The virtual library thing is now escaping from Borges' imagination and into the real world. Consider, for instance, the Australian Script Centre, down there in Tasmania. The ASC is now under the directorship of Gail Cork, whom some might remember from her Australia Council days, and has just received a considerable boost from the Theatre Board - $600,000 over the next three years.
In collaboration with Currency Press, Playlab and Playwriting Australia, the ASC has put together australianplays.org, a smart new e-commerce portal, which will be officially launched at the National Play Festival in March. What this means is that practically every Australian playwright you can think of is now for sale online in digital format. This makes up a little for the pathetic shelf-space most bookshops give to plays (which might be even worse than the space they give to contemporary poetry).
Aside from this brilliant online resource, the ASC itself boasts a vast archive of Australian work, including some interesting anthologies. I've been browsing the CD Collection #7, which consists of 27 new plays, many of them award winners. It's a diverse bunch, ranging from Version 1.0's Deeply Offensive and Utterly Untrue to Patricia Cornelius's The Call to Kit Lazaroo's True Adventures of a Soul Lost at Sea. A steal at $25. Hie thee hence and check it out.
Meanwhile, I have a problem. How do you stop listening to Antony and the Johnsons? I seem to be under a strange and intoxicating enchantment...
How do you stop listening to Antony and the Johnsons? Easy! Listen to Coco Rosie or Sigur Ros instead!
ReplyDeleteHmmm...that's weird...I was just looking at the Aust. Script Centre site this morning (it's where The Actomatic 3000 found Human Resources our current show together and Chris Aronsten the playwright, who came down from Sydney on the weekend, recommended it to me). Great site and good news for writers and people like me trying to read new and existing work. AND I have spent most of the weekend listening to Antony & The Johnsons' Crying Light thanks to first hearing the new album whilst chatting to Zoe in your kitchen the other day: I went straight home and bought it from i-tunes and it has been compulsive listening for us for the last three days with no sign of that changing soon...exquisite, understated beauty...I also agree with your musical choices there Mr. Watts!
ReplyDeleteThen I visit TN and you mention both ASC and AATJ in the same post...Great minds eh Ms TN...?
Great minds indeed, Matt... I can see there's a zeitgeisty thing happening, perhaps called "Zoe"...
ReplyDeleteYes, The Crying Light is a completely beautiful album. And I Am A Bird Now seems to have hardwired itself into my brain and changed its shape. Oh well.
And Richard, you know perfectly well that's tantamount to no help at all, as Sigur Ros and Coco Rosie are just as badly addictive. Though I admit it's been a while since I've been quite as obsessed with an album as with this one.
A Zeitgeist Named Zoe sounds like it could be an album title.
ReplyDelete...my word verification was "admen"??
ReplyDeleteI have actually occasionally stumbled across those secret "Plays" sections in shops. I had to look in the unlit basement without stairs behind the door marked "TIGER, BEWARE" but I found it. But that's great news!
I do feel a little unappreciated though, as I was the one who corrupted the family with Antony in the first place, and with the new album. I may not be living there, but I have ways of getting to your brains still.
Aw Josh, fruit of my loins, jewel of my navel, apple of my eye &c&c, you are of course deeply appreciated. We can't have you feeling out in the cold, even if you abandoned us all for the joys of Newport... and all credit is awarded here as the original originator of the A&TJ obsession.
ReplyDelete