You can tell that I'm writing a novel. It's having lamentable affects. I'm (mostly) doing my 2000 words a day, but it seems to be sparking off a concomitant logorrhea in this blog. Just be thankful that you're not my family.

Anyway...for reasons that will become clear, I am reading about Noh theatre at the moment. And in my wanderings, I found this quote from the great Noh playwright Zeami (or Seami), translated here by Arthur Waley from Zeami's Kwadensho or Book of the Handing on of the Flower (c1430). What struck me was how utterly modern it sounds, and how deeply this idea is embedded in contemporary theatre practice. Here, of course, it derives from Zen:

Gestures and intonations which yesterday appeared to be admirable may today be insufferable, even if the same actors are playing in the same play... If you look deeply into the ultimate essentials of this art, you will find that what is called 'the flower' has no separate existence. Were it not for the spectator, who reads into the performance a thousand excellences, there would be no 'flower' at all. The Sutra says 'Good and ill are one; villainy and honesty are of like kind'. Indeed, what standard have we whereby to discern good from bad? We can only take what suits the need of the moment and call it 'good'.

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Regular TN readers will know I have the odd problem with documentary theatre, but it has entered a new and surreal dimension that makes my faint squawking feel quite redundant. The Schauspielhaus in Dusseldorf is mounting a production of Karl Marx's Das Kapital, courtesy of Rimini Protokoll, a collective of documentary theatre directors. Personally, I think this is pushing the "document" end of "documentary" rather too hard, maybe into lala land. From the Guardian's description, it sounds like a nightmare fusion of community theatre and economics lecture:

Eight people - selected from among the few who have read the book from cover to cover - tell their own stories, creating a theatrical collage where Marx forms the common thread...

In Kapital, the participants make up a diverse bunch. There is a staunch Marxist who rails against Coca-Cola and the evils of consumer society, a socialist singer from the former communist east Germany, and a blind call-centre worker who dreams of going on Who Wants to be a Millionaire.

So there. I could be utterly misled, of course, and I could be missing right now the theatrical breakthrough of the century. I hope to God I am wrong. It goes hard with me to spit on the brave.

While you're pondering the hitherto deeply hidden theatrical possibilities of The Labour Process and the Process of Producing Surplus-Value or The Transformation of Money in Capital, let me make a couple of overdue pointers to things I've enjoyed recently around the blogs. Chris Goode over at Thompson's Bank of Communicable Desire has a beautiful consideration of Alan Bennett and, in particular, History Boys: a model of critical appreciation. And, as always, he has much else interesting to say on many other topics. Make sure you have a jewel-like drink at your elbow, because this man writes longer posts than I do.

And, speaking of the production of value, Melbourne artist-at-large Miles at A Confrontation With Falling has a fabulous post on the the art market and, in particular, on the auction house, with which he has had intimate dealings. And while you're there, read the rest of this great blog as well, even if it is only slightly about theatre. You'll probably need another of those nice drinks.

UPDATE: Michael Billington, the Guardian's theatre critic, thinks that staging Das Kapital is a fab idea. "One thing people have woken up to in recent years," he tells us, "is the power of documentary theatre". It occurs to me that theatre offers a wider choice than between Spamalot and Das Kapital or, god forbid, a staged reading of Origin of the Species. (Oddly, perhaps, I can imagine Nietzsche on stage; maybe it's all those exclamation marks. And as philosophers go, Nietzsche is a hoot). Nor does it come down to a stark choice between fluff and "real life". There are other possibilities... and these "other" choices - which you might loosely call imagination - are, it seems to me, where theatre is most seriously theatre.

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American bloggers are getting very excited about the appointment of Cate Blanchett and her husband Andrew Upton as the joint artistic directors of the Sydney Theatre Company. Forgive me if I am not so excited: I don't wish to prejudge, but it is far from clear to me that this is an unambiguous Good Thing.

It seems to me that if one is to talk about Hollywood stars giving their lustre to the theatre, it is much more exciting that Geoffrey Rush is starring in Ionesco's Exit The King at the Malthouse and Belvoir St next year, directed by Neil Armfield and with a cast that includes Julie Forsythe. But I remember how brilliant Rush was in Gogol's Diary of a Madman and The Government Inspector under Armfield's direction many moons ago. He is one of our great comic stage actors, and his return to work that highlights his true genius is a real Event.

