tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-72029062012-02-02T09:24:01.009+11:00Alison Croggonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08398213223487458758noreply@blogger.comBlogger10301100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7202906.post-74876396264424341062012-01-24T11:21:00.000+11:002012-01-25T08:15:12.996+11:00

One of the paradoxes of art is the uneasy legacy of success. As soon as a work is labelled a "classic", it becomes curiously invisible: it transforms into a monument, cobwebbed by all the extraneous things its success now symbolises, and the energies that made it a success in the first place are polished away by the pieties that must now attend it. Summer of the Seventeenth Doll is a good example

Alison Croggonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08398213223487458758noreply@blogger.com23tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7202906.post-25019380182838664032011-12-30T10:08:00.002+11:002011-12-31T12:06:35.047+11:00

Was that 2011? I'm thinking of the Venerable Bede's story, in which one of King Edwin's thanes compares the life of a man (with the Anglo-Saxons it was always a man) to the swift flight of a sparrow through a banqueting hall on a dark winter's day. The past year has seemed the mere flip of a wing. Yet somehow I reviewed around 86 shows this year - quite a lot more than last year, when I reviewed

Alison Croggonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08398213223487458758noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7202906.post-53724598112408355292011-12-08T11:03:00.004+11:002011-12-08T16:51:10.528+11:00

It's tempting to consider what Mary MacLane's life might have been, had she been born male. For one thing, I might have had a better chance of having heard of her: the work of interesting women is all too apt to disappear after their deaths. Perhaps MacLane might have been known as an early 20th century Thomas Chatterton or Arthur Rimbaud, a wayward brilliance that ignited rebellion into a

Alison Croggonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08398213223487458758noreply@blogger.com21tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7202906.post-3114891589631507382011-12-06T09:10:00.008+11:002011-12-07T21:06:30.833+11:00

The great holiday guillotine has now slammed down across Ms TN's diary, and so last week I saw my last shows for the year. And then, in the way of the these things, I promptly came down with a cold. I blame Melbourne's increasingly absurd weather for this, as much as the exigencies of the end of the year: this city has always, admittedly, been proverbial for its changeability ("if you don't like

Alison Croggonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08398213223487458758noreply@blogger.com26tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7202906.post-60695375804297111222011-12-02T10:21:00.001+11:002011-12-02T10:31:43.249+11:00

Ms TN seems unable to get her sentences together today, so let me briefly flag a couple of theatrical events that opened this week, both from Melbourne's thriving independent scene. Get thee hence to A is for Atlas's wholly charming Cherry Cherry (details here), which takes place in a private home in Thornbury and includes a delicious dinner, and MKA's wicked take on political delusion, The

Alison Croggonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08398213223487458758noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7202906.post-36946222521134483922011-11-29T08:45:00.005+11:002011-11-29T09:20:50.377+11:00

George Hunka at Superfluities Redux (whom I'm sure you all read religiously) blogs on the recurrent death of criticism, and in particular on the argument that its death sentence is signed by the new democratisation of the web. This is (sigh) an old and whiskery argument, but as George points out,"the real danger is in formalizing (the) informal process of inclusion and exclusion". It's an

Alison Croggonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08398213223487458758noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7202906.post-33346637664074544522011-11-28T10:18:00.007+11:002011-11-28T14:17:16.402+11:00

It's proverbial that there is a Hamlet for every century. As Jan Kott says, it's a play that absorbs its times. The Romantic era gave us a pale, introspective youth; the 20th century an animal trapped in the pitiless mechanisms of power. In the 21st century, the Prince of Denmark has become the random particle in a corrupted, dysfunctional and claustrophobic nuclear family.Stripping the play of

Alison Croggonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08398213223487458758noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7202906.post-31527242941348911622011-11-23T12:16:00.003+11:002011-11-23T12:26:42.935+11:00

I see that Dr Peter West, retired university lecturer and social commentator, is in today's Age fulminating on the bad manners of Young People at the Opera and the Consequent Decline and Fall of Civilisation. Apparently nobody obeys Rules any more. It's all the fault of entitled young people with their newfangled phones, according to Dr West. Or possibly people on drugs. Anyway, I was inspired,

Alison Croggonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08398213223487458758noreply@blogger.com56tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7202906.post-32035930620898723672011-11-22T10:39:00.012+11:002011-11-23T08:20:00.109+11:00

*Spoiler warnings*The end of the year is rushing up like a charging rhino. Melbourne theatre has its traditional means of signalling this milestone - widespread admissions of astonishment that Christmas is only 34 sleeps away, the issuing of phalanxes of party invitations, and, of course, the Christmas shows, crowd-pleasers that fill the houses with cheer and, hopefully, audiences. The Malthouse

Alison Croggonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08398213223487458758noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7202906.post-16254812131513565092011-11-15T09:48:00.007+11:002011-11-15T12:38:13.938+11:00

I walked out of the opening night of Lally Katz's new play Return To Earth with my stomach in a knot. Readers, I have seldom seen a production which was so utterly wrong. It's wrong from the ground up, wrong from the first moment, and goes on being wrong all the way through to the end. Every flicker of life in this play is wrestled to the ground and throttled to death.Any text, if it's at all

Alison Croggonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08398213223487458758noreply@blogger.com27tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7202906.post-51109022347767316032011-11-12T12:15:00.008+11:002011-11-12T14:06:19.414+11:00

Recently quite a few theatre bloggers have been tracking their creative processes: George Hunka, for instance, is logging some of his thinking material as he writes a new play in his Elf King notebooks on Superfluities Redux. I don't especially want to do this myself - if I wanted to talk about my writing process, I would start a different blog - but I thought some readers might be interested in

Alison Croggonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08398213223487458758noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7202906.post-34819121324191913662011-10-30T09:51:00.006+11:002011-10-30T10:53:40.882+11:00

Ms TN been making sad little meep noises all year about the increasing necessity to pull back on the blog and focus on my own work. Now, as the late, great Midnight Oil once had it, the time has come: for the next fortnight, circumstance will forcibly remove me from my desk. Next week I'll be in Sydney workshopping Night Songs, a music theatre piece co-written with Daniel Keene, with music by

