one another. Four cards linked to questions appear on the screen, and both parties can shuffle the deck for another question if it is not to their liking. Patrons have the option of passing on any question asked by their senior.</p>
<p>The “truth”, we are told, is “whatever it means to you today”. The process feels remarkably safe, ethical and fair, a far cry from being strapped down in a wheelchair (mind you, I loved that experience — but that’s a story for another day).</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/an-extraordinary-collaboration-watershed-the-death-of-dr-duncan-is-a-sensational-and-important-work-175330">An 'extraordinary collaboration' – Watershed: The Death of Dr Duncan is a sensational and important work</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Beautiful and deeply impactful</h2>
<p>Given that this work is still running and future iterations are likely to follow a similar format, it would be inappropriate to restate any of the questions. The truth and the willingness to tell it come from not knowing what is coming next. </p>
<p>These questions act to unlock our most deeply held dreams, goals and values. They have the potential to reveal both what we fear and what we cherish most.</p>
<p>As a newly minted “senior” myself, I came into the experience with a bit of suspicion around what someone older than I am could offer me. I expected something sweet, perhaps cute, but not particularly moving.</p>
<p>My human pairing in our all-too-short Q and A was beautiful and deeply impactful. What happened felt like a kind of deep communion, a sharing of what matters in life, safely revealed under the conditions of an ethics of care that Hersch and her team set up.</p>
<p>As for what happens with the photo, to say anything here would undermine the power of the final moments of the encounter.</p>
<p>Leaving the venue, I walked down the steps into the open courtyard of the Adelaide University Union building. It was 5.30pm on a Friday and the place was packed with young people: vibrant, noisy and full of energy after two years of COVID restrictions.</p>
<p>Usually, when walking through such a crowd I would have felt a bit old and alone. Instead, I felt connected to youth and age, even old age. And it was a good feeling, one that is still with me. </p>
<p>In that respect, Sex and Death_ and the Internet was less a performance event than a gift.</p>
<p><em>Sex and Death</em> <em>and the Internet plays at Union House, University of Adelaide, for Adelaide Festival until March 20.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/175331/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>William Peterson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Billed as an opportunity for frank conversations, this beautiful production was a deeply impactful sharing of what matters in life.William Peterson, Adjunct Associate Professor, Auckland University of TechnologyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1770622022-03-09T19:04:08Z2022-03-09T19:04:08ZThe 2022 Adelaide Biennial is titled Free/State. It explores freedom, the state and the spaces in between<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/450293/original/file-20220307-85122-1a3mbi2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=17%2C0%2C2000%2C1332&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Installation detail: 2022 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art: Free/State, featuring Namaslay by Min Wong, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo: Saul Steed</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Review: 2022 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art: Free/State, Art Gallery of South Australia</em></p>
<p>South Australia has always traded on its convict-free history and its founding as a “great and free” colony. Sebastian Goldspink’s 2022 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art: Free/State is a conceptual riposte to this colonial settler history, but it is much more. It is a nuanced play on the words “free” and the “state”, and the zones in between. </p>
<p>The pandemic has, of necessity, turned up the heat on ideas around freedom and the place of the state; this Biennial showing the work of 25 multi-generational artists is very much of its time.</p>
<p>Fittingly, the first work encountered is of Ukrainian émigré Stanislava Pinchuk whose text etched into marble plinths calls for safe passage for displaced people. On the opening of the Biennial, it echoes daily scenes in her home country, the site of a modern-day tragedy. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/450295/original/file-20220307-84943-aw9n2e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Marble plinths" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/450295/original/file-20220307-84943-aw9n2e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/450295/original/file-20220307-84943-aw9n2e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/450295/original/file-20220307-84943-aw9n2e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/450295/original/file-20220307-84943-aw9n2e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/450295/original/file-20220307-84943-aw9n2e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=491&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/450295/original/file-20220307-84943-aw9n2e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=491&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/450295/original/file-20220307-84943-aw9n2e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=491&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Installation view: 2022 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art: Free/State, featuring The Wine Dark Sea by Stanislava Pinchuk, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo: Saul Steed.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Pinchuk’s evocative installation, The Wine Dark Sea, carries text from unidentified refugees held on Manus Island and Nauru, and from Homer’s Odysseus who was homeless following the Trojan wars. </p>
<p>Urgency and despair is palpable in these etched messages: “Odysseus has lost hope”; “[REDACTED] did not want to come to this island.”</p>
<h2>Running out of time</h2>
<p>This 16th iteration of the Adelaide Biennial of Australian art gives visual form to the big ideas surrounding freedom and equality, and failures, especially of the colonial state. </p>
<p>Viewers enter Free/State through Kate Scardifield’s bright orange navigational sails adorning the gallery’s façade. We are reminded of a major failure of the state in relation to climate change: the colour orange is conventionally used by sailors in an emergency. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/450592/original/file-20220308-126102-h25x7m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/450592/original/file-20220308-126102-h25x7m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/450592/original/file-20220308-126102-h25x7m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=880&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/450592/original/file-20220308-126102-h25x7m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=880&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/450592/original/file-20220308-126102-h25x7m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=880&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/450592/original/file-20220308-126102-h25x7m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1106&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/450592/original/file-20220308-126102-h25x7m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1106&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/450592/original/file-20220308-126102-h25x7m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1106&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Installation view: 2022 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art: Free/State, featuring ALARUM by Kate Scardifield, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo: Saul Steed</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>For Scardifield, the role of art is to make visible what is invisible. Her exhibit within the gallery, Urgent is the rhythm, is a classical column made from carbon capture bricks. She challenges the museological world to consider it could capture carbon. </p>
<p>Tom Polo’s work in the Biennial sits squarely in the zone between “free” and “the state”: the space where chance enters the arena. His large semi-figurative, semi-abstract paintings stand amid the permanent works on display in the Australian art galleries, inviting audience members to find connections between his work and 18th, 19th and 20th century art.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/450296/original/file-20220307-83366-1qijbay.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Contemporary paintings in a traditional gallery" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/450296/original/file-20220307-83366-1qijbay.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/450296/original/file-20220307-83366-1qijbay.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/450296/original/file-20220307-83366-1qijbay.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/450296/original/file-20220307-83366-1qijbay.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/450296/original/file-20220307-83366-1qijbay.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=474&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/450296/original/file-20220307-83366-1qijbay.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=474&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/450296/original/file-20220307-83366-1qijbay.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=474&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Installation view: 2022 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art: Free/State, featuring works by Tom Polo, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo: Saul Steed</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Polo’s paintings as theatrical gestures challenge easy looking. Then there is his Clockwatch (end/during) sitting centrally on a large blue wall in a central space of the gallery, rather like the clock in any central station. But unlike a trusted clock, his is programmed for random actions. </p>
<p>Sometimes it is an analogue clock, at other times it becomes a talking clock face. If you listen carefully, you can even hear it question its existence: “there is not much time left”.</p>
<h2>Our online lives</h2>
<p>One of the most ubiquitous outcomes of life under the pandemic has been communication via zoom meetings. Julie Rrap’s Write Me responds to the facial images Zoom conveys and the phenomenon of people hiding behind their keyboards. Rrap’s keyboard has become 26 warped versions of the artist’s face, one for each letter of the alphabet. </p>
<p>When we retreat to screens, we lose the social contract of communicating in public space. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/450591/original/file-20220308-21-1mhtev0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/450591/original/file-20220308-21-1mhtev0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/450591/original/file-20220308-21-1mhtev0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/450591/original/file-20220308-21-1mhtev0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/450591/original/file-20220308-21-1mhtev0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/450591/original/file-20220308-21-1mhtev0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/450591/original/file-20220308-21-1mhtev0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/450591/original/file-20220308-21-1mhtev0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Installation view: 2022 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art: Free/State, featuring Write Me by Julie Rrap, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo: Saul Steed</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Other artists have turned to transcending the state via spiritual and otherworldly quests. </p>
<p>During the pandemic people turned to faceless algorithms like Google to answer life’s burning questions, so in Open Channels, Kate Mitchell constructs a conference call screen with nine psychics of the spirit world answering 83 questions. </p>
<h2>A theatrical exhibition</h2>
<p>The curatorial hand of Goldspink, a Burramattagal man, is delicate in Free/State. His brief to artists to explore ideas of freedom, the state and everything in between has led to a philosophical journey by a group of artists who – during numerous lockdowns during the pandemic – have looked within. </p>
<p>Angela Valamanesh turned to her garden and found beauty and resilience in the thorns of her rosebush in Morticia’s garden; Hossein Valamanesh transformed household gravel into a magical constellation of golden stars. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/450540/original/file-20220307-85746-n6of14.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/450540/original/file-20220307-85746-n6of14.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/450540/original/file-20220307-85746-n6of14.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/450540/original/file-20220307-85746-n6of14.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/450540/original/file-20220307-85746-n6of14.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/450540/original/file-20220307-85746-n6of14.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/450540/original/file-20220307-85746-n6of14.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/450540/original/file-20220307-85746-n6of14.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Installation view: 2022 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art: Free/State, featuring What goes around by Hossein Valamanesh and Morticia’s garden 1 by Angela Valamanesh, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo: Saul Steed</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The <a href="https://blogs.ncl.ac.uk/decolonisesml/2021/01/21/decolonial-postcolonial-what-does-it-mean-to-decolonise-ourselves/">post-colonial and decolonial</a> work speaking to the failure of the state is strong. </p>
<p>Kamilaroi/Gamilaraay artist Dennis Golding has transformed Victorian lacework on terrace houses in Redfern into an Aboriginal chandelier by subverting and claiming European domestic design features. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/450297/original/file-20220307-27-1plj2hp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/450297/original/file-20220307-27-1plj2hp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/450297/original/file-20220307-27-1plj2hp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/450297/original/file-20220307-27-1plj2hp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/450297/original/file-20220307-27-1plj2hp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/450297/original/file-20220307-27-1plj2hp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/450297/original/file-20220307-27-1plj2hp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/450297/original/file-20220307-27-1plj2hp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Installation view: 2022 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art: Free/State, featuring Casting shadows [Chandelier] and The Settlement [Shield] by Dennis Golding, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo: Saul Steed</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Kamilaroi artist Reko Rennie turned to a restored bright pink Holden Monaro to journey around urban sites of initiation into his cultural values. This journey takes place against a stunning soundscape by Yorta Yorta artist Deborah Cheetham whose music is infused with Kamilaroi language to honour Rennie’s grandmother who was never able to pursue a musical career. </p>
<p>Even a delightful element of anarchy surfaced in the opening satirical performance by Loren Kronemyer and Pony Express in Abolish the Olympics in which she performed 33 Olympic sports in one hour. Here, Pony Express describe themselves as social justice weightlifters whose aim is exposing the economic malpractice of the Olympics. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/450531/original/file-20220307-85122-wrunj2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/450531/original/file-20220307-85122-wrunj2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/450531/original/file-20220307-85122-wrunj2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/450531/original/file-20220307-85122-wrunj2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/450531/original/file-20220307-85122-wrunj2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/450531/original/file-20220307-85122-wrunj2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/450531/original/file-20220307-85122-wrunj2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/450531/original/file-20220307-85122-wrunj2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Loren Kronemyer of Pony Express, Abolish the Olympics.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo: Nat Rogers.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>And there is more, including Shaun Gladwell’s slow seductive glimpse into street culture and the inevitable curbing of freedom for some who transgress in his video Homo Suburbiensis.</p>
<p>Free/State is a performative exhibition calling on viewers to engage and explore, to leave behind their closed world of lockdowns. It is an intensely theatrical exhibition, as good exhibitions should be. Goldspink has set in motion a philosophical journey centring around human resilience and creativity in a time of uncertainty.</p>
<p><em>Free/State is at the Art Gallery of South Australia until June 5.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/australian-art-has-lost-two-of-its-greats-vale-ann-newmarch-and-hossein-valamanesh-175435">Australian art has lost two of its greats. Vale Ann Newmarch and Hossein Valamanesh</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/177062/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Catherine Speck has received funding from the Australian Research Council to investigate art exhibitions (with Joanna Mendelssohn, Catherine De Lorenzo and Alison Inglis). </span></em></p>Sebastian Goldspink’s 2022 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art: Free/State is a conceptual riposte to this colonial settler history, and much more.Catherine Speck, Professorial Fellow (Honorary), The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1753302022-03-09T00:07:31Z2022-03-09T00:07:31ZAn ‘extraordinary collaboration’ – Watershed: The Death of Dr Duncan is a sensational and important work<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/450557/original/file-20220308-130118-1obcmve.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=8%2C0%2C5742%2C3837&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Adelaide Festival/Andrew Beveridge</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Review: Watershed: The Death of Dr Duncan, directed by Neil Armfield for the Adelaide Festival.</em></p>
<p>50 years ago this May, Dr George Ian Ogilvie Duncan, a law lecturer at the University of Adelaide, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_George_Duncan">was assaulted</a> by a group of men and thrown into the River Torrens. He drowned. </p>
<p>Dr Duncan was attacked at a well known gay “beat”: a place where men gathered to meet and have sex. In an era when even private sexual acts between two men were illegal, such beats were the only place for many to experience intimate contact with other men.</p>
<p>Though three police officers from city’s vice squad were widely believed to have been involved in the murder, no one was convicted. As the lyrics in this new production proclaim: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Your murderers walk through the world <br>
[They] sleep through the night without shame.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In the wake of Dr Duncan’s death, public outcry eventually led to legal change. In 1975 South Australia became the <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-08-24/timeline:-australian-states-decriminalise-male-homosexuality/6719702?nw=0&r=HtmlFragment">first state</a> to decriminalise male homosexual acts.</p>
<p>The complex historical, political and social context around Dr. Duncan’s death requires a suitably focused dramatic vehicle. Wisely, the musical form chosen was not opera or the musical, but the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/art/oratorio">oratorio</a>. </p>
<p>Traditionally associated with sacred content such as the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passion_(music)">Passion of Christ</a>, an oratorio is a musical oration, unique in its capacity to mourn, proclaim and celebrate what comes from tragic loss. </p>
<p>One of the many triumphs of this production is its showing how this older form can tell a serious contemporary story using a range of musical styles while evoking a wide range of emotions. </p>
<p>This extraordinary collaboration between composer Joe Twist and co-lyricists Alana Valentine and Christos Tsiolkas, with set and costumes by Ailsa Paterson and choreography by Lewis Major, is superbly and sensitively staged by director Neil Armfield.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/450558/original/file-20220308-85746-z2o57x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/450558/original/file-20220308-85746-z2o57x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/450558/original/file-20220308-85746-z2o57x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/450558/original/file-20220308-85746-z2o57x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/450558/original/file-20220308-85746-z2o57x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/450558/original/file-20220308-85746-z2o57x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/450558/original/file-20220308-85746-z2o57x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/450558/original/file-20220308-85746-z2o57x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Watershed is a sensitively staged production.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Adelaide Festival/Andrew Beveridge</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>18 singers from the Adelaide Chamber Singers guide the audience through the story of Dr Duncan while evoking an era in which “coming out” becomes possible for greater numbers.</p>
<p>Two principal singers, Mark Oates and Pelham Andrews, deftly take on character voices that include Duncan, former South Australian premier Don Dunstan, and a police officer, lawyer and whistle blowing officer Mick O’Shea. Ainsley Melham enacts the “Lost Boy,” movingly guiding us through the work’s emotional heart.</p>
<p>The work opens with dancer (Mason Kelly) in a body harness falling in slow motion from the top of the stage into a pool of water. A kind of solemn horror is evoked, as the last moments of Dr Duncan’s life are evoked in a highly aestheticised way.</p>
<h2>Truth in the lyrics</h2>
<p>The lyrics draw from historian <a href="https://www.wakefieldpress.com.au/product.php?productid=1762">Tim Reeves’ research</a> into Dr Duncan’s death, the initial police and Scotland Yard investigation, and the later trial and acquittal of two of the officers in 1988.</p>
<p>Valentine and Tsiolkas’ words evoke the emotions of time and place, and – early in the work – the dangerous world of furtive cruising. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>One stands under the bridge and smokes his cigarette. <br>
A golden-haired student walks into the toilet block. <br>
Glancing neither left nor right/ he slips into the night. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>We are reminded that others were dumped into the river as well. This is a world in which gay men are bashed for sport: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>We thought faggots floated. <br>
It was just a drunken lark.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Music and lyrics express the view that many did not see gay lives as worthy. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>They’re legitimate prey.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The broader story is also one of class, as it took the murder of a university lecturer to evoke the outrage of Adelaide’s society mothers:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Surely we draw the line at murder for sport. <br>
Surely we draw the line at police brutality.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>At times the music takes on a liturgical quality, as in a mass, while at others, it opens into a raucous, celebratory mode, as when the 1975 legal victory decriminalising homosexual male sex is proclaimed. Lyrics capture the spirit of release from emotional and psychological bondage that many of us who came out in the 70s felt: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I’m overwhelmed in disbelief […] a criminal no more.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>A sensational work</h2>
<p>Under the musical direction of Christie Anderson, the small orchestra of strings, keyboard and percussion at times creates a big, oversized sound, generating the beating heart of the work. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/450559/original/file-20220308-84357-r08fsd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/450559/original/file-20220308-84357-r08fsd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/450559/original/file-20220308-84357-r08fsd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/450559/original/file-20220308-84357-r08fsd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/450559/original/file-20220308-84357-r08fsd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/450559/original/file-20220308-84357-r08fsd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/450559/original/file-20220308-84357-r08fsd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/450559/original/file-20220308-84357-r08fsd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">This new work is the result of a hugely successful collaboration.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Adelaide Festival/Andrew Beveridge</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Watershed’s success in capturing a time and place, in storytelling through song, is ultimately due to a hugely successful collaboration between diverse creative artists committed to serving the whole. </p>
<p>A new work as seamless as this requires discarding many “good ideas,” trusting that better ones will follow. This is a hard task, one that requires considerable generosity of spirit.</p>
<p>This is a truly sensational and – dare I say – important work, one that will hopefully see many future productions.</p>