There is no doubt that the STC appointment will generate publicity and ticket sales out of its sheer star power, as did Kevin Spacey's appointment to the Old Vic. But although Spacey's appointment has certainly worked in the box office, it has been artistically controversial. There is no doubt that our Cate can act, and that Andrew Upton is a fair writer (I thought his adaptation of Cyrano de Bergerac impeccable, but entertain serious doubts about his meeting with Chekhov), and no doubting also their commitment to theatre.

All the same, steering a major theatre company is a rather different task to writing and acting, and I can't but reflect that celebrity is not the same as vision. I think it's a question of "wait and see".

UPDATE: Chris Boyd has more on Robin Nevin's directorship at the STC at The Morning After.

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I feel like I can't be bothered to mention this, but I suppose I should. Perhaps it's anticipatory hysteria at the thrashing the neo-cons received in the US mid-term elections, but in yesterday's Herald Sun, Andrew Bolt takes uncertain aim yet again at all those black-clad "extremist" artists - like Muslims, we're now divided between "extremists" and "moderates" - who live in their "ghettos of hate". In Brunswick, apparently. I'm in some pretty distinguished company - Peter Carey, Richard Flanagan, Andrew McGahan, Phillip Adams, Liz Jones...

Andrew is up to his usual standards of accuracy: poor old Brunswick seems to be unfairly smeared here. Flanagan lives in the wilds of Tasmania. Isn't Carey based in New York? Liz Jones and myself live on the other side of the river. That's only the ones I know about. Not one Brunswick resident among them. Although, like that well-known extremist Coco Chanel, I do wear a lot of black.

HATEFUL: A Brunswick arts extremist (right) plots the violent overthrow of the government. Picture: Man Ray

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Some notes arising out of the present discussion:

1. The question of funding the arts is a no-brainer for artists. Not, as alleged by populist rightwing critics like Andrew Bolt, because of self interest, but because of the manifest benefits that accrue both generally to society and personally to the individual when the arts are valued.

Artists have personally experienced what the arts can give: as a means of self awareness; as a profound and continuous pleasure; as one of the human activities that give meaning and dignity to human existence; as a means of creating a sense of community and relationship; as a way of establishing and questioning a national identity; as a way of understanding our place in the world and ourselves as human beings beyond the materialist valuations of the marketplace.

Anyone who has ever loved another human being, who has had a child, who has felt - by looking at a painting, or listening to music, or by walking through a virgin forest or a humble laneway transfigured by moonlight or, like Wordsworth, by standing on a city bridge - in fact, anyone who has been touched by beauty in one of its myriad manifestations - knows that there are many things in life that are too complex and too profound to be valued simply in terms of money. Art is one of those things.

How much the arts ought to be funded, and in what ways, is a subject that needs to be seriously debated. There is no doubt that Australian arts funding, for all its significant achievements in its almost 40 year history, is far from perfect. Some of this is due to insufficient government funding; some of it can be levelled at the bureaucratisation of the arts through the 80s and 90s; some of it can be put at the feet of those who unthinkingly swallowed the model of the "arts industry" as a sufficient justification for the arts.

We need, as artists, as members of this society, to face the problems, to talk about possible solutions. We need to think more widely and more imaginatively, and to consider carefully - even if it is to lay them aside - the criticisms made of the arts community. Is it our fault that some small but vocal sections of the community hold such negative opinions of the arts? How do we educate the community at large about what the arts mean?

There is little doubt that in Australia we have not always been well served by our arts advocacy, although there have been noble exceptions like Donald Horne. Arts advocacy over the past two decades has concentrated on the economic benefits - understandably, and I do not personally believe that the arts should not be economically responsible. But this has been at the expense of the real value of the arts aside from their value as commodities in the marketplace, which has not been articulated well at all.

As Europe shows, appreciation of the arts goes hand-in-hand with access to and education about the arts. Both access and education are aspects to which state funding is crucial: subsidies make ticket prices or book prices cheaper, permit the decentralisation of the arts so they answer to their local communities and permit the arts to be unchained from market values. Since universal literacy was deemed a desirable part of society, education has been largely the business of the state. Lack of funding means that access to and understanding of the arts is limited only to those who can afford them. It is lack of funding that makes the arts truly "elitist".

Worth noting here is the particular conditions in Australia that exacerbate the difficulties for local artists: a small population spread over a huge continent, making things like distribution and touring expensive and difficult; the necessity to compete, like the local film industry, with the vastly better resourced international corporations which result in a less than level playing field. To get rid of arts funding here would be inevitably to make Australia - even more than it is now - a cultural colony of more powerful economies, most notably the US.

