News / Blog - Sian Prior: Writer, Broadcaster, Singer, MC and Lecturer

Platitudes, Playing Perth and a World Heritage Park

2008-11-19T10:44:17Z

You might like to check out my latest Radio National program - a voice-piece for Lingua Franca broadcast this week - an essay in defence of platitudes. There is a transcript available on the RN website and for a while you can also listen to the program online.

I had a very enjoyable, if somewhat rain-drenched, week of gigs with Paul Kelly at The Quarry in Perth recently. (click here for a review of the A-Z shows in The Australian newspaper). The Quarry is a stunningly beautiful outdoor venue and will be well-used in the forthcoming Perth International Arts Festival, February/March 2009. If you're flying Qantas early next year, keep an eye out for an article i'm writing about the Perth Festival for 'The Australian Way' inflight magazine.

Also just back from visiting Mildura and Mungo National Park in southern New South Wales. We took a tour of the park with Graham Clark, a traditional owner who runs Harry Nanya Tours, who told us all about the history of the lake as one of the oldest sites of human occupation, dating back around 60,000 years. You can still see ancient Aboriginal middens revealed by the winds blowing across the dry lake bed to the Walls of China, a crescent of white sand dunes which turns a lurid shade of orange/pink at sunset. Amazing place.

Melbourne Festival Fare and Forthcoming Gigs

2008-10-10T11:47:45Z

As the 2008 Melbourne Festival draws to a close, it's worth mentioning some highlights - and some lowlights.

Turkish ney-player (a long wooden flute-like instrument) Kudsi Erguner performed at the BMW Edge with an ensemble of virtuoso musicians in a concert called Sufi Invocations. The highlight for me was hearing the two male vocalists (or 'nightingales', as Erguner described them) whose voices, both individually and in unison, made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. It reminded me of being in Istanbul and hearing the Moslem prayer-calls echoing over the city, with those distorted, elongated vowels and ornamented scales dipping up and down between the extreme top and the very bottom of their vocal range. Soothing and exquisite.

Oddly enough, it also reminded in moments of Liza Lim's opera The Navigator, which played to bemused audiences in the Playhouse of The Arts centre. She, too, employed virtuoso singers, operatically trained in this instance, but required to distort their vowels in extraordinary ways to deliver Patricia Sykes' text. Frankly, i didn't think Barrie Kosky's dildo-ridden direction worked, but it wasn't entirely his fault. The text lacked drama and a coherent narrative, and i suspect this musical work should have been presented as a concert performance rather than a staged theatrical production. I am a huge fan of the Elision Ensemble, and of Liza Lim's ground-breaking compositions, but i found it hard to enjoy this show.

STO Union's two-person work '7 Important Things' was a nostalgic and vaguely therapeutic narration of one man's life story. Aided and abetted by Canadian director Nadia Ross, George Acheson re-lives his experiences growing up a baby-boomer in an era of failed utopianism. Ross is playful with the form - there's everything from TV-style chat show moments to mask-work and silent disco-dancing in this show - but it felt, in the end, rather slight.

Speaking of Canadians, Book of Longing, a new work by American composer Phillip Glass based on the poetry of Leonard Cohen, was a moving and loving homage to the Canadian songwriter and artist. Four excellent musical theatre-style vocalists delivered the songs with clear-as-a-bell diction, allowing us to relish the craft of Cohen's sad, sexy, witty poetry. Can't wait for Cohen's Australian tour (late Jan, early Feb 2009 - supported by Paul Kelly!)

Wendy Houston's Desert Island Dances put the 'playful' back into 'post-modern' with a funny, low-key and self-refllexive one-woman dance work about... about... oh, everything, really. There was a chalk board on which the English performer traced an imaginary graph of her audience's emotional response to the show, a giant wooden box with wheels in which she rolled around the small stage, and lots of talking. I loved this performance, and i'd love to see anything else she does, quite frankly.

And what a treat to see Melbourne playwright and director Jenny Kemp's latest work, Kitten, which premiered at the Malthouse Theatre. Three women play the one character, 'Kitten', who is having some kind of frightening manic episode, following the drowning death of her lover. Natasha Herbert and Margaret Mills, both longtime collaborators with Kemp, were simply astonishing in the way they captured the breath-taking charisma of someone in that state. A more accessible play, in some ways, than many of Kemp's previous works, Kitten left me in tears, and yet also elated. Definitely a Festival highlight.

Forthcoming SP gigs - I'll be performing with Paul Kelly in Perth for his A - Z gigs at The Quarry (November 4 - 7). I'll be singing and playing clarinet, and Dan Kelly will be playing along on guitar as well.

Heavenly Handel, Fringe Festival and Bogan Pride.

