Art Smitten

Ken Stone and Irene Silber’s Hard to Believe is a tight 56-minute exposé of an issue that few people like to think about: forced organ harvesting in China. It isn’t exactly a secret that the Chinese government performs surgery on its political prisoners without their consent, but in recent years the media has largely neglected this still very present atrocity. This documentary, which mostly looks at the communist party’s persecution of Falun Gong spiritual practitioners, is Stone and Silber’s great effort to bring this issue back into the spotlight, to push past the compassion fatigue that most Western citizens in particular seem to be feeling. Most of the interviews here have been conducted with American Human Rights Defenders Torsten Trey and Ethan Gutmann, who urge people to realise that these horrific violations will never be stopped if everyone just keeps waiting for someone else to fight the fight. It seems to Trey and Gutmann that if this was happening anywhere other than in China, one of the most powerful global economic players, then the international outrage and protest would be much louder and stronger. They also suggest that the problem feels too large and abstract for most outsiders to really comprehend. The human impact of these practices can easily to get lost in the sea of statistics, or indeed in the literal sea that divides China from most other countries in the world.

While the short running time does make the film easier to digest, and could well encourage some of the more apathetic people to actually see sit through it, it doesn’t really allow Stone and Silber enough time to explore the issue in quite enough detail. On top of that, far too much of this time is spent listening to these two white social commentators, while any interviews with the victims of this abhorrent system of exploitation are something of a rarity. In fact, out of the interviewees who are actually Chinese, the one who is given the most screen time is a perpetrator, not a victim. We hear a great deal about how prison doctors are being coerced into stealing the organs of their patients while they are still alive and fully awake. We also hear some of the telephone calls made by people wanting to purchase these rare healthy “criminal” organs. There’s no denying that these are both crucial things to cover, but this should not be at the expense of the voices that have already been horrifically suppressed. If anyone is going to be made the face of forced organ harvesting, it should unquestionably be one of the victims. While Gutmann doesn’t believe it’s fair to expect these people to advocate for themselves, since most of them don’t have the legal or political expertise, the idea that none of them have the skills or the capability to fight for their own rights is something I actually do find Hard to Believe. Political campaigning might work very differently in the West compared to China, but that does not in any way mean that the Chinese people can’t speak for themselves in the international media, or that they need a white saviour to fly in and rescue them.

In some ways the most, and in other ways the least controversial approach this film adopts is to compare the organ harvesting in the Chinese medical system to the Holocaust. Even though they are both large scale atrocities that were at least initially met with global denial and apathy, we are now unfortunately at a point where this is a very commonly invoked comparison that people have become almost desensitised to. I’m not sure what it would take to shake the rest of the world out of their inaction, but an acceptance of the Chinese people as the leaders of this cause and as the voices of their own national problem would certainly be a start.

Written by Christian Tsoutsouvas

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Roger Ross Williams' latest feature documentary is about a 23-year-old autistic man who's obsessed with Disney movies - basically, me, if you just wind his age back two years, move him from America to Australia and rotate his sexuality 180 degrees. In light of that, you'll have to forgive me since I can't exactly distance myself from what is pretty much my own biography. Mostly, I was just overjoyed to see a real person that I can relate to standing on the screen in front of me. I feel like I've earned that given how much of my life I've been looking at that screen. Not only is he obsessed with something that is neither maths or IT, he is also not a little kid: he is a self-aware adult, and fortunately Williams knows how to treat him as such. Unlike the subjects of most other autism documentaries, he is old enough to reflect on his own past and current experiences of friendship, love, and coming of age, and he is actually given the space here to share his reflections.

Owen Suskind, the man in question, has watched every single animated film that Disney has ever made, and memorised every single line of dialogue. Most of these stories and characters have been a part of his life for as long as he can remember. They have a place in his heart and mind that goes far beyond their nostalgic value.

Why does he love Disney so much? This is probably the only question he never answers for us. Not that I blame him, I wouldn’t really know where to start with that one. It’s just such an integral part of my psyche, of my personality and identity that it really would require me to step outside of myself to explain where that obsession came from and why it has endured. Owen’s parents talk about the comforting predictability in watching these same movies over and over, not only in that individually they never change but also that there are certain things you can always expect from a Disney animation, such as a happy ending. They also think it might be that the softness of the animation gels well with his sensory hypersensitivities, or the fact that the characters are, ironically, both very colourful and very black and white in their design. It’s a pretty clinical and simplistic explanation, but it’s not a bad start.

