Sunday Arts Magazine

Rohan talks to Neil and Eve on what is happening in the world of Arts during Lockdown 5.

Based on a true story, Robot Song is a deeply personal story. It shares an honest, intensely funny and often unconventional window into writer/director Jolyon James’ experience parenting a child on the Autism Spectrum. The show poses and attempts to answer the question, how do we support, foster and celebrate difference in our children in the face of an increasingly rigid and homogenised world?

Robot Song is a genuine family show. It is joyful and full of hope. It is for any child who has ever felt isolated, and any parent who is desperate for tools to help an isolated child. The show employs cutting edge digital technology, animatronics and a beautiful original musical score.

“It was stunning and powerful and brilliant and I couldn’t stop thinking about it after I left the theatre!” Nat Jobe

Fleur updates David and Eve on Open House Melbourne 2021

Special eBook release

Anniversary edition of Julietta Jameson’s Christmas Island, Indian Ocean 

marks 20 years since the Tampa crisis

How a tiny island and a boat full of refugees changed Australia forever

eBook available July 15, 2021 through select major digital bookstores 

and participating libraries

ISBN: 978-0-6451128-7-0

“At last, a book that tells us all about Christmas Island: a place we have previously heard about as an entry point for people seeking asylum in Australia, but otherwise a blank spot in most Australian minds.”

– Julian Burnside AO QC

Melbourne-based author, Julietta Jameson will release a new, edited version of her moving 2003 book, Christmas Island, Indian Ocean, which will be available for the first time in eBook format from July 15, 2021.

This special anniversary edition marks twenty years since the ‘Tampa crisis’, when a Norwegian freighter rescued hundreds of asylum seekers from a sinking Indonesian fishing boat and attempts to deliver them safely to Christmas Island were thwarted by the Australian government, sparking outrage amongst humanitarians and attracting global media attention for all the wrong reasons.

It is a deeply-affecting account of Jameson’s journey to Australia’s most isolated territory … an extraordinary place, at an extraordinary time.

Originally published in paperback form by ABC Books, the eBook version of Christmas Island, Indian Ocean has been revisited by the author, who during the lengthy editing process, found that the questions and issues raised at that time are every bit as relevant and important today as they were then.

Says Jameson, “This book came about when, one morning in the latter stages of 2001, I heard an ABC Radio interview with Captain Don O’Donnell, the harbour master of Christmas Island. He was describing the moving send-off the islanders had given the Tampa when she finally sailed away, her human cargo having been taken off her deck by the SAS and delivered to the Australian war ship, the Manoora, to eventually be taken to Nauru. As a journalist, an avid hobbyist on matters of the human condition and from the point of view of my own confusion about this and many other things in my life, I decided to go to the island and see what was going on for myself.

“As I set off, Australian public debate on the ‘Tampa crisis’ and the government’s ensuing ‘Pacific Solution’ to ‘stopping the boats’ was passionate, polarised and front-page news, which almost feels quaint in 2021, given how normalised and widely accepted strong-arm tactics – some might say cruelties – towards asylum seekers have become.

“Editing this book for the twentieth anniversary of the Tampa crisis, as I revisited my reflections of and at the time, it seemed like the questions I’d asked twenty years earlier had barely touched the sides of what was to come. Moreover, the answers I thought I had found had been dashed against the jagged rocks of hardened hearts and minds.

“But I believe it is valuable to look at where we came from, in order to understand how we got here. At the very least, the remarkable humanity the Christmas Islanders showed in the latter part of 2001 might serve as a reminder of the humanity in us all.”

Stephen talks to David and Eve about the latest films and the Melbourne International Film Festival.

Melbourne Chamber Orchestra (MCO) returns to the Bunjil Place Theatre stage, bringing the famed works of Antonio Vivaldi’s Four Seasons to life in a thrilling performance set for Wednesday 28th July.

Audiences can enjoy the colourful evocations of nature and Italian life that shines through Vivaldi’s exciting, and innovative work from the Baroque era. Each concerto is accompanied by a sonnet and the hallmarks of each Italian season, from birdsong in spring to summer storms.

The MCO ensemble stars a quartet of soloists led and curated by Artistic Director William Hennessy AM and includes Katherine Lukey, Markiyan Melnychenko and Jennen Ngiau-Keng on violin.

The ensemble – as with all MCO performances – conjure both the intimacy and detail of chamber music and the grandeur and spectacle of orchestral music.

MCO returns to Bunjil Place following stellar performances performing the works of Mozart in 2019. Four Seasons arrives at Bunjil Place as part of a regional tour this winter.