2008-10-03T15:27:20Z

I went to my first Melbourne Symphony concert in a while last night, and I was very happy to see an almost full house at the Hamer Hall. Must have something to do with the enduring popularity of Handel's 'Water Music' which made up the second half of the bill. The first half featured the astonishing Australian counter-tenor David Hansen peforming three Handel arias with the physical confidence of an Olympic athlete. The Baroque ornamentation he applied to these operatic numbers was the equivalent of a gold-medal-winning pentathlon performance, and the crowd roared with approval as he took his bows. The orchestra sounded incredibly youthful under the bouncing baton of Canadian conductor Bernard Labadie. They're performing the Handel program twice more this week and it will be broadcast at a later date on ABC Classic FM.

Meanwhile the Melbourne Fringe Festival has begun, and last night saw the launch of 'Jacky Jacky in the Box', a performance art installation presented by Ilbijerri Theatre. Five indigenous performers, all called 'Jacky', sit inside three glass museum cabinets in the Atrium of Federation Square. Curious passers-by can read their family histories displayed on printed signs in front of the boxes, and learn about the complex and often tragic circumstances that led to each 'Jacky' being denied their indigenous cultural heritage. It's cheeky, it's confronting, and it makes a very clear point about the way in which Aboriginal Australians have been treated as less than human for most of the past two centuries.

And at the Supper Room of the North Melbourne Town Hall i saw a work-in-progress called 'The Lonely Instrument', an alternately chilling and hilarious re-telling of Angela Carter's radio play 'Vampirella', all mixed up with characters and recipes straight out of the Country Women's Association Cookery Book. There's a shadow-puppetry play, an afternoon tea ritual with lamingtons and shortbread, and the scariest cake competition judges you'll ever meet. Keep an eye out for the finished product, due for completion in 2009. For more information, email: lonelyinstrument@gmail.com

And don't forget to tune into SBS Television at 9 pm on Monday nights for the next six weeks to see the new Australian comedy series 'Bogan Pride', featuring the marvellous Caroline Lee playing a lesbian leader of a young Christian girls friendly society.

Tropical Talents and Marvellous Mentors

2008-09-13T17:49:20Z

Just back from the Northern Territory where i caught several gigs on the last weekend of the Darwin Festival . Being able to boogie in the humid night air at the Darwin Botanic Gardens sure beats scurrying around chilly, wet Melbourne in October to attend the Melbourne Festival. (How about moving it to March, gals?)

One of the highlights was a concert called 'Drums and Lions', a collaboration between Maltese-Australian guitarist/percussionist Nicky Bomba and Ethiopian musician Dereb Desalegn. Bomba explained that it all started as a quest to find the roots of reggae in Ethiopia (he never did), but it ended with a firm musical friendship which had the crowd jigging and sweating and calling out for more at the Star Shell. Desalegn sings in his native Amharic language and plays a traditional one-stringed instrument called the masenko, but this is no world-musicky folk outfit. They rock! They've recorded an album via Transmitter Records, also called 'Drums and Lions', and i highly recommend it as a cure for the post-winter blues.

The other gig to rave about was a double bill with charismatic East Timorese singer/songwriter Ego Lemos (lead singer of Cinco do Oriente) and Yolngu singer/songwriter Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu. Gurrumul's self-titled solo album has been garnering music industry nominations and winning awards left, right and centre (keep an eye out for him at the Aria awards in October, if he doesn't take home a major prize i'll eat my sombrero). The sell-out crowd had the religious fervour of a bunch of Elvis fans, so passionate were they about this blind musician and his songs in language. He's a former member of Yothu Yindi, a current member of the Saltwater Band, and he's going to be the next big indigenous musical star in this country (or i'll eat another sombrero).

Gurrumul will be performing with the Black Armband at the forthcoming Melbourne Festival, and also doing a couple of solo gigs - book now or you'll be sorry. (And keep an eye out for my profile of Gurrumul in a forthcoming edition of The Age 'EG'.) Ego Lemos is rumoured to be performing in Melbourne on September 25th - more info anon.

Last week i hosted another business forum for the City of Stonnington, this time on the topic of mentoring. The three guest speakers (David Southwick, Fay Jamieson and Shane Hills) spoke persuasively about how asking for help - and/or offering it - can make the difference between a successful small business and a failure. Click to hear a podcast of our conversation.

Talking to Steve Bracks, and Good Old Art

2008-07-22T21:10:36Z

On August 15th I'll be chairing a Business Breakfast to raise funds for the refurbishment of the Yarraville Community Centre, a beautiful National Trust-registered building which houses a wide range of community organisations servicing the west. Guest speakers will include former Victorian Premier Steve Bracks, and the aim is to raise a million dollars in corporate sponsorship to match the funding promised by state and local governments.