<p><em>Season closed.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/175330/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>William Peterson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Dr George Ian Ogilvie Duncan was murdered at a gay ‘beat’ in the 1970s. His death was instrumental in South Australia’s decriminalisation of male homosexual acts.William Peterson, Adjunct Associate Professor, Auckland University of TechnologyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1753292022-03-07T23:24:45Z2022-03-07T23:24:45ZEmma Beech’s The Photo Box is an intimate and honest view of a life<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/450277/original/file-20220307-83366-pkvwfw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C5534%2C3684&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Adelaide Festival/Roy Vandervegt</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Review: The Photo Box, directed by Mish Grigor, Vitalstatitix and Brink Productions for Adelaide Festival</em></p>
<p>Emma Beech’s The Photo Box reminds us why we gather in small theatres to listen to a single performer tell us stories about their life. </p>
<p>In The Photo Box, Beech mines the personal, bringing the audience along for a ride that is delightful, moving and, at times, hilarious. </p>
<p>Beech is quite a presence: charming, open, disarming, and a fluid mover with a self-deprecating sense of humour.</p>
<p>The starting point for the work, she tells us early on, was when her father “started preparing for death” 24 years ago and curated family photos into nine boxes. </p>
<p>Aided by clever production and projection design (Meg Wilson and Chris Petridis), Beech brings these photographs to life, weaving stories of family, motherhood and what it feels like to come from a place many would regard as a backwater. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/theatre-of-the-real-how-artists-at-perth-fringe-world-are-stripping-down-to-reveal-their-vulnerabilities-175652">'Theatre of the real': how artists at Perth Fringe World are stripping down to reveal their vulnerabilities</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Rough and real</h2>
<p>Six screens of various height and sizes suggest family photo frames. Sitting on overhead tracks, Beech moves them into various positions as the projections on the screens flow fluidly and masterfully with the narrative.</p>
<p>Her hometown, Barmera on Lake Bonney in South Australia’s Riverlands is character in the story: the land on which her family’s stories are written. </p>
<p>“I always had the feeling that Barmera was a bit more shit than most places and that you were a bit shit for coming from there”, she says.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Production image: Beech sits in a lawn chair, surrounded by blue" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/450286/original/file-20220307-84100-1j8q19q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/450286/original/file-20220307-84100-1j8q19q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/450286/original/file-20220307-84100-1j8q19q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/450286/original/file-20220307-84100-1j8q19q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/450286/original/file-20220307-84100-1j8q19q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/450286/original/file-20220307-84100-1j8q19q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/450286/original/file-20220307-84100-1j8q19q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Barmera on Lake Bonney is as much a character in the story as the Beech family members are.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Adelaide Festival/Roy Vandervegt</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The youngest of nine children in a Catholic family, Beech pulls no punches when in comes to the town, her family or her personal life. Far from celebrating the folksy friendliness of small-town life, Beech’s Barmera is as rough and real as her storytelling. </p>
<p>By the time she came along as number nine, her mother Betty had spent virtually all her 20s and 30s producing children. </p>
<p>Answering the question of why, Betty’s response is simply: “We were Catholic of course. That’s what we did.”</p>
<h2>Emotional logic</h2>
<p>Originally, the autobiography unfolds in a chronological fashion, with photos of the young Emma moving through life’s milestones. The pattern is quickly upended. </p>
<p>Chronology is replaced by an emotional and psychological logic that moves and slices across time, capturing moments of revelation.</p>
<p>Beech’s stories are not just about herself: they are also about family members and partners. One story focuses on her brother Pete, the one who “stayed behind”, details of Pete’s life peppered throughout the larger storytelling arc.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Production image: Beech talks about a photograph of a man with a young girl on his shoulders." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/450288/original/file-20220307-16533-1thpzmn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/450288/original/file-20220307-16533-1thpzmn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/450288/original/file-20220307-16533-1thpzmn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/450288/original/file-20220307-16533-1thpzmn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/450288/original/file-20220307-16533-1thpzmn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/450288/original/file-20220307-16533-1thpzmn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/450288/original/file-20220307-16533-1thpzmn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Beech pulls no punches as she explores her family photographs.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Adelaide Festival/Roy Vandervegt</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>We learn Pete runs the local hardware store; he can be short and gruff; he loves music and his mates; he’s not good at being alone. </p>
<p>Later, Beech tells us a story of walking down North Terrace one day and seeing a “sad looking man” outside the Royal Adelaide Hospital.</p>
<p>Pete’s wife was in hospital following a life-threatening brain aneurysm. As Beech approaches the sad man, she realises it is her brother, attended by his mates who stayed in the city for the 17 days his wife was in a coma.</p>
<p>Another story tells of the year she brought her Danish boyfriend to Barmera for a raucous and heavy-drinking family Christmas. The brothers-in-law, “the least respected members of the family”, are put in charge of cooking the meat, which they burn. </p>
<p>The relationship with the Dane didn’t survive Christmas.</p>
<h2>Intimate and honest</h2>
<p>Woven into The Photo Box are three intimate short films (filmmaker Shalom Almond with cinematographer Helen Carter), looking at Beech’s brother Pete in his home bar, her father in his comfy chair listening to André Rieu on his headphones, and her mother Betty, a devoted member of the Catholic Women’s League, cleaning the local church.</p>
<p>These films add a deeply textured experiential dimension to the story telling.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/450291/original/file-20220307-84591-1e6d962.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Production image: Beech in front of images of her triplets." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/450291/original/file-20220307-84591-1e6d962.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/450291/original/file-20220307-84591-1e6d962.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/450291/original/file-20220307-84591-1e6d962.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/450291/original/file-20220307-84591-1e6d962.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/450291/original/file-20220307-84591-1e6d962.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=517&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/450291/original/file-20220307-84591-1e6d962.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=517&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/450291/original/file-20220307-84591-1e6d962.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=517&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Beech is the mother of triplets, and themes of motherhood weave throughout the storytelling.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Adelaide Festival/Roy Vandervegt</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In her early 40s, Betty was a mother of nine. In her early 40s, Beech is the mother of triplets. This bond of motherhood brings the show toward its conclusion. </p>
<p>Earlier in the production, we learnt Betty has been secretly learning Italian and long dreamt of travelling to Italy. Now Betty looks into the camera toward the audience and says, “Ciao sono Betty” (I am Betty). </p>
<p>It is a beautiful, intimate moment that lingers.</p>
<p>For a solo autobiographical piece to fully engage that audience, it requires the intimate, honest qualities found in The Photo Box. Under the direction of Mish Grigor with dramaturgical contributions from Anne Thompson, this is a supremely local, intricately crafted and beautifully shaped work of theatre.</p>
<p><em>Season closed.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/175329/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>William Peterson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>This beautifully crafted production at the Adelaide Festival is an intricate look at families and memory.William Peterson, Associate Professor, Auckland University of TechnologyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1586152021-04-09T06:32:29Z2021-04-09T06:32:29ZThere’s a long and devastating history behind the proposal for a nuclear waste dump in South Australia<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/394187/original/file-20210409-19-1vs5zsu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=28%2C115%2C2805%2C1578&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Rosemary Laing, one dozen considerations, Totem 1, Emu (2013) on display at The Image is Not Nothing.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source"> Josh Geelen</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>On Saturday the Adelaide Festival hosted a public showing of <a href="https://cloudstor.aarnet.edu.au/plus/s/d8b9jub5TrpY2y1">Australian Atomic Confessions</a>, a documentary I co-directed about the tragic and long-lasting effects of the atomic weapons testing carried out by Britain in South Australia in the 1950s.</p>
<p>Amid works from 20 artists reflecting on nuclear trauma as experienced by Indigenous peoples, the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/910138756414106/">discussion</a> that followed brought up the ways in which attempts at nuclear colonisation have continued in South Australia, and are continuing right now.</p>
<p>For the fourth time in 23 years South Australia is being targeted for a <a href="https://nuclear.foe.org.au/waste/">nuclear waste dump</a> — this time at Napandee, a property near Kimba on the Eyre Peninsula. </p>
<p>The plan is likely to require the use of a <a href="https://www.industry.gov.au/sites/default/files/2019-04/nrwmf_site_characterisation_technical_report_napandee.pdf">port</a>, most probably <a href="https://www.whyallanewsonline.com.au/story/5565509/nuclear-port-potential/">Whyalla</a>, to receive reprocessed nuclear fuel waste by sea from France, the United Kingdom and the Lucas Heights reactor in NSW via Port Kembla. </p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/393930/original/file-20210408-15-1ff2iwh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/393930/original/file-20210408-15-1ff2iwh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/393930/original/file-20210408-15-1ff2iwh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=431&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393930/original/file-20210408-15-1ff2iwh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=431&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393930/original/file-20210408-15-1ff2iwh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=431&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393930/original/file-20210408-15-1ff2iwh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=542&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393930/original/file-20210408-15-1ff2iwh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=542&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393930/original/file-20210408-15-1ff2iwh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=542&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Napandee. Site Characterisation Technical Report.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.industry.gov.au/sites/default/files/2019-04/nrwmf_site_characterisation_technical_report_napandee.pdf">Department of Industry</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<p>The waste will be stored <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/DocumentStore.ashx?id=d0a04066-1620-462c-8f48-2bc4cd2f2a06&subId=680058">above ground</a> in concrete vaults which will be filled for 100 years and monitored for a further 200-300 years.</p>
<p>Nuclear waste can remain hazardous for <a href="https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/nuclear-wastes/radioactive-wastes-myths-and-realities.aspx">thousands of years</a>.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.barngarla.com/about">Barngarla people</a> hold cultural rights and responsibilities for the region but were excluded from a government poll about the proposal because they were not deemed to be <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-07-12/bid-to-stop-ballot-on-nuclear-storage-facility-in-sa-dismissed/11302852">local residents</a>.</p>
<p>The 734 locals who took part backed the proposal <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-11-07/majority-of-kimba-residents-support-nuclear-waste-facility/11680774">61.6%</a> </p>
<p>The Barngarla people are far from the first in South Australia to be excluded from a say about proposals to spread nuclear materials over their land.</p>
<h2>It’s not the first such proposal</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8ry1VGoRkM">Australian Atomic Confessions</a> explores the legacy of the nine British atomic bombs dropped on Maralinga and Emu Field in the 1950s, and the “minor trials” that continued into the 1960s. </p>
<p>After failed clean-ups by the British in the 1960s followed by a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McClelland_Royal_Commission">Royal Commission</a> in the 1980s, the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency conducted a cleanup between 1995 and 2000 it assures us was <a href="https://www.arpansa.gov.au/understanding-radiation/sources-radiation/more-radiation-sources/british-nuclear-weapons-testing">successful</a> to the point where most of the contaminated areas at Maralinga fall well within the clean-up standards applied for unrestricted land use.</p>
<p>But experts remain <a href="https://nuclear.foe.org.au/flawed-clean-up-of-maralinga/">sceptical</a>, given the near-surface burial of plutonium and contamination remaining across a wide area.</p>
<p>The Tjarutja people are allowed to move through and hunt at the Maralinga site with their radiation levels monitored but are not permitted to camp there <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/awaye/surviving-the-fallout/12981300">permanently</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/394182/original/file-20210409-19-157oiio.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/394182/original/file-20210409-19-157oiio.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/394182/original/file-20210409-19-157oiio.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=305&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/394182/original/file-20210409-19-157oiio.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=305&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/394182/original/file-20210409-19-157oiio.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=305&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/394182/original/file-20210409-19-157oiio.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=384&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/394182/original/file-20210409-19-157oiio.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=384&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/394182/original/file-20210409-19-157oiio.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=384&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Nina Sanadze, 100 Years After, 30 years On, 3rd Tbilisi Triennial (2018) on display as part of The Image is not Nothing.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.adelaidefestival.com.au/events/the-image-is-not-nothing/">Sandro Sulaberidze</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>We are told that what happened in the 1950s wouldn’t happen today, in relation to the proposed nuclear waste dump. But it wasn’t our enemies who bombed us at Maralinga and Emu Field, it was an ally.</p>
<p>In exchange for allowing 12 British atomic bombs tests (including those at the Monte Bello Islands off the northern coast of Western Australia), the Australian government got access to nuclear technology which it used to build the Lucas Heights reactor.</p>
<p>It is primarily the nuclear waste produced from six decades of operations at Lucas Heights that would be dumped onto Barngarla country in South Australia, closing the links in this nuclear trauma chain. </p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/sixty-years-on-maralinga-reminds-us-not-to-put-security-over-safety-62441">Sixty years on, Maralinga reminds us not to put security over safety</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Nuclear bombs and nuclear waste disproportionately impact Indigenous peoples, yet Australia still has <a href="https://www.un.org/development/desa/indigenouspeoples/declaration-on-the-rights-of-indigenous-peoples.html">not signed up</a> to the <a href="https://www.un.org/development/desa/indigenouspeoples/wp-content/uploads/sites/19/2018/11/UNDRIP_E_web.pdf">United Nations Declaration</a> on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The declaration requires states to ensure there is no storage or disposal of hazardous materials on the lands of Indigenous peoples without their free, prior and informed consent.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/394346/original/file-20210409-15-w0pabe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/394346/original/file-20210409-15-w0pabe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/394346/original/file-20210409-15-w0pabe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=265&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/394346/original/file-20210409-15-w0pabe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=265&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/394346/original/file-20210409-15-w0pabe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=265&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/394346/original/file-20210409-15-w0pabe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=333&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/394346/original/file-20210409-15-w0pabe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=333&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/394346/original/file-20210409-15-w0pabe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=333&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.un.org/development/desa/indigenouspeoples/wp-content/uploads/sites/19/2018/11/UNDRIP_E_web.pdf">Article 29, United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Nor has Australia shown any willingness to sign up to the <a href="https://www.icanw.org/signature_and_ratification_status">Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons</a> which came into force on January 22 this year after a lobbying campaign that began in <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/2017/ican/facts/">Australia</a> and was endorsed by <a href="https://swuraniumimpacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/17-Indigenous-Statement-to-the-UN.jpeg">Indigenous leaders</a> worldwide. </p>
<p>Aboriginal people have long known the dangers of uranium on their country.</p>
<p>Water from the Great Artesian Basin has been extracted by the Olympic Dam copper-uranium mine for decades. Fragile <a href="https://www.samemory.sa.gov.au/site/page.cfm?u=404">mound springs</a> of spiritual significance to the <a href="http://www.arabana.com.au/">Arabunna People</a> are disappearing, posing <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/environment/sustainability/south-australia-s-disappearing-springs-raise-questions-for-miner-bhp-20201117-p56f6m.html">questions</a> for the mining giant BHP to answer.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/394183/original/file-20210409-19-c6yrtx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/394183/original/file-20210409-19-c6yrtx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/394183/original/file-20210409-19-c6yrtx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=303&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/394183/original/file-20210409-19-c6yrtx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=303&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/394183/original/file-20210409-19-c6yrtx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=303&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/394183/original/file-20210409-19-c6yrtx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=381&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/394183/original/file-20210409-19-c6yrtx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=381&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/394183/original/file-20210409-19-c6yrtx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=381&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Artworks on display at The Image is not Nothing at the Adelaide Festival.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.adelaidefestival.com.au/events/the-image-is-not-nothing/">Josh Geelen</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Australian uranium from BHP Olympic Dam and the now-closed Rio Tinto Ranger mine fuelled the 2011 <a href="https://theecologist.org/2021/mar/09/australian-uranium-fuelled-fukushima">Fukushima nuclear disaster</a>.</p>
<p>Senior traditional custodian of the <a href="https://www.mirarr.net/">Mirrar people</a>, Yvonne Margarula, wrote to the United Nations in 2013 saying her people feel <a href="http://www.minesandcommunities.org/article.php?a=10840">responsible</a> for what happened.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It is likely that the radiation problems at Fukushima are, at least in part, fuelled by uranium derived from our traditional lands. This makes us feel very sad.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The <a href="https://www.foe.org.au/kungkas">Irati Wanti</a> (The Poison, Leave It!) campaign led by a council of senior Aboriginal women helped defeat earlier proposals for nuclear waste dumps between 1998 and 2004.</p>
<p>There remains strong <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/DocumentStore.ashx?id=20e25c73-a469-4d3c-9d82-68c4cee0c4fd&subId=679791">Indigenous opposition</a> to the current nuclear waste proposal.</p>
<p>Over the past five years, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/noradwastekimba">farmers</a> have joined with the Barngarla People to protect their communities and the health of the land. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-the-silence-of-ediacara-the-shadow-of-uranium-72058">Friday essay: the silence of Ediacara, the shadow of uranium</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>In 2020 the government introduced into the Senate a bill that would do away with traditional owners’ and farmers’ rights to <a href="https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/download/legislation/ems/r6500_ems_c08f76e7-da8f-49f5-8981-25825f9ced5f/upload_pdf/731164.pdf;fileType=application%2Fpdf">judicial reviews and procedural fairness</a> in regard to the use of land for the facility. </p>
<p>Resources Minister Keith Pitt is deciding how to proceed.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/158615/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Noonan B.Sc., M.Env.St. of the No Dump Alliance provided assistance in the preparation of this piece.</span></em></p>The thinking behind the idea of a dump near Whyalla goes back 60 years.Katherine Aigner, PhD candidate Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy, Australian National UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1562982021-03-04T04:11:57Z2021-03-04T04:11:57ZEnchanted voices: A Midsummer Night’s Dream transports audiences to a place of wonder<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/387435/original/file-20210303-17-m0g9w3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=37%2C6%2C4200%2C2760&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Tony Lewis/Adelaide Festival</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Review: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, by Benjamin Britten, directed by Neil Armfield, Adelaide Festival.</em></p>
<p>Transfixed, Transported. Transfigured. Three hours pass in the blink of an eye. </p>
<p>How did this happen, or was it all just a dream? For a start, there’s the play, Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. For many, it is the Shakespeare play we encountered first. </p>
<p>On playing the king of the fairies at age 16, director Neil Armfield recalls:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I cut a rather dashing Oberon – swathed in brown chiffon with knee high lace-up boots and butterfly wing eye make-up.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>His words hint at why some of us cringe at this play. We have seen so many dreadful amateur productions that we have forgotten the power and the magic of this work.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/387439/original/file-20210303-23-1gu3m3n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Production image; two men sing on a swing" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/387439/original/file-20210303-23-1gu3m3n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/387439/original/file-20210303-23-1gu3m3n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387439/original/file-20210303-23-1gu3m3n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387439/original/file-20210303-23-1gu3m3n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387439/original/file-20210303-23-1gu3m3n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387439/original/file-20210303-23-1gu3m3n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387439/original/file-20210303-23-1gu3m3n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The costumes in this production are sensational.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Andrew Beveridge/Adelaide Festival</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The story is both simple and complex. Set in a mythical Athens, one couple (Lysander and Hermia) runs away to elope; another (Demetrius and Helena) is hot on their heels in the forest. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, the power couple ruling the fairy world (Oberon and Tytania) are having marital problems. Enter the sprite Puck, whose misunderstandings of his master Oberon’s instructions cause endless complications until order is restored. </p>
