tag:www.sarahjansen.com,2008://1 2008-07-14T00:11:48Z Movable Type 3.34 tag:www.sarahjansen.com,2008://1.27 2008-07-13T23:00:00Z 2008-07-14T00:11:48Z

The recent calls for Australia to legalise polygamy to accommodate the country’s Muslim community have sparked some interesting discussions in the media. There have been a lot of statements about the issue of polygamy — a word that covers both...

The recent calls for Australia to legalise polygamy to accommodate the country’s Muslim community have sparked some interesting discussions in the media. There have been a lot of statements about the issue of polygamy — a word that covers both multiple wives and multiple husbands — and how it relates to the “Australian way of life”. One camp says it threatens or is counter to it and therefore should not even be considered. The other camp says that it is rare for Australian Muslims anyway and that there are polygamous marriages here already so making it legal wouldn’t threaten anything. No one is talking about what the Australian way of life actually is, and why it is feeling so threatened. From this framing of the debate, I’m forcefully reminded (again) that the Australian way of life is steeped in fear and loathing of all things non-Anglo-Celtic in origin. Modern Australian culture grew from and is based on British culture; there is no argument against that. There is also no need for this basis or beginning to be the end of its development. The Australian way of life has managed to expand over the years to include Mediterranean and Asian cultures (although the beginnings of these expansions were admittedly rocky) so it seems to me that the Australian way of life is intrinsically elastic. Notwithstanding, there are always people who just don’t want any change at all, and there are always those who think everyone should want exactly what they do. Looking at the downsides of polygamy laws in other countries has been the rebuttal of many pundits arguing against legalising polygamy here. For them, highlighting the degradations and injustices that wives in plural marriages suffer in countries where their situation is legal is the basis for an argument against creating laws here. Yet finding out about the flaws in other systems should be a starting point for formulating a fair, workable framework allowing Australians to choose with whom they spend their lives and allowing them to publicly declare their loving, lifelong commitments to each other and ensuring that all parties are protected and cared for. An Australian model of polygamy would need to give equal rights and responsibilities to men and women, including the ability to take additional spouses. It would need to have some requirement that all existing parties in a marriage need to consent to a new spouse. It would probably make life easier for everyone if all parties had their own prenuptial agreements, but that would need to be worked out individually. When you resolve the issues of women being forced to live in unpleasant situations or being financially powerless, the only objections left are the weak cries of “it’s just not right” and “it’s always been done this way here”. These cries are coming from Australians who can’t stomach the idea that there are actually people who want different things from them, and from those who just can’t handle any change at all. If these people scream loudly enough it will seem that they are the majority. How long they get to look like the voice of the mythical “ordinary Australian” depends on whether the rest of us are happy to be told how to live — and with whom. tag:www.sarahjansen.com,2008://1.26 2008-07-04T07:00:00Z 2008-07-04T07:44:27Z

In 1937 the Japanese invaded China and began to systematically exterminate the people they found as they moved across the country from Shanghai to Wuhan. They hadn’t actually declared war on China, claiming they were helping the country, which gave...

