Melbourne Street Art 9

Ninth in a series of documentations of deliberate and accidental street art.
St. Georges Road South, North Fitzroy

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The Garden State

Mayor John So announced this week that the fountains in the Carlton Gardens would flow again. The house I am living in seems to be leaking upwards.



These shots of a lake in Princes Park were taken in March.

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Camilleri does Cinderella

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Corvus

Dana Miltins with (and without) antelope in Corvus (designed by director Kate Davis, lighting designed by Emma Valente, photography by Brett Boardman)


Reading Nicholas Pickard's review, I was involuntarily thrown out of my seat. Still quite a distance from the airport, I came to my senses, unfortunately.

Instead, some beautiful photos to tease those of us not in Sydney. Rumour has it that Corvus might make it to Melbourne, which would be just fab.

While we wait, the same gang are bringing their production of Osama the Hero to Melbourne later this month. Although an altogether different beast from Corvus, Osama... was one of the most intelligent "straight" theatre pieces that I saw in '06.

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40 Years Later

On this day 40 years ago, over 90% of voting Australians voted "Yes" to a Federal referendum that made two changes to the constitution. The second of these changes was to include aboriginal Australians in the national census and to remove a clause that had excluded them from Federal legislation.

Of these two amendments, the inclusion in the census rectified an intrinsic racism within the constitution (prior to this, aborigines came under the "Flora and Fauna Act"). The second was more ambitious in that social, economic and political inequality could be more effectively addressed if the power to pass laws affecting aboriginal Australians was held by the Federal government.

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Melbourne Street Art 7

may your hope not be hidden.
even if it is very small

Seventh in a series of documentations of deliberate and accidental street art.
Ewing Street, Brunswick

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 une passante

A dark room at the National Gallery. Squinting to read the information. A child has a tantrum but it is an erudite tantrum, she’s not happy in this room with Piranesi’s Imaginary Prisons, she wants go back to the Virgin Mary. I share a laugh at this with a woman standing a few pictures down. When the father scoops the child up with a smile and bustles out, this stranger and I are suddenly the only two people in the room. I return to looking at the picture in front of me, she, in her own rhythm moves one closer to my left. “These are brilliant,” she says, “I hope they have reproductions.”

Then she joins me. I move to the next one. She moves too. “I feel like I am stalking you,” she says. “Stalk away,” I reply, cheerfully. We look at the picture together. “I’m studying prisons,” she offers, “I just got back from the States, Louisiana, Death Row.” “Wow, heavy.” “I’m doing my PhD on Penology,” she says, in what is now a rush of information, “I have to explain to people that Penology is not the study of penises.”

Moments before I had been showing off to my father, referencing Foucault’s Discipline and Punish, musing on the relationship between prisoner and gaoler and how that might echo the bond between performer and spectator.

All I manage now is a stuttered, “Penal. Penology. Panopticon…” I am still smiling. Underneath my beanie I am lightly sweating. She doesn’t pick up on my obtuse word-association. My father returns and she wanders to the next room. When we move there, she has already gone. Nor is she in the bookshop where I have the faint hope that I will see her again, looking for reproductions.



Piranesi’s Imaginary Prisons(Carceri d’invenzioni) are at the NGV International (what they call the St. Kilda Road building) until September 30. It’s free, and there’s some pretty cool Leggo on the way in too…

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Friday Fun

You've got 11 days to disagree (and alter) this assessment of me. Now, I would have hoped for something a bit more, well, handsome than a raccoon, but that would contradict the "modest" bit wouldn't it? Thanks Alison, this is fun!

The Alethiometer is also a pretty good representation of a wonderful idea but nevertheless, I am in the process of begging friends to read the trilogy before Kidman and Co. embalm our fantasies forever.

Also giving me joy, Credible Witness is providing the perfect warm-up to the Eurovision Song Contest by posting some old goodies. You know you love it and don't pretend it's in some groovy/ironic way either, you just love it. Apart from one unforgivable lapse of taste (Finland.'06. Genius.) Lauren is the one to get us there. This entry particularly, is very, very special.

Don't get me wrong, Lysandra is a lovely name and I really don't mind the part-soulful, part- "I just pee-ed on your pillow and I'm not going to apologise"-look of the thing but a raccoon? Really?

