Some very interesting conversations are enlivening the blogosphere at the moment. Over at Nicholas Pickard's blog, the race issue is still causing all sorts of sparks, after Sydney director Lee Lewis's Platform Paper on racial casting in Australian theatre (which is turning into a must-read). Ming at Minktails has already posted passionately on this issue, and having got her hot little hands on Lewis's paper - as personally witnessed by me - promises more. So we will hold her to it.

Meanwhile, George Hunka has been posting heroically on Pinter's The Homecoming (several short essays, so check here, here, here and here) at Superfluities, leading to a fascinating debate on the virtues or otherwise of Peter Hall's film version. (Reader, I loathed it).

And Guardian critic Lyn Gardner, bless her cotton socks, has this great post arguing that if mainstream theatre is to survive, it has to embrace experiment. The sell-out success at the STC of Barrie Kosky's eight-hour epic The Lost Echo, or the popularity of Kristy Edmunds' Melbourne Festival programs, suggest that Gardner's onto something...