<p>Benjamin Britten’s Midsummer Night’s Dream is not merely a play, but an opera. When it premiered in 1960, Britten was already an accomplished composer and librettist. </p>
<p>And what Britten does departs radically from grand opera of the 19th century. Unlike the great classic Italian operas, there are no “hit” tunes. (Think <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWc7vYjgnTs">Nessum Dorma</a> from Puccini’s Turandot. You know this song even if you think you don’t.)</p>
<p>There are no stand and deliver moments in Britten’s opera where an emotive tune is belted out by a static singer. Instead, Britten’s music is inextricably linked to the mood, character, and dramatic action. </p>
<p>Britten excels in marshalling the sounds of a vast orchestra to support action. He conjures the fairy world with the light touch of harps, lively percussion, and stringed instruments sliding between notes, known as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glissando">glissando</a> . </p>
<p>And Britten likes brass. The unique capacity of the trombone to bellow and slide underscored the play’s comic moments. Muted trumpets, similarly, are particularly good for farting sounds when onstage ridiculousness is at a fever pitch. Who knew?</p>
<h2>Superb vocal pairings</h2>
<p>Yet despite these musical instructions, Britten’s music is open to a range of interpretive possibilities. And it’s in this space that the creative team led by Armfield, set and costume designer Dale Ferguson, and associate director/choreographer Danni Sayers weave their extraordinary magic. </p>
<p>Armfield has had lifetime love affair with Britten’s operas, and is the leading interpreter of his work internationally. Having previously directed this opera for the Houston Grand Opera, the Canadian Opera Company, and the Lyric Opera of Chicago, the Adelaide Festival production is its Australian premiere.</p>
<p>It’s a big ticket item, with ticket prices to match. But the creative and human forces required to stage this production are nothing short of gargantuan. Joining a large cast of opera performers of international stature was a sizeable contingent of musicians from the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, and the Young Adelaide Voices choir.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/387437/original/file-20210303-17-fn2tcd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Production image: a group of fairies" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/387437/original/file-20210303-17-fn2tcd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/387437/original/file-20210303-17-fn2tcd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387437/original/file-20210303-17-fn2tcd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387437/original/file-20210303-17-fn2tcd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387437/original/file-20210303-17-fn2tcd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387437/original/file-20210303-17-fn2tcd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387437/original/file-20210303-17-fn2tcd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The creative and human forces required to stage this production are nothing short of gargantuan.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Tony Lewis/Adelaide Festival</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>One of the unique features of this opera is its vocal pairings. The most famous is that of the fairy king and queen, Oberon and Tytania. </p>
<p>Playing Oberon is American opera superstar Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen, who arrived from New York in early January <a href="https://indaily.com.au/inreview/adelaide-festival/2021/01/22/american-opera-stars-adelaide-quarantine-concert/">to undergo quarantine</a>. Cohen is one of the few opera singers globally who sings in the vocal range pitched above a tenor, known as a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countertenor">countertenor</a>. </p>
<p>His richly supported voice is beautifully paired with Rachelle Durkin’s Tytania. Durkin’s role relies on the otherworldly vocal embellishments of a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coloratura_soprano">coloratura soprano</a>. Together the couple sounds enchanted, not of this world.</p>
<p>The “young” lovers Lysander (Andrew Goodwin) and Hermia (Sally-Anne Russell) and Demetrius (James Clayton) and Helena (Leanne Kenneally) are equally well cast. Their superb musical timing and strong, clear characterisations are a source of delight.</p>
<p>The royal couple, Theseus (Teddy Tahu Rhodes) and Hippolita (Fiona Campbell), who kick off Shakespeare’s play, don’t appear until the final scene. Along with the two couples, they assemble to watch the Mechanicals stage the “tragic comedy” Pyramus and Thisbe. This famous scene has rarely been more hilarious than in the delightful, comic hands of Warwick Fyfe (Bottom) and Louis Hurley (Flute).</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/387438/original/file-20210303-21-1vpekf0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Production image: a pantomime" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/387438/original/file-20210303-21-1vpekf0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/387438/original/file-20210303-21-1vpekf0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=383&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387438/original/file-20210303-21-1vpekf0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=383&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387438/original/file-20210303-21-1vpekf0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=383&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387438/original/file-20210303-21-1vpekf0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=481&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387438/original/file-20210303-21-1vpekf0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=481&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387438/original/file-20210303-21-1vpekf0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=481&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Mechanicals scene is hilarious.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Tony Lewis/Adelaide Festival</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Ferguson’s costumes are sensational, particularly the spangly, sequined, form-fitting creations worn by Oberon and Tytania. His superbly magical set is dominated by a translucent, shimmering, floating sheet above the stage. </p>
<p>It’s as if the sky breathes in sync with the orchestra and the audience. As Armfield observes:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Britten’s extraordinary music floats and shimmers, drifts and breathes with the hypnotic pulse of the human body. We are, in a sense, inside the mind, inside a kind of released imagination where the translucent skin of reality lifts and falls with the slow rhythms of enchanted sleep.“</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This is a superbly well crafted production. The sure-footed direction, the subtle vocal shadings, brilliant comic timing, orchestral precision, and magical presence of Young Adelaide Voices transported the audience into a world of dream and wonder.</p>
<p>In <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1960/06/13/archives/music-midsummer-nights-dream-opera-by-britten-bows-at-aldeburgh.html">reviewing the opera’s premiere in 1960</a>, famed music critic Howard Taubman predicted, "The chances are that Mr. Britten’s ‘Dream’ will reach many stages of the world.” </p>
<p>Fortunately for us, his prediction has proven true.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/156298/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>William Peterson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Neil Armfield’s production of the Benjamin Britten opera is a triumph of sure-footed direction, subtle vocal shadings, brilliant comic timing and orchestral precision.William Peterson, Associate Professor, Flinders UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1562042021-03-03T02:57:33Z2021-03-03T02:57:33ZGuttered: a joyful immersion and subversion of expectations between the bowling lanes<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/387130/original/file-20210302-17-99g8sw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C8%2C5489%2C3028&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Roy Vandervegt/Adelaide Festival</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Review: Guttered, directed by Michelle Ryan. Restless Dance Theatre for Adelaide Festival.</em></p>
<p>We are greeted at the entrance of Kingpin Norwood. Seasoned bowlers make a beeline for shoe hire while teens flock to the clanging siren call of arcade games. The line between real and theatrical is joyfully blurred as the interactive and immersive performance of Guttered begins. </p>
<p>Upon entering, we are required to show our palms for inspection as a small light dances across our hands. We are assessed: “You look like you’re good at supporting people. You can be on the cheer squad.” </p>
<p>Picked for our respective teams, we are directed towards couches at the end of each lane or a row of chairs towards the back of the room. These opening moments conjure a sense of conversation between audience and dancers.</p>
<h2>Questions of who we are</h2>
<p>Brightly printed score cards invite us to rate on a scale of 1 to 10 “How often do you feel like a winner?”. These are later perused by a dancer who reviews each score, assessing with a smile and a shrug before moving on to the next. </p>
<p>Glowing bowling bags emit recorded stories and are danced towards the audience, who are invited to lean in and listen. Lean in to the stories of triumph at the bowling alley. Lean in to the reflections of these dancers who face assumptions and judgements about their abilities as artists. Lean in to stories rejecting the stereotype of always being happy, or always being shy. One recording boldly proclaims: “I’m not shy, I’m wild!”</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/387131/original/file-20210302-13-1gekgxu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Two heads lean on a platform, looking disembodied." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/387131/original/file-20210302-13-1gekgxu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/387131/original/file-20210302-13-1gekgxu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=332&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387131/original/file-20210302-13-1gekgxu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=332&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387131/original/file-20210302-13-1gekgxu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=332&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387131/original/file-20210302-13-1gekgxu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387131/original/file-20210302-13-1gekgxu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387131/original/file-20210302-13-1gekgxu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Two dancers — or two bowling balls?</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Roy Vandervegt/Adelaide Festival</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Two dancers rest their chins on a bench and their heads become bowling balls in a syncopated moment of movement. From another angle, their bodies are projected shadows on the wall and the joyful moment is re-framed as a tender tussle between bodies. This duality is the first hint of the challenge director Michelle Ryan creates for the audience, inviting us to consider the possibilities of perspective.<br>
Perhaps what we assume about an action might not be the case? </p>
<p>Two dancers are caressed and held. What begins as affection slowly morphs into control and possession. Hands are repeatedly drawn over faces and arms are continuously wrapped around bodies. The dancers can no longer move of their own free will. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/387135/original/file-20210302-17-1xj2rc0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Two women embrace." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/387135/original/file-20210302-17-1xj2rc0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/387135/original/file-20210302-17-1xj2rc0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387135/original/file-20210302-17-1xj2rc0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387135/original/file-20210302-17-1xj2rc0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387135/original/file-20210302-17-1xj2rc0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387135/original/file-20210302-17-1xj2rc0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387135/original/file-20210302-17-1xj2rc0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">What begins as a gentle movement can morph into something else.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shane Reid/Adelaide Festival</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>When is well meaning helpfulness not helpful? When it denies someone the dignity of risk and opportunities to fail. </p>
<p>A poignant moment begins as a ramp is placed at the top of a lane. The bowler doesn’t want the ramp. The worker insists. The bowler is emphatic, they do not want the ramp, get it out of my way. The worker insists. The ensuing repetition and tussle is squirm inducing. Can’t the worker see she doesn’t want the ramp? Can’t they see this is insulting? Can’t they see? Then the reflection hits square and centre — when have I not seen? </p>
<p>Ryan has created the perfect embodiment of the suffocation of “support”, subverting assumptions about helpfulness in the process. </p>
<h2>Bowling ally as performer</h2>
<p>It is a delight to see the architecture of the bowling alley used for performance. Sweeping sequences shared by the entire ensemble use the separated lanes to represent individuality and finding your own path, and later provide a grid like structure for unified movement. </p>
<p>Dancers bodies lie in the gutters, backs arch over ball chutes, shoes slide along the highly oiled wood. The familiar features of the bowling alley are transformed into theatrical co-performers. </p>
<p>This is no doubt a testament to the seamless design by Meg Wilson, evocative music soundscape by Jason Sweeney and nuanced lighting design by Geoff Cobham, working together to direct and guide the audiences’ eyes throughout the performance. It is hard to fight the urge to jump up and join in. Luckily, we don’t have to resist: members of the audience are periodically invited up for (COVID-safe) participation. </p>
<p>The ensuing cheers as balls crash into gutters and strikes are bowled create a thrilling sense of celebration. </p>
<p>Juxtaposing the energetic playfulness of the ensemble are a series of solos and duets. These moments punctuate the performance, offering up stories of love, self-determination and triumph. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/387134/original/file-20210302-13-1o5vzys.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A man leans over a glowing bowling ball." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/387134/original/file-20210302-13-1o5vzys.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/387134/original/file-20210302-13-1o5vzys.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387134/original/file-20210302-13-1o5vzys.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387134/original/file-20210302-13-1o5vzys.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387134/original/file-20210302-13-1o5vzys.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387134/original/file-20210302-13-1o5vzys.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387134/original/file-20210302-13-1o5vzys.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The balls are as much a part of this dance as the performers.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Roy Vandervegt/Adelaide Festival</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In one such moment, a solo dancer tenderly removes a glowing bowling ball from a bag and places it on the floor. In a moment of pure delightful the ball begins to move, seemingly of its own volition. The dancer follows the path of the ball dutifully and, when it occasionally dips into the gutter, gently retrieves it, comforts it in an embrace, and returns it to the floor so it can continue its journey. </p>
<p>It is deceptively simple, and entirely compelling. </p>
<p><em>Guttered plays until March 14.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/156204/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sarah Peters does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>This new work from Restless Dance Theatre is staged in a bowling ally, and asks us to consider the possibilities of perspective.Sarah Peters, Senior Lecturer in Drama, Flinders UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1561112021-03-01T05:56:16Z2021-03-01T05:56:16ZThe Boy Who Talked to Dogs: a story of trauma brought to the stage with honesty and grace<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/386881/original/file-20210301-21-1xktau2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C18%2C3090%2C2012&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Andy Rasheed/Slingsby/State Theatre Company South Australia</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Review: The Boy Who Talked to Dogs, directed by Andy Packer. Slingsby and the State Theatre Company of South Australia for the Adelaide Festival.</em></p>
<p>Telling the story of a living person truthfully is difficult. Adapting the memoir of a trauma survivor for the stage is even harder. The Boy Who Talked to Dogs rises to these twin challenges with brazen theatricality, thrilling acting, rousing Irish music and shadow puppetry, connecting equally with youth and adult audiences.</p>
<p>Irish playwright Amy Conroy’s text draws from Martin McKenna’s <a href="https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Boy-Who-Talked-to-Dogs/Martin-McKenna/9781629144337">2014 memoir</a>, the story of a boy bullied both at home and school who finds his family in a band of stray dogs. It is a tale of bravery and resilience and of finding love — but without a happy ending.</p>
<p>The real-life McKenna grew up in Limerick, Ireland and came to Australia in 1988. To many Australians he known as “The Dog Man” from his books, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAV8Ql8tA0w">videos</a> and ABC <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/radio/programs/conversations/conversations/7946116">radio interviews</a>. </p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/rAV8Ql8tA0w?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>Channelling Martin is the brilliant Irish actor Bryan Burroughs, who began rehearsals <a href="https://indaily.com.au/inreview/adelaide-festival/2021/02/17/the-boy-who-talked-to-dogs-and-triumphed-over-shadows/">virtually</a> from hotel quarantine. Burroughs’ physical and verbal dexterity brings to life the homeless child, and the adult bearing the scars of an abusive childhood.</p>
<p>Early in the play, a young Martin articulates the feelings that created strife at school and at home: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>It’s like my brain won’t listen to my body and my body won’t listen to my brain and they’re screaming at each other all the time.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Such a child would likely be diagnosed with ADHD today; no adult in his world knows how to deal with him.</p>
<p>At school, his sadistic teacher Mr. Keeley verbally and physically abuses him and prevails on his classmates to call him “Mr. Stupid”. At home, his alcoholic father beats him, his siblings regard him as a nuisance, and his mother gives up on him.</p>
<p>At 13, Martin ran away from home and for three years lived with a pack of stray dogs. Wisely, the show sticks largely to these early years, resisting the temptation to tell the story of his adult life in Australia.</p>
<h2>Challenging stories for young ears</h2>
<p>Presented with ingenuity and skill under the direction of Andy Packer, who has a <a href="https://www.dailypioneer.com/2019/vivacity/---perfection-is-ephemeral---.html">long history</a> of staging challenging subjects that speak to youth, The Boy Who Talked to Dogs will inspire young people to have conversations about how to find the strength to carry on under seemingly impossible circumstances.</p>
<p>Sharing the stage with Burroughs is Victoria Falconer, welcoming us in as emcee and occasionally goading Martin and drawing out aspects of his character.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/386883/original/file-20210301-15-dnc5sa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Production image: a man looks at the shadow of a dog." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/386883/original/file-20210301-15-dnc5sa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/386883/original/file-20210301-15-dnc5sa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386883/original/file-20210301-15-dnc5sa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386883/original/file-20210301-15-dnc5sa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386883/original/file-20210301-15-dnc5sa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386883/original/file-20210301-15-dnc5sa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386883/original/file-20210301-15-dnc5sa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">This is a story of adversity: not a story of overcoming adversity.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Andy Rasheed/Slingsby/State Theatre Company South Australia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In one exchange she prevails on Martin to lighten up, noting this is “supposed to be a family show.” The audience was surveyed, she adds, and they expressed a preference for an “heroic tale of overcoming adversity.” </p>
<p>Martin, lacking sentimentality, states dryly: “that’s not my story.” </p>
<p>The show’s chief strength is presenting this harrowing story with honesty. Martin emerges strong but not unscathed. While he finds strength and resilience among his canine companions, trauma cannot be magically overcome by the power of love.</p>
<h2>Ireland in Australia</h2>
<p>Reflecting McKenna’s Irish heritage, the storytelling alternates with song (composer Quincy Grant and songwriter Lisa O’Neill) in this highly theatrical presentation. Seated at tables of six, lively banter and music create the feeling of an Irish pub.</p>
<p>Martin’s life is narrated and acted out in contained spaces — his childhood home and a ramshackle hut — designed by Wendy Todd. As the story unfolds, three additional playing areas open up like giant books. Burroughs and Falconer move freely throughout the vast space, weaving in and out of the audience. </p>
<p>Martin’s beloved dogs are represented as shadow puppets or as animated cut-outs, moving and leaping through space. These low-tech creations imbue the dogs with a sweet, gentle quality that reflects the intimacy of communication between humans and our canine companions.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/386882/original/file-20210301-15-6s8kfu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Production image: a shadow puppet dog." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/386882/original/file-20210301-15-6s8kfu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/386882/original/file-20210301-15-6s8kfu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386882/original/file-20210301-15-6s8kfu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386882/original/file-20210301-15-6s8kfu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386882/original/file-20210301-15-6s8kfu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386882/original/file-20210301-15-6s8kfu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386882/original/file-20210301-15-6s8kfu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The dogs, brought to life through low-tech shadow puppetry, lend a sense of intimacy to the production.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Andy Rasheed/Slingsby/State Theatre Company South Australia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the program notes for the show, director Packer observes “theatre can be an empathy machine”. </p>
<p>“The power we have as theatre makers,” he adds, is “to amplify Martin’s voice.” </p>
<p>Martin’s story is difficult, even extreme. With stories of abuse and neglect acted out by Burroughs using stylised choreography and punctuated by rhythmic beats from the onstage band, the play is recommended for children over age 12.</p>
<p>But in presenting that story with honesty, charm, inventiveness and a spirit of play, Slingsby once again demonstrates its skill in holding up the most difficult of human experiences for scrutiny and understanding. </p>
<p><em><a href="https://www.adelaidefestival.com.au/events/the-boy-who-talked-to-dogs/">The Boy Who Talked to Dogs</a> runs until March 14.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/156111/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>William Peterson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>This new play based on Martin McKenna’s memoir tells a difficult story with theatrical skill and artistic heart.William Peterson, Associate Professor, Flinders UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1333492020-03-13T01:01:45Z2020-03-13T01:01:45ZReview: 150 Psalms is a monumental choral event<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/319508/original/file-20200310-61113-1kkrtev.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=10%2C30%2C6679%2C4436&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Adelaide Festival/Nathaniel Schilling</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Review: 150 Psalms, The Tallis Scholars, Netherlands Chamber Choir, The Song Company, The Norwegian Soloists’ Choir for the Adelaide Festival</em></p>