Alison Croggonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08398213223487458758noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7202906.post-86161672654170544552011-10-28T19:46:00.004+11:002011-10-28T20:13:47.826+11:00

During the recent Australian Theatre Forum, one of the Open Space groups worked on a response to the National Cultural Policy discussion paper. This diverse group consisted of people from all areas of Australian theatre, including funding bodies, major organisations, independent companies and independent artists. They decided that a preamble to the policy would be a good idea, and to model this

Alison Croggonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08398213223487458758noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7202906.post-76152136318681448412011-10-28T10:01:00.009+11:002011-10-28T12:06:55.023+11:00

Curating an international arts festival, says Adelaide Festival artistic director Paul Grabowsky, isn't simply a matter of assembling a shopping list. And it's complicated. "With something like the Adelaide Festival, there are so many areas to cover," he says. "The performing arts, literature, visual art, film, public outdoor events... they're all things which people rightly expect..." And all

Alison Croggonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08398213223487458758noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7202906.post-49132323895430149332011-10-24T08:56:00.010+11:002011-10-24T13:30:31.170+11:00

When Brett Sheehy, Melbourne Festival artistic director, launched his program earlier this year at a lavishly corporate event, he announced that the themes of this year's festival were "rebellion and revolution". This immediately set up a jangling dissonance: anything less revolutionary than the event which announced it is hard to imagine. This, you might justifiably conclude, is a comfortable

Alison Croggonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08398213223487458758noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7202906.post-77178062140432370882011-10-22T09:17:00.005+11:002011-10-25T09:46:35.388+11:00

Some of the dance at this year's Melbourne Festival has been full-on sensory overload. Hofesh Shechter's Political Mother hit like a sledgehammer, an avalanche of sound and imagery that struck me as an almost unmediated response to the violence of our times. BalletLab's Aviary had a similar physical effect, with very different means and imagery. Immersive theatre? The choreographers do it by

Alison Croggonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08398213223487458758noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7202906.post-9189627991549647832011-10-20T09:34:00.014+11:002011-10-23T09:21:57.652+11:00

Watching Thomas Ostermeier's production of Hedda Gabler - the first of his works I've seen - was unexpectedly fascinating. Through directors such as Benedict Andrews, a stablemate of Ostermeier's at Berlin's Schaubühne, the aesthetic of Ostermeier and his peers has had a profound influence on contemporary Australian theatre. So much of the design language here - architectural spaces defined by

Alison Croggonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08398213223487458758noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7202906.post-70440713959526732392011-10-15T08:31:00.009+11:002011-10-15T11:32:33.215+11:00

Byron Perry's new dance work Double Think opens in complete darkness in the vast space of the North Melbourne Town Hall. To the rhythms of Luke Smiles's electronic score, blindingly bright geometries of white light flash out and vanish. The movements are precise, created as two dancers lift small boxes concealing the light source, and there's not enough time for the light to bleed out and

Alison Croggonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08398213223487458758noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7202906.post-47452709298058884372011-10-14T08:58:00.015+11:002011-10-14T13:53:18.097+11:00

La beauté, “Beauty is difficult, Yeats” said Aubrey Beardsleywhen Yeats asked why he drew horrorsor at least not Burne-Jonesand Beardsley knew he was dying and had tomake his hit quicklyHence no more B-J in his product.So very difficult, Yeats, beauty so difficult.- Ezra Pound, CantosI left Whiteley's Incredible Blue last night with Pound's verse circling around my head. Barry Dickins's new play,

Alison Croggonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08398213223487458758noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7202906.post-26337309655565587832011-10-13T09:10:00.008+11:002011-10-14T13:35:12.185+11:00

When Hofesh Shechter debuted here during Brett Sheehy's first Melbourne Festival, I was in the UK and missed it. So it's fair to say that I had no idea what to expect last night when I sat down to watch Political Mother - aside, that is, from the kind of generalised anticipation prompted by a bunch of people saying things like "!!!" when his name was mentioned. 70 minutes later I staggered out of

Alison Croggonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08398213223487458758noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7202906.post-59830488679528328212011-10-12T10:49:00.004+11:002011-10-12T11:13:15.670+11:00

A pointer to my review of New York Theatre Workshop's Aftermath, which I saw at the Perth Festival earlier this year, and which opened in Melbourne at the Malthouse Theatre last night.

Alison Croggonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08398213223487458758noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7202906.post-78120494221449886092011-10-11T10:45:00.015+11:002011-10-12T09:33:22.252+11:00

Much has been said about The Manganiyar Seduction, a stunning theatrical presentation of Rajasthani music, and no doubt I will simply add another bunch of superlatives. Indian director Roysten Abel has created a work that had the Melbourne Festival audience standing up, cheering and stamping its feet. Like everyone else, I was seduced: by the musicianship, by the passion of the music, by the

Alison Croggonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08398213223487458758noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7202906.post-77933952829404303392011-10-10T10:58:00.012+11:002011-10-10T16:27:55.308+11:00

One of the strongest aspects of this year's Melbourne Festival program is the local performance. I can remember a time when under-developed local shows too often made an embarrassing contrast with the production-polished international work: not so in 2011. It demonstrates the depth of achievement that has been nurtured in this city over the past decade, and festival director Brett Sheehy's good

Alison Croggonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08398213223487458758noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7202906.post-44861029323549159502011-10-07T09:59:00.012+11:002011-10-10T10:59:51.344+11:00

I've been dithering over this post for days, trying to find a way in to writing about this extraordinary show. As with Back to Back's Food Court, which remains one of the most compelling experiences I've had in a theatre, Ganesh Versus The Third Reich takes an idea which initially appears to be very simple, and then, with cumulative force, systematically unpicks every expectation that you might

Alison Croggonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08398213223487458758noreply@blogger.com22tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7202906.post-27477753654003929282011-10-05T08:56:00.013+11:002011-10-10T10:59:23.324+11:00

Your faithful blogger has been shanghaied by the day job lately, dealing with an editing deadline for my forthcoming novel. (Forthcoming Christmas 2012, that is - lead times are long in the publishing world). And I find, lifting my weary head from the coalface of the imagination, that I've fallen rather behind in my reviews, and this despite steadfastly missing nearly the entire Melbourne Fringe.

