It’s a cold, windy night in Hickson Street as the capacity audience spills out from a performance of A Streetcar Named Desire directed by Liv Ullman for Sydney Theatre Company. My friend and I want to find a café and a drink, somewhere to escape the wind, and to debrief the past 3 + hours.
Continue reading ...There have been some great apps come my way this year. One of the best has been the aptly-named del.icio.us (I still have to think about the spelling when I type). I have no idea how I came across this marvellous, democratic, imaginative tag system back in January, but the first bookmark ever was ‘How
Continue reading ...Occasionally a gem sparkles amongst the tailings of most journalism on the theatre. Such a piece was Kathleen Noonan’s All the World’s a Stage (Brisbane’s The Courier Mail 24-25 November). It was a very personal take on the power of theatre to move, shake, or soothe like ‘a warm cup of cocoa’ if that’s your
Continue reading ...I was asked by some students recently how, or whether I exercised my own imagination. We had been talking about the ‘most important muscle’, and about keeping it limber. This conversation must have stuck with at least one of the class members, who emailed me a week back wanting to know how to keep working
Continue reading ...I’m just back from seeing Elizabeth: the Golden Age. It’s all about Cate Blanchett and her fine, very fine acting. It’s a gorgeous looking movie by any account … we can only guess at the number of zeroes in the production design budget. As far as the performances are concerned, the movie is not a
Continue reading ...I’ve been re-reading Robert Hornby’s book ‘The End of Acting: a radical view’ I first met this nicely provocative work in 1993 during grad school at UH. Hornby’s spray on the US actor-training establishment, especially of the Method variety, resonated for me. I liked his writing style and opinion, born out of long experience as
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