<p>One of the great aspects of international arts festivals is the opportunity to experience large-scale artistic projects that would otherwise be unfeasible in a smaller city like Adelaide.</p>
<p>A series of choral concerts may not seem like the same scale as an opulent opera or an interactive virtual reality experience. But 150 Psalms was a monumental event. It brought together four internationally acclaimed choirs to cover 500 years of musical terrain.</p>
<p>Created by Tido Visser of the <a href="https://www.nederlandskamerkoor.nl/en/">Netherlands Chamber Choir</a>, 150 Psalms was first staged for the 2017 <a href="https://oudemuziek.nl/home/">Utrecht Early Music Festival</a>. Along with the Netherlands Chamber Choir, the Adelaide event brought together Sydney-based <a href="https://the.song.company">The Song Company</a>, the <a href="https://solistkoret.no/en/">Norwegian Soloists’ Choir</a> and British vocal ensemble <a href="https://www.thetallisscholars.co.uk">The Tallis Scholars</a>. </p>
<p>Each ensemble brought their own distinctive character and aesthetic. In 12 concerts at various venues – a Uniting church, Catholic and Anglican cathedrals, an Orthodox synagogue – all 150 psalms were performed.</p>
<p>Visser conceived the project as a reflection of the world today, connecting the themes of the psalms with contemporary events. </p>
<p>Concepts of joy, fear, loss and insecurity running through the texts seem as relevant today as they were when the psalms were written. </p>
<p>Accompanying the performances was a photographic exhibition drawn from The Australian’s archives. These photos highlight the relationship between contemporary events and the psalms: powerful images contrasting war, protests and vigils against artistic and sporting achievement, children playing and religious celebration.</p>
<h2>How lovely is your dwelling place</h2>
<p>The Netherlands Chamber Choir had the most traditional sound, with warm, blended timbres. </p>
<p>The Tallis Scholars and their historically informed performance had exceptional precision and clarity with nuanced phrasing. </p>
<p>The Song Company were animated and communicative. </p>
<p>The polished Norwegian Soloists’ Choir navigated their exceptionally diverse programs with ease.</p>
<p>Renaissance music made up a large percentage of the concert programs. There were well-known names such as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josquin_des_Prez">Josquin</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giovanni_Pierluigi_da_Palestrina">Palestrina</a> alongside lesser-known composers including France’s <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philibert_Jambe_de_Fer">Philibert Jambe de Fer</a>. </p>
<p>Short, simple settings, such as Lodovico da Viadana’s <em>Exultate iusti</em> with its homophonic textures and call-and-response passages, beautifully contrasted with the intricate polyphony of works like Ferdinando di Lasso’s <em>Sperate in Domino</em>.</p>
<p>In the selected baroque works, alongside the predictable inclusion of works by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Sebastian_Bach">Bach</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Purcell">Purcell</a> was composer and Benedictine nun <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiara_Margarita_Cozzolani">Chiara Margarita Cozzolani</a>. Her <em>Dixit Dominus</em> was one of the more interesting early works, with its contrasting textures and shifts between major and minor modes.</p>
<p>Among the many highlights across the performances was French-Lebanese composer Zad Moultaka’s setting of Psalm 60 in <em>Sakata</em>. </p>
<p>Violent imagery permeates the text of Psalm 60, with references to earthquakes and the futility of man’s salvation. Moultaka conveys this harshness through effects such as chest beating, ululation and other extended vocal techniques, while slowly shifting drones maintain a sense of unease throughout the setting.</p>
<p>Most of the psalms were either a capella or with organ accompaniment. James MacMillan’s A New Song brought the organ to the fore, with impressively clear articulation in the repeated scalic passages by organist Anthony Hunt.</p>
<p>There was an impressive number of world premieres across the programs. New works by Australian and New Zealand-based composers replaced some of the settings in the original Utrecht staging.</p>
<p>Commissions included some of today’s most distinctive composers, among them Cathy Milliken, Elena Kats-Chernin and Claire Maclean. Kate Moore’s setting of Psalm 3 evoked a sense of desperation, with vocal portamenti conjuring distant emergency sirens. </p>
<h2>I walk in the midst of trouble</h2>
<p>Dutch theologian Gerard Swüste divided the psalms into 12 themes, such as abandonment, trust and suffering, with speakers contextualising each performance.</p>
<p>These themes weren’t always successful. The inclusion of Carlo Gesualdo – the late Renaissance composer who <a href="http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20130905-a-16th-century-musical-badass?fbclid=IwAR2BPXyWpo5zPOL_mdikEtl4ltXKoyP6Y_1A8RiTDu8NjKM-xtcm4Zc5tIc">brutally murdered</a> his wife and her lover – in a program called “safety” seemed ill-conceived.</p>
<p>But, for the final concert, Celebration of Life, the unresolved dissonance at the end of Francis Poulenc’s <em>Exultate Deo</em> seemed fitting after Kerry O’Brien spoke to tumultuous current events. The lack of harmonic resolution at the end of an otherwise jubilant musical setting felt like an unanswered question, leaving us to consider how to move forward in the chaos of today.</p>
<p>The musical answer given to this question was Thomas Tallis’s <em>Spem in Alium</em>. All four ensembles came together to perform the glorious 40-voiced work. </p>
<p>Although the text of this work is drawn from the Book of Judith, rather than psalms, it summed up the celebratory nature of many of the psalms. The beauty of the music, along with the text’s exhortation to hope, was one of the most moving moments in the entire program.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/133349/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Melanie Walters does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Four choirs in 12 concerts cover 500 years of musical terrain, connecting the psalms to the contemporary world for the Adelaide Festival.Melanie Walters, PhD candidate in music, University of AdelaideLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1323502020-02-28T00:46:47Z2020-02-28T00:46:47ZDance Nation review: an outrageous depiction of girls grasping their emerging sexuality and power<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/317688/original/file-20200227-24659-ewg014.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=23%2C23%2C3973%2C2636&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Chris Herzfeld/STCSA</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Review: Dance Nation, directed by Imara Savage. State Theatre Company South Australia and Belvoir for the Adelaide Festival</em></p>
<p>Dance is at the heart of playwright Clare Barron’s Dance Nation, from the resolutely upbeat ensemble number that opens the show to the poignant solo that ends it. </p>
<p>We are in the hyper-competitive, vapid and vulgar pre-pubescent dance culture of the TV series <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1991410/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Dance Moms</a>, thankfully mostly absent from the Australian dance scene. </p>
<p>Larissa McGowan’s choreography mercilessly recreates the cut-throat world of American competition dance and is as pivotal in conveying the narrative arcs of its characters as Barron’s script and Imara Savage’s ebullient direction. </p>
<p>A <a href="https://www.pulitzer.org/finalists/clare-barron">finalist</a> for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2019, Dance Nation reveals Barron’s fearlessness in tackling the under-explored dramatic territory of young girls entering puberty, but is not without flaws. </p>
<p>Dance teacher Pat’s dance troupe is launching a campaign to win a national dance competition, and Pat’s claim to glory is a dance routine of jaw-dropping cheesiness: a jazz ballet paean to Mahatma Gandhi. The dancers, decked out in metallic pastel unitards, disport themselves around Gandhi seated on a glittery disco version of a golden lotus, to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99j0zLuNhi8">With Arms Wide Open</a>. </p>
<p>Apart from bringing the house down with its conceptual incongruity, this hilarious number reveals Pat, with his delusions of artistic profundity, to be oblivious to the damage he is doing to his charges. </p>
<p>Pat urges his dancers to channel their inner Gandhi and meditate on the suffering of the world, while utterly blind to the suffering under his own nose. Played with a tense doggedness by Mitchell Butel in his first role since taking on the directorship of the State Theatre Company, Pat is the embodiment of the cliché-spouting coach who vicariously realises his own ambitions by pushing his students to win no matter what the cost.</p>
<p>It is the cost of this competitiveness that propels the action. </p>
<p>Only one dancer can be selected for the solo. When Pat unexpectedly bestows the role on Zuzu (always second to her bestie Amina), he opens up a repressed rivalry. Both girls dream of becoming dancers, but Amina is more gifted and more ambitious. When the opportunity arises, she usurps Zuzu’s place and wins the prize that will launch her professional career. </p>
<h2>The secret lives of girls</h2>
<p>One of the conceits of the play is the preteen girls are played by grown women. Chika Ikogwe owns the role of Zuzu, ably conveying her vulnerability and insightfulness. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/317689/original/file-20200227-24672-o0gsef.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/317689/original/file-20200227-24672-o0gsef.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/317689/original/file-20200227-24672-o0gsef.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/317689/original/file-20200227-24672-o0gsef.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/317689/original/file-20200227-24672-o0gsef.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/317689/original/file-20200227-24672-o0gsef.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/317689/original/file-20200227-24672-o0gsef.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Chika Ikogwe plays Zuzu with vulnerability and insightfulness.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Chris Herzfeld/STCSA</span></span>
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<p>Although she makes the most of the part, Yvette Lee’s Amina has to work with the weakest aspect of the script. According to Barron’s program notes, the play’s feminist intention is to validate female ambition, but the unlikeability of the only “successful” character undermines this. </p>
<p>While the other girls profess they “love” Amina, they obviously don’t like her much. In the flash-forward at the end it’s clear the one <em>truly</em> ambitious girl, the one who goes on “winning and winning”, is destined for a lonely life. </p>
<p>Barron’s writing of character is generally underdeveloped, and Amina’s success undercuts the play’s message. But this flaw is balanced by the play’s outrageous depiction of girls grappling with emerging sexuality and power. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-scarlet-ribbons-the-huge-history-of-big-hair-bows-131389">Friday essay: scarlet ribbons – the huge history of big hair bows</a>
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<p>In true adolescent fashion, the six girls and one dorky boy, Luke (nicely played by Tim Overton), are fixated on sex. </p>
<p>Verbal gags on menstrual blood are interspersed with earnest discussions of masturbation and circumcision. The language is defiantly crude. As Ashlee, Amber McMahon delivers a monologue about her own sexual power (and mathematical brilliance), morphing into an almost demonic possession. It’s a scene-stealer, in which McMahon is absolutely terrific, and the culmination of the play’s powerful celebration of girl power.</p>
<p>There is an undercutting of the real in several shifts from present to future, the girls carrying the victories and traumas of their pubescence into adulthood. This transition is nicely encapsulated as Connie (Emma Harvie) and Sofia (Tara Morice) admit their lifelong struggles with depression. </p>
<p>Jonathon Oxlade’s set comprises a dance studio with mirrored walls where daily reality merges with fantasy sequences. The mirrors become windows: revealing mother figures (all played by Elena Carapetis) urging on their progeny; revealing the trophies and triumphs of past teams. </p>
<p>Dance Nation is unsubtle and flawed, but the uniformly terrific cast and the exuberant energy of this production make it well worth seeing. </p>
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<p><em>Dance Nation is at the Scott Theatre, Adelaide, until March 7. Then Belvoir St Theatre, Sydney, March 14 – April 12.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/132350/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Maggie Tonkin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>This new production from State Theatre Company South Australia and Belvoir explores the messy and contradictory inner selves of pre-teen girls.Maggie Tonkin, Senior Lecturer, English and Creative Writing, University of AdelaideLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1268292019-11-19T03:31:03Z2019-11-19T03:31:03ZAustralia’s major summer arts festivals: reckoning with the past or retreating into it?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/302312/original/file-20191118-169393-1nioih9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=11%2C2%2C1905%2C1074&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Wesley Enoch's Sydney Festival has placed First Nations people and artists at its heart.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Victor Frankowski/Sydney Festival</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Australia invests heavily in its major festivals: <a href="https://acncpubfilesprodstorage.blob.core.windows.net/public/c83df050-38af-e811-a95e-000d3ad24c60-db26ab3e-a975-49b3-a2b6-66842dfff283-Financial%20Report-b45bb30e-3a45-e911-a973-000d3ad24282-2018_Annual_Report.pdf">A$5 million</a> in state government funding for Sydney Festival, <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-02-11/perth-festival-opening-weekend-boorna-waanginy-kings-park/10798726">$7 million</a> for Perth, and <a href="https://www.adelaidefestival.com.au/media/4958/b431014-adelaide-festival-corporation-2018-19-annual-report.pdf">$9 million</a> for Adelaide.</p>
<p>Funding for festivals has remained relatively constant over the past five years, even as other <a href="https://theconversation.com/federal-arts-funding-in-australia-is-falling-and-local-governments-are-picking-up-the-slack-124160">arts funding has been slashed</a>. Adelaide Festival will even receive an additional <a href="https://www.adelaidereview.com.au/arts/2019/06/19/state-budget-arts-funding-adelaide-festival-windmill/">$1.25 million a year for the next three years</a> while the rest of the local sector will <a href="https://www.artshub.com.au/news-article/news/grants-and-funding/richard-watts/shock-as-arts-budget-slashed-in-south-australia-256418">face cuts</a>.</p>
<p>So what should festivals do in such circumstances: focus on bringing the world to us – or make us reflect on ourselves?</p>
<p>Major Australian arts festivals have always balanced <a href="https://www.britishcouncil.org.au/crossing-points/kath-m-mainland-what%E2%80%99s-point-festival">the local and the global</a>. Festivals can offer local artists the opportunity to create works of scale and reach <a href="https://www.artshub.com.au/festival/news-article/features/festivals/richard-watts/creating-entry-points-for-non-arts-audiences-256411">wider audiences</a>. On the other hand, festivals are also a chance to bring <a href="https://creative.vic.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0004/313780/vic-creative-festivals-review.pdf">new and challenging work from overseas</a>.</p>
<p>Three of Australia’s major multi-arts festivals take place in the first three months of the year, and their 2020 programs offer an interesting insight into how artistic leaders are making festivals in the face of shrinking budgets for the rest of the sector.</p>
<h2>Sydney, 8–26 January</h2>
<p>Wesley Enoch started at Sydney Festival in 2017 armed with passion and vision. </p>
<p>The first Aboriginal artistic director of the festival, his tenure has been characterised by a strong focus on First Nations artists. Sydney Festival overlaps with Australia Day, and Enoch programmed <a href="https://www.sydneyfestival.org.au/events/the-vigil">The Vigil</a> on January 25 2019: an invitation to gather at Barangaroo and reflect on “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JjQ87oJZZCg">the day before it all changed</a>.” He is repeating this programming in 2020.</p>
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<p>2020 also includes three world premiere theatre works by Indigenous artists, and major visual art exhibitions including <a href="https://www.sydneyfestival.org.au/events/fiona-foley-who-are-these-strangers">Fiona Foley</a> and <a href="https://www.sydneyfestival.org.au/events/vernon-ah-kee-the-island">Vernon Ah Kee</a>. Enoch has championed <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2017/jan/03/patricia-cornelius-a-courageous-australian-playwright-neglected">Patricia Cornelius</a>, started a <a href="https://www.sydneyfestival.org.au/2020/accessibility">disability programming initiative</a>, and the festival <a href="https://content.sydneyfestivalcdn.org.au/2020/Documents/Sydney%20Festival%202020%20media%20release.pdf">claims to be</a> “the largest single commissioner of Australian work.”</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/302082/original/file-20191118-66917-10v0v4b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/302082/original/file-20191118-66917-10v0v4b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302082/original/file-20191118-66917-10v0v4b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302082/original/file-20191118-66917-10v0v4b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302082/original/file-20191118-66917-10v0v4b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302082/original/file-20191118-66917-10v0v4b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302082/original/file-20191118-66917-10v0v4b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">My Name Is Jimi at the 2018 Sydney Festival told the story of four generations of Torres Strait Islanders.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Daniel Boud/Sydney Festival</span></span>
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<p>Enoch’s programming feels driven by a conviction that festivals have the power to rehearse new stories, resurrect lost classics, and re-imagine the future.</p>
<h2>Perth, 7 February – 1 March</h2>
<p>During her four years at the helm of the Perth Festival from 2016-19, Wendy Martin cultivated a profound sense of place, giving local audiences and artists space to reflect on what it means to live and create in the city.</p>
<p>Her festivals opened with large, inclusive <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2017/feb/11/perth-festival-opens-with-an-exquisite-million-dollar-spectacle-and-an-urgent-warning">public events</a>. She commissioned work from Perth artists, culminating in <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-02-11/perth-festival-opening-weekend-boorna-waanginy-kings-park/10798726">seven world premieres</a> this year. She invited international artists to <a href="https://thewest.com.au/entertainment/piaf-reviews/interactive-journey-of-discovery-ng-b88402437z">collaborate with local companies</a> and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2018/mar/15/birth-water-sweat-and-menstrual-blood-museum-of-waters-australian-donations">work with local communities</a>. She <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-03-01/perth-festival-disability-arts-initiative-putting-artists-centre/10851924">foregrounded artists with disabilities</a>.</p>
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<span class="caption">You Know We Belong Together, a play about Down Syndrome and Home and Away, premiered at the 2018 Perth Festival.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Toni Wilkinson/Perth Festival</span></span>
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<p>2020 will be Iain Grandage’s first festival, and he is following Martin’s lead. The first week of the festival will be <a href="https://www.artshub.com.au/festival/news-article/news/festivals/richard-watts/perth-festival-dedicates-first-week-exclusively-to-first-nations-259144">dedicated exclusively to Aboriginal work</a>, including a large-scale Shakespearean production and a suite of children’s songs, both devised and performed in Noongar language. </p>
<p>It is too early to say what will define Grandage’s term in Perth, but if 2020 is anything to go by he is going to continue to focus on the local and celebrate what it means to be from WA.</p>
<h2>Adelaide, 28 February – 15 March</h2>
<p>Neil Armfield and Rachel Healy debuted in Adelaide in 2017. In contrast to Enoch and Martin’s emphasis on local people and place, Armfield and Healy have defaulted to <a href="https://indaily.com.au/opinion/2019/09/11/is-there-enough-adelaide-in-the-adelaide-festival/">prioritising works of scale from overseas</a>.</p>
<p>If there is a guiding concept to their four festivals, it is the classic. Their international imports have focused on proven successes from Europe, with a preference for male auteurs (<a href="https://theconversation.com/search/result?sg=1e281d4d-0196-4b48-bb81-221d66ae673b&sp=1&sr=3&url=%2Fbarrie-koskys-the-magic-flute-is-a-contemporary-spectacle-despite-the-operas-outdated-attitudes-112284">Barrie Kosky</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/in-a-miserable-year-the-adelaide-festival-brought-us-joy-74846">Thomas Ostermeier</a>, <a href="https://www.adelaidefestival.com.au/events/requiem/">Romeo Castelluci</a>) directing canonical operas and plays .</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/302119/original/file-20191118-66945-189dcly.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/302119/original/file-20191118-66945-189dcly.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302119/original/file-20191118-66945-189dcly.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302119/original/file-20191118-66945-189dcly.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302119/original/file-20191118-66945-189dcly.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302119/original/file-20191118-66945-189dcly.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302119/original/file-20191118-66945-189dcly.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Barrie Kosky’s Saul was the centrepiece of the 2017 Adelaide Festival.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Tony Lewis/Adelaide Festival</span></span>
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<p>In 2020, while Sydney and Perth are staging major new theatre works, the only Australian theatre in Adelaide will be William Zappa’s 2017 adaption of <a href="https://www.adelaidefestival.com.au/events/the-iliad/">The Illiad</a>; and a Belvoir/State Theatre Company of South Australia production of American playwright Clare Barron’s <a href="https://www.adelaidefestival.com.au/events/dance-nation/">Dance Nation</a>.</p>
<p>The 2020 program has no Indigenous-led opera, theatre, dance, or visual art – surprising given Armfield’s strong track record of <a href="https://belvoir.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Belvoir_Production_History-to-2018.pdf">nurturing Aboriginal artists at Belvoir</a>. </p>
<p>Each of Armfield and Healy’s festivals have <a href="https://www.adelaidefestival.com.au/news/latest-news/adelaide-festival-2019-the-most-successful-in-its-59-year-history/">broken box office records</a>. But ticket sales are <a href="https://theconversation.com/beyond-bulldust-benchmarks-and-numbers-what-matters-in-australian-culture-101459">not the only measure of a festival’s value</a> and bigger is not always better. </p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/beyond-bulldust-benchmarks-and-numbers-what-matters-in-australian-culture-101459">Beyond bulldust, benchmarks and numbers: what matters in Australian culture</a>
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<p>Would it matter if box office dipped, if local artists and audiences gained? The number of tickets sold doesn’t speak to the number of new stories told, old languages learned (Enoch has programmed free classes of the <a href="https://content.sydneyfestivalcdn.org.au/2017/17_PDF_Uploads/Press_Releases/Bayala_Let%E2%80%99s_Speak_Sydney_Language_Press_Release.pdf">Sydney language</a>), or traditions invented. </p>
<p>Adelaide Festival looks increasingly out of step with other major Australian festivals. Whereas Perth and Sydney are firmly anchored in place, Adelaide Festival could be happening anywhere in the world.</p>
<h2>What is a festival for?</h2>
<p>When the broader arts sector has been starved of <a href="https://theconversation.com/just-29-companies-receive-59-of-australia-council-funding-artists-are-calling-for-a-change-124873">funding</a> but is also hungry for change - eager to become more <a href="https://theconversation.com/creating-and-being-seen-new-projects-focus-on-the-rights-of-artists-with-disabilities-124270">equitable</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/australias-art-institutions-dont-reflect-our-diversity-its-time-to-change-that-122308">diverse</a> - I think festivals take on additional visibility and responsibility.</p>
<p>Perth and Sydney have recognised this by commissioning diverse local artists working in diverse forms. These festivals are engaging with their place in contemporary culture by supporting local artistic communities, and reflecting stories of their cities back to their audiences. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, Adelaide has continued down a well worn path. One could say they are being conservative but my read is the reverse – their refusal to move with the times is almost radical.</p>
<p>Sydney and Perth festivals have shown us artistic leadership that wants to reckon with the past; Adelaide’s leadership want to retreat to it.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/126829/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Caroline Wake receives funding from the Australian Research Council.