Alison Croggonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08398213223487458758noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7202906.post-57611342249687241642011-09-22T14:13:00.005+10:002011-09-27T08:30:28.890+10:00

Bangarra Dance Theatre's Belong demonstrates, once again, why Bangarra is one of our leading dance companies (and why it has such a huge international reputation). It consists of two dances: About, by Torres Strait Islander Elma Kris, and ID by artistic director Stephen Page. Both of them add up to "stunning".The opening work enacts myths about the wind from Kris's Islander culture, opening out

Alison Croggonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08398213223487458758noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7202906.post-4933757598598495852011-09-22T14:01:00.004+10:002011-10-03T17:38:18.300+11:00

In the past few years, adaptations of classic plays have become more the norm than otherwise in Australian innovative theatre. Two directors in particular wrenched opened the Pandora's box. Barrie Kosky led the way from the 1990s with refigured classics, such as Lear or the baroque opera Poppea, while Benedict Andrews's explored an austere theatricality in shows such as The War of the Roses. And

Alison Croggonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08398213223487458758noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7202906.post-55410685944553125542011-09-21T09:24:00.000+10:002011-09-21T09:27:32.029+10:00

I will be seeing very little of the Fringe Festival this year. This is because Life is getting in the way. To wit: the edits for my novel Black Spring (coming out late next year, but the lead times are astonishing in book publishing) have arrived and must be dealt with asap, and preferably before the Melbourne Festival opens, and I have a couple of music theatre workshops coming up in early

Alison Croggonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08398213223487458758noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7202906.post-38460458358364113392011-09-16T10:55:00.000+10:002011-09-16T12:47:47.408+10:00

The Australian Theatre Forum. Where to begin? For the past two days, I've been locked in a box with 260 theatre makers - performers, directors, designers, composers, writers, critics, arts funders, bloggers, producers. They came from all ends of Australia, from the regions and the capital cities, from the major companies to tiny independent outfits, descending on the Brisbane Powerhouse by the

Alison Croggonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08398213223487458758noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7202906.post-22026805917694104112011-09-13T09:33:00.000+10:002011-09-13T09:46:29.477+10:00

For four decades, Michael Leunig's savage and wistful universe has been one of the constants of Australian popular culture. His cartoons were a ubiquitous part of my childhood. Back in the 1970s he was still working for the lamented Nation Review, and I saw many of his cartoons for the first time in its pages - that is, until my father cancelled our subscription after a particularly pornographic

Alison Croggonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08398213223487458758noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7202906.post-8150018532932467242011-09-12T11:14:00.004+10:002011-09-12T16:13:52.799+10:00

NB: This review contains spoilers "Shakespeare," says Jan Kott, "is truer than life. One can play him only literally." It might seem counter-intuitive to some, perhaps, that Kott goes on to say that to play Shakespeare naturalistically is to butcher his plays. Shakespeare's world is not a mirror held up to mundane life, so much as an intensifier of its significant moments. The spectacle

Alison Croggonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08398213223487458758noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7202906.post-17858061499844159812011-08-31T11:23:00.008+10:002011-08-31T15:26:04.778+10:00

"Complaining," said Rilke, almost a century ago. "The eternal vice of poets." But consider the poet in the 21st century! The digital age has amplified whingeing to a remarkable degree. This means, for instance, that Ms TN can now alert almost 5000 people instantly via Facebook and Twitter that she is having the vapours. The fact that I always feel embarrassed afterwards for megaphoning such

Alison Croggonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08398213223487458758noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7202906.post-4689895326101360252011-08-27T08:02:00.002+10:002011-08-27T08:06:01.852+10:00

A quick heads up for tomorrow's Melbourne Writers Festival panel on independent theatre. I'll be chairing a discussion on our fertile independent scene with Declan Greene, Angus Cerini and Anne Louise Sarks at the ACMI Cinema 1 at 4pm. Details and bookings here.

Alison Croggonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08398213223487458758noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7202906.post-35755274199730703442011-08-26T11:19:00.003+10:002011-08-26T11:26:23.387+10:00

I was looking for a picture of my brain on the internet, but I couldn't find anything grotesque enough. Sorry everybody: especially to those young people at that excellent event, MUDFEST, whose shows I didn't make this week, and to those others who are waiting for reviews to emerge from this malfunctioning machine. I've been struggling for a couple of months, and this week's vile cold has helped

Alison Croggonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08398213223487458758noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7202906.post-33018284113678149982011-08-18T09:25:00.011+10:002011-08-20T10:18:45.650+10:00

The notion of "authenticity" in art has whiskers all over it. Art, by definition, is artifice, mimicry, representation: at its most achieved, it can perhaps aspire to be authentically fake. It's entirely possible that the rest is marketing: celebrity didn't just start with Paris Hilton, after all. This generates one of the central paradoxes of art: what makes art matter, to those who encounter it

Alison Croggonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08398213223487458758noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7202906.post-60169814779581247612011-08-17T10:39:00.007+10:002011-08-17T12:36:46.962+10:00

Your Humble Blogger continues at a low ebb this week. As is probably clear to regular readers, Ms TN hasn't managed to control her wont to vastly overestimate her ability to do things, which, predictably, results in minor breakdowns, the kind where a vehicle is bogged in sucking clay while the driver sits outside in the rain, wringing her hands and vainly trying to flag down passing trucks. This

Alison Croggonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08398213223487458758noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7202906.post-86081682803147064852011-08-09T10:55:00.010+10:002011-08-10T08:32:31.093+10:00

I wish I could adequately explain the irrational joy that The Rabble's latest work, Special, invoked in me when I saw it last week. There is something in it of pure theatre, unafraid act, that set a flame in the gloom that has bedevilled me this long Melbourne winter. Or maybe it's just liberating to see something this angry. In Special, The Rabble confront the psychic disintegration of

Alison Croggonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08398213223487458758noreply@blogger.com48tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7202906.post-48197757906027839622011-08-07T11:47:00.009+10:002011-08-07T14:12:22.447+10:00

I've never seen a work by Pina Bausch. As with those of us who come too late, who miss the boat, who weren't there, my knowledge of her work with Wuppertal Tanztheater has been limited to the scraps you gather together - critical books, photographs, videos, reviews, the descriptions of friends, even the traces of her influence in the work of others. I have built a patchwork Bausch, intuiting the

