I can thoroughly recommend Alan Bennett at the BBC which is currently available from Audible.com or the iTunes store. I’ve just finished listening to the inimitable Mr Bennett reading what is a miscellany of his work from the past 30 or so years, and all via the BBC. By the way I very much also
Continue reading ...Between Christmas and New Year’s there’s always a sense of the big roundup. For years, network television grabs the ‘biggest’ ‘worst’ ‘best’ etc. of everything and rehashes a package to remind us of the biggest, worst and best of the past year. These programs always remind me of the leftover Christmas ham that is also
Continue reading ...And so off I went today to see Australia Baz Luhrmann’s epic, epic movie about … OK, no spoilers here, but can I just say spearing, crocodiles, the bombing of Darwin, cattle stampedes, Hugh Jackman, Nicole Kidman, romance … the attraction of opposites, dyed-in-the-wool villains, redemption, the stolen generations, a wonderful young actor Brandon Walters,
Continue reading ...The Groundling has been engaged on another blog with a 31-Day Challenge thingy. Groundlings should know better. Anyhow this has all been about being a better commenter on other people’s as well as your own blog. It’s been distracting me from the business of this blog for a lot of the time, but there have
Continue reading ...photo credit: Thomas Hawk I got to thinking during the drive home last night that there’s an awful lot of drama about three women, often sisters … not sure why three rather than two or four. Now these couplings are inevitably memorable. A few that spring to mind include the (in)famous sisters Lear (Regan, Goneril
Continue reading ...I often use improvisation with my students in acting classes. It is never entirely ‘free-form’ as is often thought. Improvisation bears fruit when allowed free rein within a ‘cage’ of understood rules … what we tend to call in acting the given circumstances or GCs … the who, where, when and what of a scenario.
Continue reading ...Those of us who spend our lives working in theatre are used to the disappointments that come all too often it can seem. One production somewhere is OK, or doesn’t work … quite, despite the best efforts of all concerned; we forgive and perhaps forget. Another somewhere else can be plain awful … and at
Continue reading ...There’s a widespread view that not much happens during the summer … culturally speaking … in Brisbane, Queensland’s capital city. Wrong! I’ve just returned from a couple of days spent primarily on the south bank precinct of the Brisbane River. This is home to QPAC (Queensland Performing Arts Centre), the Queensland Museum, the State Library,
Continue reading ...I spend a bit of time in the car driving to meetings in the state’s capital, about 90 mins by road. It means I can listen to stuff as I travel the route I know practically mile-post by mile-post. In the past year or so, I’ve been listening to downloads from the many podcasts out
Continue reading ...Spent a lovely evening this week at the opening night of Queensland Theatre Company’s first up for Season 2008. It’s Joanna Murray-Smith’s Female of the Species, a new wave look at old feminism, and my, how we laughed. The sacred cows flew gently and not so gently upwards under the direction of Kate Cherry, soon
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