2. State funding of the arts recognises that art is a labour-intensive activity which might not necessarily justify itself by economic return but which offers its own unique benefits to society. In this way, arts funding is exactly the same as Research and Development in the sciences, which doesn't necessarily generate economic return, and sometimes not at all, but which is essential to the further development of the science. It is a bad sign that R&D is not served well in this country either, and that the cultural braindrain is mirrored by a braindrain in the sciences.

3. A market-driven policy for the arts - such as is dominant in America - is unambiguously inhibiting to the diversity and ultimately the quality of the arts. (George Hunka at Superfluities has further thoughts on the American perspective, where this battle has been largely lost). It encourages artists to conform to the necessities of the marketplace, and devalues immeasurably the non-economic aspects of the arts. Those aspects, in fact, that make the arts most valuable.

Worth reading in full, in connection with this question, is William Osborne's illuminating comparison between US and European arts funding models. Australia at present is somewhere in between these two extremes, with state funding still functionally present but being continuously eroded by the "free" market ideologues in power, who would prefer us to follow the US model. As Osborne comments:

The dangers of artists being forced into conformity are apparent. Given the volatility of mass markets, Wall Street has a very particular ethos. This was clearly summarized by Ray Kroc, one of the founders of McDonald's, who was angered by some of his franchises: “We have found out ... that we cannot trust some people who are nonconformists. We will make conformists out of them in a hurry. ... The organization cannot trust the individual; the individual must trust the organization.” The very nature of a mass market is conformity in both product and customer. ...

In the spirit of their mixed economies, Europeans would argue that many forms of artistic expression cannot be positioned or relativised within the mass market or its fringes. For them, culture must be communal and autonomous. They often see American culture as hegemonistic -- a totalizing and destructive assault on the humanistic, cultural and social structures they have worked so long and hard to create.

A general sense of the different perspectives concerning communal identity can be illustrated with an example now widely discussed in the States. Many Americans have seen how corporate-owned strip malls and Wal-Marts have deeply affected their cities and towns. The old downtown areas are abandoned as customers move to corporate businesses on the edge of town. Communal identity and autonomy, which are an important part of cultural expression, are replaced with a relatively isomorphic corporatism.

Osborne links America's urban desolation with the policies that insist on the commodification of the arts, and contrasts it with European planning that values the historical, social and cultural identities of cities. "It is not enough that people have freedom of speech," he concludes. "They must also have mechanisms for meaningfully expressing and debating it. Public arts funding is deeply valuable because it encourages societies to be diverse, intellectually alive, inquisitive and realistic. It furthers the discourse societies need to fully express their communal and national identity and place it in the rest of the world. It furthers our ability to heal and help. It furthers our well-being, freedom of expression, and pursuit of happiness. Public arts funding represents the deepest American ideals."

4. In connection with the above notes, we must keep in mind how free speech has been eroded Australia since 2001 by neo-conservative ideologues. Examples are too numerous to list here: books banned in university libraries; publishers raided and the hard drives on their computers erased; academics fearful that their legitimate research might break the law. And so on. The neo-conservative campaign against the arts does not exist in a vacuum, but is part of a much larger program of legal and social repression, the radical dimensions of which Australian society as a whole is yet to comprehend.

Much mockery has been made of my comparison of the Howard Government's slow erosion of arts funding with Ceaucescau’s funding cuts to the Bulandra Company theatre, which highlights the role of funding cuts as a means of censorship. If the present threat to La Mama was the only symptom, of course the comparison would be ludicrous. But it is by no means the only symptom. The fact that a culturally invaluable - and cost effective - arts institution like La Mama is under threat only highlights how bad things have already become.

The comparison with Ceaucescau was made in the context of a multiple squeezing of the space for the arts: on the ABC, in the Sedition laws, in conservative attacks on contemporary work. This goes, as even a cursory glance at rightwing websites and articles or Howard's "soft" Hansonism will show, with xenophobia and racism, a good dose of homophobia (except in the case of Alan Jones), and a general denigration and fear of anyone designated "other". It seems, for example, that we have already forgotten that under Howard Government policy we imprisoned literally thousands of children in immigrant detention centres, in direct contravention of both international law and common human compassion.