Shanghai to Wuhan. They hadn’t actually declared war on China, claiming they were helping the country, which gave them more freedom to play outside the rules for things like the treatment of POWs and the admittance of the press. This is the setting for Children of the Silk Road, a film centring around the true story of one journalist’s experience of the eastern beginning of World War II. Desperate to get into the city of Nanjing, Japan’s latest conquest, and report on what’s really happening, George Hogg poses as a Red Cross delivery driver and makes it into Japanese controlled territory. What follows is not what he expected, but that’s what happens when life takes you in hand and points you in a different direction.]]> Children of the Silk Road was clearly made by people who revered Hogg, and this is not a weakness of the movie at all. It is a brutal piece of work, as full of violent and disturbing images and ideas, as any truthful story of any war must be. The children of the title are war orphans, irreparably damaged boys from toddlers to teenagers. On the whole, the young actors portraying them hit an authentic note of scary blankness that shields savage fear and anger. Playing Oxford man Hogg, Jonathan Rhys-Meyers puts in a decidedly average performance with moments of unforgivable woodenness. The only times he shines is in moments of pure visceral fear, pain or shock. His co-stars, Radha Mitchell (Finding Neverland), Michelle Yeoh (Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon) and Chow Yun Fat (Anna and the King, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon) have a handful of wooden moments as well, but theirs are mostly due to having to say some truly appalling lines. And some of these are really terribly dodgy. It’s a trap of retellings of factual events: the urge to make sure the audience has all the information and doing it by giving the characters all sorts of unnatural exposition dialogue. Thankfully, Silk Road’s historical factoid chats are mostly limited to the first act. Zhao Xiaoding’s cinematography is one of the film’s best features. It brings out the harsh majesty of the mountainous regions of China and the Silk Road itself to the edge of the Gobi Desert in the country’s east. The story is a catalogue of the cruelty human beings constantly inflect on each other, offset by the noble heights the same species can reach to help others in need. It is the heights reached by one man who stepped up (after some prodding by a pretty girl and an enigmatic freedom fighter) that the film focuses on. It is a starkly individual story in a great big global context. The idea of war as a human activity is an even larger context that could have been explored more, and with great resonance for those of us who are citizens of countries recently and currently engaged in activities that have killed half a million civilians of the country we’re trying to help. It’s also quite interesting that this film, portraying the Chinese as a people threatened and abused by outside forces is released in the year of the Beijing Olympics. It’s a fairly safe bet that films based on the more recent tribulations of the Chinese people at the hands of internal forces will not be appearing anytime soon. That aside, Silk Road is neither particularly anti-Japanese nor pro-Chinese. It is pro-pacifism, but active pacifism; constructive resistance rather than conscientious objection. Blowing up records rather than people. Teaching children to grow vegetables rather than fire a gun. Leading them out of conscription’s and bombs’ way rather than cowering in a bunker. For all its flaws, it is watch-worthy if only to be reminded of the extents of depravity we as a race can sink to and the heights of honourableness to which we can rise. And the scenery is well worth seeing on the big screen. --------------------------------------------------------- Children of the Silk Road opened yesterday. Starring: Jonathan Rhys-Meyers Radha Mitchell Michelle Yeoh Chow Yun Fat Writer: James MacManus, Jane Hawksley Director: Roger Spottiswoode Executive Producer: Lillian Birnbaum Producers: Arthur Cohn, Wieland Schulz-Keil, Martin Hagemann, Jonathan Shteinman, Peter Loehr Line Producer: Eryong Wang Zhang Composer: David Hirschfelder Cinematographer: Zhao Xiaoding Production Designer: Steven Jones-Evans Editor: Geoff Lamb Art Director: Xinming Huang Costume Designers: Gao Wenyan, Kym Barrett]]> tag:www.sarahjansen.com,2008://1.25 2008-07-01T22:00:43Z 2008-07-01T23:03:35Z

Although he’s the current it-boy of the next generation on classical music’s world stage, Pekka Kuusisto doesn’t go in for all the rock star gimmicks his peers seem to resort to. There’s no designer punk hair style, fluorescent instruments, or psychedelic suits; just plain matte black two piece suits for Kuusisto, pianist Simon Crawford-Phillips, and the page turner du jour; standard haircuts and clean shaven chins; standard wood violin and glossy black grand piano.

He’s a classical musician with a talent for improvising. A concert violinist who decides his playlist moments before taking the stage. A baby-faced professional. An outgoing Finn. Although he’s the current it-boy of the next generation on classical music’s world stage, Pekka Kuusisto doesn’t go in for all the rock star gimmicks his peers seem to resort to. There’s no designer punk hair style, fluorescent instruments, or psychedelic suits; just plain matte black two piece suits for Kuusisto, pianist Simon Crawford-Phillips, and the page turner du jour; standard haircuts and clean shaven chins; standard wood violin and glossy black grand piano. Musica Viva's website.]]> tag:www.sarahjansen.com,2008://1.24 2008-05-04T04:39:02Z 2008-05-04T04:45:48Z

By all accounts, the Australian film industry is under the pump. Apparently, independent Aussie films are lucky to pull $3 million at the box office and usually cost between $3 million and $10 million to make. Not difficult sums to...