Couple of recent highlights in the Melbourne arts scene:

The Coronation of Poppea - the Victorian Opera production of this 17th century opera features some of the most beautiful singing i've heard on stage in this town for a very long time. Counter-tenor David Hansen (Nerone), mezzo-soprano Sally Wilson (La Fortuna, Ottavia) and bass Paul Hughes (Seneca) are the stand-outs in a strong cast, and though the direction occasionally strays into the gratuitously bawdy, this new version of Monteverdi's and Sacrati's opera is definitely worth seeing. On at the South Melbourne Town Hall (perfect acoustics) until July 26th.

Art Deco: 1910 to 1939 - the National Gallery of Victoria's latest blockbuster has been attracting huge crowds, which is great, and also a shame, because it can be hard to get a close look at all the beautiful objets, artworks, frocks and film footage which make up this enormous exhibition of Art Deco Stuff. But it's worth getting up early for, and making sure you have a few hours to spend inside the only-just-adequately-lit exhibition spaces in the St Kilda Rd building. You'll want to take it all home. On until October 5th.

And keep an eye out for the Travel lift-out in The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald on Saturday July 26th - an article i wrote recently about cutting edge arts in New York will be published at last!

SP to perform in Queensland Music Festival 2009

2008-07-16T11:29:12Z

I have been invited to sing in an event called 'Music School' at the Judith Wright Centre in Brisbane during the 2009 Queensland Music Festival (17th July to the 2nd August 2009). The Festival will be directed by singer-songwriter-actor (and founder of the Broad shows) Deborah Conway. More details to follow.

Marketing Forum, and latest ABC broadcast

2008-07-08T15:32:13Z

On Thursday July 17th I'll be hosting a business forum for the City of Stonnington on marketing. The regular 'Roosters and Feather Dusters' forums aim to give local business people fresh and useful information - and a chance to socialise and network. There'll be a panel of three expert guest speakers, the event starts at 6:30 pm at the Malvern Town Hall, and drinks and nibbles are provided - contact the City of Stonnington for more details.

And i recently spoke with a fascinating and deeply wacky American artist on Radio National's Lingua Franca program on Saturday May 17th. I interviewed Nina Katchadourian in her Brooklyn home when i was in New York in April. She's done a project called Accent Elimination where she employed a voice coach to try to teach her parents (a Swedish-speaking Finnish literary translator and an Armenian- Turkish-Lebanese social science professor) how to speak with a so-called 'pure American accent', at the same time as she tried to learn how to speak with their inimitable 'foreign' accents. I'm not pulling your leg. (If you missed the live broadcast, you can always podcast it)

World Environment Day forum

2008-05-17T13:01:31Z

On Thursday June 5th i hosted a World Environment Day public forum at the St Kilda Town Hall for the City of Port Phillip. The four guest speakers were looking at practical solutions to the threat of climate change:

• Hon John Thwaites (Professorial Fellow Monash University Sustainability Institute) on the social impacts of climate change

• Suzie Brown (Environmental Consultant) on changing behaviour and adapting our homes

• Ric Brazzale (Director, Carbon Market Economics) on what governments can do

• Brendan Condon (Managing Director, Australian EcoSystems) on the potential for community action

Singing, Tootling and Talking

2008-05-13T18:57:36Z

If you're heading down to the Mornington Peninsula on Sunday June 15th, and fancy some singing and tootling, you might like to consider coming along to my next recital. It's a program of art songs and clarinet pieces by French composers, including Faure, Hahn, Poulenc, Roussell, Bozza, and a stray Dane with a French-sounding name (Jens Bjerre). I'll be accompanied by pianist Katherine Gillon and the concert begins at 2:30 at the Rosebud Uniting Church, Murray Anderson Rd, Rosebud. Tickets are $10 at the door, and you'll get afternoon tea for that, too.

And i'll be talking to a fascinating and deeply wacky American artist on Radio National's Lingua Franca program this weekend (Saturday May 17th, 3:45 pm). I interviewed Nina Katchadourian in her Brooklyn home when i was in New York last month. She's done a project called Accent Elimination where she employed a voice coach to try to teach her parents (a Swedish-speaking Finnish literary translator and an Armenian- Turkish-Lebanese social science professor) how to speak with a so-called 'pure American accent', at the same time as she tried to learn how to speak with their inimitable 'foreign' accents. I'm not pulling your leg. (If you miss the live broadcast, you can always podcast it)

If you're interested in sustainability and small business, you might like to check out the podcast of a forum i chaired last week for the City of Stonnington - 'Green is the New Black'. Guests included Rob Gell (weatherman and environmental crusader), Katie Patrick (founder of the Green Pages) and Amanda Nutall (from the NetBalance Foundation).

If you are looking for a good film to see, i can happily recommend 'The Edge of Heaven'. Set in Germany and Turkey, it is an intricately-woven tale about a Turkish man and his German-born son, the prostitue they befriend and betray, and her daughter, an idealistic young political activist. In fact, i suspect this is The Perfect Film. I'm still digesting it, three days later. One of the many outstanding actors in 'The Edge of Heaven' is Hannah Schygulla, who i remember from in a number of politically confronting German films in the 1980's, so it was quite a nostalgia trip, seeing her beautiful but aged face staring out at me from the big screen. We saw it at The Classic but i'm sure it's on elsewhere.