What the film itself suggests, even if no one explicitly says it, is that these movies are a thrilling escape into a very different universe, a “whole new world” if you like, filled with endless possibility. The life of an autistic kid in a non-autistic world can be painfully lonely. Of course, Owen himself describes better than anyone else just how crushingly isolating it is. You want to make friends as much as anyone else does, but everyone you meet just dismisses you as the “weird” kid. By the end of primary school, the word “weird” can start to feel like a hateful slur. Everything about you that is unique, everything you love, everything you do, your entire identity is pushed aside and pigeon-holed into this single, meaningless category that no child wants to be a part of.

Both Owen and I eventually gave up trying to play with other children and would play with the Disney characters instead. You still have fun that way and enjoy being a child. They can actually feel like good substitutes for friends. Up to a certain point, they fill that gaping hole. Even when you leave the house, you can spend ages revisiting them in your mind. Owen still likes to recite some of their best lines to himself when he’s out and about, in the way that most other people might sing to themselves.

It’s also satisfying to make your up your own stories about them in your head. It’s the closest you can get to actually bringing them to life, and, until you finally learn to accept yourself and start to be accepted by others, this is the closest you can come to being a hero.

At about the age of ten, Owen had written and illustrated a hundred-page story about all of the wise and quirky Disney sidekick characters, naming himself the “protector of the sidekicks” who kept them safe from the monster terrorising the forest that was their home. It’s easy to see why Owen identifies so strongly with these funny or sage-like side characters. As someone with unusual mannerisms and very specific interests, if this was any other movie he would most likely be a side character. He would be cast as the helping hand to the ‘relatable’ hero, put there to provide laughter when things got tense, wise words when things got rocky, and hi-fives when things turned out well for them, but his own aspirations, fears, goals and longings for companionship would never be considered. You can tell a lot about a person by the characters they identify with the most, especially when they’re not the ones you’re supposed to feel represented by.

In this production, Owen’s story of the sidekick is brought to life in some dazzling animation sequences by the team of Matthieu Betard, Olivier Lescot and Philippe Sonrier. I can easily imagine just how excited Owen must have been to get that rare opportunity of seeing his childhood fantasies on screen. Equally, the scenes showing the Disney club he started with his fellow Neurodivergent friends are some of the most moving and satisfying moments in the film.

I am happy to say that Owen has definitely not been made the sidekick in his own story. One of the many benefits of choosing an adult subject for an autism documentary is that you can show them taking their life into their own hands and making it better. Owen turns what used to be his sorry substitute for friends into a way to meet and connect with like-minded people, real people who will always be there for him. It also turns out to be a way for him to meet Jonathan Freeman and Gilbert Godfried, who pay the group a surprise visit and do a live reading of Jafar and Iago, their respective parts in Aladdin.

Of course, the other important opportunity given by Williams’ choice of subject is that of exploring romantic relationships. Owen’s conversations with his girlfriend, Emily, who is also Neurodivergent, sound unhealthily strained. In many ways autistic people can be said to have their own language, and their own way of communicating. This is why an autistic person who is asked to communicate the way non-autistic people do will sound a bit like someone who is speaking in a language that is not their native tongue. It is quite strange that Owen and Emily would feel the need to speak in a neurotypical way when it is just the two of them, but there is obviously a force of habit at play.

It is interesting that Life, Animated focuses quite a lot on the movie Peter Pan, seeing as there is this tendency view autistic people as children who never grow up, just like the lost boys. Certainly, on the surface, people like Emily and Owen might sound and look like children, but it is hard to know whether that is just the way they naturally carry themselves, or whether it is because they are usually spoken to as if they were children, which leads them to think that that is how other people like to be spoken to. In this manner, a lot of the medical and clinical studies of autism are very chicken and egg.

The only trap of infantilisation that this film really falls into is its suggestion that Owen basically doesn'tknow what sex is. Sex is another thing that can be especially complicated for autistic people, but, unlike friendships at school, it is surprisingly easy, at least to a certain point, to convince yourself that it doesn't exist (after all, non-autistic people pretend that's true all the time when they talk to each other). His older brother and close mentor thinks that Owen actually doesn't understand it at all, mostly because he could never have learned it from watching Disney and because Owen's been very unresponsive any time he's brought it up. However, just because he doesn't like to talk it about with his brother, or on camera (which is far enough) doesn't mean he knows nothing about it.

