The jacaranda trees are starting to go off after a month or more of blooming their lovely hearts out. That means end of year uni exams are over, but it also signals the start of audition season here in Queensland, and indeed, all over the country. As I write, hopefuls are being coached and lining
Continue reading ...Image via Wikipedia I couldn’t resist posting this, if only to prove how a great play can get sandbagged by good intentions. Here’s Harold Pinter‘s The Dumb Waiter, a brilliant, dark little piece for two actors. It’s been animated and condensed and posted up to YouTube. The point, I hear you ask? Well maybe it
Continue reading ...It’s been a busy busy week for this groundling. And it’s mostly been spent travelling to and from Brisbane for performances, showcases, launches, and other industry-related matters. It’s typical of the frantic pace that accompanies the last couple of months of each year, as we gather to mull over what’s been, plan what’s to come,
Continue reading ...I trawled back through the posts to one I wrote at this time last year. This is what I said then: … Another class of actors enters the industry at their showcase performance and end of three years of intensive training. Their lovely talent shone through despite the grunginess of the venue. As always, I
Continue reading ...And so to Brisbane where one of the country’s newest experiments in outdoor Shakespeare had its second, annual 2-day event. Shakespeare on Oxford in Bulimba Brisbane culminated in a one-off performance on Sunday afternoon of that most satisfying of Shakespeare’s plays, Much Ado About Nothing. The team of mostly professional actors worked on the project
Continue reading ...He had to wait a long time to win an Academy Award (The Color of Money 1986) a source apparently of much good-humoured banter over the years between Paul Newman and his Oscar-winner wife Joanne Woodward. But oh how he deserved one for sheer masculine presence on the screen. Not only was he ridiculously good-looking
Continue reading ...And so to Brisbane again the other night for a playreading of the three writers in this year’s YPP (Young Playwrights’ Program) run by Queensland Theatre Company. The Bille Brown studio on the edges of Brisbane’s South Bank Cultural Precinct was heaving with young’uns plus a few oldies who’d come to cheer on the writers
Continue reading ...Spent an afternoon on Brisbane’s delightful South Bank cultural precinct yesterday. It’s site until today of the annual Brisbane Writers’ Festival. The joint was jumping. Author talks, panels, coffee drinking, book browsing (and buying) and readings have been the stuff of the past 4 days. And if you think that’s boring, think again. And it
Continue reading ...This post gets a lot of hits, and I puzzled over it for awhile. I then realised it’s because of the Shakespearean quote which is the title. So for all of you who have come here expecting to find more about the muse of fire, here’s some info to get you surfing on. The quote
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Comment as a sigh: over to you
Today’s 31 Day Comment Challenge asks that we turn the blog over to our readers. OK. I’m up for it. Here’s the task. I’m a voice coach a lot of the time. When I’m working with a class of actors, I’ll often ask them to ‘drop in a breath and to sigh out how they
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