On the other hand, unless you relish the idea of spending an evening in a bleak famillial dystopia, avoid 'Before the Devil Knows You're Dead'. Not even Phillip Seymour Hoffman's marvellous acting (nor director Sidney Lumet's excellent track record - 'Broadcast News'!) could console me when I was trapped in the second row, watching this depressing film about semi-accidental matricide. Oi veh...

About As Good As It Gets

2008-05-02T20:36:28Z

So often i go to an opera and come away feeling underwhelmed. There's usually something about the production that's just not quite good enough to allow me to relax and fully enjoy it. But this week i saw something so good, i almost forgot i was at the opera. OA's production of Richard Strauss' 'Arabella' is an unmitigated pleasure from start to finish. You have to love Strauss - that late Romantic lushness, that passion for soaring female voices entwined in rapidly modulating harmonies - and i do. So it was only a question of whether the voices would be full and warm enough to carry it off, and whether the acting would be convincing enough to allow the alternating comedy and the tragedy to drag you from laughter to tears in the space of a few bars They were. A quick synopsis - Arabella's father is a compulsive gambler, the family's finances are dwindling rapidly, and he needs to 'sell' his beautiful daughter off to the highest bidder in order to avoid destitution. Arabella's little sister Zdenka has been cross-dressing all her life, because the family can't afford the cost of bringing two daughters out into Viennese society. Zdenkas fancies Arabella's suitor Matteo, but is trying to be a good girl and sell her sister to him by writing him love-letters supposedly by Arabella. Enter the tall dark handsome WEALTHY stranger Mandryka. There's a Viennese ball, there's a case of mistaken idenity, there's some late night hanky-panky, and it's all resolved by the sensuous quaffing of a large glass of water. There's a dash of proto-feminism in amongst the romantic folly - i reckon Zdenka rather enjoys wearing those trousers - and the cast was about as strong as it gets for an OA production - Cheryl Barker, Peter Coleman-Wright, Kanen Breen, Emma Matthews, Milijana Nikolic, Richard Roberts, and a wonderfully comic Conal Coad. It's on until May 9th - see it if you can.

The week before i saw OA's production of 'Carmen' - some underwhelming performances (like i said...) but the set was great (i almost believed there was a bull-ring behind that big red wall) and fortunately Pamela Helen Stephen was a sexy Carmen with a huge expressive voice. Hard to believe such a powerful sound could come from such a diminutive woman, but she carried the night.

At The Toff In Town in Swanston St, local lyric soprano Vanessa West presented the latest incarnation of her one-woman show 'Puccini's Women' last Sunday afternoon. Just who were the damsels who inspired Tosca, Mimi, Musetta, and all those other memorable but mostly doomed operatic heroines of Signor Puccini? See this show on Sunday 4th May and you'll find out.

And for sheer entertainment, there's the MTC's production of 'The 39 Steps', a sweet theatrical piss-take of the conventions of Alfred Hitchcock's films. Four actors play over 100 characters (there's a lot of hat-swapping) and Marcus Graham seems to relish his role as the devilishly handsome but hapless romantic lead who is led astray by a femme fatale. Just not sure whether our tax-payer dollars should be sponsoring something as light and entertaining as this. Whatever happened to the commercial theatre sector?

Nothing but a Dream

2008-04-17T21:41:03Z

Is it true? Was i really at the Brooklyn Academy of Music's Harvey Theatre watching Paul Simon (tiny, aged, grandfatherly) strumming his guitar and singing songs from his musical 'The Capeman', accompanied by the Spanish Harlem Orchestra? Must be, i've got the obligatory photo of Me Walking Across The Brooklyn Bridge to prove it (see Photographs, in Portfolio section of website).

Sigh.

New York has floated off into the dimming past, and it's back into the cultural fray in Mel-Born.

Whence i arrived just in time to catch a Comedy Festival show on the very last day of the festival. Frank Woodley (formerly of Lano and Woodley) had concocted a winning piece of physical theatre (with some ventriloquism and guitar-strumming thrown in for good measure) called 'Possessed' which was on at the daintily-dusty Comedy Theatre. Would you believe it was about a social introvert and model ship-maker who becomes possessed by an Irish slip of a girl from the 19th century who is seeking a mysterious object, wit'out which her accursed soul will never rest in peace, to be sure, to be sure. The ship-spotter falls in love with her, which leads to some interesting experiments in theatrical onanism, and a lot of falling down the stairs. Very funny, a little bit moving, and if not ground-breaking, a t'oroughly enjoyable afft'rnoon's entertainment (to be sure, etc.)