And this is in a larger context where basic common law concepts such as Habeas Corpus - the right that protects a citizen from abitrary detention by the State - are being set aside in many major Western democracies, including, under the new anti-Terror legislation, ours. Habeas Corpus has been for centuries the hallmark of a society that determines that the State cannot abuse its power over the individual: it is what has traditionally made civil democratic society different from tyrannical or totalitarian regimes.

If the Howard Government does not wish to be compared with repressive regimes, it should not employ the same policies as they do.

As Primo Levi said in the preface to his devastating book, If This Is A Man: "Many people - many nations - can find themselves holding, more or less wittingly, that 'every stranger is an enemy'. For the most part this conviction lies deep down like some latent infection; it betrays itself only in random, disconnected acts, and does not lie at the base of a system of reason. But when this does come about, when the unspoken dogma becomes the major premise in a syllogism, then, at the end of the chain, there is the Lager [concentration camp].... Here is the product of a conception of the world carried rigorously to its logical conclusion; so long as the conception subsists, the conclusion remains to threaten us."

5. The question of arts funding is inextricably linked to the question of what kind of society we wish to live in.

UPDATE: George Hunka provides a thoughtful response at Superfluities, in the context of US mid-term elections, reminding us that we are not talking utopias. In part: "this is not to say that a culture or nation that provides continuing, significant support to minority and antagonistic artistic expression would have kept us militarily out of the Middle East, prevented the abuses at Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo, or built guarantees of privacy into the Patriot Act. But it would have provided an environment that contextualizes these issues in a broader vision of humanity."

Which reminds me of Oscar Wilde's comment in De Profundis: "The only crime is lack of imagination".

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I just did something unprecedented, and closed off the comment thread to my post on the threat to La Mama's funding. TN had swum into the purview of the right-thinking wingnuts, and suddenly they were swarming in like Darth Vader's TIE fighters to do a bit of arts bashing.

The comments included the recommended dose of abuse, personal smear and innuendo (a couple of which I removed) laced with the proud sentiment that they don't know anything about art, but they know what they hate. The argument, which is sufficiently outlined in the comments and elsewhere on the net, is that those pinko / commie / poofter / parasite artists (or is it rich, possibly French, aristocrats?) are stealing money from honest hardworking joes to finance their nefarious, leftoid and morally dubious activities. If only it were not all so predictable and boring. Thanks to those who weighed in or emailed me, and heartening also to see a guest appearance from Joe Orton's alter ego, Edna Welthorpe.

I do wonder why these tender-hearted anti-arts activists are not more exercised by straight-out corporate theft than by the tiny amounts of state money which are given to generate the well-documented benefits - employment, tourism, urban revitalisation, creative thinking, pleasure, even health - that the arts give to the community. Though perhaps the real problem is an uneasy suspicion that someone, somewhere, might be having a good time.

Being a parasitical and lazy arts wanker, and consequently having a 500 page novel to write, I don't have time to deal with politico trolls with irony bypasses. Frankly, my feeling is that if you think that artists aren't worth 0.02 per cent of the GDP - what the Australia Council actually costs - you can go jump. Any more trolling comments will be deleted forthwith. This is a blog for debate about theatre (see above). If any of those commentators are actually interested in theatre (say, if they go to see an actual play) they are welcome to contribute. Those who think that theatre ought not to exist at all can vent their spleen elsewhere.

However, as Lao Tsu recommends, perhaps we should embrace our enemies. A couple of local bloggers, alarmed by the argument here, express concern about the reluctance of the arts community to defend itself. Supernaut has some stern words for artists remaining quiet out of the fear that speaking up may affect their funding:

So this in a country where largely the very people and organisations being lined up for the abattoir are too afraid to speak out because they may lose funding, Dance Works gone, Sydney Dance Company, La Mama on notice, and I've lost track of the number of remaining companies also with that noose around their necks. It seems like all of them.

The last thing the arts in Australia needs when Australia Council is busy trying to work out how to not fund anyone, and Neil Jillett, Andrew Bolt and assorted other colonial trash are basking in the right-wing anti-arts thuggery of Australia today is for the artists themselves to be too pathetic to even respond. It's in no small way ironic the voice for survival of performing arts so often comes from journalists who aren't concerned with self-protection so that we artists can have our freedom of speech.