Alison Croggonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08398213223487458758noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7202906.post-92142743781777067322011-08-04T09:37:00.006+10:002011-08-04T10:13:44.806+10:00

The Melbourne Writers Festival, which opens later this month, is bearing down like some kind of benign leviathan. And this year there are a few events that might appeal to theatrenauts. There isn't a category on the website called "theatre", so I'm listing some here so you can put them straight into your diary.The Arrival: A performance of Sydney composer Ben Walsh's sonic-scape of Sean Tan's The

Alison Croggonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08398213223487458758noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7202906.post-2615819440324885632011-08-03T06:40:00.007+10:002011-08-04T09:33:06.194+10:00

We all know some variation or other of this feeling. You are alone, it is dark. You hear an almost inaudible sound, just on the edge of hearing, that you can't quite identify. Your body is shocked into a state of hyper-alertness: adrenaline floods through your bloodstream like a rush of cold water. Your ears strain into the busy silence. You hear it again. Or maybe you don't hear it, maybe it's

Alison Croggonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08398213223487458758noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7202906.post-57617503619625138942011-07-26T09:48:00.008+10:002011-07-27T10:59:04.851+10:00

For the first ten minutes or so, I was completely transfixed by Matthew Lutton's theatrical extrapolation of Schubert's late song cycle, Die Winterreise. It is a beautiful idea: the juxtaposition of some of Schubert's most sublime lieder with the experience of a man listening to them in the most mundane of settings. Die Winterreise, set to a poem cycle by Wilhelm Müller, is one of the most

Alison Croggonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08398213223487458758noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7202906.post-16995506397163579562011-07-25T11:38:00.008+10:002011-07-26T07:38:43.464+10:00

Back in another age, when dinosaurs roamed the earth and I was a copygirl in the Finance section of that long-gone afternoon daily the Melbourne Herald, I found myself unexpectedly fascinated by the captains of industry. In another life, I might have become a finance reporter. The Alan Bonds, Rupert Murdochs and Robert Holmes à Courts of that time, ruthless accumulators of wealth, power and

Alison Croggonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08398213223487458758noreply@blogger.com23tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7202906.post-40881069879155432802011-07-20T11:43:00.009+10:002011-07-20T16:45:34.881+10:00

Watching Rawcus's superb new production Small Odysseys was an oddly personal experience. For me, it was the psychological equivalent of that optical test in which, when a bright light is shone into your pupil, you see the veins of your own retina. It was as if I was watching a repatterning of some of my peak Melbourne experiences of the past few years: Ariane Mnouchkine's Le Dernier

Alison Croggonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08398213223487458758noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7202906.post-8993315601122299652011-07-13T10:09:00.013+10:002011-07-15T16:56:37.013+10:00

Launches have their conventions: they are the events where those interests, state and corporate, who invest lavishly in an event get to stand in the spotlight and be thanked. And the Melbourne Festival launch last night, at the sparkly Forum Theatre, was no exception. It gave the impression that the newly-monickered Melbourne Festival, stripped of its "international arts" component, was a whisker

Alison Croggonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08398213223487458758noreply@blogger.com23tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7202906.post-65431474555020303542011-07-11T14:20:00.003+10:002011-07-11T14:37:33.527+10:00

If in art we are comparing a cat with another cat, or a flower with another flower, the artistic form as such is not constructed solely of the moment of cross-breeding; those are merely detonators for triggering much larger explosions, entryways into knowledge, explorations of the new.By refuting emotion or ideology in art, we are also refuting the knowledge of form, the purpose of knowledge, and

Alison Croggonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08398213223487458758noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7202906.post-86414418696937107862011-07-08T12:15:00.010+10:002011-07-08T14:33:48.835+10:00

Right now, just after the winter solstice, Ms TN is struggling. The skies have been grey for too long, the news has been bleak for too long, and human beings have been stupid and destructive for too long. Nary a light gleams at the end of the tunnel, and actually doing things - like, say, getting out of bed - seems impossible and futile. Yes, I know despair is a sin - I suspect I am on my way to

Alison Croggonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08398213223487458758noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7202906.post-84465690359689285712011-06-25T09:58:00.010+10:002011-06-25T13:51:01.666+10:00

*Spoiler alert*In A Golem Story, Michael Kantor and Lally Katz reach into Judaeic folklore and mystic traditions, fashioning a work of theatre which is at once outstandingly beautiful and frustratingly perplexing. Mounted in the Merlyn, this is one of Kantor's most compellingly conceived works. The action occurs in a simulcrum of a candle-lit 16th century Prague synagogue, sketched by a

Alison Croggonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08398213223487458758noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7202906.post-4657570016607623392011-06-24T09:46:00.013+10:002011-06-25T09:04:04.682+10:00

Last Wednesday, Lally Katz's A Golem Story and Robert Reid's The Joy of Text premiered at the Malthouse and the MTC. The same week, the Malthouse opened its remount of Declan Greene's 2010 hit, Moth. Meanwhile at the MTC, Joanna Murray-Smith's The Gift is running at the MTC's Sumner Theatre, and tonight Ian Wilding's new play The Water Carriers opens at the Lawler Studio. At the moment,

Alison Croggonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08398213223487458758noreply@blogger.com32tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7202906.post-20029247843669671482011-06-20T11:04:00.013+10:002011-06-21T15:26:50.873+10:00

I'm a sucker for Shakespeare's comedies. They reveal his profound knowledge of the stage, and his pleasure in its vulgar tricks and conventions gives us some of the most sublimely funny scenes ever written. In Much Ado About Nothing, Shakespeare steals freely from a bunch of popular contemporary sources, from Luigi Pasaquaglio's Il Fedele to Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, in which a virtuous woman

Alison Croggonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08398213223487458758noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7202906.post-45148550344438723422011-06-17T12:11:00.008+10:002011-06-22T12:30:53.398+10:00

Princess Dramas, now playing at Red Stitch, is the first play by Elfriede Jelinek ever to have been produced in Australia. And massive kudos to Red Stitch for finally giving us a chance to see her work. Jelinek - probably best known for her novel The Piano Teacher, which was adapted into a film by Michael Haneke - is an Austrian writer and intellectual, and a major contemporary German dramatist.

