Art Smitten

Will Dawson reflects on his time at SYN. (His dreaded SYN death has arrived!) We, (Lauren, Will and Caroline) also talk about the importance of keeping community radio. 

You can show your support by signing the #KeepCommunityRadio petition here: http://www.keepcommunityradio.org.au/

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Ben & Christian did a combined review of ACMI’s exhibition dedicated to award-winning film maker, Martin Scorsese. 

Scorsese will be exhibiting at ACMI 26th May to 18th September

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Hosts Will and Lauren were joined in the studio with MAXINE GIGLIOTTI and BEDE NASH from the National Institute of Circus Arts (NICA). Maxine and Bede talked about the 2016 graduating class showcase performance Things NOT of this EARTH, how they both become interested in circus arts, and how they chose their circus specialities. 

Things NOT of this EARTH  will be being performed 8 - 18 June, Wed – Sat 7.30pm at the NICA National Circus Centre, 39 - 59 Green Street, Prahran

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Hosts Ben & Michaela were joined in the studio with ANDI SNELLING – writer, producer and performer of the critically-acclaimed solo confessional show #DearDiary.

 #DearDiary is being perforfmed at The Butterfly Club, Wed 1st – Sun 5th June at 7pm

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Hosts Ben & Michaela discuss the highs and lows of karaoke; the unattainable high notes, the dramatic ballads, the overplayed songs and the annoying na na na naaa section of Hey Jude by The Beatles. 

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Hosts Ben & Michaela were joined by tigers of the stage - GABRIELLE SAVRONE (director and actor at Owl & Cat Theatre) & MARCUS MOLYNEUX (actor) from Owl and Cat Theatre’s production Flesh Eating Tiger. 

Flesh Eating Tiger is being performed at Owl and Cat Theatre, 34 Swan Street from 31st May – 2nd June

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Experience. Strength. Hope. These words don’t carry much meaning by themselves, but together in the context of Melbourne Playback Theatre Company’s latest performance SticksnStones of the Birrarung Marr - Stories of First Nations Place Making, Culture and Legacy, they provided a pivotal focus for the evening’s event.

SticksnStones was the second public event by Melbourne Playback for the year. The event was split into two parts – a Q&A panel with esteemed First Nation Victorians including Jill Gallagher, Reuben Berg, Monica McDonald, Bruce Pascoe, and Stan Yarramunua, followed by a one-of-a-kind improvised theatre performance by Melbourne Playback. The event took place at Deakin Edge Theatre in Federation square, located on the banks of the Birrarung Marr – the river of mists. The Birrarung Marr is a significant meeting place for First Nation Victorians, and so it seemed particularly appropriate for the event to take place beside the river.

The event also coincided with Reconciliation Week – a week where Australia acknowledges the First Nation people and their history of suffering and atrocities since the White Settlement / Invasion 200 years ago, as well as the ongoing negative impact this hidden history continues to have in the present day. It is also a week where Australia takes the opportunity to celebrate and honour First Nation’s Cultural systems.

Each panelist shared stories and family histories of growing up in Victoria and Australia. Jill Gallagher told of the hardships her mother endured. She was born on country in Victoria’s Western District and lived on a mission. “They were very cruel times” Jill’s mother told her, “I try to forget”. At 13 her mother left school and worked as a seasonal picker. Seasonal work meant Jill attended 19 different schools. However, her mother strongly believed education was a catalyst for change and encouraged Jill to get a good education.

Bruce Pascoe, award-winning author of Dark Emu, Black Seeds, told the audience of the efforts he needed to make to discover the truth about his family history. He discovered that his family was aboriginal and had fled from Tasmania. For many years his family was forced to deny their cultural heritage in order for to be able to stay on the mainland. After years of searching and listening to elders, Bruce began to unravel a complex web of family relations. Bruce realized that ultimately, what connected them all, was their connections to the land.

After interval, the vivacious Ian David from Melbourne Playback Theatre Company welcomed the audience to share words and thoughts that had touched or inspired them from the panel discussion. The improvisation ensemble, or Players as they are called, took these words and created physical images of these ideas through dance, movement and music. Three audience members had the opportunity to tell a personal story that the players transformed from the individual to the universal in ways that resonated with all of us in the room.