And at Minktails, young artist Ming-Zhu Hii talks about the necessity of speaking up for what we believe in:

I do not in any way shape or form advocate silence, and I believe that there are many of these such arguments out there that we are showing only our silent backs towards. As artists and supporters of a rich and diverse culture, it is time that we spoke a little more loudly. In general. Perhaps we would not have to waste our breath on defending our totally justified exasperation towards issues such as the threat to La Mama's funding. Perhaps, just perhaps, then, we wouldn't be exasperated in the first place, because the livelihood of the theatre would not be in jeopardy.

UPDATE: A wonderful post from Ben at Parachute of a Playwright speculating on why these attacks on the arts are so vitriolic:

As I type, the thought occurs to me that perhaps the reason that the thug-wits go after people who write like Alison, who point out that the arts is not a luxury add-on to a lifestyle but an essential element of coming to understand and to navigate our lives... well they go after such ideas because the ideas remain powerful. The facts are powerful. And there is something so unsettling about the idea that human beings MUST express or we will be walking dead that provokes the zombie attacks.

And Ben also points out the absolute necessity now for all of us who value the arts and what they stand for to speak up against the libels and the smears and the lies, to negotiate our own differences and to create spaces where difference and debate is actually possible:

It's too easy to listen to abusage of the arts and roll my eyes and think that the person doing the abusing won't change, so what point is there? Sometime I wonder whether I've been simply rolling my eyes at concepts I find uncomfortable and don't want to do the work of engaging with. But we have to engage. Of course, we have to pull the plug on anonymous threats and smears, but we mustn't expect them. We have to talk. If there's one thing that characterises the Howard era it's that, under attack, we've become silent even amongst ourselves. Say something. Every voice adds nuance and richness. Let's stop believing, too, that disagreement within our circles implies that we want those who disagree with us destroyed or humiliated. Let's take it as a starting point for finding out more about one another. Enough of the silent simmering - it has only let the scum rise in the public sphere.

Of course, well-known arts connoisseur Andrew Bolt dishes the dirt as well. It seems I am married to the playwright Daniel Keene!!! Deep investigative journalism there - he just has to read the sidebar on this blog. And clearly, my poor pathetic husband needs my support to ensure his future staging at La Mama! Why else would I think the damn place mattered?

And obviously my huge influence as a poet and freelance journalist swings him those stages at Theatre de la Ville, Theatre de la Commune, the Theatre du Rond-Pont, the National Theatres of Bordeaux and Toulouse, the central stage at the Avignon Festival (some of the most prestigious theatres in France, btw) and all those other productions since 2000... which, little does Andrew know, add up to thousands and thousands of tickets sold. (A little googling might have enlightened him, but we all know that Andrew never lets the facts get into the way of a good smear.)

Like they say on Dragonball Z: I'm more powerful than I ever imagined...

And another PS: while we're at it, let's not forget the Sedition laws, which are a crucial part of the mix that is targeting free speech and impacting on artists. The whole Anti-Terror Act, which contains these laws, can be downloaded here. The Australia Law Reform Commission's reports and recommendations on the Sedition laws, rejected by the Attorney General, are available here.

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Good things come to those who wait. The Age finally ran my opinion piece on La Mama Theatre being put "on notice" by the Australia Council, almost two weeks after I sent it in, and only after Robin Usher caught up with the same story. After I submitted it, which ruffled my feathers slightly. An old journalist never loses those scoopish instincts.

A couple of things to note about the subbing: in the original, I said La Mama was picking up where the Community Cultural Development Board left off. Grammatical expediency now includes the New Media Board as well, which in the lo-tech environs of La Mama is patently absurd. And a couple of pars about the Sedition Laws were chopped, which is a pity. For the record, they ran:

Some aspects of this war on freedom of speech, such as the new editorial policies at the ABC, are much discussed. Others are more insidious, such as Attorney-General Phillip Ruddock’s refusal to amend the Sedition provisions in the new anti-Terror Laws, despite recommendations from the Australian Law Reform Commission and a Senate Committee. These laws, according to a range of legal opinion, particularly threaten artists.

Artistic organisations protesting the Sedition laws say they will have a “chilling” effect on artistic expression. “Freedom of expression and public debate is not only the foundation of a free and flourishing literature,” says Angela Bowne, President of Sydney PEN. “It is one of the critical underpinnings of our democracy.”

UPDATE: The cerebral heavyweights over at Tim Blair's blog get stuck into La Mama (and Croggon). Heady, edifying, deeply informed stuff, as you might expect.