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Sunday Text

Every art, every philosophy may be viewed as an aid and remedy in the service of growing and striving life: they always presuppose suffering and sufferers. But there are two kinds of sufferer: firstly he who suffers from a superabundance of life, who desires a Dionysian art and likewise a tragic view of and insight into life – and then he who suffer from poverty of life, who seeks in art and knowledge either rest, peace, a smooth sea, delivery from himself, or intoxication, paroxysm, stupefaction, madness.

-Nietzsche

The Gay Science, 1887
trans. R.J. Hollingdale, Penguin, 1977

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Melbourne Street Art 6

Sixth in a series of documentations of deliberate and accidental street art.
Under the Capital City Trail Footbridge, Yarra River, Abbotsford

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Melbourne Street Art 5

"Simplify your life as modern Europeans do..."

Corner of Nicholson Street and Brunswick Road, Brunswick
Fifth in a series of documentations of deliberate and accidental street art.

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Industry's Best Practise

Greg Baum writes today about spectator-auditing, Major Events Corporation-style. His shot at the figures for the world swimming championships and the Grand Prix should be read by theatre producers, artistic directors and funding bodies across the land.

I expect attendance figures for theatre in this country will inexplicably rise in the order of 10 to 30%, the next time a federal enquiry happens to ask.

I'm only interested in a level playing field.

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Vale Freddie Francis

You imagine you will measure your own mortality by your parents, friend's parents, friends. It didn't occur to you that there would be an age during which your heroes would start dropping like flies.

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News travels slowly in these parts. Vale Peer Raben.

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New Links

Jasmine Chan loves the S-Bahn, so she should fit right in here. The Rabble are planning a major production in Sydney soon, keep eyes open.

Back to Back are one of the best theatre companies in the world. Seeing Small Metal Objects recently proved that, again.

So I've added them to the list!

+script: quite coincidentally, Jasmine also has a review of Small Metal Objects.

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Melbourne Street Art 4 (Progress)

my favourite capitalist girl done got caged by developers

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This is not an obituary. Neither is this.

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How to Direct a Play

Last week an Irish make-up artist visiting Melbourne asked me if I was sport-obsessed, like all the other Aussies she had met. I said I wasn't.

Last weekend I saw Zinedine Zidane: a 21st Century Portrait

I want to be him.

It's a beautiful film. Co-director Douglas Gordon also made 24-hour Psycho, that film slowed down so that it lasted 24 hours...simple, effective. This portrait is in real time and it is a hypnotic 90 minutes that closely follows Zidane through a match he is playing for Real Madrid. So closely is he observed that you don't really know how the game is progressing and it takes you a while to realise he is sharing the pitch with the likes of Beckham and Ronaldo. He stalks like a lion, clips the ground like a restless horse and when he does strike, it seems to be in slow motion (which mirrors the experience of watching Wayne Carey live, btw) He doesn't waste time with words, just the odd yell. In the one moment when he smiles, his whole face lights up; it's a "feminine" moment in a portrait of pure masculinity. Masculinity and Flow. The first is intrinsic to the subject, the "sitter", the second is the theme that justifies the form, the use of the close-up video, the manipulation of the sound from personal, interior space to the roar of a full stadium, and Mogwai's music. The 'Flow" that is achieved when you are totally focussed on a series of discrete actions, when time stops behaving and ideas link with each other before you have thought them. When you have forgotten the exterior world and yet are totally in synch with it. When you feel predestination. This film is a celebration of the sportsman as artist, or the masculine in art, or the art of masculinity.

In an interview Gordon suggested that Zidane's headbutt-exit from the World Cup was an orgasmic/destructive urge to sully the perfect moment. I have an ongoing , complex response to Zidane's 'final moment' so the simplicity of this idea is attractive.

And I want to be him.

Anti-AFL-ers should duck the next two pars. I was losing bits of teeth reading the likes of Robert Walls pontificating about North Melbourne and as always, Leapin' Larry at The Age leaps the right way:

SNOOZER OF THE WEEK
Anyone still congratulating themselves at length on recognising the Gold Coast as the Kangaroos' "only option". Yes, after years of successfully white-anting such local supporter base as they had here by shipping their games all over the national landscape, and otherwise publicly eroding confidence in their finances, there was only one path left, so all due congratulations to those pundits on the marvelous feat of recognising it. Hoorah. (The Sunday Age, 4/3/07)

As a former Fitzroy supporter who couldn't bear (ha bloody ha) a Brisbane-based version of his beloved club and so spent 3 seasons in the wilderness before following North (another inner-urban club, a smattering of ex-Fitzroy players) you can imagine how overjoyed I am by the prospect of never seeing a free-to-air game not telecast from the Gold Coast. Gold Coast Kangaroos? Oh, the humiliation.

