Again back again

Sydney yesterday was a blast. The Geraldine Pascall Foundation event at the Bangarra Theatre was packed, and the panel debate, chaired by the new director of the Sydney Writers Festival, Chip Rolley, was lively and interesting. (The topic was, Should the critic be fired?, and there were varying robust opinions on whether or not this was a good idea). In a nice serendipity, at exactly the same time, the announcement of the winner of the Patrick White Playwrights' Award was occurring just down the pier at the the STC; although I was unable to attend, I did poke my nose in beforehand and met the winner, Nicki Bloom, who was indeed blooming despite having just returned from Germany.

Then Ms TN and friends drank industrial quantities of champagne and, perhaps inevitably, I ended up at the theatre, at the closing night of Anthony Neilson's The Wonderful World of Dissocia. Which impressed me a lot more than my first meeting with his work. Afterwards, I bumped into an acquaintance who said sternly, I've been checking Theatre Notes every day for a report on the Australian Theatre Forum - what's happening, Croggon?

What's been happening is simple: for the past fortnight (in between, admittedly, a couple of furious bouts of non-blog work) Ms TN has been on a big, shiny carousel. It's covered with colourful paintings and strings of lights and people laughing and cheering, and there are mirrors everywhere. Now I'm slowly climbing down. I can only go round so often before I start feeling sick and dizzy.

Today, with a cold compress affixed to my forehead with gaffer tape, I am really looking forward to some sober, steady work in my quiet and boring study. There is stuff to do, piling up like the rubble in front of Benjamin's Angel of History (who, as you will remember, has his face turned to the past). The promised reviews will begin to emerge this week, once the judging for the RE Ross Trust Play prize is dealt with. They might, in the interests of catching up, be a little shorter than usual. I'm not sure that I'll find the time to write about the forum. It was, I think, a Very Good Thing, and I suspect that good things will emerge over the next year as a result of it happening. I'm also not sure I've had time to process it. Now, back to normal broadcasting...