Opera Australia is in town, and i saw 'Carmen' this week. The most important ingtedient was there - a charismatic, sexy mezzo-soprano in the role of Carmen - Pamela Helen Stephen - truly a slip of a girl, but with a voice that could stop a train. You could believe that sane men would throw away perfectly good careers in the military just for a chance to polish her dusty boots. The tenor (Rosario La Spina) was less believable, in part because his bulk makes it hard for him to move with any fluidity on stage. And the voice seemed tired at the beginning of the performance, but warmed up in the third and fourth acts. I loved the set - ACCA-style rust-red walls behind which i actually believed there might be a Spanish bullring. The orchestra sounded strong and sweet, and though (or perhaps because?) the stage direction was intensely busy, it was always interesting. 'Un Ballo in Maschero' next week, followed by 'Arabella' - watch this space.

What the Frick?

2008-04-04T02:17:02Z

Walked from the East Village to the United Nations yesterday for a tour of the building. A beautiful but forbidding French woman told us all about the different meeting chambers, and the various Scandinavian countries who had donated and designed them, and somehow the vision and idealism of the UN's original purpose was convincing, in spite of what we know about the awful compromises and corruption that have been the reality.

Then on to the Frick Museum, an astonishing private collection of paintings, sculptures and decorative arts housed in the mansion of a late American industrialist called Frick. Rooms and rooms of Whistlers and El Grecos and Rembrandts and Vermeers (three out of only 35 that exist!) and Bellinis and Renoirs. I didn't want to leave. But Greewich Village beckoned - and an eating-and-drinking marathon that began with oysters and rose in Cornelia St, followed by gluten-free pizza in Bleecker St, followed by red wine at the Blue Ribbon bar around the corner.

I've also done the Staten Island ferry ride past the Statue of Liberty (where a man standing behind me at the rail told his friend a great story about how his father was rejected the first time he tried to emigrate from Europe to the USA, via immigration authorities on Ellis Island, because his brother, an actor in the Yiddish theatre scene in New York, tried to persuade the authorities he could support the younger brother and the mother - by flashing huge wads of stage money!)

And of course a visit to Macy's department store, which is filled with flowers at the moment - an indoor, instore garden show - here i bought myelf a big black coat to combat the bitter cold of this freezulating city. Works a treat.

New York NY

2008-04-02T08:24:15Z

Currently spending two weeks in New York, trying to choose from amongst the gazillions of cultural offerings here - no easy task. So i've been spreading the load - some visual arts, some performing arts, some music, some dance, some weird combinations of all of the above.

PS122 is a former primary school in the East Village, converted into an experimental performing arts venue and currently run by Australian artistic director Vallejo Gantner. Saw two shows there:

'Bride' - a funny, disturbing, dystopic puppet show which imagines God as a wrinkled old guy with a monkey-slave who patches him through to pleading humans via an old telephone exchange. Trouble is, God can't really help - and even suicide is not an option, because all the big old books (the Bible, the Koran, the Torah) say he's here for eternity. So he tries to create a son to take over the job, but each prototype (puppet) son turns out to be flawed, and is banished to a rat-infested basement of heaven. There's a happy ending, involving a reconstructed giant goddess, and a moment of awkward sentimentality which undercuts and undermines the kooky, clever humour of the rest of the piece. Interesting enough, nevertheless.

'Democracy in America' - a concept show, in which every bit of it is for sale - each line, each movement, each song, each video projection. Bewildering. More anon.

PS1 is another former school, in Queens (graffiti capital of the world?), now a big multi-level gallery currently exhibiting Wack! a retrospective of feminist art from the last few decades. Paintings, videos, sculptures, collages, frocks, from women artists from all over the world. Funny, angry, clever, with work from women who are internationally famous (Louise Bourgeois) and others whose work has been important in the USA but hasn't travelled as far.

Went to The Met to see a new production of Benjamin Britten's opera 'Peter Grimes'. Beautiful singing, such sweet acoustics in that enormous space. Very dark production, both literally and mood-wise, in which Teddy Tahu Rhodes made his Met debut as Ked Keene. Uniformly good acting - i guess they don't have to choose, here, whether to go with the best actors or the best singers. They take their pick of the Complete Package. Loved the fact that New Yorkers didn't bother dressing up to go the opera. No smell of mothballs, no fur coats. It's all normalised.

Saw a couple of very interesting exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) - one called Design and the Elastic Mind - all about design and the digital age. Favourite exhibit there was the Future Families Project, by Elio Caccavale - a series of plastic blow-ups toys representing each of the ingredients potentially involved in creating a baby these days - eg. Dummy Tummy, Fertility Egg, Fertility Sperm, Fertility Tummy - 'a baby today can have up to 5 people responsible for its birth - sperm donor, egg donor, surrogate mother, couple of any gender combination, or single mother or father.' Why not use toys to explain it all to a child?