Nevertheless, Williams does give Owen ample opportunity to speak for himself on camera, and also to express himself through his impressive illustrations, as well as, of course, his favourite Disney scenes. He rounds off the film with some footage of Owen opening an international autism conference: a powerful reflection of the social progress of the past several decades. I can certainly understand how strange it must have felt, to be a 23-year-old who has fast-tracked their way to the big time thanks to their exotic brain. Unsurprisingly, Owen finds it hard to pen down everything he has to share into just one little speech, and asks his father, Ron, what he should say. Ron tells him that it is all up to him, that it's his story to tell, which is ironic, considering this film is technically based on the book that he wrote about his son's life with autism. Even so, by the time he is able to stand up there and present himself as a proudly autistic adult, his family has finally realised that he is not a lost boy, he is a man who has found himself.

Written by Christian Tsoutsouvas

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Beth and Rach are joined by Stephaie Lake, performer in The Dark Chorus, a production in the Melbourne Festival. 

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Alice Nash, Executive Produer of Lady Eats Apple, joins Beth and Rach in the studio to speak about the production in the Melbourne Festival. 

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There’s something incredibly uncomfortable about seeing a show about poor people by non-poor people, essential for rich people in one of Melbourne’s most highly regarded theatre venues.

Blessed explores the lives of Maggie and Grey, two poor people who fell in love as teenagers and had heaps of fun, then Grey disappeared for ages and Maggie found him in a disgusting apartment, they talk about their past and what they’ve been up to and then towards the end it turns out that Maggie is pregnant and is the mother of god. The play ends with a beautiful monologue by Maggie about how her son is going to be a kick-arse god.

Blessed has been described as an ‘insight into the lower class’ and as someone who grew up in a family with very little money, I honestly just find that offensive.

It was a grossly one dimensionally portrayal of people from low-socio economic background, it portrays us as drug addict, angry, hopeless people with weird accents, it portrays us as people with no agency and no control over our lives.

Of course that may be the case for some people with a poor background, but what good is it doing putting it on stage that the vast majority of the audience will be from a privileged background? The characterization of Maggie and Grey did no favors to the script, I felt completely unsympathetic towards either of them, in particular Grey, who was played as a ‘crazy’ angry verbally abusive man, an insight into the lower class?  Nope, you’re just further stigmatizing them.

I think Fleurs writing was really beautiful, but I cannot think what the director was trying to do in his interpretation of Fleurs’ script. I think the script really could have worked with the right director. It was a funny play, I could see the humor trying to break though but the direction, set and sound design was forcing the audience to suppress that, it forced us to feel pain, from the scratchy, grim sound design to the aggressively invasive flickering lights during every single scene change. I found myself drifting off and disengaging at multiple points in the play, mainly because I felt like I was just being yelled at and I’m not really interested in being yelled at, but also because I found it so ridiculously unrealistic

We got to see flash back of when Maggie and Grey first met when they were 15, and I had a few problems with this – the same actors played their younger selves, which just seemed silly because they were taking it so seriously and forcing the audience to take it seriously, I wish they had have gotten actually younger actors to play these scenes, I think it would have been a lot more effective, or at least do something drastic to the lighting or costume during these scenes, it was so weird for it to be just in the same setting and lighting but the actors ‘acting 15’.  And on that note, I found the portrayals of 15 year olds really disingenuous, they seemed like they were playing 6 year olds to be honestly, if I was a 15 year old I would be offended.

Blessed is one of four shows part of Poppy Seed a theatre festival for independent theatre makers. Despite my negativity, Poppy Seed Theatre Festival is something everyone should support, and encourage. Check out their website to see what else they have on offer.

Blessed is showing at The Malthouse until the 20th of November.

Written by Ebony Beaton.

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This review contains mature content and language and pretty major spoilers about the show.

Straight up, Anti-Hamlet was one of the best productions I have seen this year. It was absolutely trilling, and so engaging it left me exhausted and unable to get up from my seat, which is always a very special experience that I’ve only felt twice before

I loved it so much that I was it two times in it’s opening weekend, but not only because I loved it, but because it was so complex and intelligent I think I had to see it twice to get a stronger grasp of what it all meant, the first time seeing it was like being a twig thrown into a whirl wind, and coming out the other side with flowers growing all over me, but not knowing how they got there. The second time I saw it, I was able to process the content of the work with a deeper sense of comprehension, which was very rewarding.

That being said, you don’t have to see Mark Wilson’s phenomenal work twice to fully appreciate it as a production. Nor do you have to have a deep understand of William Shakespeare Hamlet, I came to the show not knowing much about Hamlet. My friend I went with gave me a quick recap of story before we were ushered into the theatre. I think knowing Hamlet would be very helpful but not essential, I think having a small knowledge of it would be fine.

Mark and his perfectly picked collaborators took Hamlet, gave it a good shake, tipping out all the language, and political context of the late 1500s, and replaced it with a magnificently crafted contemporary script, filled with references to currently Australian and world politics.