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Depressing news on the grapevine today - ABC Radio National is axing its popular daily arts program The Deep End. Which means, aside from The Book Show, no daily arts on the ABC anywhere, and nothing, aside from Julie Copeland's Exhibition A, that talks regularly about the performing arts. One more nail in the coffin of mainstream arts coverage. So much for the ABC charter.

More thoughts on the dwindling public space for contemporary arts and artists, and the significance of this, soon.

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Killing Game by Eugene Ionesco, directed by Greg Stone. Design by John Bennett, lighting by Nick Merrylees, sound by Greg Stone and Evan Drill. With University of Ballarat Arts Academy Third Year graduates. Theatreworks until November 4.

Eugene Ionesco's Killing Game is notable, among other things, for probably holding the theatrical record for deaths on stage. It might even beat the record in its first scene, which starts off as an innocuous portrayal of streetlife and ends with a mysterious and deadly illness striking down everyone in sight.

Ionesco's enthusiastically comedic overkill continues through almost every scene in the play, providing every actor in his large cast with at least one death scene. But like Albert Camus in his rather more sober novel The Plague, Ionesco is concerned not so much with death itself, as with what happens to human beings in a society that perceives itself under threat: how easily human freedoms are compromised and manipulated by fear.


Written in 1974, Killing Game is one of Ionesco's later plays. Less overtly surreal than a play like Rhinoceros, it nevertheless takes Emily Dickinson's advice to "tell the truth, but tell it slant". The plague that afflicts this unnamed town kills astonishing numbers of people: 30,000 in one day. They keel over in the streets, in their homes, in prisons and hospitals, dying mere seconds after exhibiting their symptoms.

Ionesco is simply unconcerned by the realities of pathology or with the logistical details of, for example, removing 30,000 corpses a day from the streets. The literal details of what might be called his propositions about reality do not interest him.What does concern him is the absurdity of the human capacity for self-deception and folly and the possibility - always contingent - of true human communication.

Ionesco himself fiercely resisted political or ideological interpretations of his work. "The true society, the authentic human community," he wrote, "is extra-social - a wider, deeper society, that which is revealed by our common anxieties, our desires, our secret nostalgias....A work of art is the expression of an incommunicable reality that one tries to communicate".

But this doesn't mean that ideologies cannot be read in Ionesco's work. Perhaps his truest insight is the profoundly Marxist idea that society alienates human beings from themselves. "I believe that every society alienates," he said. "Even and above all a 'socialist' society...wherever one finds social functions, one finds alienation." Such refusals of the binaries of Left and Right look less wilfully eccentric now than they might have done in the 1950s, when they caused pain to critics like Kenneth Tynan, who saw them as an expression of aesthetic irresponsibility.

In Killing Game, the disease that attacks the community might be seen a metaphor for society itself. But although its black satire of a community destroying itself in order to protect itself seems grimly apposite now, Greg Stone's lively and intelligent production refuses the temptation of burdening the play with heavy-handed relevance. It speaks for itself, and so retains its complexity.

It opens as a faceless red-cloaked figure, an avatar of Death, strums a sinister solo on an electric guitar. She stands on the heights of John Bennett's striking multi-level set while the citizens of the town unknowingly go about their business below, creating a theatrical image that is very like the mediaeval idea of memento mori.

Stone's energetic student cast keeps the pace fast, exploiting Ionesco's black ironies with enthusiasm and comedic aplomb. The scenes cut from one to another across the multiple levels of the set, signalled by changes in lighting states. It's backed by an powerhouse soundtrack, including live music and a good dose of Tom Waits' The Earth Died Screaming.

For the most part, the performances are more than creditable; the only time when their youth is a problem is in a moving (and rather crucial) dialogue between an old couple (Michael Bevitt and Helene Koen). It is not these talented young actors' fault that this scene is beyond their capacity: it is not only the physical appearance of age that is missing here, but the profound and subtle sadness with which Ionesco imbues his characters, and which can only come with age itself.

This production certainly shows off the various talents of Ballarat University's Arts Academy. And as an old Ballarat girl myself, I'm glad to say they do Ionesco proud.

Picture: Michael Bevitt and Helene Koen in Killing Game. Photo: Ponch Hawkes.

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My review of George Ogilvie's autobiography Simple Gifts, published by Currency House, was broadcast today on ABC Radio National's The Book Show today. Audio and transcript here.

Worth listening to on the same program is Frank Moorhouse's talk on The Writer in a Time of Terror, in which he ruminates on freedom of speech (or the increasing lack of it) in Australia.

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