Behrouz Boochani wrote his memoir of incarceration on Manus Island one text message at a time. Translating this work of ‘horrific surrealism’ from Farsi to English was a profoundly philosophical experience.
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To Kill a Mockingbird is no sermon. Its lessons are presented in effortless style, tackling the complexity of race issues with startling clarity and a strong sense of reality.
Aboriginal children are rarely named in the colonial archive. But the remarkable story of Dirimera and Conaci reveals two boys who, while removed from their land, had a keen sense of sovereignty.
In this grim and often bloody tale of dog-groomer Marcello, the canines steal every scene they are in.
As a bushranger in the Kelly gang, Steve Hart took to dressing as a woman and riding side-saddle to avoid detection. Sidney Nolan’s painting captures Hart’s adolescent cockiness, bravery, and foolhardy bluster.
A pared-down, humorous and intimate monologue, this production explores the human dimension of a political movement. It is a challenge to tacit silence and collective amnesia in Australia also.
Our use of social media platforms such as Instagram is changing our relationship to nature, and – at least for now – not necessarily for the better.
Like a good pop ballad, I Used To Be Normal is energetic, colourful and masterfully anchored by a deep and earnest sentimentality.
The latest scary shark film, The Meg, opens this week. But fictionalised tales of monster fish blind us to the important role sharks play in maintaining the health of our oceans.
Reading the poem Eurydice to her students unleashed surprising emotions for Stephanie Trigg. But literature works in mysterious, unpredictable ways, highlighting the impossibility of trigger warnings.
Plagued by production woes for 25 years, The Man Who Killed Don Quixote embraces the spirit of its 17th-century source material. But unlike de Cervantes, Gilliam uses the female characters as props for the hero’s story.
Tales of giants can be found around the world - in Wales, in Australia, and the Pacific Islands. They helped people explain the sometimes cataclysmic changes to the environment they saw around them.
The 2018 Tarrawarra Biennial explores the act of creation itself, dissolving boundaries between mind/body, physical/spiritual, and form/content. But the experience in the gallery is sometimes something of an anti-climax.
Bats have symbolised everything from insanity to good luck. A new book explores their place in our collective imagination.
The female dwarf, disability, and beauty
The Conversation, CC BY23.2 MB (download)
For centuries, women with dwarfism were depicted in art as comic or grotesque fairytale beings. But artists are challenging these portrayals and notions of beauty and physical difference.
Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey broke all the rules of science fiction cinema, and allowed the audience to experience a uniquely philosophical film about the evolution of human consciousness.
The republic of letters was an intellectual community that took shape in the Enlightenment. And just like writers’ festivals, it had rules about who could speak.
In the Sydney Theatre Company’s premiere production, white guilt festers as part of the shame, the ongoing, percolating wound that is the plot-space of contemporary colonisation.
It is 50 years since anthropologist W.E.H. Stanner gave the Boyer Lectures in which he coined the phrase ‘the great Australian silence’. How far have we come since?
Buffy the Vampire Slayer, a cult classic, was a series with a diversity problem. News of a new season provides an opportunity for a different kind of storytelling.
In La Boite’s premiere production, 19-year-old Lysa unleashes a one-woman protest inspired by recent women’s marches around the world.
In remote Northern Territory, most Aboriginal people have been buried in unmarked graves. Archaelogists are carrying out painstaking detective work to help communities find their loved ones’ remains.
Trump Baby is the latest in a long history of visual protests. But is this ‘cheap shot street theatre’ truly effective, or should we ask more of protest artists?
Even if mermaids aren’t real, they’ll likely feature in human stories for many years to come. Very few mythical creatures are found in so many diverse cultures, across so many years without changing.
The performing arts is the canary in the coalmine of the gig economy.