Melbourne’s trams are brightening up your everyday commute, with the first art tram hitting the tracks as part of the Melbourne Festival and Art Trams initiative. Eight trams are hitting the city’s tracks until April next year offering Melbournians a creative contemporary art experience. The first Melbourne Art Tram for 2017 has hit the tracks…
Liveworks, the celebration of performance and cross-disciplinary art, is returning to Carriageworks this month with its most exciting program yet. From 19 to 29 October 2017, a mix of leading Australian and international artists will showcase their works exploring gender, the environment, queer and trans identities, sexuality, race, politics, Indigenous memory and land rights, and the…
It’s astonishing to think about how much music has filled our ears and hearts over the years; and I don’t just mean the years we’ve been alive. I’m talking from day one, when Earth was created. Think about the genre discoveries, the melodies, the development of instruments, idols both past and present. Imagine, what it…
Oftentimes, a contemporary theatrical work can leave a strong impression on an audience, but none more so than the modern-day adaptation of Federico García Lorca‘s YERMA. Directed and re-written by Australian Simon Stone is a radical production of this intense Lorca masterpiece. Starring Billie Piper in her Olivier Award-winning role, and joined by acclaimed Australian actor Brendan Cowell sees the…
Dare to enter the dark and magical world of a 19th century circus as The Carnival of Lost Souls tours through Melbourne, Adelaide, Sydney and Brisbane this October/November, leaving a dizzying path of mystery and mayhem for audiences along the way. Nestled somewhere between the madness of a Tim Burton psychosis and the darkness of…
Famed American artist Georgia O’Keeffe is the focus of Alicia Inez Guzmán’s latest work, Georgia O’Keeffe At Home. Exploring the relationship between O’Keeffe’s location and the work she produced, Guzmán takes readers from Texas, to New York, to New Mexico, in a book that is part beautiful coffee table literature, part in depth art historical…
“Culture does not make people. People make culture. If it is true that the full humanity of women is not our culture, then we can and must make it our culture.” Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Ms Adichie is just one fierce wordsmith quoted during tonight’s performance by Hot Brown Honey‘s Busty Beatz; setting the tone and ramming it home…
A book like Your Brain Knows More Than You Think is one that challenges you to leave your assumptions at the door. Originally written by psychologist and neurobiologist Niels Birbaumer, and translated into English by David Shaw, it provides some compelling arguments and case studies from the research and practice undertaken by Birbaumer, and others in this…
Author Emma Viskic is an award-winning Australian crime writer, her critically acclaimed debut novel Resurrection Bay won the 2016 Ned Kelly Award for Best First Fiction, as well as many other awards. Not only that but she’s also a classically trained clarinettist, who’s worked with Jose Carreras and Dame Kiri Te Kenawa. Her new novel, And…
When strangers meet, they unconsciously do a “dance”, a subliminal meeting of minds using body language. Darlane Litaay and Tian Rotteveel explore this idea in their dance piece Specific Places Need Specific Dances, which this week is part of the OzAsia Festival in Adelaide. Indonesian native Litaay met Dutch / German Rottveel in Papua New…
A show title can make or break the moment a viewer picks your show in an epic Fringe line-up. Well, Appropriate Kissing for All Occasions certainly caught my attention and it was everything I wanted and expected. The 60-minute work is broken up into two 30-minute short pieces, with the second titled to heat you up and cool you…
The Rob Guest Endowment held auditions in Melbourne and Sydney earlier this month, in search of this year’s winner of the Rob Guest Endowment Award. Now in its 9th year, the award is given annually to an emerging musical theatre performer selected by a panel of industry experts. The panel seek out Australia’s most talented young…
Making its world premiere at Brisbane Festival, FUN HOUSE is a vibrant mix of circus acts, dance, and vaudevillian comedy, helmed by a unicorn and a bunny – who else?! It’s been (perhaps a little awkwardly) marketed as an all ages show, presented as a family friendly sister act to Strut & Fret’s other Brisbane…
Touching down on the Alice Springs tarmac I know I’m in a special part of Australia. A town of over 25,000 people, the second largest town after Darwin in the Northern Territory and one largely influenced by its Indigenous culture. Straddling the usually dry Todd River and the Eastern and Western MacDonell Ranges, the town…
Make Nice launched in 2016 and was born from the desire to push back against the “boys club” which exists within creative industries (most industries, let’s be honest) and show creative women they don’t have to be competitive to get ahead. Women can “make nice” and still be successful. In fact, when creative women join…