Ben Ellis points us to the Radio 4 site for some Tynan. Also there at the moment is Mike Brearley, yes, THAT Mike Brearley investigating the Art of Directing. (Can't link directly, click on a weekday and find it in the A-Z listing).It's typically English, uptight but forensic. Early on, Sir Peter Hall describes G.B. Shaw's rehearsal process and it is soundly tut-tutted. Unfairly, I think.

You can't go past Katie Mitchell's "98% of directing is hard work." Her observations of the origins of Stanislavski's Method should also ring some bells for Melbournians, although the implications for a methodology that is founded on fear are not pursued.

All in all, well worth a quick listen, and I look forward to the second installment next week.

I now have an image of Alan Border interviewing Simon Phillips about rehearsal processes, and it won't go away.

I'd like to dedicate today's blog to the The Age report, about Harry Potter performing in the current West End production of Equus, that described the protagonist Alan Strange as "a stable boy obsessed with horses." Makes me feel very sane indeed.

and did I mention this man amongst men?

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Melbourne Street Art 4

lane off Fenwick Street, North Carlton
Fourth in a series of documentations of deliberate and accidental street art.

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Why I am doing this Part 1

Today, Cameron Woodhead writing in The Age referred to a "neutral Australian" accent. Coincidentally, yesterday I was sharing my German copy of Les Murray's Freddy Neptune which is billed as a "translation from the Australian English", and not so coincidentally, I have been branding my own translations as "from the German into Australian English". It warms my provincial heart. Hopefully my spell-checker will catch up soon.

In other big news, I have added the German text to my Rilke translation, both for the pedants, and so that the rhyming scheme can be admired. I have also added a photo of fire-woman, designer and all-round theatre genius Margie Mackay to the "Golem" post.

Supernaut posted blog#1000 recently. I'd like to celebrate with a joke:

There are only ten different sorts of people in this world, those that understand binary and those that don't.

Reading true blog-veterans makes me aware that I have lobbed in at a moment when everything is ridiculously easy. Mine is a pret-a-porter template with only a few minor hacks (courtesy of Hackosphere). Apart from admiring the pioneers, I have been aware that my current layout actually mitigates against the complex thought. A bit like those of us that still find long-hand writing a better way of thinking, this template discourages the essay.

That leads to the fact that this blog is by nature aimless. It was started as a reaction (loss, dislocation, home) not an action. The "why I am doing this" begs to be answered. The beginning of an answer is that the format has imposed it's own requirements. In a strategy that I often use on stage, I have recently decided to react to the limitations of the template, not by reformatting, but by accepting them as an interesting stretch:

This template is suitable for pictures and short texts. Because I have a little experience either with photographs or with brevity, that is exactly what I am going to stick with! For the moment, at least. Hope it's worth a visit now and then.

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Melbourne Street Art 3

Johnston Street, Fitzroy
(referring to the state of the office behind, rather than the window)
Third in a series of documentations of deliberate and accidental street art.

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Rilke Poem

I hurt so bad. I saw you pale and scared.
This was in my dream. And your soul pealed.

Very softly, my soul resonated with yours
and both souls sang each other. I suffered.

Then, joy, deep inside me. I lay
in that silver heaven between dream and day.

my loose translation of:

Mir war so weh. Ich sah dich blass und bang.
Das war im Traum. Und deine Seele klang.

Ganz leise tönte meine Seele mit,
und beide Seele sangen sich. Ich litt.

Da wurde Friede tief in mir. Ich lag
im Silberhimmel zwischen Traum und Tag.

Rainer Maria Rilke, from Advent (1898)

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Smells like...

It has often been remarked that I possess a preternatural sense of smell.

Now, my life's potential has finally been fulfilled...and to think, Jean-Baptiste Grenouille thought he had his work cut out for him bottling the scent of a virgin.

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Body Melt

Two nights ago, I watched and AWESOME Australian film on DVD.

How often do you get to say that?

I had no intention of blogging about it, until this morning's paper carried an article about the unfortunate effects of a particular sleeping tablet.