Alison Croggonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08398213223487458758noreply@blogger.com18tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7202906.post-90764622802237877142011-06-17T09:10:00.008+10:002011-06-17T15:27:19.434+10:00

I've often thought that the major weakness in Australian theatre is its writing. We have an astonishing design culture, an embarrassment of talented actors, and directors, young and established, aplenty. But while our theatre artists can work as if they live in the 21st century, writers are trammelled in expectations and conventions that seem to belong in the Menzies imaginary. This struck me

Alison Croggonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08398213223487458758noreply@blogger.com28tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7202906.post-55563622195016310212011-06-11T09:45:00.008+10:002011-06-11T15:59:59.892+10:00

*NB: Major spoilers after the fold*Deadpan irony is a perilous art. Australians are reflexively ironic, and can find themselves disconcerted when the irony doesn't carry, when a flip statement intended by its very outrageousness to highlight some absurdity or injustice is, contrary to its intention, read straight. This is particularly perilous when spoken statements make it into print. For

Alison Croggonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08398213223487458758noreply@blogger.com18tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7202906.post-87311182615583914082011-06-03T12:04:00.012+10:002011-06-06T10:25:51.332+10:00

A home is much more than a building. "Originally," says John Berger in his almost unbearably beautiful book And Our Faces, My Heart, Brief as Photos, "home meant the centre of the world - not in a geographical, but in an ontological sense. Mircea Eliade has demonstrated how home was the place from which the world could be founded. A home was established, as he said, 'at the heart of the real'."

Alison Croggonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08398213223487458758noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7202906.post-63272322457853908672011-06-01T11:52:00.004+10:002011-06-01T12:07:00.264+10:00

As some commenters have ruefully noted, TN has been on a lull for the past fortnight. I have a few reviews to write - and will, I hope, in the near future. This time I don't even have the excuse of being distracted by other work: I simply seem to have run out of words. It's a mysterious inability: as Orwell noted once, when a writer says he can't write, he really can't. However, this paragraph is

Alison Croggonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08398213223487458758noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7202906.post-41658999015271232102011-05-08T11:23:00.007+10:002011-05-09T11:51:54.175+10:00

An apology and an explanation. As I said yesterday, I am in the lees of a foul cold: but the truth underneath is that, since the beginning of this year, my other lives have been more than usually demanding. (If you're wondering what those "other lives" are, my biography lists some of them.) I'm still not sure how to balance blogging and its associated activities, which could quite easily be a

Alison Croggonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08398213223487458758noreply@blogger.com28tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7202906.post-41888846863783619222011-05-07T10:46:00.006+10:002011-05-07T11:26:46.269+10:00

Those unfortunate souls who follow Ms TN on Twitter will be aware that this week she has been under the weather. "Crapulous" is the adjective that springs to mind: neither ill enough to hang up her boots by her sickbed (with attendant sympathies, flowers and Belgian chocolates) nor well enough to gird her loins and spring with a happy cry into life's melee. This is one of the most boring states

Alison Croggonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08398213223487458758noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7202906.post-28603541160559982132011-04-29T09:53:00.009+10:002011-04-29T13:27:19.512+10:00

Consumerism depends on the frustration of desire. Unhappiness might be the most profitable emotion in first world society: it creates an ever-tightening spiral, the pursuit of happiness inevitably frustrated by its displacement into commodification. This dissatisfaction sparks more consumption that in its turn remains unsatisfying, requiring more consumption. Consumption, excess, waste,

Alison Croggonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08398213223487458758noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7202906.post-9638372172144247442011-04-25T09:45:00.014+10:002011-04-28T19:43:49.793+10:00

Your faithful correspondent has been somewhat scattered of late, like a barrel of popcorn given a hefty thump. I have excuses, with which I won't bore you; suffice to say that recently my other lives have been demanding. In TN's bright new 2011 reincarnation, which frankly looks pretty much like last year's model, I am pursuing my aim of seasoning the madness of doing this blog with some kind of

Alison Croggonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08398213223487458758noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7202906.post-55098521716568952242011-04-21T12:07:00.003+10:002011-04-21T12:40:14.020+10:00

Things might have been quiet on TN (aside from the shenanigans on the Baal comment thread) but that doesn't mean that Ms TN has been idle. No, indeed: life in all its glorious variety has been getting in the way of all my plans. All the same, I have seen quite a bit of theatre, which I hope to write about when I manage the requisite time-wrangling. Watch this space...Meanwhile, a couple of notes

Alison Croggonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08398213223487458758noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7202906.post-5361095148022991042011-04-14T09:24:00.005+10:002011-04-14T11:00:13.936+10:00

I gave this talk on Monday at the Judith Wright Centre of Contemporary Arts in Brisbane as part of the Low-Fi Forum, organised by Arts Queensland. “Amateur” is an interesting word. It usually carries a derogatory sense, meaning unskilled, ignorant or second-rate. And it’s a word with economic baggage – an “amateur” is unpaid, whereas the “professional”, the term used as a distinction, is paid.

Alison Croggonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08398213223487458758noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7202906.post-90905092841270168872011-04-08T08:46:00.017+10:002011-04-08T17:46:00.759+10:00

Baal, pagan Lord of Heaven, god of rain and fertility. Baal, the first king of the Christian Hell, best known to us as Beelzebub. Milton's Baalim, one of those evilly ambiguous demons who, "when they please / can either sex assume". In the hands of the young Bertolt Brecht, he's the archetypal rebel poet and criminal anti-hero, a voracious appetite on legs, epic hater of womankind. The original

Alison Croggonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08398213223487458758noreply@blogger.com96tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7202906.post-72651216451618607372011-04-06T09:21:00.008+10:002011-06-17T10:35:52.708+10:00

Watching the development of theatre companies is a fascinating business. They are organisms subject to all the travails of being alive: growth, change, decay, death and renewal. They are networks of individual energies which seed in unexpected places, producing unexpected syntheses and collaborations. The Hayloft Project and Chamber Made Opera are cases in point. Both have had a major impact on

Alison Croggonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08398213223487458758noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7202906.post-42668322339111514102011-04-06T08:33:00.004+10:002011-04-06T08:48:25.302+10:00