She is Chair of the Board of PACT Centre for Emerging Artists.</span></em></p>Australia’s three major summer festivals in Sydney, Perth and Adelaide give an interesting insight into how festival programming is changing – or not.Caroline Wake, Senior Lecturer in Theatre and Performance, UNSW SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1137302019-03-18T06:54:55Z2019-03-18T06:54:55ZWith Grand Finale, audiences bear witness to a world on the edge<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/264269/original/file-20190317-28475-v7dz55.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Grand Finale is a new work from Israeli-born, London-based choreographer Hofesh Shechter.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Rahi Rezvani</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Review: Grand Finale, Adelaide Festival March 15</em></p>
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<p>When we take our seats in Adelaide’s Festival Theatre the air is already thick with haze. Its density suggests something ominous, a kind of collapse. A single, melancholic musical line pierces through the darkness as a body in motion comes into focus.</p>
<p>Soon the stage is filled with the full company of ten dancers, casually attired in khaki and beige, none standing out from the crowd. We see bodies in constant motion, like cells dividing and reconfiguring endlessly when looked at through a microscope. </p>
<p>Grand Finale employs the movement vocabulary that audiences have come to associate with Israeli-born, London-based contemporary dance choreographer Hofesh Shechter. Dancers swirl, whirl, jump in place and move like human percussion machines across all dance styles. When the dancers are in motion, all is fluid and there is no rest. Everything and anything could happen. Nothing can be predicted.</p>
<p>While the work’s title might suggest something rousing and operatic with a clear narrative and heroic resolution, this is anything but that. It’s as if we’re witnessing something big, but don’t know what. We are silent spectators to something terrible unfolding, a global catastrophe, possibly a literal “grand finale” for the species. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/264268/original/file-20190317-28479-6xgm8l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/264268/original/file-20190317-28479-6xgm8l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/264268/original/file-20190317-28479-6xgm8l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264268/original/file-20190317-28479-6xgm8l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264268/original/file-20190317-28479-6xgm8l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264268/original/file-20190317-28479-6xgm8l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264268/original/file-20190317-28479-6xgm8l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264268/original/file-20190317-28479-6xgm8l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Grand Finale draws upon movements typical of Hofesh Shechter’s works.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Rahi Rezvani</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Dancers respond to forces that seem to register on their bodies but are unseen to us. They move alone and in groups, countering those provocations with different tactical moves.</p>
<p>Bodies become objects, human sacks of flesh that are dragged and pulled around the stage, arranged and posed, held, cradled, then reconfigured. We feel the weight of these human bodies that have been drained of life. It is poignant, difficult, even painful. </p>
<p>At other times dancers are pulled from heaps of bodies and become human wreckage, mute, mouths agape, unable to speak, as if they have been atomised, burned alive in an atomic blast.</p>
<p>Designer Tom Scutt’s enormous but remarkably mobile panels, which can look like giant concrete walls, are manipulated by dancers from behind, creating the spaces that shape and contain movement. They are co-actors in the unfolding drama, back drops, places of refuge and of no escape, prehistoric monoliths used for unknown rituals, even monstrous, menacing grave markers.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/264270/original/file-20190317-28512-3jbokj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/264270/original/file-20190317-28512-3jbokj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/264270/original/file-20190317-28512-3jbokj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264270/original/file-20190317-28512-3jbokj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264270/original/file-20190317-28512-3jbokj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264270/original/file-20190317-28512-3jbokj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264270/original/file-20190317-28512-3jbokj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264270/original/file-20190317-28512-3jbokj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Mobile panels designed by Tom Scutt play an essential role in the unfolding drama.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Rahi Rezvani</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Like other works by Shechter, notably Political Mother and In Your Rooms, Grand Finale is highly percussive, with beats activating human movement, which at times becomes frantic, even painfully frenetic. In this work he adds an onstage string quartet with two cellos, a violin, and an acoustic guitar. The musicians seem to disappear and reappear in different areas of the stage, thanks to Tom Visser’s magical lighting. </p>
<p>The sometimes mellifluous, often melancholic musical line is contrasted with a soundscape of industrial noise: the sounds of static, metal scraping, crashes and booms, buildings falling down or a ship – the Titanic perhaps – hitting an iceberg. </p>
<p>These two sonic worlds constantly compete, with one dominating the other but never for long, as the other line is eventually born from the sonic chaos. The dancers similarly emerge from and move through a world that is unstable, chaotic, ever-changing.</p>
<p>Because of the way sound, light, movement, and percussion come together, Shechter’s choreography can be almost trance-inducing in its intensity and relentlessness. It can seem to invoke the ecstatic, as if dancers were seeking to connect with some higher power, springing up and down, arms splayed out, their hands reaching for something beyond the reach of mere mortals. </p>
<p>When the dancers advance downstage toward us, executing martial arts moves that sometimes resemble a Māori haka, freezing to briefly hold stances of power and strength, they can almost make our hair stand on end.</p>
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<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In the second half of Grand Finale, the dancers seem to inhabit a new world order.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Rahi Rezvani</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>When they reappear from the darkness in the second half of the work, they seem to inhabit not a world falling apart, but instead a brutal, new world order. The giant mobile panels now increasingly resemble the walls that cut through Jerusalem, angry, impossible to scale, closing in on the dancers and separating them from one another. </p>
<p>The dancers break apart, lonely and isolated, and the walls scatter. A feeling of urban warfare prevails, with rapid tempo shifts forcing the dancers together and driving them apart.</p>
<p>It’s as if they’re dancing in and around a ruined world. Suddenly all stop to stare at a couple kissing against a slice of the wall, an unexpected and unprecedented act of intimacy.</p>
<p>As the work draws to a crescendo, with their backs to us the dancers fall into a line running upstage, swaying out of sync with one another, delicate, broken, but still moving. Suddenly they stop, and find themselves enclosed in a sarcophagus-like structure. It opens and the dancers move into the breach, into the light, and fade from view. </p>
<p>This is a Grand Finale for which there is no known ending, only the certainty that those who survive will step into different world than the one they left behind.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/113730/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>William Peterson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Hofesh Shechter’s latest contemporary dance work is not the rousing narrative its title might suggest. Its dancers inhabit a global catastrophe and then a brutal new world order.William Peterson, Associate Professor, Flinders UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1133522019-03-13T00:42:44Z2019-03-13T00:42:44ZIn Manus, theatre delivers home truths that can’t be dodged<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/263297/original/file-20190312-86678-1ym8xp1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Iranian theatre company Verbatim Theatre Group performed Manus as part of this year's Adelaide Festival.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Mohammad Sadeq Zarjouyan</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Review: Manus, Adelaide Festival, March 8</em></p>
<hr>
<p>How to review a play whose relationship with matters of fact is so serious and politically culpable it overwhelms the critical distinctions that might normally be used to judge it? </p>
<p>Where is <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislavski%27s_system">Stanislavski</a>’s “magic if” (if I were a refugee locked up for six years by the Australian government …)? What are the “given circumstances” (near-drowning at sea, a sun-beaten island at the end of the earth)? Or the “inciting incident” (political oppression, military destruction, despair on an epic scale)? </p>
<p>We might ask is the narrative balanced? Does the piece make appropriate use of contemporary staging techniques in portraying, say, how a 23-year old refugee set himself on fire, or a group of teenage youths sewed their lips together? </p>
<p>Is it well-shaped dramaturgically? Is the flow of events satisfying to an audience expecting a good night out at the theatre? Or is it too much for those affronted by the horror, the inhumanity, the endless hell of it all? How will Australians in particular cope, given that we are the ones responsible for building that hell and setting its cycle of torment in motion?</p>
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<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In Manus, actors perform verbatim interviews with Iranian asylum seekers on Manus Island and Nauru.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">James Elsby</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="https://www.adelaidefestival.com.au/events/manus/">Manus</a>, as the title will suggest to most, but especially Australian audiences, is a drama presenting the stories of eight refugees from Iran who sailed to this country in 2013, just after the passing of the Coalition government’s <a href="https://www.legislation.gov.au/Details/F2013L02166/Explanatory%20Statement/Text">Operation Sovereign Borders legislation</a>. </p>
<p>Apropos the new zero-tolerance approach to marine-arriving asylum seekers, they and hundreds of others were mandatorily detained at Manus or Nauru Regional Processing Centres for five years or more. There they faced limited resettlement options, and an explicit commitment to never allow them entry into Australia, regardless of whether they were found to be “genuine” refugees or not.</p>
<p>The first half hour of this 90-minute show by Iranian company Verbatim Theatre Group explores the background of the characters – who are not characters, of course, but men and women with names, faces, families and fates, just like you and me – and the reasons they chose to leave their home. </p>
<p>These are as various as you’d expect, and fall into the category of the credible. Their journey takes them via Indonesia, into the Arafura and Timor seas, where they hit storms and rough waters, their flimsy vessel breaks apart, and they nearly drown. </p>
<h2>Harrowing narrative</h2>
<p>Just in abbreviated form, delivered with the slight means at the disposal of a small company from Tehran – two dozen red petrol cans, some projections and a rain effect – this section of the narrative is harrowing.</p>
<p>It’s a ghastly journey even when undertaken with adequate food, water and equipment, which are frequently absent. Rescue comes from a British naval vessel and the Iranians are asked where they want to go. They say Australia.</p>
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<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The first part of the show is dedicated to the life stories of the people portrayed in the play.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">James Elsby</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There are sharply divided opinions in this country about what director Nazanin Sahamizadeh describes in the program note as: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>a world in which every three seconds one person is forced to flee home … to seek safety, security or simply a better life in peace and freedom. Tragedy in our time shows its ugly face when the borders are closed rather than open to these women, men, girls and boys.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It is not hard to imagine her view being strongly contested: the argument put that opening our borders only encourages people-smugglers, for example, thus more dangerous maritime crossings, and thus more deaths at sea. It is also possible to question the social impact of large-scale migration (though <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/pubs/rp/rp1617/Quick_Guides/MigrationStatistics">Australia’s in-take</a> is not especially large) and a global order where, in the words of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/sep/20/migrants-refugees-asylum-seekers-21st-century-trend">academic Alexander Betts </a>“refugees and displacement are likely to become a defining issue of the 21st century”.</p>
<p>But beyond the general debate we find, in legal parlance, a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bright-line_rule">bright-line</a>. The last two-thirds of Manus narrate how the eight Iranian detainees fared in their tiny island prisons, and the neglect, abuse, humiliation, indifference, and, to our ever-lasting shame, outright violence and cruelty they were subject to. </p>
<p>In this, the main body of the play, we hear the voices and accounts of those who saw the <a href="https://www.sbs.com.au/news/the-truth-or-not-about-manus-island-riot">2014 riots</a> on the island close-up, because, unlike the Australian politicians glibly sure of their judgements later, they actually witnessed them. </p>
<p>The deaths, injuries and hunger-strikes that followed were peaks in a sine wave of misery that ground down the asylum seekers through repeated acts of petty tyranny. The play describes this through the voices of the actors: food delivered late or not at all; latrines limited in number and broken; electricity cut off in the middle of the night; telephone calls restricted. </p>
<p>On and on and on it goes: a stream of organisational meanness as deliberate, ingenious and grim as any that can be found in Dante’s Inferno. </p>
<p>It is one thing to refuse entry to people who claim asylum in Australia on the grounds their entry is illegal. It is another to treat them in the way we have, subjecting them to prolonged and aggravated incarceration for no criminal offence, dragging Australia’s reputation into the slime, where it will no doubt remain for some time to come, and deservedly so.</p>
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<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Manus is delivered entirely in Persian.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">James Elsby</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>An imperfect show</h2>
<p>Manus is not a perfect show. It is hard to imagine how such a panorama of human misery could be condensed into 90 minutes of stage action.</p>
<p>Within the verbatim theatre model there is a tension between emotional authenticity and documentary accuracy. Delivered entirely in Persian, with English surtitles, Manus leans toward the first, with the result that sometimes details blur and it is difficult to judge the scale and effects of a given event. News footage, projected onto the bodies of the performers themselves, is used to boost atmosphere rather than to communicate precise chronology.</p>
<p>But this does nothing to rob the drama of its impact in the Australian context. In fact, the opposite: the show’s imperfections only point up the evil perpetrations we have let slither by us, as an electorate, like a venomous snake. Theatre has a trick of banging-out home truths in ways that can’t be dodged, even with our nation’s studied mastery of the toad-arts of moral evasion. </p>
<p>I left the venue feeling numbed, drained and profoundly confronted. What was I doing while all of this was happening? While these refugees, normal people, neither better nor worse than myself, were having their lives excoriated by devils, large and small, in my name? What were we all, as supposedly good Australians, thinking? </p>
<p>Not even God can change the past, the Spanish say. We have infinite time ahead of us to answer such questions, and contemplate the void they have opened up in our national soul.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/113352/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Julian Meyrick does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>This verbatim drama presenting the stories of eight Iranian asylum seekers detained on their island prisons delivers uncomfortable home truths.Julian Meyrick, Professor of Creative Arts, Flinders UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1131052019-03-08T02:52:16Z2019-03-08T02:52:16ZA Man of Good Hope is no tale of triumph over adversity, but it is the story of many<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262562/original/file-20190306-100778-p3vub4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A Man of Good Hope is a theatrical adaptation of the book of the same name, playing as part of this year's Adelaide Festival.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Keith Pattison</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Review: A Man of Good Hope, Adelaide Festival</em></p>
<hr>
<p>In a world where so many are escaping brutality, war, persecution, and loss of land, is it possible to tell the story of just one displaced person, and in so doing, tell the story of many? With A Man of Good Hope, a theatrical adaptation of a biography of the same name by Jonny Steinberg, the Cape Town-based Isango Ensemble suggests the answer is yes.</p>
<p>An energetic cast of over 20 actor-singer-dancer-musicians are shaped by director Mark Dornford-May’s dynamic and lively staging. They take the audience on a journey alongside the play’s central character, Asad Abdullahi, as he is driven from his home in Somalia and across thousands of kilometres through Kenya, Ethiopia, and South Africa.</p>
<p>Unfolding over a 22-year period, multiple actors play Asad as a boy, a young man, and as an adult. We first see Asad as a grown man, as Steinberg evidently first encountered him. He is weighed down by life, wearing sadness like a mask. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262560/original/file-20190306-100787-xff4tq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262560/original/file-20190306-100787-xff4tq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262560/original/file-20190306-100787-xff4tq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262560/original/file-20190306-100787-xff4tq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262560/original/file-20190306-100787-xff4tq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262560/original/file-20190306-100787-xff4tq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262560/original/file-20190306-100787-xff4tq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262560/original/file-20190306-100787-xff4tq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The performance takes the audience through 22 years of Asad Abdullahi’s life.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Keith Pattison</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>And in the next scene, when we see him as a ten-year old standing in the doorway of his childhood home in Mogadishu, Somalia with his mother, we understand why.</p>
<p>Virtually overnight, his entire clan, one that knows its lineage across 25 generations, is branded the enemy. Soldiers bang on the front door. His mother is unceremoniously shot. </p>
<p>In a moment, Asad becomes a homeless child from a clan slated for extermination. This is a world where men with guns are everywhere, where anyone can be shot or killed at any time by anyone, where a life can be taken on a whim.</p>
<p>After Asad’s mother is murdered, he attaches himself to another survivor, a woman living on the streets. By age 10 he is with her in Kenya at a refugee camp run by the United Nations. There everyone dreams of life in America, a place where “everyone is rich”, “everyone is free” and, in one of the few lines that elicits laughter from the audience, “there are no guns”. </p>
<p>Abandoned a second time by the mother figure he has adopted, he becomes a survivor, a clever street kid, an operator. As he puts it, “I belong to everyone; I belong to no one”.</p>
<p>By the time he’s a young man, he is living in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where he falls in love with a Somali woman who has been subjected to female genital mutilation. After paying off people smugglers, the two briefly end up together in South Africa. </p>
<p>Asad trades goods in a remote black township, experiencing more alienation and persecution, causing his wife to flee the country with their child. But he stays, believing, “I have a better chance to change my fate by staying and fighting”.</p>
<p>The play’s rapid-fire action takes place on a steeply raked stage comprised of what look like wooden planks, surrounded by corrugated iron walls, suggesting the world of South African shantytowns.</p>
<p>Props are used sparingly, serve multiple functions, and are sometimes ingeniously transformed, as when, for instance, a door becomes the roof of a crowded bus, held aloft by the passengers underneath, while the boy Asad rides on top in the open air.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262558/original/file-20190306-100787-1gtpga.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262558/original/file-20190306-100787-1gtpga.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262558/original/file-20190306-100787-1gtpga.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262558/original/file-20190306-100787-1gtpga.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262558/original/file-20190306-100787-1gtpga.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262558/original/file-20190306-100787-1gtpga.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262558/original/file-20190306-100787-1gtpga.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262558/original/file-20190306-100787-1gtpga.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A door is used as the roof of bus in A Man of Good Hope.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Keith Pattison</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This is a show with much singing and dancing, while many of the performers take turns playing the standing, marimba-style instruments on both sides of the stage. As the predominant orchestral sound, the percussive marimba becomes problematic as it always retains a kind of chirpy, upbeat quality and is not able to deliver much nuance or tonal shading.</p>