Interestingly the details differ between the online version and the print version, with the print version being a superior read.

"Abandoning it's usually dry language" reports Julie Robotham, "the Adverse Drug Reactions Advisory Committee's bulletin, published yesterday, referred to "bizarre sleep-related effects", of the drug."

Different examples are given in each version but they share the important detail: "104 reports of hallucinations and 62 of amnesia since the drug...was released in 2000."

I recommend you check out the references to "inappropriate or strange automatic behaviour while asleep."

Now, go slowly with me here, the film I saw...(drumroll)... has the tag: "The first phase is hallucinogenic...the second phase is glandular...And the third is...(have you got it yet?)...BODY MELT.

Oh alright, I sort of gave it away in the post heading.

The article could be a bit of serendipity but really is just a handy provocation for me to rave about this movie, which has, as it's far-out premise, the idea that an evil corporation is marketing a very unsafe vitamin supplement to unsuspecting Melbournians.

Body Melt was made in 1993 and re-released, in a speccy DVD version last year by a mob called Umbrella. I'm very late to the party, please forgive my enthusiasm.

I've watched a lot of horror/slasher/splatter flicks over the last 18 months or so - in preparation for the (eventual) staging of "Zombie State", a play by Ben Ellis.

These films have such clear genre specifications that even the worst really hone your sense of who has command of the narrative tropes and, importantly, who has something to say, or not. Actually, this last thought is more interesting; there is equal delight in the high art/low-art/no art gemischte of the genre in general.

Body Melt stands up. On all those fronts.

The film is brilliantly crafted and has an aesthetic that, I would wager, makes it better with time (in stark contrast with most Aussie movies actually of that era, which date appallingly). Sound design, from such a prestigious sound designer/director is obviously fantastic, particularly fun is had with the cheery, counter-intuitive jingles that kick in, almost subliminally, when things get really ugly. The pacing of the whole is spot on and the movement of the camera is classy. Brophy has a kind of Kubrickian-thing (I'm thinking of The Shining) going on, with the camera inexorably thrusting into dark spaces, altering our sense of scale and generally probing in a way that YOU REALLY WISH IT WOULDN'T.

Add to this unnerving element a fine integration of dodgy computer graphics, great design all round (there is a tie that Andrew Daddo wears, at a specific climax that should have won its very own AFI) a number of nicely understated lead performances, an elegant coat-hanger plot, and you have a ripper film.

What makes it great, tho', are the so-bad-they're-brilliant elements: the two totally OT "Wogboys", a dag-version of the Chainsaw Massacre family and some truly awful dialogue (Ramsay Street drivel colliding with feeble buddy-movie one-liners). Gratuitous porn and bodybuilders almost complete the picture but I would be forgetting a feast of scenes. I won't spoil them all but can't help recording my pleasure at the delightfully "Monstrous Feminine" plot-tangent that sees William McInnes having his (presumably spare) rib ripped out by Suzi Dougherty. And then there's what they do to Lisa McCune... but now we are back into plain "good-film-making" territory. It is this game between the low and the high that make it such terrific stuff.

All in all, Brophy has every reason to write
this article which I also highly recommend for a chuckle and a weep.

and now, if you'll excuse me I'm off to make a movie of my own. I was going to head up to the Top End and bait a psycho-killer croc with, maybe, Rhada Mitchell, but I'm not sure anyone will buy that...

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Melbourne Street Art 2

Mary Street, North Carlton
Second in a series of documentations of deliberate and accidental street art.

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Australia Day

Poor Fellow, My Country

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The Golem of Rucker's Hill

reviews here and here


Curses, evil spells, magical weapons...
Something sinister is coming after the families of Northcote!
What can protect us?
And what is the cost?

Platform Youth Theatre presents an incredible fantasy set on the streets of Northcote.
Action-packed with live music, circus, fire, puppets, comedy and, well, action …

Performed by the members of Platform Youth Theatre, and a bevy of singers and puppeteers


Directed by Michael Camilleri

Written by Michael Camilleri with Bernard Caleo & Daniel Schlusser
Musical Director - Karen Berger
Head Puppetmaker - Emma Pryse
Fight Choreographer - Felicity Steel
Fire Choreographer - Margie Mackay (pictured with Golem legs)

Tickets ONLY $10

Bookings – Phone: 9482 9278 or Email: bookings@pyt.org.au

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be noice

Both Theatrenotes and Supernaut have picked up on John McCallum's blazingly good essay. I only wish that all those colossal wastes of tax-payer's money from Nugent on, had concluded the same.

