It’s that time of the year; calendars and diaries are on their last pages and new ones are being offered in some shops for those who like to track the passing of time with paper prompts on the wall. There’s a sense of Auld Lang Syne, of things ending, of the old year dying and
Continue reading ...Some time ago I wrote a post here that discussed developing a career as a young artist. I drew on a lot of sources, books, conversations, and thinking time in putting it together. I ran it by some young artists for a beta-test before publishing, and it’s since become quite a popular piece. One of
Continue reading ...The delightfully human snippets of people and events that are sprinkled throughout Maurice French and Judy Brewer’s “Bar and Boniface: a compendium of Toowoomba’s Pubs and Publicans 1844-2020” make for delightful reading on their own. I suspect anyone who starts reading will find a personal connection that they didn’t expect. I did.
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Chance is always powerful. Let your hook be always cast; in the pool where you least expect it, there will be a fish. (Ovid) There is no plan. (Daniel Pink: The Adventures of Johnny Bunko) Ounce by ounce, putting it togetherSmall amounts, adding up to make a work of artFirst of all you need a
Continue reading ...In 2005, the Toowoomba Literary Society asked me to give an address to their November meeting. Here it is. I called it “Giving Voice to the Darling Downs letters of Anna Kate Fowler Hume 1866-1871.” Drayton, 18th February 1870 My dearest Alice,Very many thanks for your nice long letter of November 19, which I received
Continue reading ...Possibly because I have neglected doing it for so long, and because I now have some time, today’s job was to tidy up the disgusting piles of old paper which are much-beloved of silverfish, I see. Among them were gnawed copies (what else has been living in these piles of paper, I wonder) of talks
Continue reading ...Some months ago, I watched David Berthold interview the great director Peter Sellars. Among other things, Sellars noted the possible upsides of the pandemic. “There’s an upside?” I wondered. But Sellars said something which I’ve kept front and centre in my thinking for the past almost 6 months: “The virus is our teacher.” Those five
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This is being written over 10 years after several theatre friends based in the UK and the USA Matt Boothman, Travis Bedard, ‘Old Bear’ and yours truly had been chatting for about a week on a site called Utterli – a kind of mini-podcasting application at the time. We’d turned our attention to the theatre’s use
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It’s been quite a while since I wrote this little piece for the QTC’s 1975 newsletter No 2. I found it today as I was researching materials for the upcoming 50th anniversary of the Company. Touring around the vast distances of this country is still a way of life for actors – some things never
Continue reading ...As much as I’m longing for home, I am always sad when I leave this town. 10 visits later, it feels like a second home to me, having spent some formative years here a long time ago. London is a place that truly one can never tire of. It’s so different to when I first
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