And next door on the same floor - 'Color Chart: Reinventing Color, 1950 to Today' - featuring the Andy Warhol silk-screened 'Marilyn Flavors' - Lemon Marilyn, Cherry Marilyn, Mint Marilyn, etc., and Marcel Duchamp's last painting (before he moved on to urinals), featuring a cascade of lozenge-shaped color samples from a paint manufacturer's catalogue.

And - of course - Paul Kelly, at Joe's Pub on Lafayette - comfy chairs, tall ceilings, dim lighting, great acoustic, happy crowd, end of the tour - hooray!

Laughing, Moving and Flying

2008-03-21T19:54:11Z

Moving Target is on at the Malthouse Theatre until March 29th, and if you have siblings, you'll love the opening scene. A group of six people are spread around a sparsely furnished room, including a young man sitting on a office chair who teases a young woman by making silly mouth noises. This goes on for quite some time. As sibling teasing did, according to my recollections. Soon the group of people start to play hide and seek, which in a sparsely furnished room is no mean feat. They tell stories about children, they count up to one hundred, they roll themselves up in carpets, they hide behind the sofa, and by the end of the night, what began as a memory of the quiet cruelty of childhood games has become a deeply disturbing, prismatic look at our fear of The Other. You'll laugh and then you'll get goose bumps.

The Comedy Festival Gala moved to the Vodafone Arena this year. Sooooooooooooo big. I got lucky and sat near the front. It's a great sampler for the Festival - so here's who you should consider seeing:

Mark Watson - wacky Welshman who you'll want to take home and keep as a pet

Shane Warne the Musical (in progress) - Eddie Perfect meets Casey Bennetto (Keating the Musical) meets a Playboy magazine

Fiona O'Loughlin - the Bad Mother is back, and now she's menopausal (and has misplaced her cervix)

The Umbilical Brothers - so so so skilled, these boys - Marcel Marceau eat your heart out (and yet - may you rest in peace)

Nina Conti - ventriloquist with a monkey hand puppet - sounds dodgy but she's clever and funny and a little bit sicko

I'm heading to New York this week for a couple of weeks. Will try to keep you posted as regards my adventures in the Big Apple.

Songs and Detention and Rock'n'Roll

2008-03-05T10:53:00Z

On Monday 2 July 2007, Dr. Mohamed Haneef was arrested at Brisbane International Airport for allegedly assisting a terrorist organisation. Detained for 12 days, Haneef made history by becoming the first person detained under the extraordinary provisions of Australia’s new anti-terrorism laws. Based on the transcripts of the following interrogation, playwright Graham Pitts and director Gorkem Acaroglu have turned Dr Haneef's interrogation into a two-man play.

I saw the opening night of a short season of 'Haneef: The Interrogation' at the Gasworks Theatre in South Melbourne recently. Whilst it was interesting to eavesdrop on the interrogation techniques of an Australian Federal policeman, it didn't work so well as theatre. The production claims to 'raise the possibility of the extinction of civil liberties in an increasingly censored society', a threat which i take very seriously. But this interrogation doesn't offer strong evidence that such a threat is imminent. The policeman questioning Dr Haneef seemed to me to be simply doing his job, and in the absence of any outrage-provoking interrogation techniques, the writer was forced to create a small chorus of two commentators who try to persuade the audience that what they are watching is indeed outrageous.

The real outrage in the Haneef incident was in the way our conservative federal politicians used the case to provoke fear and xenophobia in the wider community, and how Dr Haneef was eventually deported from the country on the basis of selectively leaked information and innuendo. Now THAT would be an interesting subject for a work of theatre.

It will have another season soon at La Mama theatre in Carlton - decide for yourself.

Over at The Arts Centre, the Melbourne Theatre Company is offering a production of Tom Stoppard's play Rock'n'Roll. It follows the lives of three generations of one English family caught up in the ideological battles of the Cold War, and of a Czech student who lives through the momentous political changes in Eastern Europe in the last three decades of the 20th century.

The acting is very strong; I've never seen Genevieve Picot do better work on the stage. It's a long play, and at times the pace seems too hurried for the complex content - perhaps the director was worried about our short little spans of attention. But the intellectual and emotional content is fascinating - idealism versus the brutal reality of human political behaviour - Marxist communism versus the Stalinist corruption of that vision - and the anarchic, dionysian pleasures of rock'n'roll (and love) versus the authoritarian impulse to control and limit those pleasures. I came away wanting to read the script, at my own pace, to take it all in.

In the Fairfax Studio at the Arts Centre you can see 'Love Song', a Seinfeld-meets-Woody-Allen-style American comedy about love and madness. It has a relentless kind of hysteria to it, and yet it's also deeply sentimental. Funny, exhausting, and in the end not entirely satisfying. But Thomas Wright, who plays a vulnerable young man called Beane, is marvellous. Watch his hands closely, for a lesson in the craft of building up a character with physical idiosyncracies.