Apparently, this is to be the first in a series of essays in The Australian. Can't wait. Meanwhile in The Age, resident Grand Poo-Bah of Everything Michael Shmith has strayed from his usual arts beat into political territory...now, I've made a few New Year's Resolutions one of which I can't bear to break so early in the year, so I will not comment, but read it for yourself.

And a little congratulation to acting graduate Beth Cleary who was a deserving recipient of the women@minterellison Rising Star Award. Her body of work in 2006 included my gore-fest, Touch Me, I'm Sick. Pictured above is a (live-videofeed) photo of Beth singing a rousing version of "Johnny Appleseed" to a soon-to-be-mutilated Japanese exchange student.

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Happy New Happy Old

tis the season for season wraps. Mine is very selective. Lot's of travelling and surprisingly little theatre-going. For Melbourne, my picks can be expressed by a "Fantasy Theatre" wish: to see Anita Hegh (The Yellow Wallpaper) playing Lady Macbeth opposite Peter Houghton (For Samuel Beckett) as Macbeth. That idea is now public property, somebody grab it! My other Oz highlight was Minmi and Me, a work for children at the Melbourne Museum:

This show really got me thinking about good theatre and the relationship between good theatre and working for children: the way that an audience of 10 year olds really clarifies some of the basics. Minmi and Me packed in the sophistication of some beautiful shadow theatre and puppeteering, with equally stunning low-tech effects thanks to Michael Camilleri's "live-drawing". Bernard Caleo, who is known around town for his raconteuring gifts, pared back some of his florid excesses and kept his audience (young and old) educated, amused and on tenterhooks (while operating his own sound) for the whole show. Simply brilliant.

My "Blimey he's good" award would go to Brett Adam for his exquisite handling of Ross Mueller's Construction of the Human Heart and my "who the **** is that?" discovery award goes to Tom Wright for his hypnotic performance in Osama The Hero at The Old Fitz.

My London highlight was a production of Joyce's Exiles directed by James Macdonald at The National. For only the second time in my life, I was enraptured by Naturalism (the first was Zadek's Cherry Orchard in '96) When executed with care, it really is a magical form.

Finish Tango by Nina Wehnert and Eva Burghardt (pictured top), was an exceptional dance-theatre piece that premiered in Berlin and will be seen often this year.

Other features of 2006:

favourite inter-cultural moment: being screamed at by a triumphant Italian, after I had barracked for the French in the World Cup final, in a pub in Bermondsey.

favourite musical discovery: Sleepy Time Gorilla Museum

favourite "books never prepared me for the heart-stopping grandeur of it all" moment: Gaudi's Sagrada Familia, Barcelona

favourite 2nd-hand bookshop find: 1st Edition copy of The Root Letters.

favourite gift received: Arrested Development, Season 1

favourite footy-speak: "...there's no doubt that I'll be trying to exit him out rather than exit him in". (G. Thomas, about R. Harvey)

and to end, my favourite lyric of 2006:

what do you do with the pieces of a broken heart?
and how does a man like me remain in the light?
and if life is really as short as they say, why are the nights so long?

(thanks M.Ward) and Merry New year to you all.

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Don't Make Me Angry

Alison is angry. But not angry enough for The Age to bite back. Her closing statement, "I've been watching the most interesting things in Melbourne get squashed flat...and, my dears, I'm sick of it." reminds me of, hey what do you know? Me! A pansy-assed North Carlton boy if ever there was one. The last time I tried to involve The Age in a stoush it ended up here, in the letters section of RealTime. I mean, really. I don't have the journalistic clout that Alison does but I was similarly yearning for a dialogue, or a fight, even. Looking at the letter with a bit of distance, it was a tad personal, but I only regret that as far as it might have contributed to a response not being forthcoming. Not only did The Age ignore it (including a conveniently shortened version that i politely provided), not only did Helen Thomson completely ignore it but-once published- so too did the community. I would have thought that a company like Red Stitch, whose very survival seemed, at the time, to be thanks to this one reviewer, would come out in defense of her aesthetic platform.