Melbourne Chamber Orchestra is Victoria’s preeminent small orchestra and the leading independent Victorian chamber music organisation. For 30 years, the orchestra has created a distinctive orchestral practice, with a collegial ethos, exploratory programming, and ambitious regional touring.

Bunjil Place is an award-winning cultural precinct in the City of Casey that first opened in 2017. The name and striking architectural design of the facility were inspired by stories of Bunjil (also known as ‘Bunjil) the ‘creator’, from our First Nation’s People. Bringing together an outdoor community plaza, theatre, multipurpose studio, function centre, library, gallery and more – Bunjil Place is a destination for high quality arts and entertainment in Melbourne’s south-east.

Theatre adventure Because The Night, devised during Melbourne’s winter lockdown in 2020, has been extended until 26 September 2021 after selling more tickets than any other show in Malthouse Theatre’s history.

The production opened on 23 March this year and has been welcoming waves of new audiences to the theatre, delivering an immersive experience that gives visitors the choice of what to do, what to see and experience. Taking place takes place across more than 30 custom-built fantasy rooms in the historic Malthouse building in Southbank, it has captured Melbourne’s imagination.

After initially extending until the end of June, tickets are now on sale for performances until 26 September 2021, with two performances nightly at 6pm and 8.30pm from Tuesdays to Sundays, and a matinee performance at 1pm on Saturday.

Mulch Underground is an enchanting bar and club embroiled in all things botanical. It’s an interactive fitout complete with sounds of photo synthesizers, flower choirs and playable frozen compost sculptures while performers unfurl and push towards the surface.

Kelping are a collaborative extension of Lichen Kelp’s performance chemistry practice. Their shows combine Lichen Kelp’s electronic ikebana and interactive ice sculptures with Dylan Martorell’s immersive soundscapes and seminal costumes, and dance and movement by Benjamin Hancock and Jason Hood.

 

Mulch Underground is a chilled-out space to cross-pollinate with a drink on the dance floor. Come dressed in florals, gardening clothes or just wear something plain dirty.

Arts House Artistic Director, Emily Sexton, says “SINK will refresh your senses with techno that skews binary frameworks, before Mulch Underground’s interactive botanical installation welcomes you in for drinks, tunes and a play in the compost.”

Underground music icon Simona Castricum combines her talents with the light and projection sorcery of Carla Zimbler to create SINK, a live sonic experience of uncommon depth.

SINK reinvents the stadium techno experience and strips it back to an intimate encounter. It is a music installation with loud percussive drumming, electronic music, sudden intense noises, flashing lights, smoke effects, haze and lasers.

As a queer percussive and visual explosion, SINK is a portal that destabilises the binary frameworks in an urban space and reveals the queer virtues of belonging and catharsis, highlighting that gender nonconforming perspectives are important contributors to our cultural and urban landscape.

Under a grand installation of hanging white ropes that reflect Zimbler’s mood-altering projections, Castricum will command the space with a full drum set and a suite of percussion machines to create a fluid environment using tactics of garble and feedback.

 

 

This July, Theatre Works and Iron Lung Theatre bring Andrew Bovell’s multi award-winning play, When the Rain Stops Falling, to Melbourne.

Starring Francis Greenslade (Shaun Micallef’s Mad as Hell, Winners and Losers, All Saints) this powerful story spans four generations over eight decades across two countries, between a prediction in London in 1959 and its outcome in Australia eighty years later. Described by Time Magazine as “… the best play of 2010”,When the Rain Stops Falling unfolds like a mesmerising puzzle to be solved.

Alice Springs, 2039. A fish falls from the sky. It’s been raining for days, the apocalypse moves ever closer and Gabriel York know something is wrong. And so begins this epic sprawling drama, where fish fall from the sky, a daughter inherits a secret and where the rain never stops.

Taking place between two worlds, When the Rain Stops Falling reaches from the claustrophobia of a small flat in rainy London in 1959 to the windswept coast of South Australia and beyond, following the journey of Gabriel Law as he retraces his father’s footsteps, desperately attempting to solve the mystery of his disappearance.

“Andrew Bovell has an incredible way of making the everyday reach out and touch us in an extraordinary way. And this play does that…” explains Iron Lung’s Director Briony Dunn.

“It’s vast and complex and weaves a spell on a grand scale from squished London flats to rolling oceans and sweeping deserts, where Bovell uses the weather like a tenth character. What theatre does so well – and this play is a gorgeous example – is it lifts the audience and takes them to that magical realm only plays like this can. In many ways too this play has come into its own. It’s more relevant now than when it was first written in 2008.”