By all accounts, the Australian film industry is under the pump. Apparently, independent Aussie films are lucky to pull $3 million at the box office and usually cost between $3 million and $10 million to make. Not difficult sums to work out. Those films that do manage to get close to that $3 million mark are the relatively big ones like Romulus My Father that have actual marketing and publicity budgets. This situation leaves the others to survive on word-of mouth. Only they don’t usually stay at cinemas long enough for word to get passed through enough mouths that are attached to bums which will end up on cinema seats. People in all sections of the industry seem to agree that the business model is faulty. Although it isn’t as faulty as the one Australian independent theatre makers are currently negotiating. Independent films at least have budgets that include paying cast and crew, whereas it’s pretty rare to find an independent theatre production that manages to pay for its public liability insurance and time in the performance space, let alone its director, performers, and the myriad of highly skilled behind the scenes players it takes to put even the most humble of shows on the boards. The comparison may not be that of apples with apples, but the two are related artforms: both tell stories through image and sound; both need collaboration between several people; and actors, directors and writers often cross over and back from one form to the other. Film and theatre are two of the more expensive artforms because they take a lot of equipment and a group of people to create a piece. To practice as an actor or director or lighting designer, you need a specific project to work on. It’s not like being a writer, musician, dancer, painter, sculptor—those forms of expression you can practice on your own with a pen and paper, instrument, the right shoes, canvas and paint, clay or wood or a piece of rock and a chisel. If you’re moved to express what’s in you through one of those mediums, you can do so by yourself, in your own time, outlaying no more than a couple of hundred dollars, and without needing to relay on convincing other people they want to consume what you produce. Sure, you don’t make any money off it unless you convince someone that they want to swap it for your art, but you can still do it. And doing it, in the end, is what allows an artist in any medium to hone their craft, get better at expressing themselves in a way that resonates with others. Many of the old school artists who are still revered were either supported by aristocratic families (Lord Byron, Lord Tennyson) or had wealthy, often royal, patrons to support them (Shakespeare, de Vinci). Not having to hold down day jobs to pay the rent freed their schedules up for study and practice in their chosen fields—the stuff of the most luxurious dreams of most contemporary Australian artists. But given the relative lack of old money in Australia, wealthy patrons interested in plonking money down on theatre and film productions are a little hard to come by. There really is nowhere for theatre and filmmakers to turn but government funding schemes. There are heaps of public funding bodies—federal arts body Ozco, all the state and territory based agencies—but arts makers shouldn’t have to be supported so heavily by taxpayers their entire careers. Film and theatre makers need somewhere to mature to once their craft has been nurtured through its infancy to take its first steps. Right now they are left to stumble through the rest of their careers with no directions, no signposts, no map to point them towards sustainability. tag:www.sarahjansen.com,2008://1.23 2008-03-25T00:30:00Z 2008-04-05T08:48:26Z

With the resignation of their lawyer, it is now up to the Bali Bombers themselves to appeal their death sentences. They’re not going to of course, but that seems to be something that the Australia media and the families of the bombers’ victims are determined to ignore.

With the resignation of their lawyer, it is now up to the Bali Bombers themselves to appeal their death sentences. They’re not going to of course, but that seems to be something that the Australian media and the families of the bombers’ victims are determined to ignore. The bombers would rather die soon than rot in jail for the rest of their lives. Unlike western people who prefer to be alive no matter in what condition. Even though the bombers would likely be grateful for the favour, at least one grieving Australian father seems pretty keen to do some killing himself if the Indonesian authorities can’t decide how and when to dispatch his son’s murderers to the afterlife. This morning Nine’s Today program showed the middle-aged Anglo-Australian calmly yet fervently expressing his desire to become more like the men who killed his child by taking a rifle to them himself. Apparently revenge is its own reward and grief doesn’t hurt anyone who has joined the ranks of the vengeful and violent. Especially when you deliver those who you blame for your pain from a life of pain and degradation. tag:www.sarahjansen.com,2008://1.22 2008-02-26T11:53:44Z 2008-02-26T11:52:50Z

Internationally acclaimed Australian filmmaker Gillian Armstrong is on her way home....