Obviously I'm having trouble letting go! And you would be forgiven for thinking that I have some sort of Socratic yearnings. Perhaps my middle-class soft-centre self had such yearnings then, but this is now. Now, I am simply ruing a lost opportunity for all involved to sell more of whatever it was we were selling at the time.

To continue, or return rather, the thing that so saddened me about the minkshoe comment-fiasco was that the first section of the argument was brilliant (as Ben Ellis pointed out). Chris Boyd and Adam Cass were like a two insulting, attack-minded middleweights. Great combinations, the odd rabbit-punch...offense could have been taken but that would be like "The Man" Mundine complaining about Kessler's handy sharp left; a damp squib, a less-entertaining, or enlightening option for the punters.

So I suppose I am actually taking a different tack from the "why can't we have more sophisticated arts criticism" and going for the much more Australian excitement of, say, a kick in the head, or roo-boxing, or a game against Port Adelaide. "If you can't win the game win the fight," should be heard from the stands. Think of it as a kind of anti-nuance crusade.

I quite like Robin Usher, but before you lynch me, let me tell you why: he is an old-fashioned journo, a shit-stirrer, he uses all the tricks of the trade to generate some heat and is probably the only interviewer that I approach with my own dictaphone, in case he misquotes for his own theatrical uses. I am not being sarcastic. It's a relief to talk to a journo these days who doesn't insist on you naming your favourite bar and the cool cocktail you discovered therein. Much more interesting to be unwittingly involved in some random institutional arson. What confuses me, is why The Age is not interested in availing itself of the nearest can of lead-free. It is certainly antithetical to Usher's poke-the-snake-with-a-stick-even-of-your-are-wearing-a-sock-on-your-hand -and-pretending-it's-a-snake old-skool-style (sorry to mix the metaphors but my German readers are complaining that bush-fires and/or deadly indigenous animals aren't getting enough of a go here.)

Now, as Alison says, the problem is that for many, The Age is the first and last word. A few "insiders" like herself are furiously trying to reason with the monkey, but what has started as a completely onanistic beat-up can only be furthered by shirtfronting the organ-grinder: PLAY THE MAN NOT THE BALL. And I am being lovely and inclusive and egalitarian with this proscription, all of us kids can have a turn, from Arts Editors to Bloggers, from "disgusting from Hawthorn" to Chris Bendall, from Andrew Bolt to, well, let's not get carried away, he's got the edge of practice already...we all get to whack each other (and the less dicriminantly, the better) WE ALL GET TO HAVE A GO. Follow me, through that last un-Australian thought to a world where we meet in the pub afterwards to compare the size of our stats.

Imagine, for starters, two full length opinion pieces, published in The Age side-by-side (yes, this plan involves acquiescence from "The Big Paper"). Imagine Theatrenotes Vs. Supernaut (pick your own supercharged combo) on why the festival fell or soared. Sophisticated analysis permitted, if you must, but sub-editing done according to a napalm-wit-and-savage-put-down-meter, y'know, dredged for the best vitriolic highlights, with staff comments to follow and fuel the flames.

Where's the old Harry M. Miller/J. Jonah Jameson instincts? More debate = more passion = more excitement = a more involved public = newspaper AND ticket sales! It's a no-brainer and surely no amount of looking after your advertisers and/or fellow B-Boomers can alter that fact. Get it together people!

PS: Not much of a leap then to Theatre Criticism as a contact sport, based on Pay TV-friendly formats like Salad Wrestling. I smell funding possibilities from the AIS and a bag of sponsorship opps. Somebody stop me before this descends into Ray Gill-patented self-loathing satire, otherwise known as...Next week: Artistic Directors appointed on the results of bare-knuckle fighting and two-up.

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Melbourne Street Art

"North Melbourne is the land of lost men"

First in a series of documentations of deliberate and accidental street art.

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Melbourne's Finest #2

Overdue thankyous, to Jodi, Alison and TQ for shared outrage and lovely buck-up-little-camper notes. It turned out to be nothing that a half-a-dozen mojhitos and some rock'n good friends couldn't fix (well, that's the short version anyway.) And a long overdue thanks to all who welcomed me to this world, particularly fond of George Hunka's description of minkshoe and myself as "contrarians". Speaking of friends, one of my favourite co-conspirators, Mila Faranov, exhibited as part of a VCA graduate exhibition recently, to left you can see a detail from "It isn't easy being me - pair of babies". Mila can be quite outrageous, deviant and caustic but her work here was playful, funny and sad.
Another piece that got me was a computer-generated animation loop from Hao Guo and James (hmmm, credits in my program look incomplete) "kick" & "snow fight with no dick" were downright disturbing, followed by "erection" a man with a lap-top on his, erm, lap...further description probably not neccesary...let's just say that I responded as someone whose relationship with his new powerbook was, at least temporarily, challenging to my significant organic relationship.

