The success of the Opera Australia and Barking Gecko Theatre’s Rabbits offers a chance to celebrate the pioneering nature of children’s theatre in Australia.
Greek tragedy remains the most modern form of drama, unafraid to question everything we value.
Sarah Walker. Photo: Jane Montgomery Griffiths as The Leader and Aaron Orzech as Haemon.
Regardless of reasoning and the plethora of scholarship that exists, Greek tragedy remains the most modern form of drama. It is unafraid to question everything we value.
Anna Volska, Maggie Dence, John Gaden, Peter Carroll and Barry Otto in Seventeen.
Brett Boardman/Belvoir St
Seventeen is the story of teenagers on the brink of adulthood; its canny trick is a cast of actors in their 70s. Despite this, it’s a conservative play that adheres to a predictably happy ending.
‘Theatre directors come in two kinds: “star” and “of use”. I’m in the latter category, which means that, for any given play, there are at least three or four other directors who could do it equally well.’
We need to consider what balance we want to achieve between the heritage and contemporary arts.
AAP Image/Julian Smith. Artists of the Australian Ballet rehearse for the The Dream.
Given the pressure being applied to the majority of people working in the arts sector, we would be foolish not to consider the roles and inherited rights of Australia’s major performing companies.
Sophiline Cheam Shapiro (L) in rehearsal with one of the members of the Sophiline Arts Ensemble. Khmer Arts Theater, Takhmao (Kandal Province), Cambodia. June 26, 2015.
Photo by Chris Philips
New stories can offer insight on alternative ways of living out our lives. As the experience in Cambodia shows, the performing arts can help us face up to enormous challenges and possibilities.
At its best, opera can, indeed, be a powerful form of allegorical theatre.
EPA/Gian Ehrenzeller (Image from Verdi's I due Foscari)
A gang-rape scene in a new London staging of Rossini’s Guillaume Tell was greeted with audience booing, and has sparked ongoing controversy. Are opera directors at risk of miscomprehending the medium?
Stage musicals, such as the Rocky Horror Show, don’t necessarily make sense. Nor do recent changes to arts funding.
AAP Image/Paul Miller
In cultural policy every good idea becomes a bad one if the context is confused. The fact there wasn’t initial clarity around the Program for Excellence indicates it will probably do more harm than good.
The cast have made a personal and emotional sacrifice in entering into the nightmare world of Jimmy Savile. And for that, they deserve our respect and praise.
The Waiting Room explores the love, loss and hope of IVF.
Jeff Busby/MTC
Covering love, loss and IVF, Kylie Trounson’s latest play explores the life of her own father, pioneering biologist Alan Trounson, and the invention of IVF.
Andrew Bovell’s adaptation of Kate Grenville’s The Secret River is a key example of post-Apology theatre.
AAP Image/Heidrun Löhr
It’s been seven years since Kevin Rudd delivered his apology to Indigenous Australians. On Australia’s stages dramatists continue to explore the ramifications of that apology and colonial history.
You’d be forgiven for thinking Double Falsehood was recently “found” and confirmed as being by Shakespeare. But that’s not what the researchers behind the computational tests actually said. So what’s up?
Cassamarca Foundation Chair in Latin Humanism and Chief Investigator, ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions: Europe 1100-1800, The University of Western Australia