<p>Song too was integral to the storytelling, and some of the evening’s most powerful moments were when group choral singing created a huge sound, full of luscious, rich harmonies. Less successful were some of the sudden shifts from speech to song, with many short passages consisting of a single phrase or two suddenly sung in the rhythm of ordinary speech or in a kind of operatic style that came across as awkward or forced.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262557/original/file-20190306-100775-9cucjr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262557/original/file-20190306-100775-9cucjr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262557/original/file-20190306-100775-9cucjr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=367&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262557/original/file-20190306-100775-9cucjr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=367&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262557/original/file-20190306-100775-9cucjr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=367&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262557/original/file-20190306-100775-9cucjr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=461&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262557/original/file-20190306-100775-9cucjr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=461&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262557/original/file-20190306-100775-9cucjr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=461&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A Man of Good Hope is a show filled with song and dance.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Keith Pattison</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In terms of storytelling, each new tragedy begat another one equally or more horrible, with most of the play’s scenes ending with some kind of dramatic confrontation. While this is no doubt reflective of the trajectory of Asad’s life and parallel to the structure of the book, on stage it can at times feel plodding, even predictable.</p>
<p>Despite these shortcomings, this is a memorable, challenging, high-octane piece of theatre. A Man of Good Hope is ultimately no tale of triumph over adversity. As the play ends, Asad says goodbye to his writer friend Jonny for the last time, making it clear, despite the well-meaning writer’s protestations, that he has no interest in ever reading his own story. </p>
<p>As Steinberg himself observes in the program notes, “the story is not for him; it is for others”. Ultimately, it can only be for us, those fortunate enough to have had lives not marked by trauma.</p>
<hr>
<p><em><a href="https://www.adelaidefestival.com.au/events/a-man-of-good-hope/">A Man of Good Hope</a> is playing as part of the Adelaide Festival until March 11.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/113105/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>William Peterson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In A Man of Good Hope, an energetic cast of over 20 performers take the audience on a journey through the life of Somali refugee Asad Abdullahi.William Peterson, Associate Professor, Flinders UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1130322019-03-06T06:10:19Z2019-03-06T06:10:19ZLa Reprise: startling theatre and a call to the dead to speak<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262326/original/file-20190306-48435-10m873s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A scene from La Reprise, director Milo Rau's first production following the publication of his controversial 'Ghent Manifesto' on theatre.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Michiel Devijver</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Review: La Reprise. Histoire(s) du théâtre, Adelaide Festival</em></p>
<p>By chance, I happened to overhear a conversation on theatre audiences before seeing this remarkable, sulphurous show about the senseless murder of a gay man, <a href="https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2012/05/03/belgium-gay-mans-death-may-be-first-to-be-classed-as-homophobic/">Ihsane Jarfi</a>, in Liege, Belgium in 2012. The argument being put forward was that as theatre asks for spectators’ attention and favour, their needs should shape the delivery of stage production. </p>
<p>La Reprise places sharp limits on this argument. It is unforgiving in taking audiences where they probably don’t want to go – the heart of a killing – and forensic in presenting details that will stick in their mind like hot wires. It stakes out its terrifying truth and attends to it with every device that dramatic intelligence and skill can provide. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262317/original/file-20190306-48426-uuzaay.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262317/original/file-20190306-48426-uuzaay.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262317/original/file-20190306-48426-uuzaay.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262317/original/file-20190306-48426-uuzaay.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262317/original/file-20190306-48426-uuzaay.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262317/original/file-20190306-48426-uuzaay.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1129&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262317/original/file-20190306-48426-uuzaay.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1129&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262317/original/file-20190306-48426-uuzaay.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1129&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The performers in La Reprise start by telling their own stories.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Hubert Amiel</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In this, spectator needs are not so much the end-point as the vehicle for the show’s raison d’etre. We go to enjoy the play, of course. Once there, more importantly, we bear witness to it. </p>
<p>A cross between verbatim theatre and true-crime reconstruction, La Reprise (literally, “the recovery”, “the repetition”) is a work by director <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/03/theater/milo-rau-ntgent-controversy.html">Milo Rau</a> and an ensemble of French and Flemish actors, some professional, some not. </p>
<p>Rau, appointed Artistic Director of theatre company NT Ghent in Belgium last year, recently posted his controversial and resolutely political <a href="https://www.ntgent.be/en/manifest">Ghent Manifesto</a> laying down ten “rules” to govern theatre production.</p>
<p>La Reprise is his first show to appear after the Manifesto, and follows all these rules: it uses at least two languages; the ensemble were centrally involved in creating the play; a significant part of rehearsals were spent outside the rehearsal room; and the set design is containable in the back of a normal-size moving van. </p>
<p>But it’s the Manifesto’s first rule that gives La Reprise its committed form and tone:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It’s not just about portraying the world anymore. It’s about changing it. The aim is not to depict the real, but to make the representation itself real.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Adopting a classic five act structure, La Reprise is, on one level, very simple. It tells the story of how Jarfi died: how he got into a car with a group of drunken, unemployed youths, for unknown reasons; how they took him to the outskirts of Liege, stripped him naked and beat him unconscious, leaving him to an agonising death.</p>
<p>It shows how his parents and his ex-boyfriend reacted, and the thoughts of one of the men who killed him. There is also a semi-narrator figure, though the narrative function is distributed through the cast in different ways at different times.</p>
<p>It’s the “how” of the story-telling, though, that makes La Reprise so startling and – to use a word too long in cold storage – <em><a href="https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/engag%C3%A9#Adjective">engagé</a></em>. The theatrical means are low-rent: a mobile video camera and a central video screen. </p>
<p>The six performers take turns talking directly to the audience from the stage, or directly to the audience via the video camera, their faces magnified on the screen, minutely accessible.</p>
<p>Initially, they tell their own story – of the development of the play, or being cast in it. Gradually, however, the actors shade into their characters. “When does the tragedy begin?” asks Tom Adjibi, the actor playing Jarfi. It’s not entirely certain. But at some point, the drama arises, like a wreath of smoke.</p>
<p>There are four types of dialogue in La Reprise: actors talking about acting; actors talking about their real-life characters; actors talking <em>as</em> their real-life characters; and actors stooging around the stage in a neutral gear that becomes more invested as the story reaches its climax.</p>
<p>This verbal ambiguity has its visual equivalent. Sometimes the screen shows what is happening on stage; sometimes it shows what seems to be happening, but is actually pre-recorded footage, slightly divergent; and sometimes it shows what can’t possibly be happening – a man walking his dog or a room suddenly full of people on a dance floor. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262321/original/file-20190306-48450-vqmvb1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262321/original/file-20190306-48450-vqmvb1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262321/original/file-20190306-48450-vqmvb1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262321/original/file-20190306-48450-vqmvb1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262321/original/file-20190306-48450-vqmvb1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262321/original/file-20190306-48450-vqmvb1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262321/original/file-20190306-48450-vqmvb1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262321/original/file-20190306-48450-vqmvb1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">La Reprise uses a central video screen in innovative ways.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Hubert Amiel</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the long, gruelling scene in which Jarfi is picked up, beaten up and taken to the killing ground, the action is presented twice, simultaneously: once in the theatre – real car, real rain; once on screen – close-ups on the faces of the perpetrators, reflected lights of the passing traffic. </p>
<p>We flip between the two registers in easy moves that are uneasy in their implications. What are we doing exactly? Remembering something or reliving it?</p>
<p>However, before breaking out the favoured critical terms – meta(theatrical), inter(sectional), post(dramatic) – it’s worth asking what all this cleverness is for. It isn’t for performative display. </p>
<p>Rather La Reprise casts a spell of invocation, a call to the dead to speak, through the medium of representational drama. Because what the dead have to say is unknown, and their experiences die with them, fracturing the dialogue and stage images in a non-linear way creates cognitive gaps in which the audience can be asked to do some of the work. </p>
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<figcaption>
<span class="caption">La Reprise recreates a murder with forensic detail.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Hubert Amiel</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>And magically we do it. This is realism at its most flexible and courageous, less a set of conventions than a compulsion to imagine the seemingly unimaginable. What were the last moments of Jarfi’s life actually like? What did it feel like for this blameless man to know he was shortly going to die? </p>
<p>La Reprise allows these questions to be genuinely asked and truthfully answered. Can there be anything starker and more demanding than to identify with another person at their most fateful hour? </p>
<p>If Brecht’s “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distancing_effect">alienation effect</a>” is, as he defined it, the ability to see one’s own mother as another man’s wife, then empathy is surely the opposite: the ability to see another man’s boyfriend as one’s own son.</p>
<p>This is La Reprise’s ultimate invocation: the call to feel something for someone no longer there, but who should be.</p>
<p><em><a href="https://www.adelaidefestival.com.au/events/la-reprise-histoire-s-du-th%C3%A9%C3%A2tre/">La Reprise: Histoire(s) du théâtre</a> is playing as part of the Adelaide Festival until March 7.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/113032/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Julian Meyrick does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>La Reprise is remarkable theatre about the murder of a gay man, Ihsane Jarfi, in Belgium in 2012.Julian Meyrick, Professor of Creative Arts, Flinders UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1129472019-03-05T03:49:24Z2019-03-05T03:49:24ZMeryl Tankard revisits Two Feet, the tragic story of a dancer’s perfectionism<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262012/original/file-20190304-92310-2l81so.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Natalia Osipova in Meryl Tankard's recreated Two Feet, which premiered as part of this year's Adelaide Festival.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Regis Lansac</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Review: Two Feet, Adelaide Festival</em></p>
<hr>
<p>There are many reasons for a dance choreographer to revisit a work from their back catalogue. With Two Feet, an exhilarating two-hour work that brought audiences to their feet for the opening weekend of the Adelaide Festival, acclaimed Australian choreographer Meryl Tankard has added another.</p>
<p>When Two Feet premiered in 1988, Tankard herself played one of the early 20th century’s greatest ballerinas, Russian Olga Spessivtzeva. She has recreated the work for one of the most brilliant ballet dancers of the current generation, Russian Natalia Osipova. </p>
<p>Tankard has a long association with Adelaide, and it was during her tenure as Artistic Director of the Australian Dance Theatre (1993-1999) that the company developed a solid international reputation. Local audiences would recognise aspects of her quirky, homespun style in this work, while it also bears the traces of her six years as a featured dancer with Pina Bausch’s famed Wuppertaler Tanztheatre.</p>
<p>Spessivtzeva was a dancer known for her work with the Ballet Russes and Paris Opera Ballet from 1916-1934, and perhaps more famously, for a series of mental breakdowns. In 1934, following a successful Australian tour, she was found wandering down a deserted road outside of Sydney.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262017/original/file-20190304-92283-1kl2g11.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262017/original/file-20190304-92283-1kl2g11.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262017/original/file-20190304-92283-1kl2g11.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=534&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262017/original/file-20190304-92283-1kl2g11.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=534&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262017/original/file-20190304-92283-1kl2g11.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=534&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262017/original/file-20190304-92283-1kl2g11.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=671&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262017/original/file-20190304-92283-1kl2g11.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=671&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262017/original/file-20190304-92283-1kl2g11.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=671&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Natalia Osipova plays fellow Russian ballerina Olga Spessivtzeva. Both dancers are renowned for their interpretations of Giselle.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Regis Lansac</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The dancer’s most famous role was that of the title character in Giselle, one of the great 19th century romantic operas. And like Giselle, whose madness is expressed by the compulsion to dance to the point of being consumed by it, Spessivtzeva was known for her fanaticism and a perfectionism that ultimately proved too onerous for her body.</p>
<p>She famously identified with the character, and her interpretation of the role, which includes a tragic scene in which she literally dances herself to death, has remained a fixed reference point for all future Giselles.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/dada-masilos-giselle-is-a-courageous-retelling-for-our-times-112764">Dada Masilo's Giselle is a courageous retelling for our times</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
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<p>Enter Osipova, who like Spessivtzeva, has been critically acclaimed for her Giselle. She has been lauded both for her raw, emotional approach to the character, but also for her high leaps, which make it appear as though she is flying across the stage in the ballet’s key dance scenes. In an interview late last year <a href="https://dancemagazine.com.au/2018/11/meryl-tankards-two-feet-to-fly-and-to-fall/">Tankard observed of Osipova</a>, “she’s like a modern day Olga”. </p>
<p>Yet this is no autobiography of Spessivtzeva – we know little of her actual inner emotional life. Instead, with new sequences developed with Osipova, Tankard offers up a rich piece of dance theatre which riffs on what would today be recognised as Olga’s struggle with depression. Known for her obsessive repetition of dance exercises along the barre prior to performing, Olga’s mental illness is linked to the rigorous demands of dance training.</p>
<p>The internal logic of the work weaves a twisted but uncannily connected web connecting Osipova and her mental state with the extreme, cruel, and sometimes comic ways in which dance is taught and learned.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262019/original/file-20190304-92277-v7xybt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262019/original/file-20190304-92277-v7xybt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262019/original/file-20190304-92277-v7xybt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=562&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262019/original/file-20190304-92277-v7xybt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=562&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262019/original/file-20190304-92277-v7xybt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=562&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262019/original/file-20190304-92277-v7xybt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=706&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262019/original/file-20190304-92277-v7xybt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=706&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262019/original/file-20190304-92277-v7xybt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=706&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Spessivtzeva was known for her obsessive dance training along the barre.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Regis Lansac</span></span>
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<p>One of the comic sequences is drawn from a 1957 primer, Every Child’s Book of Dance and Ballet, which sets out with diagrams and writing how a young girl is to perform the absurdly over-mimed “Shrimp” dance. Osipova attempts to master the steps as they are authoritatively delivered via voice-over in English and Russian. </p>
<p>The instructions are frequently ridiculous, as the girl, net in hand, is instructed how to dance out the capture and eventual release of a large shrimp while acting cute for the audience. In its silliness, it is also vaguely menacing.</p>
<p>So too are some of Osipova’s own revelations, as when she reveals in one sequence that her mother frequently found her with her legs strapped behind her head to the bed post. As she demonstrates the pose, she tells us, “I never felt anything because I’m used to pain”. </p>
<p>Adding further depth to this richly layered show were the projections of Tankard’s long-time collaborator Regis Lansac. His photographic and video images created the physical world that commented on, shaped, encased, and made the dance possible.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262016/original/file-20190304-92277-1pfp3cx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262016/original/file-20190304-92277-1pfp3cx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/262016/original/file-20190304-92277-1pfp3cx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262016/original/file-20190304-92277-1pfp3cx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262016/original/file-20190304-92277-1pfp3cx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262016/original/file-20190304-92277-1pfp3cx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262016/original/file-20190304-92277-1pfp3cx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/262016/original/file-20190304-92277-1pfp3cx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Regis Lansac’s photographic and video projections added a rich layer to Tankard’s production.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Regis Lansac</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Nowhere were Lansac’s projections more magical and necessary than in the work’s final scene. Mirroring Giselle’s breakdown, Olga finds herself in a forest, where she dances herself into an emotional and physical breakdown. We feel the chill of the air as a forest of trees is revealed in the mist, then reflected in the light pool of water that floods the stage. </p>
<p>When Osipova, as Olga playing both Giselle and herself enters this world in a calf-length tutu, the juxtaposition of the elegant, Romantic world, and a menacing natural one elevate the drama. Osipova’s Olga is now a body that is contained, restrained, confined. Her movements are jerky, defeated, those of someone struggling in vain to discipline an uncooperative body. </p>
<p>As she falls, repeatedly, we are witnessing an excruciating beauty unfolding in front of us. There is no happy ending here, only the dancer and the audience alone together, in the dark. </p>
<hr>
<p><em><a href="https://www.adelaidefestival.com.au/events/two-feet/">Two Feet</a> is playing as part of the Adelaide Festival until March 5.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/112947/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>William Peterson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Acclaimed dance choreographer Meryl Tankard’s show Two Feet premiered in 1988. Now it returns to the Adelaide Festival, recreated for one of today’s most brilliant dancers.William Peterson, Associate Professor, Flinders UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/933462018-03-14T02:37:04Z2018-03-14T02:37:04ZThe Great War and Kings of War journey from the kill zone to the map room<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/210198/original/file-20180313-131594-b0oojf.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Great War uses scale models to depict catastrophe through a keyhole.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Tony Lewis </span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Two plays about war, one utilizing children’s toys, the other blank verse. In many ways, they represent opposite ends of the military spectrum, the first, the oceanic filth of the kill zone, the second, the high-flown speechifying of the map room. Think of them as the walk and talk of armed conflict – Thucydides’ swords and speeches – which add up to war in its endless variety and monotonous aim: the defeat of one side, the triumph of another.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.adelaidefestival.com.au/2018/the-great-war">The Great War</a>, by Dutch live-animation theatre company Hotel Modern and composer/foley artist Arthur Sauer, is billed as “creating a miniature WWI landscape live in the theatre accompanied by … sound and music … based on testimonies, diaries and letters written by soldiers who fought in the trenches”. </p>