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Melbourne's Finest

The black dog has nipped me, I'm afraid. Personal and temporary reasons bear the main blame, but a big reason is both public and ongoing. George Hunka has done a good job of negotiating the ethics of the situation from a distance. Alison Croggon has navigated the whole affair here, and is moderating a good discussion. I am speechless. Gutted. Gobsmacked. Ashamed.

A person without any power has spoken out about a perceived structural illness and she has been lynch-mobbed. There is no other word for it. Alison points out that this is another chapter in Melbourne's history of small-mindedness (and believe me, I know of theatre-workers who have been "punished" for "not playing nice") but this is a new low.

I don't blame Minkshoe for folding, for self-censoring. She started her blog with a very clear statement of vulnerability. As an actor, she had nothing to gain and something to lose. Her aggressors have borne out her fears. I'm grateful that while I am speechless there are more match-fit bloggers who are saying what needs to be said. I'll pull myself together soon.

Elias Canetti's Crowds and Power surely has an apposite quote about the mob (damn that library in a box!). All I can bring to mind is another of his aphorisms, "There are enmities that must be met. Silence is rot."

I only post this if others are using it as a portal. Check it out, follow it up and consider this a very temporary silence on my behalf. 'Til then, I'm going to go and cheer myself up by listening to some Howard Barker.

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Come in, the water's warm

The previous post hoped that the debate around the latest TheatreatRisk show Requiem for the 20th Century: volume 1 might extend. It has and has. I thought I’d see what I can do from this corner. The first point is somewhat extreme, so I very much hope people don’t get stuck on it and miss the second point, which is the one that might contribute to the longevity of the conversation.

I’m just going to start with the issue of leaving shows early. Any theatre piece has an integrity that makes such a thing possible. Coming from Berlin, where early-exiting, often loudly, is not just acceptable behaviour but also the terrific corollary of an engaged audience who have a sense of ownership of the work, I relish these moments. It is also common sense. If someone tells you your sister is a hairy donkey, you might hang around for a moment to see if they are joking (assuming you disagree), but staying to see whether they transform into a nice person, if you just gave them half an hour or so, would be silly. Just as you don’t expect a personality to suddenly transform, neither do you expect a work of art to betray it’s own nature mid-stream. A theatre-maker brings a sensibility to the whole experience, as any artist does, and has to be credited with control. That is, you have to assume that the artist is guiding you deliberately. The hairy donkey analogy might be flippant but who expects a technically shaky violinist to suddenly improve for the last movement? Or a novelist to stop being turgid after you have waded through the first 100 pages? The few people I know that are genuinely adventurous in their DVD watching, are so with one hand poised over the eject button. There is “healthy curiosity,” and there is “wasting large slabs of your life”.

A thoughtful viewer can judge a production by the first half, or even the first ten minutes (aside: or sometimes even the poster, but that should probably wait.) OK, so the debate is really about whether or not a critic, rather than the generic “viewer”, has a responsibility to hang around. I would argue that different rules for critics and audience members belittles the audience member and casts the critic as having parental responsibilities to both audience and artist in a particularly infantile theatrical cul-de-sac. (And don’t get me started on the misapprehension that a reviewer “owes it” to a company to stay because of the free ticket, that is an ethical no-brainer.) Now, I don’t expect to convince even a small minority to share my views on this. I am merely explaining why I feel that a critic has an intellectual and ethical justification for leaving and further, why I respect and even enjoy the reviewer who has such a confidence in their own agenda. Perhaps I also get the feeling that they are big enough to know that all they would be doing by staying to the bitter end would be clocking up point-scoring opportunities.

So, why is this legitimately upsetting to Melbournians? Territorial Pissing, to agree with Ben Ellis, is absolutely key. The weird contortions that happen when money, audiences and career-possibilities are at such an all-time low that everyone gets horribly defensive and things that a healthier system could absorb, become life-threatening.