Gillian Armstrong is on her way home.]]> Dendy cinemas in March to talk about her new film Death Defying Acts to fans, cinephiles, and people who win tickets on the radio. The film’s cast fairly sparkles, and not just with Oscar gold: Guy Pearce and Catherine Zeta Jones head the line-up, supported by Timothy Spall of several Harry Potters and Atonement’s Saoirse Ronan. With all those big names currently hovering around her own, Armstrong’s speaking tour is pretty much guaranteed to pull quite the crowd, so get in early if you want to go. There will be refreshments, then the film screening, then a Q&A session with the woman behind the film. Armstrong’s past features include My Brilliant Career, Starstruck, The Last Days of Chez Nous, Little Women, Oscar and Lucinda, Charlotte Grey and Unfolding Florence: The Many Lives of Florence Broadhurst. Portside Event Details 6:45 pm, Tuesday 4 March 2008 Dendy Cinemas Portside, Hamilton $17 / $14 (including refreshments on arrival from 6pm) Call Dendy to book: 07 3137 6000 Click here to watch the Death Defying Acts trailer.]]> tag:www.sarahjansen.com,2008://1.21 2008-02-21T05:00:00Z 2008-02-21T05:04:59Z

In the end, I had just over 7,500 words down about my heroine. Still 2,500 short of my personal target and nowhere in the neighbourhood of NaNoWriMo’s 50,000 words in 30 days target....

In the end, I had just over 7,500 words down about my heroine. Still 2,500 short of my personal target and nowhere in the neighbourhood of NaNoWriMo’s 50,000 words in 30 days target. In the end, I had just over 7,500 words down about my heroine. Still 2,500 short of my personal target and nowhere in the neighbourhood of NaNoWriMo’s 50,000 words in 30 days target. While disappointed I didn’t make it to five figures, I do think I did some good work and got to know my characters and the complexities of my narrative and the challenges of long-form story telling. Thanks to everyone who followed my progress, even though it’s been so long between updates. tag:www.sarahjansen.com,2007://1.19 2007-11-23T01:25:00Z 2008-02-21T05:06:28Z

Dedicated to gem for reminding me to write it! I wasn’t counting on crazy work season in the middle of NaNoWriMo and it’s put my whole writing schedule out of whack. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it....

Dedicated to gem for reminding me to write it! I wasn’t counting on crazy work season in the middle of NaNoWriMo and it’s put my whole writing schedule out of whack. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.]]> Dedicated to gem for reminding me to write it! I wasn’t counting on crazy work season in the middle of NaNoWriMo and it’s put my whole writing schedule out of whack. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. To take my almost-full-time workload into account, just after I published the last article, I set myself a new and still fairly stiff goal: 10,000 words by the end of the month. Given that the end of the month is next Friday, I have to write a couple of thousand words this weekend and then about 500 words a day for the rest of next week. Wish me luck. Numbers aside, I’m still enjoying the writing and getting back to just creating rather than planning and calculating and sticking to the plans and calculations. My eyes are still in a glasses-only state (except for the odd sporting related contact lens stint) because not only do I stare at words on screens for about three quarters of my waking hours, I’m also madly researching and reading novels from the era my book is set in for the other quarter. Stay tuned for the final wrap up. ----- You can help NaNoWriMo to continue helping people find their novel voices by donating anything from $10 upwards on their donations page.]]> tag:www.sarahjansen.com,2007://1.17 2007-11-08T01:00:00Z 2008-02-21T05:14:23Z

The first week of NaNoWriMo has fled, and as expected, I am well behind where I should be at this point.

NaNoWriMo has fled, and as expected, I am well behind where I should be at this point. Nonetheless, it has been and continues to be a really positive experience, and even though I’m behind word-count-wise, I’m enjoying letting go of the responsibility for quality words and just getting some words — any words — up on the screen.]]> NaNoWriMo has fled, and as expected, I am well behind where I should be at this point. Nonetheless, it has been and continues to be a really positive experience, and even though I’m behind word-count-wise, I’m enjoying letting go of the responsibility for quality words and just getting some words — any words — up on the screen. It’s also a fabulous opportunity to get to know my existing characters better, and to create new characters at record speed. So far, I quite like them and they seem to be poised to fulfil their respective purposes in life effectively. Meanwhile, I continue to write all day at work, write all evening on my novel, and write afterwards in my journal. My eyes are getting a bit squirmy under their contact lenses with all this short-distance focusing and staring at screens, so I’ve broken out the specs for a few days and plan to get out into the great outdoors over the weekend to make sure I don’t do any damage. To check out my NaNoWriMo profile and check up on my day-to-day progress, click here.]]> tag:www.sarahjansen.com,2007://1.16 2007-11-01T01:40:00Z 2007-11-01T01:34:14Z

It starts today: National Novel Writing Month. Known affectionately as NaNoWriMo, it’s a month long event for aspiring novellists based on the writer’s-block-busting principle that quantity is king. The aim for participants is to pump out 50,000 words in the...

