Découpages d’hommes
Selected from images taken in Europe and Australia, Melbourne-based queer artist Eureka (Michael James O’Hanlon) juxtaposes the male figure on found architectural backgrounds.
Theatre Notes review: Whiteley's Incredible Blue
Review by Alison Croggon for Theatre Notes on 14 October. See here in it’s full context.
La beauté, “Beauty is difficult, Yeats” said Aubrey Beardsley
when Yeats asked why he drew horrors
or at least not Burne-Jones
and Beardsley knew he was dying and had to
make his hit quickly
Hence no more B-J in his product.
So very difficult, Yeats, beauty so difficult.
– Ezra Pound, Cantos
I left Whiteley’s Incredible Blue last night with Pound’s verse circling around my head. Barry Dickins’s new play, subtitled “an hallucination”, is almost an essay on the proposition of the difficulty and necessity of beauty, through the medium of the enfant terrible of Australian art, Brett Whiteley.
Interview: Julian Meyrick on Curtain Call
An interview with Do not go gentle… director Julian Meyrick from Crikey’s Blog Curtain Call. See the interview in its original context here.
Next week, Melbourne’s fortyfivedownstairs will present the world premier of Do not go gentle… , written by Patricia Cornelius and directed by Julian Meyrick. It’s an award-winning script using Robert Falcon Scott’s final — and fatal — Antarctic expedition of 1910-13 as an allegory for life in an aged care facility and the final journey that five of its residents take through dotage into death.
Cornelius employs Scott’s tragic end to amplify the struggle of her five geranauts against the dying of the light. In Antarctica, twilight lasts for weeks, the colours are spectacular and the views infinite: the terrible sublime of an endless sunset. On reaching the pole, Scott wrote in his diary: “Great God! This is an awful place.”
The script won the 2006 Patrick White Award and was also short listed for the Griffin Award. Despite critical acclaim, it has waited four years for its first production.
Dr Julian Meyrick is and has been a passionate contributor to Australian theatre for more than 20 years, as a practitioner, historian and theorist, critic, administrator and occasional polemicist-cum-pamphleteer. He is currently a Research Fellow at La Trobe University and has previously been Associate Director and Literary Advisor at the MTC, directing many productions in Melbourne and around Australia. As an historian, he has written histories of Nimrod Theatre and the MTC, as well as Trapped by the Past: Why Our Theatre Is Facing Paralysis, a bracing 2005 Platform Paper written as part of Currency Press’s quarterly essays on the performing arts.
We interview’d the engaged and engaging Meyrick during rehearsals for Do Not Go Gentle.
Review of Manbeth on Captain's Blog
This review of Manbeth is from White Whale Theatre’s Captain’s Blog. See it in it’s original context here.
I was, I have to admit, a little worried as I made my way down the familiar set of stairs at 45 Flinders Lane last night.
The idea of an all-male Macbeth, set in a jail, has some cheesy potential. In theory, it could have been cheesier than a deep fried wheel of King Island Blue Brie. But a number of my most trusted carrier pigeons had informed me that this was not the case. And, I’m happy to say, they were right.
Patricia Cornelius in 'On the Spot'
Patricia Cornelius in 'On the Spot', The Age, A2, July 24, 2010: Read more about Patricia's play Do not go gentle... here.
Patricia Cornelius on Australian Stage Online
An article about Patricia Cornelius and her upcoming play Do not go gentle... from Australian Stage Online, written by Trevar Alan Chilver. See it in it's original context here. Dreams, Visions and Constipated Old Farts Images of an ageing Ghandi…
Openings: Judy Holding
Opening of The Unshaped World II by Judy Holding. Tuesday 20 July 2010
Opening: Tamirat Gebremariam
Opening of Crossing Between Cultures by Tamirat Gebremariam. 20 July 2010 Exhibition being opened by Professor Su Baker, Head of School of Art, VCAM.
Review: Manbeth
The review of Manbeth below is written by Joanna Bowen for Australian Stage Online. See the original review here. Manbeth is a riot of masculinity; within minutes, you can smell the testosterone. This retelling of Macbeth is set in a…