How much better off would Melbourne be, if the net effect of the three great “I left” moments of recent theatre history (Croggon, Boyd, Rundle) were ripples in a much bigger pond, that is, having less brutal impact but broader radius. These guys are lambs, it will be a sign of great things when Melbourne can support a genuinely vicious reviewer, a Ken Tynan or a Frank Rich (does anyone else remember the short-lived MacSween Bolton?) But that is absolutely not possible while Melbourne has one and a half daily papers that sporadically review. Publishing reviews the day after opening must be a given. Reviewers of different tastes reviewing the same show in the same paper is also necessary… you know, normal stuff, arts reporting as journalism not as lifestyle recommendations.

But the “mass” argument is a digression (and blogging may make the whole newspaper-whinge redundant soon enough). Reviewers have a duty to be consistent and that is all. My understanding of the ‘Faithful Witness,’ is that fidelity improves the clearer the witness can explain their perspective. I am not rude to my friends if I don’t like their show simply because I lack social graces, I want to be believed and understood the next time I have a positive opinion. Reading Alison Croggon is a pleasure because her agenda is writ large. The next time she leaves at interval, everyone will be that bit clearer about where she is coming from (or going to?). To get personal, Jonathon Marshall is another reviewer who has a perspective and clearly articulated opinion that makes it possible for me to enjoy his reviews, even when, as is often the case, he is caning my art. To refer again to the Grand-daddy of the vicious review, Ken Tynan, the man could be a beast but he was always witty, and most importantly, he was pushing a vivid and visionary agenda, one he believed in so vigorously that he ended up co-founding (with Larry Olivier) the National Theatre in London. An argument if ever there was one, for the power of “negative” criticism.

But here is the rub: Croggon is, in her own words, a blogger not a journalist. She is not being paid, has genuine freedom and relishes the deeper intellectual inquiry that is possible as a result. Chris Bendall cares very deeply, because his meagre livelihood depends on it (in Melbourne, a good review won’t make people come but a bad review will put them off, as I know from experience, and, longer-term, what else are you going to show the funding bodies but reviews?) Bendall and Croggon interact. Excellent so far. If there is a systemic problem, they are both working to fix it, politely or not. The genuinely powerful presence in the equation, that is, the one making money out of the whole enterprise is The Age. What disappoints me is that Cameron Woodhead has not engaged in the debate himself. He must be itching to, surely? Without his input, everything is chugging along nicely but although here I am addressing the whole “should a critic leave” thing, and elsewhere there is much interesting stuff, my understanding of Croggon’s original post was that it had the potential to set up a much more interesting dialectic about assumed critical values (“…there are extremes that ought to be noted.”). Clearly Croggon is up for anybody who has the nettle to take her on and, surrounded by such diverse and articulate blogging minds scoring it as they see it, why not engage?

Cameron, do us all a favour and consider that a call out! Use the word-limitless-luxury of blogspace to mount an argument supporting your appreciation of Requiem… (or at least the first half!) That would send what is already an interesting debate into a kind of discursive nirvana. Here in virtual Berlin, you can consider the Lapsang Souchong on the brew and the door open. Email me, I’ll post it.

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I am not a theatre reviewer

that is why Alison Croggon's Theatrenotes link is to the right. She also claims not to be a reviewer (later note: see comments for correction of that fact) but is the best one Melbourne has. Which is all by way of drawing your attention to the fact that she has started something really important, to which Ben Ellis has also added some typically thoughtful comments.If it can go a few more rounds (very un-Australian if it did), it could get even more interesting. In the meantime, Mr. Woodhead and Ms Croggon are united in their appreciation of 11th Hour's For Samuel Beckett. This is my first Melbourne must-see for the last two years (OK, I've been away for most of those!) read Alison again here, see it, and then start suggesting loudly and publicly that Peter Houghton should be knighted for his performance as Hamm (and if there is some technical hitch with that formality, somebody give him a Green Room Award)

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"Melody. Noise. Humour. Love."

I like these four words. In this sequence. I was driving over the West Gate Bridge with Simon King, it was his answer to my question, "what is it about Yo La Tengo that makes them your favourite band?"

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testing testing

I went back to Adelaide a few weeks ago to catch up with the group of graduating actors that created "Touch Me, I'm Sick". They were trying to convince me to mentor them next year. I don't know whether it was the proposed working title ("A Six Hour Show About Typewriters") or the proximity of that evil looking thumb to my nostril cavity, but I said yes.

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