<p>Scale models, tiny cameras and overhead projection work a visual thaumaturgy to provide a worm’s eye view of biblical destruction: catastrophe through a keyhole.</p>
<p>In assaying the bloody blot on human history that is the First World War, artists face two problems: the problem of scale, and the problem of repetition. So much happened, yet so much of what happened was the same thing, over and over again. The Great War rises to the first challenge by creating a micro register of perception in which small things viewed from tight angles (often around knee-height) communicate a disproportionate sense of titanic violence.</p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/hlXYa2n5Knw?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
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<p>The means the company uses are strikingly simple. On either side of an open stage stand pens of garden earth, wherein the legs of soldiers (animators’ fingers, with plastic boots on their tips) grimly trudge through endless trenches. Above hangs a large screen, magnifying everything.</p>
<p>So it begins, the killings: death by sniper fire; death by shelling; death by gas attack; death by machine gun fire; death by drowning; death by ghastly incineration.</p>
<p>When washing up liquid and water are tipped into the pens, hey presto, there’s <a href="https://www.awm.gov.au/visit/exhibitions/anzac-voices/passchendaele">Passchendaele</a>, in all its boggy horror. A little talcum powder becomes deep winter snow. Burning parsley becomes flaming fields and woods. All this is managed with an adept sense of how our minds remix information fed by our eyes - setting aside the knowledge that these are household items to freight them with profound significance and visceral power.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/210200/original/file-20180313-131575-1h0g5my.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/210200/original/file-20180313-131575-1h0g5my.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/210200/original/file-20180313-131575-1h0g5my.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/210200/original/file-20180313-131575-1h0g5my.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/210200/original/file-20180313-131575-1h0g5my.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/210200/original/file-20180313-131575-1h0g5my.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/210200/original/file-20180313-131575-1h0g5my.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/210200/original/file-20180313-131575-1h0g5my.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Household items are freighted with visceral power in The Great War.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Joost van den Broek</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Hotel Modern meets the problem of representing so much death by scrupulous selectivity. A toy horse mired in the mud stands delegate for every horse that died between 1914 and 1918. This is the arc of disaggregation good drama invariably takes, carving from mass events the contours of singular lives. To tell one story is not to tell them all. But it reminds us of the difference between summary account and actual experience. Eight million horses died in World War I. Yet they died, as we all die, one by one.</p>
<p>There is nothing so visual as sound, and Sauer provides live music and aural effects, from furious bombardment to sucking swamp. Narration of the letters and eyewitness testimonials is also live, by one of the three animators. Her soft, singsong Dutch voice at first seemed at odds with the bloody tale she recounts. By the end, I thought it perfect – a child’s voice, almost, for a show drawing on the child’s realm to represent the horrors of the adult one.</p>
<p>A hundred years on, World War I remains a conflict that we still struggle to process, morally and intellectually. Technology makes war far worse, not only by rendering the killing more efficient, but by interpolating machines between our violent intentions and their fatal consequences: a cruel puppetry far, far less creative than the one this Dutch company uses to reverse the process, taking a cluster of machines and using them to reconnect us to the pity of war.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/memorial-is-a-shattering-excavation-of-the-scars-of-war-through-poetry-dance-and-mind-blowing-score-92925">Memorial is a shattering excavation of the scars of war through poetry, dance and mind-blowing score</a>
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</em>
</p>
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<h2>Mature drama</h2>
<p>The gap between history lessons and the lessons of history is also the territory of <a href="https://www.adelaidefestival.com.au/2018/kings-of-war">Kings of War</a>, presented by another Dutch company, Toneelgroep Amsterdam. It is a collage of five Shakespearean history plays: Henry V, Henry VI (parts I, II and III) and Richard III. Some readers may recall the Roman Tragedies the group brought to the Adelaide Festival in 2014. Kings of War has a similar high-altitude feel, of great events viewed from the unsteady perspective of leaders who believe they are in control of them.</p>
<p>At four and a half hours, this is not a production of the short-show-is-a-good-show variety. It takes time to achieve its full power. But it’s worth it, not only for the final crushing effect, but for the carefully wrought character and action details along the way. Modern theatre is so in thrall to the enfant terrible director it stands in danger of forgetting what mature drama feels like. Kings of War resounds with an emotional depth and insight that no work of youthful talent could convey.</p>
<p>Kings of War is above all a play about <em>meetings;</em> its achievement is to flip the medieval order of lordly precedence into one of modern bureaucratic maneouvre – the world of “suits”. </p>
<p>Through the boardroom, people come and go, standing at the back, arguing across the table, looking rumpled and slightly jaded. It is only later that certain items on the agenda show themselves to be terminal.</p>
<p>The set design is a concatenation of beige-coloured, all-purpose corporate spaces, some real, some virtual, some both. As with Hotel Modern, a large screen dominates the action, with a roving video camera showing a maze of anonymous corridors offstage, through which the Dukes-of-this and Queens-of-that endlessly trundle, having sex or killing each other.</p>
<p>When a King is crowned, a red carpet is laid out like a lizard’s tongue, and a perfunctory line-up of underlings occurs. The crown – object of perpetual power lust – briefly appears, hovering above another already weary head, then is whisked off, back to its glass cabinet.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/210195/original/file-20180313-131587-1utzar9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/210195/original/file-20180313-131587-1utzar9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/210195/original/file-20180313-131587-1utzar9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/210195/original/file-20180313-131587-1utzar9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/210195/original/file-20180313-131587-1utzar9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/210195/original/file-20180313-131587-1utzar9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/210195/original/file-20180313-131587-1utzar9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/210195/original/file-20180313-131587-1utzar9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A red carpet is laid out like a lizard’s tongue and the crown hovers above an already weary head.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jan Versweyveld</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Choreographically, the production is capacious, processional and cold. Carefully placed figures in a landscape, epic and removed, stand as though in a picture by the French painter <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jacques-Louis-David-French-painter">Jacques-Louis David</a>. The ensemble of 16 actors are uniformly brilliant, and it would be invidious to single any out for particular praise, though Ramsey Nasr as Henry V, Janni Goslinga as Margareta (Queen Margaret), and Hans Kesting as Richard III do impressive heavy lifting. A small group of musicians switch perfectly between brass, period vocals, and DJ sampling of contemporary rock and pop.</p>
<p>The 70 years between 1415 and 1485 are another bloody stretch of England’s past, another tranche of brutishness and butchery. I recently tried to make sense of it, going over the names, the attainders, the endless slaughter. Benedict Andrew’s Wars of the Roses at the Sydney Theatre Company in 2009 presented this history as a loop of murders. No sense to be had beyond the killing.</p>
<p>For Toneelgroep Amsterdam, the same plays are something quite different: a succession of betrayals – of power won and lost with a word or a poor decision. When the killings happen, they take place off stage and are beamed back on screen. Current methods are favoured, usually an injection of poison into the veins.</p>
<p>The result is that meaning and purpose re-enter the narrative frame. The problem with (civil) war is not that it is senseless, but that the reasons for it lie in the heads of a handful of leaders of immense power who think they know what they are doing but do not. And Shakespeare’s Wars of the Roses cycle takes this ultra modern, ultra dry, ultra political interpretation as a perfect fit.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/210197/original/file-20180313-131610-noydjf.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/210197/original/file-20180313-131610-noydjf.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/210197/original/file-20180313-131610-noydjf.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/210197/original/file-20180313-131610-noydjf.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/210197/original/file-20180313-131610-noydjf.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/210197/original/file-20180313-131610-noydjf.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/210197/original/file-20180313-131610-noydjf.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/210197/original/file-20180313-131610-noydjf.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Killings happen off stage and are beamed back on screen.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jan Versweyveld</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The final play, Richard III, is a portrait of an archetypal contemporary dictator: a sagging, middle-aged, narcissistic braggart, a thug who treats people with no more consideration than the furniture around him. </p>
<p>There’s the usual serial cursing, yet for Richard it’s water off a duck’s back. The road to hell is paved not by good intentions but a desire for control chilled and remote, until it bursts into sudden violence, like a rage-filled face in a blood-drenched dream.</p>
<p>All very familiar to a world like ours, busy collecting a new lot of tin-pot tyrants, old men kissing each other’s cheeks and arranging each other’s murders. “People don’t always think before they act”, Richard tells Queen Elizabeth, defending his indefensible record.</p>
<p>But, actually, they do: with a terrible, unwavering commitment to personal gain; to a death-filled logic; to a self-love that triumphs over every other goal and relation, almost over life itself. Only at the end does Richard doubt, seeing the faces of his past victims shimmer in the mirror that is his constant interlocutor.</p>
<p>Or maybe they are future victims. It is worth remembering that within 50 years of Shakespeare writing the last line of his play - “Now civil wounds are stopp’d, peace lives again:/That she may long live here, God say amen!” – England had once more descended into savage civil war.</p>
<p><em>The Great War and Kings of War were both exclusive to the Adelaide Festival.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/93346/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Julian Meyrick does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The Great War uses scale models to give a worm’s eye view of titanic violence. In Kings of War, by contrast, lethal events are viewed from the unsteady perspective of leaders.Julian Meyrick, Professor of Creative Arts, Flinders UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/929252018-03-07T00:46:13Z2018-03-07T00:46:13ZMemorial is a shattering excavation of the scars of war through poetry, dance and mind-blowing score<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/209219/original/file-20180306-146694-19pqrtk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Helen Morse lends her voice to the poetry of Memorial. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shane Reid</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Arthur Danto, in his Analytic Philosophy of History, calls the common noun “scar” a “past-referring term”. In this way, language acknowledges the passing of time, representing verbally what happens to us physically. The mystery of appearance and disappearance in the world – the cycle of life and death – is caught in the warp and weft of how we speak, the soul made manifest by the word.</p>
<p>Memorial is a large-scale performance piece drenched in a sense of time passed. Based on <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12841067-memorial">Alice Oswald’s poetic exploration of the Iliad</a> (the precise, and again temporally charged, descriptor is “excavation”), it brings together a transcendent score by composer Jocelyn Pook, deft movement of 150 supernumeraries by Yaron Lifschitz, and a charged narration by actor Helen Morse, a voice born to convey feelings of love, loss and grief.</p>
<p>Chris Drummond, whose work has headed towards a new synthesis of refinement and ambition for some time, writes in his director’s note:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The idea of translating a work’s atmosphere is a compelling one, but coupled with the notion of enargeia (“bright, unbearable reality”), Memorial offered the possibility of being an immensely theatrical proposition. In the theatre, gods (and ghosts) are manifest, real, physical presences and in the right context, at its greatest, theatre can conjure a living communion with our immortal selves.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Just so. In essence, Oswald’s poem is a 90-minute-long casualty list. It names and details the deaths of the ancient combatants on both sides of the ten-year Trojan war – that distant struggle that has become the universal index for all war.</p>
<p>No Australian has to be told of the significance of blood-soaked beaches in the Dardanelles, of savage death under perfect blue skies. From the opening image of a stage covered in prostrate bodies all of whom slowly raise one arm, Memorial occupies a register of high pathos that is both personally familiar and nationally confronting.</p>
<p>Here we go: the long itemisation of those who have lost their lives in causes that now seem so much hazier than the deaths they engendered. Things are much easier – and shorter – when enumerated rather than enunciated: one reason governments prefer statistics to vivid description.</p>
<p>The brilliance of Oswald’s writing lies in its combination of unrelenting singular focus with endless poetic invention, of simile and metaphor drawing on the natural world to capture a repetitive and eventually routine outcome (the deaths of combatants). Watching, I felt a visceral tug to memorise the text, to ingest its words into my mind. Hurriedly, I wrote down snatches afterwards:</p>
<p>“He opened a door in the earth and an entire generation vanishes.” “This whole river is a grave.” “Grief is black; it is made of earth.” “The works of men pass away.” “Thousands of names, thousands of leaves.” “… and is gone.”</p>
<p>The stage of the Dunstan Playhouse in Adelaide is a forgiving one, but, even so, moving 150 people on it requires outstanding choreographic skill. Three of Memorial’s “soldier chorus” are listed as dancers; the remainder are drawn from South Australian choirs and opera companies. Choreographer Lifschitz’s approach is to keep the physical text in motion most of the time, then still the picture, or clear it, leaving Morse alone, in the gloom.</p>
<p>Sometimes this works with startling power, sometimes it feels a little overdone; movement for movement’s sake. The great benefit of such massification, however, is that it acts not only as a reminder of scale, but that a non-professional chorus cannot hide its polyglot humanity – the mad variety of visages and elbows, walks and hairstyles, eye-lines and auras. It is this difference that war kills, returning everything to the sameness of the grave, of <em>gone.</em></p>
<p>Pook’s score is a golden stream of soft, devastating sadness: the sinuous reediness of oboe, shawm and clarinet; the pong and chime of bells; the wail and keen of counter tenor and Bulgarian and Macedonian vocals. The musicians are suspended on an illuminated bridge above the stage, like demi-gods. At its most climactic, Memorial’s music is almost literally mind-blowing. I thought, “If death is like this, it might not be too bad.”</p>
<p>But that’s life talking. In truth, when people die we have no idea what happens to them next, and that goes equally for the Archbishop of Canterbury and Richard Dawkins. De-heroicizing violent death, which has been part of the English literary tradition since the War Poets a hundred years ago, is surely also Oswald’s intent here. Many of her vignettes include the paralytic sorrow of those left behind – bereaved lovers, wives, brothers; crippled parents and children; lives torn apart and torn up. War looks sort of OK in the movies. But it really, really, really isn’t.</p>
<p>In bringing this piece into existence, director Chris Drummond shows two things. First, that his ability to handle the outsize tools of epic performance, previously on show in Night Letters and When the Rain Stops Falling, is now approaching the definitive. Second, that his interest in the human condition, in vulnerability, in drama, remains squarely at the centre of his vision. </p>
<p>Plays always have to be entertaining, one of my students said to me the other day. Well, yes. But they also have to be much more than that. Memorial is full of the death that life is full of. It is deeply compassionate, a quality emanating not only from Oswald’s poetry, but from every artist involved in the production.</p>
<p>Most compellingly from Helen Morse, who vibrates with feeling like a musical instrument herself. Her command of the text is total, her delivery shattering. She keeps herself on a short leash, emotion never spilling over structure, bleeding heart shielded by dry eyes. But then if we started weeping, would we ever stop?</p>
<hr>
<p><em><a href="https://www.adelaidefestival.com.au/2018/memorial">Memorial</a> was staged as part of the Adelaide Festival.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/92925/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Julian Meyrick does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Memorial brings Alice Oswald’s poetic retelling of the Iliad to the stage, with its furious indictment of war and its aftermath.Julian Meyrick, Professor of Creative Arts, Flinders UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/919162018-03-02T00:48:01Z2018-03-02T00:48:01ZWaqt al-tagheer: Time of change explores the diversity of Muslim Australian identities<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/208344/original/file-20180228-36680-j9938h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A section of Hoda Afshar, Westoxicated, from left-right, #3, #9, #5, #1, #7 (Under Western Eyes series) (2013-2014), digital prints, 105 x 92cm (each). </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy the artist.</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>“Artworks”, wrote the philosopher Alva Noë, “direct our attention to the complexity of experience, a complexity that we can easily overlook”. This is a fitting description of a new exhibition at the 2018 Adelaide Festival in which the major focus is on Islamic identities in the Australian context.</p>
<p>Waqt al-tagheer: Time of change, curated by Abdul-Rahman Abdullah and Nur Shkembi, is the debut exhibition of <a href="https://eleven-collective.com/contact/about/">eleven</a>, a collective of Muslim Australian contemporary art practitioners living in different parts of the country.</p>
<p>The exhibition at ACE Open (South Australia’s premier contemporary art gallery) directs our attention to the diversity and versatility of Australian Islamic experiences – and to some commonalities.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/208362/original/file-20180301-36671-xkxupr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/208362/original/file-20180301-36671-xkxupr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/208362/original/file-20180301-36671-xkxupr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208362/original/file-20180301-36671-xkxupr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208362/original/file-20180301-36671-xkxupr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208362/original/file-20180301-36671-xkxupr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208362/original/file-20180301-36671-xkxupr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208362/original/file-20180301-36671-xkxupr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Abdullah M. I. Syed, Aura II (2013) hand-stitched white crocheted prayer caps (topi), Perspex and LED light, 127 (diameter) x 54cm; installation view.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Sam Roberts Photography</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The beguiling works on display are grounded in the realities of the artists’ daily lives in contemporary Australia. From their individual standpoints, these artists tell it as it is. Such perspectives are infrequently seen or heard amidst the clattering “white noise” that often drowns out the voices and viewpoints of Muslim Australians.</p>
<p>Over the past couple of decades, western perceptions of Islam have resulted in people of that faith often being perceived as a single homogenous group and frequently stereotyped negatively.</p>