These performances were incredibly powerful – the players seemed able to draw out the emotional core of each story. The ensemble worked so well together that it was hard to believe that these were not rehearsed pieces of work. ‘Travelling moments” flowed seamlessly together on stage, everyone playing a part when needed. There were moments when their performances brought me, and many others in the audience, to laughter and tears. I can’t recall the last time a work of performance art had achieved that.

There will be other public events by Melbourne Playback Theatre Company later in the year focusing on: Refugees, Climate Change and Mental Health. Do not miss out!

SticksnStones on the Birrarung Marr took place on Friday 27th May at Deakin Edge Theatre, Federation Square.

Review written by Lauren Klein

Review read aloud by Michaela Jones & Ben Volchok

Photographer credit: Steven Rhall

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Adalya reviews The Wheeler Centre’s author talk event with Hanya Yanagihara in conversation with Jason Steger.

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It was fantastic to hear that The Arts Centre’s season of Sugarland is being targeted at VCE students, but don’t let that make you think that the play itself is mostly for high school students. Fraser Corfiel and David Page’s debut production of Rachel Coopes and Wayne Blair‘s latest theatrical work is one of those stories of adolescence that engages teenagers both past and present.

Lately, Melbourne has seen quite a few ensemble pieces set in remote regions of Australia, usually ones like this year’s Meeka that have used this type of setting as a source of claustrophobia, dread and potent danger. One of the characters in Sugarland, Erica (played by Xanthe Paige) describes the Northern Territory town of Katherine as a kind of Disneyland, a peaceful place where no one is a stranger and everyone can be trusted. However, Erica has just moved here from Canberra, while our narrator, Nina (Dubs Yunupingu), and her friend, Jimmy (Calen Tassone), have lived here their entire lives. They are two aboriginal teenagers, who both express a strong spiritual connection to their land and their ancestry in some beautifully lyrical monologues, but who would both leave this town in a heartbeat if they could. Nina lives in a single share house with 12 other people, one of them being her mother’s abusive auntie. She wants to live in her own house, where she won’t have to be dodging blows and following orders. She wants to go to a school where she won’t have to suppress her academic skill so she can stay in a class with people who understand her. Jimmy isn’t sure what he wants, he just doesn’t want to be living in Katherine. Since he is currently lacking the attendance to finish school and the work ethic to get into a trade, this seems like an impossible dream, but for Nina, there is the shining prospect of winning the town’s Sing Search competition and the grand prize of $5000. She certainly has the vocal talent to take this contest out, but so might Erica. She already has the means to leave, but unlike Nina, Jimmy, and their naïve young schoolmate, Aaron (Narek Arman), she has also already been to the outside world. She has lived where they all dream of living and has had to move many times throughout her life. She knows that a change of place can only do so much, and that childhood neglect takes its toll no matter how much money you have thrown at you. One of the play’s most powerful scenes shows how Jimmy and Erica, two characters from such vastly different backgrounds, have both ended up in this same damaged, dangerous place in their lives.

This is the tone of about half of the show’s total duration, the remainder is just as affecting but a lot more fun. Every member of the cast, which also features Jonas Thomson as their hapless schoolmate, Charles and Eliza Logan as the long-suffering social worker, all have excellent comedic and timing and dramatic skill, and some even get a chance to show some impressive singing skills. The lighter scenes do well to endear us towards these wonderfully drawn characters whose plights, though they are of many different shapes and sizes, are all very compelling and uniquely revealing. Charles is another hopeful entrant in the competition. He has chosen to sing, of all things, Justin Bieber’s ‘Baby,’ and has no desire to tell this to his sport-obsessed father, unless he wins. He is a simultaneously hilarious and heartbreaking example of the pressures placed on young white Australian men, just as Aaron, Jimmy and Nina show us what happens to young Indigenous men and women who have no pressures and no expectations placed on them at all. The singing competition, with all of its pitfalls and inequities, is an excellent narrative device for encapsulating the high hopes and crushing realities of these five young people who all want and deserve the same things, love and freedom, but who, for various reasons, may never come to know them.

Sugarland is truly a theatrical marvel, having managed to engage, educate and consistently entertain young audiences without pandering to them or misrepresenting them. It is an authentic, insightful, and artistically precise piece of storytelling.

Review written by Christian Tsoutsouvas

Review read aloud by Lauren Klein

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Hosts Lauren and Andrew are joined in the studio with Caitlin, a jazz student at the Australian National University School of Music. She shares her story of how she feel in love with jazz and the, perhaps surprisingly, vibrant jazz scene in Taiwan. 

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