* It's all over US newspapers, but I can't seem to find it in any local sheets, at least online: former MIAF director Kristy Edmunds has landed a plum job at UCLA as artistic director of its renowned live performance series. As the LA Times puts it, "Her four years as artistic director of the Melbourne International Arts Festival in Australia extended her reputation as an impresario with

Alison Croggonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08398213223487458758noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7202906.post-75911956104937716612011-04-01T11:43:00.013+11:002011-04-01T15:24:46.390+11:00

Finally - the last of my responses to Dance Massive, which, such is the pace of life around these here parts, feels in the remote past already, although it only closed a few days ago. I managed to see around a third of the events, although it was one of those aggregations of energy in which everything caught my eye. Those hungry for more reviews can, if they haven't already, direct their browsers

Alison Croggonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08398213223487458758noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7202906.post-50514093607357352082011-03-30T09:51:00.009+11:002011-03-30T19:01:54.841+11:00

Last week Ms TN took a few days off to lounge about in the fleshpots of Sydney. And lo, it was good, although the perilous aspect of taking a short holiday is that it makes you understand how much you need a longer one. But it was not all caviar and champagne, I'll have you know. I had a good theatrical reason to be there: viz, it was the final week of Belvoir's justly acclaimed The Wild Duck, a

Alison Croggonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08398213223487458758noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7202906.post-54243564314139817722011-03-28T11:22:00.003+11:002011-03-28T11:27:15.210+11:00

I saw three fascinating performances last week: two Dance Massive works (BalletLab's Amplification and Gideon Obarzanek's one-man piece Faker) and, in Sydney, Simon Stone's astonishing adaptation of The Wild Duck. Faker is on at the Malthouse until April 2 and is highly recommended, but the others closed this weekend. Responses may take a few days, as Ms TN has pressing duties in her other lives.

Alison Croggonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08398213223487458758noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7202906.post-90930589325082022032011-03-21T11:13:00.006+11:002011-03-24T19:38:59.158+11:00

Less, so the conventional wisdom goes, is more. Like most truisms it isn't always true, but it's a handy rule of thumb that Narelle Benjamin might have heeded when creating In Glass, a multiply-imaged extravaganza which played last week in the intimate environs of the Beckett Theatre as part of Dance Massive. The work is choreographed for two extraordinary dancers, Paul White (whose classical

Alison Croggonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08398213223487458758noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7202906.post-33729963170740440952011-03-20T10:39:00.010+11:002011-03-24T19:39:29.192+11:00

Dance Massive is now in full swing, offering the kind of fare that means I am constantly kicking myself (an interesting athletic feat) for not seeing everything on the program. Altogether, I'll get to six shows over the fortnight, which is not exactly insubstantial: but such is the diversity of practice on offer - from film, improvisation and sound art to more conventional theatrical performance

Alison Croggonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08398213223487458758noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7202906.post-58723441459528096142011-03-18T09:22:00.019+11:002011-05-06T10:18:43.719+10:00

You know, I thought that Melbourne was a small city, just the right size for a cultural grasshopper like Ms TN. Unlike the seething metropolises of London or Paris, it seemed to me that in Melbourne a keen observer would be able to see most of the interesting performance on offer, or at least a good proportion. Lately, I've been revising this view. 2011 is full-on already, and no one can keep up.

Alison Croggonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08398213223487458758noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7202906.post-24359164915845907482011-03-10T16:24:00.006+11:002011-03-10T18:28:49.724+11:00

Ms TN has been having one of those curiously pointless fortnights that are the special purgatory of writers. Today, as I was attempting to gather my wits from the dark corners where they have skittered like so many cockroaches, a fortuitous parcel in today's mail prompted me to post this contribution from Daniel Keene. It amused me, and I thought it may amuse some of you.The parcel contained a

Alison Croggonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08398213223487458758noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7202906.post-18444502106159636382011-03-07T13:24:00.010+11:002011-03-08T12:58:27.311+11:00

The catastrophe of the body is never far away in Samuel Beckett's writing. Mortal, decaying, risible, smelly, full of inconvenient humours and vapours and needs, the human body steps forward in all its poignant obscenity. It's the eternal answer to human hubris, a tube of flesh which serves only to transform nutrition into dung. So too in The End, one of several novellas Beckett wrote in the

Alison Croggonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08398213223487458758noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7202906.post-78400397651613970122011-03-07T11:14:00.004+11:002011-03-07T11:38:43.500+11:00

Quick pointer this morning to Peter Craven's latest peroration on the Evils of Postmodernity in this morning's Age. Which gives me an excuse to mention the recent announcement of Brett Sheehy's appointment, after months of feverish speculation, as the new artistic director of the Melbourne Theatre Company. Sheehy's appointment was certainly a surprise to most of us, but it's been warmly welcomed:

Alison Croggonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08398213223487458758noreply@blogger.com22tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7202906.post-21004759643419654282011-03-04T11:50:00.012+11:002011-03-04T13:10:42.948+11:00

The Famous Spiegeltent is back in its cosy niche in the Victorian Arts Centre forecourt, lighting up the grey environs with a pleasurable sense of liveliness and long queues. Beside the Spiegeltent itself, that beautiful remnant of the Weimar Republic where Marlene Dietrich herself once performed, there's an ancillary flotilla called the Spiegel Garden: an old W-class tram has been done up as a

Alison Croggonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08398213223487458758noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7202906.post-41892007165718652011-02-28T09:42:00.011+11:002011-02-28T15:00:14.140+11:00

Ms TN is now back at her desk, dazed and bizarrely jetlagged after a mega-packed week in Perth. With some cunning scheduling, I managed to see most of the theatre and dance on offer at the Perth Festival. To make things easier, I had already reviewed a couple of events on their premieres in Melbourne - 1927's The Animals and Children Took to the Streets, and Lucy Guerin's Human Interest Story (

Alison Croggonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08398213223487458758noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7202906.post-46286484517166840992011-02-25T12:39:00.011+11:002011-02-25T16:07:40.087+11:00