National Novel Writing Month. Known affectionately as NaNoWriMo, it’s a month long event for aspiring novellists based on the writer’s-block-busting principle that quantity is king. The aim for participants is to pump out 50,000 words in the the 30 days of November, starting at 12:01am on 1 November and finishing at midnight on 20 November. It was founded in 1999 by frustrated US writer Chris Baty as a cure for his and his writer friends’ critical approach to their writing so that they could just finish something. And apparently it works, because the NaNoWriMo website membership has swelled to 90,000 aspiring authors gunning for the biggest word count this year. Plus, there are success stories galore, with writers having bashed out first drafts of novels and subsequently tweaked and refined it into something that publishers are interested in. I’m attempting the monster task of writing almost 1700 words per day for the first time this month. Considering I also write for a living, write the odd piece for this column, as well as everyday correspondence and my journal, that’s a whole lot of writing going on! I have a plot outline ready, have done some research and know my cast of characters fairly well. I think I’m about as prepared as possible. Let's into the breach — typing starts tonight! ----- You can help NaNoWriMo to continue helping people find their novel voices by donating anything from $10 upwards on their donations page.]]> tag:www.sarahjansen.com,2007://1.15 2007-10-29T21:00:00Z 2007-10-29T21:22:58Z

November is the month Arts Queensland wants to hear from you about the future of the department’s support for our state’s design community. Starting on Friday, Arts Minister Rod Welford be consulting Queenslanders for a whole month on what we...

Arts Queensland wants to hear from you about the future of the department’s support for our state’s design community. Starting on Friday, Arts Minister Rod Welford be consulting Queenslanders for a whole month on what we think about building a Queensland Centre for Design. It will be interesting to see what this consultation entails. The proposed centre will be charged with: strengthening Queensland's design industry and raising the profile of state designers by creating an internationally recognised hub for the varied design disciplines. Whoa. I kind of feel sorry for it already. That’s a lot to ask of one centre servicing a state with a population of around 4 million and a pretty terrible recent history of supporting those with a creative bent. Whatever the outcome, it will be great to see some government support of our design community, from the interior and furniture designers, to creators of gorgeous vases and bowls, not to mention those who specialise in lamps and light fittings, and even ceiling fans. Seriously.]]> tag:www.sarahjansen.com,2007://1.14 2007-10-25T03:00:00Z 2007-10-25T02:23:49Z

Following on from a hit season in Sydney and sold out sessions at the Sydney and Melbourne International Film Festivals, Four is geared to delight Brisbane audiences with what critics have praised in such glowing terms as ‘vibrant and ambitious’, ‘sumptuous and very poignant’, ‘exquisite’, and ‘seamless’.