Michael Ralph is one of Australia’s leading choreographers, always striving to create work that is ground-breaking, fresh and relevant. As part of this year’s Melbourne Fringe Festival, Ralph has gifted audiences with a 60-minute dance piece that explores every facet of an artist’s psyche. It is appropriately titled SELF, and stars none other than musical theatre heart-throb,…
If you enjoyed Jersey Boys then you’re sure to love the latest jukebox musical to hit Aussie shores: Beautiful – The Carole King Musical. Starring the sublime Esther Hannaford and featuring an incredible collection of hits, Beautiful is slickly produced and expertly performed. It’s a guaranteed good night out for all. Billed as a musical…
Learn how to play the fascinating, awe-inspiring taiko! Play Taiko will leave you with a unique group experience that will energise, stimulate and excite. Taiko playing requires great energy and teamwork, as well as total integration of one’s mind, body and spirit; the rhythm of the taiko pulsates through your body – its expression is…
Until the Lions is derived from a tale in the Mahabharata about Amba and Shikhandi. Director Akram Khan has a long history with the Mahabhrata, having performed in Peter Brook’s version in 2005. In this dance piece, Khan brings to life the story of Amba, who on her wedding day is abducted by Bheeshma as…
Sondheim, as always, has to make things difficult. If it’s not in his chords then it’s the subject matter of his musicals. However Assassins, one of the more rarely performed of the Sondheim repertoire, finds itself locked and loaded in good hands with Dean Bryant at this latest production at the Hayes. Superb casting all…
I Just Came To Say Goodbye is more than a farewell to bad relationships, bad childhoods and bad dreams. It’s a stupendous sound off of every emotion you’ve spent, every moment you’d traded off and every secret you’ve denied. Worth the lining up, and the extra red from the La Boite’s house bar, the cacophony…
Edith Podesta truly writes from all the world’s perspective. The parts of the world that are crying, the parts that are growing, even the parts that are howling. A modest plot that even we feel potentially gives too much away in the blurb seems innocent, heartwarming perhaps. Very David Williamson in design, but not even…
How can you resist a show named Terror? But don’t be fooled, it’s a quiet terror. It creeps up on you long before you realise its there. But once you see it, what’s most terrifying is asking yourself would you do it? At first, it seemed risky to have a court drama. Many a time…
Ahead of Make Nice: Un-conference for Creative Women, which kicks off tomorrow in Sydney, we caught up with the event’s Keynote speaker Ann Friedman, an acclaimed freelance journalist who writes about (among other things) gender, media, technology, and culture. How did you start out as a writer? What were some of your first jobs? I am one…
The most irreverent and eclectic music and art festival, MONA FOMA (MOFO), is coming back to Australia in January 2018. The festival will return to Hobart, as well as launching an exciting Mini Mofo addition in Launceston. The full festival line up is not expected to be released until Friday 13 October 2017, but organisers…
A few days ago our beloved Amy Winehouse would have turned 34 years old. It’s still so hard to think that this world no longer has such a soul gifting us with her talents. All is not lost however, as an exhibition in her honour is so close to opening thanks to the Jewish Museum…
Melbourne artist Elyse De Valle has been announced as this year’s winner of the Australia Glenfiddich Artists in Residence Program. Now in its fifteenth year, the program offers Australian and New Zealand artists the chance to win a prize worth over 20K, including a three-month residence to live and work at The Glenfiddich Distillery near…
Brisbane, you are killing me this time of year! Last week I had BIGSOUND and interviews with artists, I moderated two panels for Brisbane Writers Festival, I launched Access Arts brilliant festival Undercover Artist Festival and then the Brisbane Festival kicked off as well! My pick of the Brisbane festival so far is Laser Beak Man presented…
The Never Ending Story did end. No actual “Wolf” on Wall Street. Not even a small metallic-looking coat in Full Metal Jacket. Why don’t we keep our promises? This as well as other important questions will not be answered – nor asked – in the premier of Willem Richards’s new off-the- wall one man sketch…
In a Sydney-exclusive, Melbourne Theatre Company’s critically acclaimed musical What Rhymes with Cars and Girls will be presented by Riverside Theatres from 11th to 14th October as part of its national tour. An intimate musical gem, What Rhymes with Cars and Girls weaves together the poetic songs from the ARIA award-winning debut solo album by…