Ms TN is not normally in the business of doling out writing tips, of which there is a sufficient plenitude online: but here's one. If ever you want to get some work done, book yourself into a hotel in a strange city for a week. The lack of procrastinatory devices such as washing dishes, polishing the bathroom taps, answering the telephone or castigating children has a startling effect. Everyone

Alison Croggonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08398213223487458758noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7202906.post-12140688611265250982011-02-22T15:04:00.012+11:002011-03-01T16:48:56.114+11:00

On Sunday afternoon, I saw les ballets C de la B's performance of Out Of Context - For Pina at the stunning new Heath Ledger Theatre, a venue that combines the virtues of modern theatre architecture with the embracing intimacy of an old-fashioned theatre. I had planned to stay for the artist talk that was scheduled afterwards, but when the show finished, I realised that the last thing I wanted

Alison Croggonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08398213223487458758noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7202906.post-539737052761556392011-02-21T18:06:00.011+11:002011-02-22T11:25:17.341+11:00

Sometimes there's an unexpected serendipity to picking festival shows. So it was on Saturday, when your humble correspondent landed in Perth. My first day here included some of the final performances of two shows from the earlier weeks of the festival - Donka: A Letter to Chekhov, by Swiss company Teatro Sunil, and The Red Shoes, an adaptation of Hans Christian Anderson's remarkably cruel story

Alison Croggonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08398213223487458758noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7202906.post-38970227491061610952011-02-21T17:48:00.004+11:002011-02-21T18:03:22.090+11:00

Yes, I know; but sometimes a gel has to do what a gel has to do. Today Ms TN has a piece on the ABC's website The Drum about David Williamson. It's a response to a last week's piece by political writer Annabel Crabb, which claimed, among other things, that "implacable hatred of [David Williamson] seems of late to have become an article of faith for the serious theatre-goer". My penny's worth is

Alison Croggonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08398213223487458758noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7202906.post-12495887018497730172011-02-19T06:12:00.003+11:002011-02-19T06:21:40.296+11:00

Ms TN is up at this ungodly hour on a Saturday morning because she is imminently flying to the other end of the continent. I'll be there for a week as a guest of the Perth Festival, absorbing as much of the rich program as is humanly possible. I'll be blogging everything, and if you're super keen on the butterfly peregrinations of this too too sullied flesh, you can follow me on Twitter as well

Alison Croggonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08398213223487458758noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7202906.post-23726380516183401092011-02-18T09:51:00.013+11:002011-02-25T10:18:58.166+11:00

It's unsurprising that the 20th century saw a renewal of interest in the Jacobean tragedies. Aside from their unapologetic theatricality, which generates its realism from extreme emotional truths, their dark machineries reflected a godless world in which human passion flamed out and extinguished itself in a materialistic, cynical and bloodily hierarchical society. Morality in this universe walks

Alison Croggonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08398213223487458758noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7202906.post-24716755830611659822011-02-16T10:20:00.009+11:002011-02-17T08:01:17.833+11:00

First, an apology of sorts: Ms TN is wearing another couple of hats at present, and has only so much forehead where they can fit. Worse, one of the hats is generating a bunch of psychic static that gets in the way of everything else. The reason I have no time for the argument that claims that criticism is just the same as making art is that, in my experience anyway, art demands everything that

Alison Croggonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08398213223487458758noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7202906.post-6190188073912831172011-02-09T11:10:00.010+11:002011-02-11T17:55:26.515+11:00

Yes, there is life after David Williamson. It must be said that lately the man has been hard to ignore: even John Bailey found himself adding, with an air of bewilderment, to the pile of words surrounding his latest play. "I can't think of another local play, great or rubbish," says Bailey, that has "provoked so many words from commentators, or [has been] given so much space in the public sphere"

Alison Croggonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08398213223487458758noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7202906.post-88072698970018041792011-01-31T10:44:00.012+11:002011-01-31T18:33:30.590+11:00

On a mild summer evening in the ivy-clad courtyard of The Eleventh Hour's headquarters in Fitzroy, it's not difficult to think that you have suddenly been transported to a different era. The lawn is studded with marquees; a door behind the temporary bar opens teasingly to a private house with shuttered upstairs windows, which you can't help but imagine must look like something painted by Bonnard

Alison Croggonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08398213223487458758noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7202906.post-49236738246234018092011-01-16T11:14:00.012+11:002011-01-17T00:51:57.987+11:00

Every time David Williamson writes a new play, the Australian theatre world launches into one of its favourite games. It goes like this.There's a flurry of pre-publicity in which we hear, again, that Williamson is our best-selling playwright, a "national myth-maker" who takes the pulse of our times and touches the receptive hearts of the masses. We hear that "the critics" are unkind and out of

Alison Croggonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08398213223487458758noreply@blogger.com59tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7202906.post-20259142392678147272010-12-29T15:32:00.010+11:002010-12-30T08:17:35.151+11:00

KO: REVOLUTION. What takes place as indicated by Ko is believed in only after it has been accomplished. Hexagram 49, I Ching.It's no exaggeration to claim that there has been a revolution in local theatre over the past five years. From this end of the telescope, it might appear to be a Boojum revolution, during which certain verities about theatre have "softly and suddenly vanished away".

Alison Croggonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08398213223487458758noreply@blogger.com21tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7202906.post-50601202928625343152010-12-16T11:20:00.014+11:002010-12-17T16:34:05.085+11:00

It's that time of year again. Mechanical Santas litter the pavements, cheering on the shopping with catatonic hohohos, and those of us who should know better are threatening the bank balance with imminent annihilation. And Ms TN is posed at her desk in strenuous attitudes of thought, magisterially weighing up the annals of 2010.I think that all Melburnian theatre geeks agree that 2010 has been an

Alison Croggonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08398213223487458758noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7202906.post-37942270171085856092010-12-11T13:15:00.013+11:002010-12-12T12:06:09.331+11:00

A fascinating phenomenon over the past few years has been the revival of naturalism as a theatrical force. For years, commentators divided Australian theatre into two strands: "naturalism", the accepted form of the mainstream or proto-mainstream; and "non-naturalism", which covered everything from mime to Barrie Kosky. Naturalism was linked to the so-called "well-made play", in which theatre did

Alison Croggonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08398213223487458758noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7202906.post-64966535048770715512010-12-08T11:10:00.005+11:002010-12-08T15:59:07.932+11:00

Collected Works, under the proprietorship of Kris Hemensley, is one of the treasures of Melbourne. It is that rarest of businesses, a poetry bookshop. As The Wheeler Centre comments today, Victoria boasts over 300 book shops, but its City of Literature submission singled out Collected Works as “unlike any other shop in the country… specialising in poetry and ideas, and is the most substantial

Alison Croggonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08398213223487458758noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7202906.post-86234924062996213042010-12-07T07:33:00.002+11:002010-12-07T07:38:43.405+11:00

The Australian today publishes my whistle-stop and inevitably partial guide to Australian independent theatre. Feel free to note significant omissions, especially outside the Sydney/Melbourne axis...