They kept much of the structure of the original Hamlet, but set it in modern Australia, they still called the location they were in Denmark, like in the original Hamlet, but it was very clear that it was a substitute for Australia, I suppose to make it less on the nose.

In this plays reality, Denmark is a constitutional monarchy, a referendum is going to take place, and if passed make it a republic, making Claudius played by Marco Chaippi, the current Prime Minister, the President of Denmark. Claudius seemed to be an amalgamation of Liberal Party leaders. Gertrude was still the Queen and Hamlets mother, played very luxuriously by Natasha Herbert. Hamlet was still the prince, played by Mark Wilson, re-worked to be a Melbourne academic off-the-rails-student-prince, turned anarchist. Ophelia, played by Natascha Flowers was reworked to be a clear headed Rhodes Scholar graduate of Oxford, that works for Claudius in hope to insight social change around the treatment of Asylum Seekers. Horatio, Hamlets friend in the original play played by Marcus McKenzie was still used by name in the play, but he’s character is less of a friend to Hamlet and more of a re-occurring character that helps or interacts with Hamlet, such as a busker Hamlet gives a $5 note to, and a stage manager or Hamlets one man show, Marcus, also plays ‘The Anti-Hamlet”. Two more characters were worked into the show, who replaced characters of the original text. Polonius reworked as Sigmund Freud, played magnificently by Brain Lipson and Laertes reworked as Edward Bernays, played astoundingly by Charles Purcell. Sigmund Freud was played as himself, but as a psychoanalyst for the characters in the play. If I had to choose Edward Bernays was my favorite character, he was a manipulative, powerful 1950’s talkin’ American man who helps Claudius become the president of  Denmark. Like Freud, Bernays was a real historical figure, who basically invented propaganda, and is a very interesting man, look him up.

The ensemble of performers were shockingly good, and just perfectly cast. All the performers had crafted their characters in such an astonishing way, with real depth and meaning.

The set and costume design by Romanie Harper was elaborate, clean and beautiful, the stage was framed with scaffolding with a lusous red curtain around the perimeter. The costumes for each character matched very well, especially Gertrude, who I think, had a different luxurious gown on in every scene.

Amelia Lever Davidsons lighting design beautifully complimented the set, costumes and performances. She created electric atmosphere with her wonderful design.

The sound design by Tom Backhaus was crafted nicely to fit into the show. It worked to the advantage of the dialogue heavy script, and intense aesthetic of the production.  

The story Mark created in his new adaption Anti-Hamlet was so complex and intellectual; I really don’t think I could do justice recounting it. It was beautifully nuanced and at times meta. It had a perfect balance of comedy and seriousness.

Something I really admired about this production was how far the cast and creative team pushed the boundaries. One of the stand out moments in this production was the final scene of the first act, where after being told by Freud that all of Hamlets troubles would be solved if Hamlet had sex with her, Gertrude takes Hamlet into her ‘closet’ and invites him to fuck her. Hamlet succumbs and tries to but can’t get an erection, he tries to masturbate, but can’t. At this point we hear Freud behind the curtain masturbating, Hamlet is filled with rage and naked, runs to Freud, pushes him behind the couch and kills him, covered in blood he screams “I have killed Sigmund Freud!” while holding up his decapitated head wrapped in an Australian flag and then the curtain closes in front of them, I was left dazed and unable to speak.

There is multiple other moment in the play that had this effect on me. The commitment and bravery shown in this play and in this scene in particular are what I love about seeing and making theatre, seeing artists be brave and uncensored in their words and actions is inspiring and beautiful.

Anti-Hamlet presented by Theatre Works and New Working Group is confronting, political, breath taking and thought provoking, New Working Group are shaping up to be one of my favorite theatre groups, the bravery and talent of these artists is incredible and extremely inspiring, particularly for a young theatre maker like myself. Do your self a favor and go see this show, and it runs about 2 and a half hours with intermission, so make sure your well fed before hand. It is now showing at Theatre Works in St Kilda until November 13th

Written by Ebony Beaton.