<p>Hoda Afshar’s digital photography installation from her Westoxicated series challenges such ideas. Her aesthetically flawless work cheekily parodies the ways in which some Australians regard veiled women as subjugated and miserable.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/208345/original/file-20180228-36693-2izjpq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/208345/original/file-20180228-36693-2izjpq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/208345/original/file-20180228-36693-2izjpq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=141&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208345/original/file-20180228-36693-2izjpq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=141&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208345/original/file-20180228-36693-2izjpq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=141&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208345/original/file-20180228-36693-2izjpq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=177&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208345/original/file-20180228-36693-2izjpq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=177&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208345/original/file-20180228-36693-2izjpq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=177&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Hoda Afshar, Westoxicated, from left-right, #3, #9, #5, #1, #7 (Under Western Eyes series) (2013-2014), digital prints, 105 x 92cm (each).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy the artist</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Her five works wittily undermine dominant media representations and the other ubiquitous iconography that inform the “western gaze” (that judgmental observation that adversely affects many veiled Islamic women).</p>
<p>At the same time, the visual vocabulary and imagery underpinning Afshar’s work depicts stereotypes of “western” women as seen on social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram. Her unexpected juxtapositions disrupt expectations, thereby promoting a cognitive shift on the part of the viewer.</p>
<p>The woman in these works is depicted smoking while nursing her Jack Russell terrier, acting as a toy gun-wielding anarchist, heavily made up and displaying “vamp” eyebrows, and sporting cheesy Minnie Mouse ears (in which she is symbolically framed by a deep yellow setting, thus enhancing beautiful Islamic calligraphy crafted into interlocking geometric patterns). The artist’s playful seriousness means that this work speaks eloquently to every Australian woman at some level, offering a subversive counter-narrative to status-quo thinking.</p>
<p>Hoda Afshar’s installation also gently critiques the standard visual iconography of subordinated Islamic women by using a benign but effective weapon – Aussie humour that merges incongruity, satire and pastiche.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/208348/original/file-20180228-36683-8lfsoq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/208348/original/file-20180228-36683-8lfsoq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/208348/original/file-20180228-36683-8lfsoq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=347&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208348/original/file-20180228-36683-8lfsoq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=347&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208348/original/file-20180228-36683-8lfsoq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=347&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208348/original/file-20180228-36683-8lfsoq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=436&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208348/original/file-20180228-36683-8lfsoq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=436&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208348/original/file-20180228-36683-8lfsoq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=436&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Abdul Abdullah, Journey to the West (2017), digital print, 75cm x 130cm.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy the artist and Lisa Fehily Contemporary Art, Melbourne</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Abdul Abdullah’s visually striking work Journey to the West is heartbreaking in terms of its subject matter. An apparently tortured, martyred and lonely humanoid figure, wearing a simian mask (derived from Planet of the Apes) is depicted as residing in the midst of opulence. This operates as a metaphor for the promise migrants are offered to live the “good life” in Australia but who then have to face a starkly different reality in terms of lack of social acceptance and sometimes, isolation.</p>
<p>Abdullah’s Wedding diptych (comprising two works with the creepily Orwellian-type titles of Delegated Risk Management and Mutual Assurances) also offers platforms for the staging of identity, in the luxurious setting of weddings – a ritual with which many people are able to connect at some level.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/208350/original/file-20180228-36674-vk62f2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/208350/original/file-20180228-36674-vk62f2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/208350/original/file-20180228-36674-vk62f2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=259&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208350/original/file-20180228-36674-vk62f2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=259&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208350/original/file-20180228-36674-vk62f2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=259&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208350/original/file-20180228-36674-vk62f2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=325&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208350/original/file-20180228-36674-vk62f2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=325&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208350/original/file-20180228-36674-vk62f2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=325&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Abdul Abdullah, Mutual Assurances (2017), archival print, 100 x 232cm.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy the artist and Lisa Fehily Contemporary Art</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But this is no scene of blissful union. In place of the archetypally happy smiling couple on their wedding day are two balaclava-clad figures. For viewers, this destabilises the images and acts to dehumanise (or even criminalise) these innocent couples on the supposedly happiest day of their lives.</p>
<p>In Delegated Risk Management the groom is absorbed with his mobile phone, oblivious to his new wife’s presence. These representations are as much commentaries on the increasing bureaucratic hegemony in Australian life generally and as such, like all works in this exhibition, should not simply be categorised as “Islamic art”.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/208354/original/file-20180228-36700-oaqg5d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/208354/original/file-20180228-36700-oaqg5d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/208354/original/file-20180228-36700-oaqg5d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208354/original/file-20180228-36700-oaqg5d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208354/original/file-20180228-36700-oaqg5d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208354/original/file-20180228-36700-oaqg5d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208354/original/file-20180228-36700-oaqg5d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208354/original/file-20180228-36700-oaqg5d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Abdul Abdullah, Delegated Risk Management (2017), archival print, 100 x 154cm.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy the artist and Lisa Fehily Contemporary Art</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Adbullah’s work explores how individual, group, ethnic and even national identity involves an elaborate interplay of self-defined identity and Other-defined (or externally defined) identity. The tension that exists between these competing definitions means that identity sometimes becomes a site of struggle. </p>
<p>When self-defined and Other-defined identity are closely affiliated, individuals and groups are well placed to lead “relaxed and comfortable” lives. But when Other-defined identity is unremittingly imposed on minority groups and individuals, matters can turn ugly.</p>
<p>The eerie lighting and vibrant colour deployed brilliantly by Abdullah in these two archival prints are at odds with how the couples are represented – as quasi-terrorists.</p>
<p>As the Black British filmmaker and artist <a href="http://www.mardigras.org.au/events/isaac-julien-film-noir-angels-looking-for-langston">Isaac Julien</a> and art historian <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09528829008576253?journalCode=ctte20">Kobena Mercer</a> (both of whom are also
gay activists) <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books/about/Male_order.html?id=34gEAQAAIAAJ&redir_esc=y">have put it</a>, it needs to be recognised that “politics always involves a struggle over representation”. This is certainly the case with many works on show in this exhibition.</p>
<p>Waqt al-tagheer: Time of change, reveals bounteous talent, as is evident in Abdullah M. I. Syed’s Aura II, comprised of hand-stitched white crocheted prayer caps (topi). Displayed against a background of total darkness, the luminous beauty of this work shines out, guiding one’s entry into the inner chambers of the gallery.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/208351/original/file-20180228-36700-39bg5r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/208351/original/file-20180228-36700-39bg5r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/208351/original/file-20180228-36700-39bg5r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208351/original/file-20180228-36700-39bg5r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208351/original/file-20180228-36700-39bg5r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208351/original/file-20180228-36700-39bg5r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208351/original/file-20180228-36700-39bg5r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/208351/original/file-20180228-36700-39bg5r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Abdullah M. I. Syed, Aura II (detail) (2013) hand-stitched white crocheted prayer caps (topi), Perspex and LED light, 127 (diameter) x 54cm.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy the artist</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Other artists with splendid work in the show include Shireen Taweel, Khadim Ali, Eugenia Flynn, Zeina Iaali and Khaled Sabsabi. Abdul-Rahman Abdullah is also exhibiting one sculptural piece titled 500 Books.</p>
<p>It is clear from this exhibition that Muslim Australians often carry a heavy burden in their struggles over how they are represented. This alone makes Waqt al-tagheer an important exhibition, but ultimately it is the contemporary relevance of its curatorial premise, the high calibre of the artworks, and their conceptual bases that ought to bring audiences flocking to see it during the Adelaide Festival and beyond.</p>
<p><em>Waqt al-tagheer: Time of change runs from March 3 – April 21 at <a href="http://aceopen.art/exhibitions/waqt-al-tagheer-time-of-change/">ACE Open’s Gallery</a>, Lion Arts Centre, North Terrace (west end) Adelaide, Morphett Street entrance, Tuesday- Saturday 11am – 4pm.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/91916/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Christine Judith Nicholls does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The beguiling works on display in an exhibition by Muslim Australian artists are grounded in the realities of their daily lives.Christine Judith Nicholls, Senior Lecturer in Australian Studies, Flinders UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/748462017-03-21T20:26:46Z2017-03-21T20:26:46ZIn a miserable year, the Adelaide Festival brought us joy<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/161735/original/image-20170321-9136-18yzds9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">L-E-V comes at you like a freight train with Killer Pig in the Adelaide Festival.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Media Credit Gil Shani</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>This March, the Adelaide Festival has been both signal and signally needed. 2016 was an awful year, and 2017 isn’t looking much better. Man’s inhumanity to man proceeds apace, truth is under siege, and treasurers across the world are using their grandmothers’ false teeth for pie crimpers to make budget savings.</p>
<p>Against this louring and dismal horizon, the Adelaide Festival has stood out as a blaze of hope, skill, diversity and fun. </p>
<p>There’s been a fair bit of numberising about the economic impact of the Festival, which is certainly impressive: 86,400 spectators attracted; $4M+ revenue raised; 500 performances across 58 free and ticketed events. No doubt, from an aggregate point of view, these stats are affirming. But – a no brainer, really – they’re not what the Festival is ultimately about. </p>
<p>Right from the start it was obvious the Festival program was a beautifully crafted object d’art. It’s hard to pick out highlights from a highlight year. What follows is a selection that tries to be representative as well as exemplary, to give a sense of the range of work on offer, and the richness of response it invited from those fortunate enough to see it.</p>
<hr>
<h2>Portraits in Motion</h2>
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<span class="caption">Portraits in Motion at the Adelaide Festival.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Media Credit Franz Ritschel</span></span>
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<p>Volger Gerling creates photographic flipbooks – pads of successive images that, when thumbed at speed, trick the eye into seeing movement. It’s like film, but at a slower speed, exposing the invisible substrate around it: time.</p>
<p>Gerling shows audiences his flipbooks with the aid of an overhead projector, a 1980s technology currently making something of a theatrical comeback. His specially-purposed camera shoots a 16-second sequence of his subject, whether a person or a place. Impossible not to shift in that time, to smile, scratch or scowl. And there it is, in a flip-book: a tiny slice of your life in all its analogue richness.</p>
<p>Each summer Gerling goes walking through Germany, a latter-day Wandervogel. He shows his flipbooks to get by. He also talks to people and, if the relationship develops, takes their picture with his special camera and makes a new flipbook.</p>
<p>The simplicity of this one-person show belies the profundity of its animating idea. Gerling is a true artist. He gathers stories as much as images, and his intense respect for the samples of humanity he comes across irradiates his material with a quiet spirituality. </p>
<hr>
<h2>The Magic City</h2>
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<span class="caption">Manual Cinema’s Magic City in the Adelaide Festival.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Media Credit Chuck Osgood</span></span>
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<p>Manual Cinema are a Chicago-based performance collective who create multi-media immersive theatre experiences*. Actually, “multi-media” doesn’t adequately describe the potpourri of live music, recorded sound, shadow puppetry, live feeds, multiple screens and beautifully drawn projected images that blend into a joyful celebration of the human imagination.</p>
<p>Edith Nesbit’s Edwardian tale of a little girl, Philomena, who is raised by her sister in relative bliss until that sister betrays her by getting married to someone with a really annoying young son, Lucas, is transposed into a modern idiom. Philomena takes refuge in the attic of her new home, where she builds a miniature city out of banished junk. From there it is only a small doze away into a dream world of belligerent hammers, dancing bottles, and rubber ducks who double as sea ferries.</p>
<p>Afterwards, Fornance invites children in the audience to the stage, where they can handle the puppets and see themselves writ large on the projection screens. There’s no artifice to this show, which is extraordinary if you consider the manifold devices involved in its production.</p>
<hr>
<h2>Killer Pig</h2>
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<span class="caption">L-E-V with Killer Pig in the Adelaide Festival.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Media Credit Gil Shani</span></span>
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<p>The L-E-V company from Israel demonstrate the very different place dance inhabits now compared to 20 years ago when minimalism meant watching someone get in and out of a fiddleback chair 20 times.</p>
<p>One of two Festival shows “created” by Sharon Eyal and Gai Behar (there is no choreographer credit), Killer Pig is so forceful it mows down spectator response. It’s more than chutzpah, and it’s certainly not arrogance. It’s urgency, skill and ambition moulded into a series of in-yer-face moves so connected and intense they feel pre-ordained. This is dance as mineralogy: solid forms in violent action.</p>
<p>Aside from the six dancers themselves there’s nothing on stage. They wear skin-coloured costumes, tight tubular outfits that de-sex them and eliminate all superfluous detail. Then their bodies burst forth, furiously bending, twisting, leaping; arms and legs on the same axis, then on different axes, as if they were being tortured, or having violent sex, or both.</p>
<p>Every so often, they scream. And if all that feels, you know, a bit much, be assured that the pace, inventiveness and resolution of each dance is rich enough to make a distanced response beside the point. Ken Kesey was right. You’re either on the bus or off it.</p>
<hr>
<h2>Richard III</h2>
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<span class="caption">Schaubühne Theater’s Richard III, Adelaide Festival.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Media Credit Arno Declair</span></span>
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<p>The work of German director Thomas Ostermeier, famous for his visceral re-visioning of classics in the Western theatrical canon, has become a staple at international arts festivals. Ostermeier doesn’t so much adapt these plays as create a highly integrated new world.</p>
<p>This Richard III places the audience on a roller coaster ride where anything can and does happen. Richard enters from the fire doors on the side of the theatre, flies across the stage on a rope, springs onto this enemies in an angry rage, coerces, humiliates, plots, and takes delight in murder and mayhem. Lars Eidinger’s Richard, a man raging over the ways the world has wronged him, is seductive, narcissistic, psychopathic, even sexy, his famous hump notwithstanding.</p>
<p>One of the great strengths in Ostermeier’s interpretation is the clarity of each of the supporting male characters. Among the standouts was the Duke of Buckingham, motivated and costumed in a way that suggests Hitler’s wingman Joseph Goebbels, the evil genius without whom the truly deranged cannot attain power.</p>
<p>For all of the thrilling rock-and-roll aspects of this production, ultimately it was the ominous and obvious connections with contemporary politics that Ostermeier brings to the fore that remain the best reason for continuing to re-imagine and re-stage Shakespeare’s story. </p>
<hr>
<h2>Gala</h2>
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<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Gala, Adelaide Festival.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Media Credit Josefina Tommasi</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>In a festival that featured so many superb and well-crafted dance works (see the heart-stopping <a href="https://theconversation.com/betroffenheit-when-the-mind-and-body-get-stuck-74058">Betroffenheit</a>), among the most impactful was Jérôme Bel’s Gala, which featured 15 diverse and remarkable locals, the majority of whom were not dance-trained. </p>
<p>In the first sequence, dancers – different in each city, and of every conceivable age and body type – respond somewhat awkwardly to classical ballet music. As the work progresses, each dancer presents a self-devised solo number, and then leads the group as they attempt to replicate their movements.</p>
<p>We come to know each individual kinesthetically, as a unique personality expressed through movement. One dancer surprises by proving to be a brilliant hoola-hoop artist, another is adept at Bollywood dance moves, while a young boy in red socks displays a breathtaking capacity to respond to rhythm, flying around the stage as the others struggle to keep up.</p>
<p>The dancer whose movements all of the others found nearly impossible to replicate was a developmentally disabled young woman. The steely determination that seemed to propel her through space pointed to another way of being in the world. And in this moment, it was as if we in the audience were seeing her world for the very first time. </p>
<hr>
<h2>Backbone</h2>
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<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Backbone in the Adelaide Festival.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Media credit Darcy Grant</span></span>
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<p>One of the markers of a truly successful international festival is programming local work that sits seamlessly beside the best of the work from overseas. We’ve already reviewed the <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-secret-river-exquisitely-illuminates-the-unspeakable-under-the-stars-739610">exquisite Secret River</a>, but there are other homegrown highlights.</p>
<p>Given Australia’s international reputation as a powerhouse producer of incredibly well-honed circus artists, the inclusion of Backbone, presented by Adelaide-based Gravity & Other Myths, was a wise and welcome addition to the Festival.</p>
<p>This was a family-friendly show, where adults gasped and children tittered and exclaimed as this fierce and fearless ensemble of circus performers topped every impossible feat with one even more impossible. A standing three-tiered human pyramid was created by performers wearing buckets over their heads. A performer, upside down, balanced on one hand atop another performer’s head. That performer then walked on his hands across the heads of others who stepped forward to replace those who stepped behind.</p>
<p>Rarely, for such an ensemble-created work, the overarching theatrical framing provided a beating heart and soul for the piece, activated by a brilliant live musical score. Extreme technical virtuosity and tight teamwork, especially in such an attractive package, is guaranteed to raise an audience to their feet shouting for joy, as they did when we saw it at a matinee.</p>
<hr>
<p>Given the money involved in international festivals it’s easy for them to become supersaturated consumption objects, audiences rushing round madly to fit in one more show. It’s the achievement of this year’s Festival that it hasn’t ever felt like this; that despite the quantity of events, there has been a sense of space and choice. </p>
<p>We run into friends from Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane who ask, forgetfully, “how long are you in Adelaide for?” Interesting question. For a while yet, if the Festival keeps steaming ahead like this.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>*This sentence was corrected on March 30 to reflect that Manual Cinema does not only produce work for children, as the sentence originally implied.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/74846/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>This year has got off to an awful start. Thank God for the Adelaide Festival, a blaze of hope, skill and fun. Here are our critics’ highlights of a beautifully crafted program.William Peterson, Senior Lecturer in Drama, Flinders UniversityJulian Meyrick, Professor of Creative Arts, Flinders UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.