Alison Croggonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08398213223487458758noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7202906.post-16933375798217810842010-12-05T11:15:00.013+11:002010-12-06T08:05:35.303+11:00

The talk in the foyers of late has been that of scarred veterans swapping notes from the front-lines of culture. Never, say hardened theatrenauts (as they whittle their programs into speaking likenesses of Ibsen) has Melbourne seen such a season as this. A few years ago, you could count on the theatres going dark in November, leaving summer free for extra-curricular frolicking in front of the Wii

Alison Croggonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08398213223487458758noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7202906.post-16870452764739090032010-12-03T12:52:00.004+11:002010-12-03T13:33:29.736+11:00

Ms TN's brain has once again gone AWOL. I've released its description on Interpol, on the off chance that it's done something glamorous and illegal like running off with Julian Assange, although I suspect it's more likely to be lurking in the mean streets of the Western Suburbs, consuming custom-made pickles and designer lattes.This abscondment means that, despite the fact that Melbourne's

Alison Croggonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08398213223487458758noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7202906.post-13371888767147893562010-11-29T09:36:00.013+11:002010-11-29T11:01:12.276+11:00

Next year, Lally Katz is probably the most produced playwright in Australia (although Shakespeare might give her a run for her money). She has three new plays coming up on main stages through 2011 - Neighbourhood Watch at Belvoir St, Return To Earth at the MTC and A Golem Story at the Malthouse. Who would have thought that this least classifiable of playwrights should have become a mainstream

Alison Croggonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08398213223487458758noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7202906.post-38728587857795731532010-11-25T14:19:00.004+11:002010-11-25T14:31:41.242+11:00

I've a short speculation up at the Overland blog today which wonders about art, use and politics. All extremely difficult questions which, as regular readers here would know, are close to my heart.It's part of the Subscriberthon that this excellent literary magazine is running this week. May I encourage you to take part and subscribe? You can even do it online here. You mightn't get free beer

Alison Croggonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08398213223487458758noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7202906.post-31679455668709603772010-11-22T23:00:00.015+11:002010-11-25T08:37:47.604+11:00

I saw three astonishing works of theatre last week, all created from texts not originally intended for the stage. One, A Woman in Berlin, is based on a personal memoir of the Russian occupation of Berlin at the end of World War 2. Another was Fragment 31's Irony is Not Enough: Essay on my Life as Catherine Deneuve, a poem by Canadian poet and scholar Anne Carson. The poem wasn't so much adapted -

Alison Croggonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08398213223487458758noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7202906.post-37621913006382845242010-11-17T09:23:00.003+11:002010-11-17T09:34:30.991+11:00

I am sometimes puzzled by a disconnect between form and content. No, let's go further: I am baffled by how a perceived form can obliterate what I find myself forced to describe as "content", or vice versa. Perhaps it's simply a poet's failing, but I have a great deal of trouble separating one from the other in any work of art, since the fusing of formal imagination and subject seems to me to be

Alison Croggonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08398213223487458758noreply@blogger.com29tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7202906.post-52976648407593945052010-11-16T08:27:00.017+11:002010-11-16T16:26:04.218+11:00

Some days, writing is about as much fun as flogging yourself with a wooden spoon. Different parts of the brain refuse to speak to each other, which causes problems with the brain-hand-keyboard co-ordination traditionally associated with the art of writing. Thoughts float past in clogged, alienated lumps, not one connecting to the next. Every sentence you screw out has the vim and grace of a

Alison Croggonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08398213223487458758noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7202906.post-15029410126177572942010-11-09T11:00:00.010+11:002010-11-10T18:07:47.588+11:00

Ms TN spent most of last week in her bathchair with smelling salts taped under her nose, which partly accounts for the belatedness of these reviews. But it's also because Daniel Schlusser, who directed The Hollow, and The Rabble, who created The Bedroom Project, are among our more restless experimental artists. The work of both is an on-going interrogation of theatre, and consequently they make

Alison Croggonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08398213223487458758noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7202906.post-32268784293121441762010-11-09T08:49:00.009+11:002010-11-09T11:52:57.408+11:00

Briefly: Marion Potts, the incoming artistic director at the Malthouse, announced her first season yesterday. And she's giving us a solid line-up of crunchy excellence. This is a heavily text-based season, with a well-judged mix of classics and new work, leavened by four dance pieces: a fine evolution of the Malthouse's style.2011 opens strongly with Potts's own production of John Ford's Jacobean

Alison Croggonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08398213223487458758noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7202906.post-90187452556750308512010-11-08T17:22:00.003+11:002010-11-08T17:50:01.091+11:00

One would think that, after more than a month of thespian festivities, Melbourne theatre should have collapsed, gorged with its own dizzy art, and decided instead to enjoy the burgeoning spring in a sensible and above all relaxed manner. But lo! The laurels of Dionysus jiggeth still! All the shows that have been queuing patiently as the Fringe and Melbourne Festival hogged the spotlight are now

Alison Croggonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08398213223487458758noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7202906.post-62562831653854093182010-11-07T12:39:00.006+11:002010-11-10T12:31:45.349+11:00

* There's no shortage of new writing in November. In fact, Melbourne is so lousy with readings of new plays that there is absolutely no excuse not to encounter at least one. Some are, however, happening in the teeth of bureaucratic resistance. Last week the fledgling writers theatre, MKA Richmond, was bizarrely thrown out of its new home in Richmond after only two days of operation. According to

Alison Croggonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08398213223487458758noreply@blogger.com0