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Derek Cianfrance's The Light Between Oceans is something of an epic, operating on quite a small scale but still putting its characters through some formidable challenges. It's based on TL Stedman's novel of the same name, one that suggests both intimacy and profundity. This story does eventually deliver on both, but in the film at least, the intimacy is there pretty much from the get-go. It sets itself up to be a charming love story about a mild-mannered lighthouse keeper (Michael Fassbender) and his lovely wife (Alicia Vikander) who live on the Island of January between two oceans. It is December, 1918. Tom Sherbourne was a lucky survivor of the Great War, though with no loving family to come home to and no reason to believe that he has any right to be alive after so many have died. As he is first getting to know the sweet young Isabel Haysmark, he tells her he has done some unspeakable things in the years he spent on the front, though he doesn’t go into any detail. For him, the noble occupation of a lighthouse keeper is a way to give something good to the world, to help others when they most need it, but to do so from afar, without having to look into their eyes and receive undeserved gratitude. He never envisioned sharing this new life with a wife and child, but almost immediately after she meets him, Isabel is determined to court him, marry him and give him a family. She manages the first two of those easily enough, but after two miscarriages that final dream of hers is looking unlikely to come true.

Cianfrance doesn't spend too long on their burgeoning romance. He mostly just shows them sharing their different experiences of the war. Isabel lost all three of her brothers, and is now an only child. She notices how, unlike a wife who might tragically become a widow after the war, there is no special name for what a parent becomes if they lose their children, or for what a sister becomes if she loses her brothers. To her, it is a connection that cannot be severed, the kind of love that never dies, even if the person it was for is now dead, or never even had a chance at life.

Conversations like this one are peppered throughout the film, particularly in the initial stages of the plot. This is one of the more well-written deep and meaningful dialogues to be seen here. Others are markedly more on-the-nose, such as Tom explaining all of the mythological symbolism of the island, or one that has a certain crucial supporting character reciting one of the morals of the story: “You only have to forgive once. To resent, you have to do it all day, every day.”

These are all very worthy, weighty sentiments, but some of them are gratingly overstated and seem to arrive just in time for some not-so-subtle foreshadowing.

Unsurprisingly, the film is at its most effective when it communicates its ideas through sounds and images - especially one striking shot that makes the ocean feel just like a desert - and when it simply trusts the strength of its story. After a generous amount of romantic and tragic setup, the real story is carried over the waves towards the little island with those two tiny graves. The couple spot a dinghy drifting near the shoreline, with a dead man and a crying baby girl lying inside it. Isabel is desperate to keep her. For all they know, she has no one. If Tom puts this in the log book, she'll probably be sent to an orphanage. Isabel convinces him to pretend that she's theirs, to Christen her Lucy Sherbourne and literally raise her as their own, an apparently victimless crime that might just rescue all three of them.

Years later, however, when Tom discovers there that there is indeed a victim still suffering from what they did to her, he fears that they have damned themselves to a lifetime of punishment. It turns out that the dead man in the boat, the girl’s biological father, was a German man named Frank Roennfeldt (Leon Ford), the one who later espouses the virtues of forgiveness in a romantic flashback. Unfortunately, his new overseas neighbours weren’t quite as willing to bury the hatchet so soon after the war. He got into that boat out of blind fear for his own life, and even more so the life of his tiny daughter, who he had named Grace. Meanwhile, his wife, Hannah (Rachel Weisz) was left behind to erect a tombstone for both of them on the mainland of Australia.

Strangely enough, that is where the film is set, even though its three main actors are Irish, English and Swedish and use more or less English accents. Cianfrance has tried to create a believable sense of place by shooting some of the scenes in Tasmania  and filling the supporting cast with well-known Australian actors like Jack Thompson and Bryan Brown, who all act in their native accents. It’s a pretty discordant mix, but it still amounts to some very evocative cinematography and many solid performances. Unsurprisingly, Fassbender imbues the world-weary war survivor with a genuine sense of humanity, Vikander brings an unexpected dark streak to the loving mother with no child to love, while Weisz is consistently engaging as the wounded wildcard who stirs things up to an exceptional level of moral complexity.

There are an awful lot of films that start with an excitingly unique premise that then just tapers off into cliché, but, interestingly, The Light Between Oceans begins in a fairly predictable way and becomes more interesting and sure-footed as it goes along.

Written by Christian Tsoutsouvas.

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Ben and Thierry are joined in the studio by Jonathan Holloway, the artistic director of the Melbourne Festival, recapping highlights and challenges of the 2016 season.

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Thierry and Ben are joined by Sean Patten, one of the performers and creators behind Gob Squad's production of War and Peace at the Malthouse Theatre.

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Christian and Adalya are joined in the studio with Linda Shevlin, curator of Radical Action exhibition, by artist Seamus Nolan. This year is the 100 year anniversary of the 1916 Easter Rising in Ireland, and Radical Action focuses on "how events in recent and distant history, attitudes to rebellion, revolution and agitation have formed societies and national identities, question[s] the role of the artist in imagining future states and explore[s] the impact this revolutionary period has had on Irish citizens."

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