Paul Kelly: A to Z - "C" Songs Available For Free Download from March 1st

The rollout continues. On March 1 Paul posted new recordings of 8 songs starting with C and taking down February's Bs.

A couple of songs released by other artists but not until now by Paul make their debut - (The) Cake And The Candle first performed by Kate Ceberano and Renee Geyer as well as Cradle Of Love by Ann Kirkpatrick and Kelly Willis. Coma, a tune co-written with Professor Ratbaggy, is now a strange klezmerish mutation with clarinet by Sian Prior. Check out Charlie Owen's Slide Guitar, a tribute to a man, and the stark and shivery Change Your Mind.

Click here to collect your free downloads.

Stage, Screen and Gallery update

2008-02-24T12:55:14Z

For a long time now I've been planning to watch the Australian drama series 'Love My Way' on DVD. Having just seen the new adaptation of Moliere's play Tartuffe at the Malthouse Theatre, written by the creator of 'Love My Way' - Louise Fox - i'm heading straight to the video store. Fox handles the English language like a Harlem Globetrotter handles a basketball - immense skill hidden behind delicious playfulness. This modern-day Tartuffe (Marcus Graham) has been transformed into a bling-wearing, Bible-bashing Don Juan. His victim, Orgon (Barry Otto) is a Toorak toady and the co-conspirator of a fictional fraudster called 'Vizard'. It's loud, it's sexy, and it's really really funny.

The Victorian Opera recently celebrated Puccini's 150th anniversary with a concert that mixed some operatic 'greatest hits' with his less well-known religious work, the Messa di Gloria. There were some exhilarating solos from bass Paul Hughes, tenor James Egglestone and soprano Rosamund Illing, but the highlight for me was the Victorian Opera chorus, a thrilling sound en masse, and proof that there are many more excellent singers in this country than there is work for them.

You might like to check out the Sidney Nolan retrospective at the Ian Potter Centre (National Gallery of Victoria). I saw the same show at the Art Gallery of NSW over summer, and though i confess to not being a passionate fan of this Australian artist's work, the exhibition does show you the full arc of his career as a painter. Keep an eye out for an exquisite early painting called 'Luna Park in the Moonlight'. Takes your breath away.

So many good films out there at the moment! The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is directed by Julian Schnabel and is based on the autobiographical book of the same name (in French - Le Scaphandre et le Papillon) by Jean-Dominique Bauby. It's an intensely visceral re-creation of what it would feel like to be completely paralysed by stroke, with the exception of one eye-lid. Somehow Schnabel creaties lyricism out of claustrophobia. Max von Sydow, who plays Bauby's elderly father, will make you weep.

And if you're in a book club, go and see The Jane Austen Book Club. Robin Swicord has made a charming chick flick for the literary-minded, and there is a bunch of great roles for women 'd'un certain age' in this film - enough reason to support it, i say!

Outlaw or resistance hero?

2008-02-06T09:52:09Z

Just back from scorching Perth, where i've been making a radio feature for the Artworks program on Radio National all about a new play called 'Jandamarra' that's about to open in the Perth International Arts Festival. It's based on the true story of a Bunuba man from the Kimberley who was (depending on your point of view) either a murderous outlaw or an indigenous resistance hero. The program will be broadcast at 11:05 am Sunday 10th Feb, and then repeated at 8:35 pm on the evening of Monday 11th Feb. It's an amazing project - written by Steve Hawke (Bob's son) and performed in four different languages - including Bunuba. The Black Swan Theatre Company took it on, after Steve and his collaborators at Bunuba Films had been unsuccessful in getting the story up as a feature film. It's been directed by Tim Gutteridge (possibly the most patient man on the planet) and translations done by Patsy bedford, Mona Oscar, Selina Middleton, and the Chair of the Kimberley Language Resource Centre, June Oscar (possibly the most patient woman on the planet). I had the privilege of sitting in on rehearsals at Black Swan for a few days. Highlights:

watching the kids of various indigenous cast members hanging around the edges of the smallish rehearsal room, snoozing, whispering on their mobile phones, watching the action. One tiny boy picked up a big fat script and, in imitation of the cast and direction team, sat holding it in his lap with pencil poised, ready to 'take notes'.
watching George Brooking, a respected elder of the Bunuba clan and a singer in this production, laughing silently from the sidelines as the non-Bunuba speakers in the cast struggled valiantly to get their tongues around the language he has been speaking from birth.
hearing occasional thumping and shrieking coming from the ceiling above where, on the second floor of Black Swan's headquarters in Nedlands (a former Masonic Lodge), another cast was simultaneously rehearsing The Caucasian Chalk Circle. hmmm... the irony of the title only just strikes me now.
the cast leaning into big microphones, stirring buckets of pebbles, flapping pairs of old gloves, and popping balloons, to simulate the sounds of giant snakes slithering, startled birds flying and shotguns firing. Close your eyes and you'd think you were in Windjana Gorge.