Four opens in Brisbane at Dendy George Street tonight. ‘The film is a journey for the audience, a journey through the four corners of the world, that is at once familiar and unknown,’ said Slade. ‘It demonstrates that the timeless rhythms and harmonies of music, and the rhythms and harmonies of life and nature, are one and the same thing.’ Following on from a hit season in Sydney and sold out sessions at the Sydney and Melbourne International Film Festivals, Four is geared to delight Brisbane audiences with what critics have praised in such glowing terms as ‘vibrant and ambitious’, ‘sumptuous and very poignant’, ‘exquisite’, and ‘seamless’. The film follows four world-class violinists from far-flung locations and backgrounds, one for each season and with Vivaldi’s iconic baroque violin concerto series, The Four Seasons, as an auditory backdrop.]]> Four opens in Brisbane at Dendy George Street tonight. ‘The film is a journey for the audience, a journey through the four corners of the world, that is at once familiar and unknown,’ said Slade. ‘It demonstrates that the timeless rhythms and harmonies of music, and the rhythms and harmonies of life and nature, are one and the same thing.’ Following on from a hit season in Sydney and sold out sessions at the Sydney and Melbourne International Film Festivals, Four is geared to delight Brisbane audiences with what critics have praised in such glowing terms as ‘vibrant and ambitious’, ‘sumptuous and very poignant’, ‘exquisite’, and ‘seamless’. The film follows four world-class violinists from far-flung locations and backgrounds, one for each season and with Vivaldi’s iconic baroque violin concerto series, The Four Seasons, as an auditory backdrop. The first quarter of the film, Spring/Tokyo, international violinist Sayaka Shoji leads young and brilliant students through Vivaldi’s Spring Concerto, revealing the timeless lessons in the music, and in their own culture. In Summer/Australia, Niki Vasilakis travels from her home in Adelaide 3,000 km north to Waiben on Thursday Island to perform a concert with friends who come from all over our wide brown land. Violinist Cho-Liang ‘Jimmy’ Lin is the ring leader of a cultural melting pot of musicians in Autumn/New York who reunite at the Barney Greengrass delicatessen on the city’s Upper West Side. And finally, deep in Finnish Lapland, 200 km north of the Arctic Circle, the enigmatic violinist Pekka Kuusisto and his musician friends travel through the ice and dark to perform the Winter Concerto in a neighbourhood concert. With an AFI Award nomination for best documentary (to be awarded in December this year), Slade and the team are already immensely proud of this artwork. ‘In a sense,’ Slade said, ‘Four is as simple and elegant as its original idea—to celebrate the four seasons in four different nations through the eyes and sounds of a brilliant violinist of that country.’ ‘It grew organically, and took on, purely because of what the people we met felt—a strong sense of reminding us how beautiful our planet is, and our seasons, our homelands, and that we should be careful to take care of them.’ --- For more information on Four and other Dendy films, go to www.dendy.com.au]]> tag:www.sarahjansen.com,2007://1.13 2007-07-19T04:55:13Z 2007-07-19T05:03:51Z

Tonight I am off to see Micro-Trip — seven plays in 70 minutes!

Micro-Trip — seven brand new plays in 70 minutes! All the plays are new work by emerging playwrights, some of whom are performing as well. They are: Kale and Verona: a story of flatmates who may also be lovers Grace: a black comedy about partying and loss It’s Hot: an award winning screenplay about two con men adapted for the stage Ten Commandments: a satire about Catholic confession Moving Fast: something about politics and world domination In the Park: a 30-something dating story A Trip Down Brunswick: all about our very own Valley It should be interesting — the producers, performers and special guest director Elise Greig are all long-established features of Brisbane theatre, talented artist Kitty Taube has designed the set, and composer Brian Cavanagh has lent his skills to the sound design. A review will be here in a couple of days. In the meantime, see what the Courier-Mail and Australian newspapers have to say about it. Micro-Trip is Part of Metro Arts' Independents 2007. Credits: Producers: Jo Thomas and Sean Dennehy Performers: Nick Backstrom, Sean Dennehy, Christina Koch, Nigel Poulton and Jo Thomas Playwrights: Nick Backstrom, Shaun Charles, Sean Dennehy, Dan Evans, Adam Gelin, Brendan Glanville and Sally Rodda Special Guest Director: Elise Greig Set design: Kitty Taube Sound design: Brian Cavanagh]]> tag:www.sarahjansen.com,2007://1.12 2007-07-12T09:30:30Z 2008-07-08T06:14:23Z

Tonight, QPAC's Cremorne Theatre will host the opening night of the Queensland Theatre Company's production of The Glass Menagerie, one of American playwright Tennessee Williams' best known works.