Go Sees and Don't Bothers

2008-01-26T10:45:00Z

I've been to a bunch of shows at The Arts Centre in the last week, including some Don't Miss This Ones.

The Season at Sarsparilla is a Sydney Theatre Company import for the Melbourne Theatre Company, and it's revelatory. I've always been a bit lukewarm about Patrick White's plays; in the wrong directorial hands, they can seem awkward and self-conscious and dated. But I loved every minute of this one. The set design is ingenious - one suburban house, three families, all inhabiting it simultaneously, even though they are actually neighbours. Live cameras are placed around the house, solving the 'problem' of the characters' odd, poetic monologues - they are spoken straight to camera, like the ramblings of a video blogger sent off into cyberspace. Acting - uniformly marvellous. Direction - by Benedict Andrews - clear, strong, sympathetic, emphasising the comedy without going for cheap laughs.

Vaudeville X is part of the Full Tilt program, performed in The Black Box, and i laughed till i wept. Wickedly clever satire, from three blokes with great comic instincts. Dunno about Michael Dalley's (writer/performer/director) politics - i suspect they're often at odds with mine - but that's the great thing about satire. If it's good enough, you'll still laugh, even if you're being targetted. On till Saturday 2nd Feb.

Aeros was at the Hamer Hall and if you are old enough to remember 14 year old Romanian gymnast Nadia Comenica winning a gazillion gold medals at the Montreal Olympics, you'll understand where the show has come from. Those Romanians must be good at handling pain, because this show must hurt. About 20 top-level gymnasts are choreographed into a fast-paced series of 'dance' routines which defy gravity. You know those dreams you have about being able to fly? Well these kids can.

Don Juan in Soho is another MTC production, but it wasn't my cup of tea. Some dubious casting and some wobbly regional British accents undermined the performances in this Patrick Marber play, and quite frankly, i'd rather go and see Mozart's version. The original story is communicated better, and the music in Don Giovanni is sublime.

And if live theatre's not your thing, go and see Lust:Caution, the new Ang Lee film. A work of immense psychological complexity and subtlety - deeply disturbing, beautifully acted, and the art department must have been in seventh heaven, recreating Hong Kong and Shanghai in the 1940's.

For those of you interested in good writing - reading it or doing some yourself - check out the State Library of Victoria's Summer Reading blogathon. A bunch of very good local writers, including Alice Pung, Cate Kennedy and Kate Holden, have been putting down some really useful and entertaining thoughts about the process of writing - how to find ideas, and how to turn them into stories that people will want to read. And there's room for you to comment on their thoughts, and join in the conversation about the pleasures and perils of trying to write.

Sydney Festival highlights

2008-01-16T09:04:07Z

Just back from a week in Sydney, where i caught up with several Sydney Festival events. A few highlights:

Seeing Brian Wilson perform with a Beach Boys cover band in the Domain on a drizzly but warm Saturday night. One giant, sweet singalong, bringing back memories of the first time i was introduced to the BB's by my step-brother on a long drive to the Flinders Ranges, circa 1975. Tempting to credit Good Vibrations with inspiring my subsequent addiction to choral singing. Thinking maybe we should introduce the Beach Boys repertoire into the traditional family Xmas carol singing session. If there was a God, i reckon she'd approve.

Seeing some of Australia's best singer-songwriters paying tribute to Kev Carmody in the Cannot Buy My Soul concert at the State Theatre - a man of righteous anger and soulful consolation, whose presence managed to dwarf all those stars, even as he sat quietly on the side of the stage in front of a mock camp-fire. Such an important story, told so graciously by so many talented and generous people.

Watching a bunch of young Scottish actors channelling a bunch of young Scottish soldiers in Black Watch, a curious theatrical production that was part opera, part ballet, part community theatre project, part history lesson. Not ground-breaking, but it has haunted me ever since, especially when i watch the evening news.

Watching indigenous actor/dancer Trevor Jamieson taking direction from a group of his 'aunties' as they taught the audience of Njapartji Njapartji how to sing 'heads, shoulders, knees and toes' in Pitjantjatjara language. A sprawling show, full of goodwill, and a virtuoso performance from Trevor J. See anything he's in, if you can.

Melbourne University Up Close

2008-01-03T14:06:08Z

In 2007 I hosted Melbourne University Up Close, a series of indepth interviews with Melbourne University academics, available as audio or downloadable as podcasts. Topics include medical tourism, post-natal depresison, mindful leadership, post-Soviet crime, and the geopolitics of global warming, and feature interviews with Artistic Director of the Melbourne Theatre Company Simon Phillips and internationally lauded French horn player Barry Tuckwell.