Tonight, QPAC's Cremorne Theatre will host the opening night of the Queensland Theatre Company's production of The Glass Menagerie, one of American playwright Tennessee Williams' best known works. Now we all know that a show being on at the illustrious Queensland Performing Arts Complex definitely does not guarantee us audience members a good night out. The last two shows I saw there were utter, utter garbage. One was an adaptation of a classic 1980s film and one was a certain recent production of a certain world-famous opera that painfully extracted three and a half hours out of my life. That said, and deep breaths taken, I think we're pretty safe with this one. Firstly, Tennessee Williams wrote it. Secondly, the meddlesome matriarch Amanda Wingfield is being played by veteran of the screen and stage Carol Burns. Thirdly Michael Futcher, a long time fixture on the Brisbane theatre scene as director and playwright, is directing. Add to these capable hands assistant director Marcel Dorney and actors Conrad Coleby (best known to the masses as a cute ambo on All Saints) and Helen Cassidy, and we can all rest easy in our comfy QPAC seats. The Glass Menagerie was written in a time of change in America. World War II was over and there was a new mood in society that was, as always reflected in the theatre. According to a contemporary theatre reviewer, "the mainstream of Broadway was essentially a realistic tradition." Then along came Williams. Many theatre buffs were agreeably surprised by this more dreamlike "memory play", including Anton Chekov who “...was young and not prepared for a stage language in an American play of such exquisite lyricism.” The word "lyrical" comes up a lot when people discuss Tennessee Williams. As well as the beautiful words, Menagerie, like many of Williams' plays, includes copious stage and lighting directions. It is said that he included these because he was concerned that there wasn't enough hard plot to communicate his intentions to the director. It is a semi-autobiographical story of an overbearing mother, a shy and disturbed daughter who spends her days playing with the glass animals of the title, and a dreaming son who wants to be left alone to write poetry, and if he can't do that, wants to run away to sea. Williams' own sister suffered from chronic mental illness and he actually did run away with the navy. The parallels end there, however, hence the semi-autobiographicality. For example, the Wingfields of the play are in financial hardship whereas the Williamses never were. The Glass Menagerie is showing from tonight until 11 August 2007. Tickets are $26 to $56 Performances are captioned at 7.30pm Friday 27 July and 2.00pm Saturday 28 July 2007. For further information, see QTC's website. --------- What do you think of this article? Love it? Hate it? Spotted a spelling mistake? Comment! What do you think that button's there for?]]> tag:www.sarahjansen.com,2007://1.11 2007-06-26T01:00:00Z 2007-06-26T00:32:57Z

One of the most intriguing and impressive elements of the fest was the music. The musicians were an integral part of many shows, contributing to the action, both following and leading the other performers. One such muso is Dan Walmsley...

the fest was the music. The musicians were an integral part of many shows, contributing to the action, both following and leading the other performers. One such muso is Dan Walmsley who plays with Melbourne impro group The Crew. Trained as a classical pianist, Dan quit when he was 15 once he had reached grade 8 because the options for continuing down that path were decidedly narrow. “I didn’t want to go to uni and do music and I didn’t want to be a music teacher,” he said. Meanwhile, he was busying himself writing and acting in sketch comedy shows at Monash University before getting into stand-up comedy. Dan joined the Crew in around about 2002 as a performer of the non-musical variety. “I did say to them ‘oh, you know, I can do piano too’,” he recalled of his early days. “But they didn’t really believe me.” That was until he jumped on a keyboard at the Kitten Club one night and bashed out a few tunes. The penny dropped and he became the troupe’s regular tunester. These days, he provides the Crew with a soundtrack most weekends and meets up with members at random to do overseas shows. “All the members of the Crew have stand-up careers as well, so sometimes a few of us will all happen to be at, say, the Edinburgh Fringe at the same time and we’ll throw together a late night show for the week.” Oh the life of the international artist! But artist’s life is not all fun and games as another of the festival musos, Brisbane pianist Tim Wotherspoon, attested. For the talented musician studying jazz piano at QUT, the last minute gig playing this weekend was a godsend. Tim wrote impressive on-the-spot scores for a few of the shows, including an interlude of the theme from Doctor Who, which drew hoots and cheers of excitement from the audience. “That theme used to freak me out as a kid,” he said when asked how he knew it off the top of his head. “You probably noticed that I didn’t really get it at first, I kind of got it about half way through and that’s when everyone cheered.” At the moment he’s working on an as yet untitled EP, which he says is jazz–pop–funk fusion. The album, Argo, is due out sometime next year. Local muso Matt Hadgraft, who plays with festival sponsors Impro Mafia, got a great response from his instant rendering of Mozart to give one of the improvisors a clue in the game they were playing. Unfortunately it didn’t help. While Matt, an aspiring actor, plays impro regularly, he has supporting gigs teaching and writing radio copy. He’s also a talented singer, having sung with the Brisbane Chamber Choir, Choir, Canticum, St Stephen's Cathedral Choir and the ACU Choir. --- Stay tuned for more post-fest articles, interviews and deconstructions over the next few days. ]]>