Lore is both sensational and profound, powerfully exploring the concept of the title, a body of traditions and knowledge held by a group and passed on from generation to generation. In the two contrasting pieces making up this unique program, the Indigenous body becomes the means of handing on the past and documenting its transmutation in the present and finding, in the process, hope for the future.
It was a pleasant surprise as I waited outside The Factory for my meeting with Kylie Coolwell to see three familiar dogs rounding the corner and hear the familiar cry “Agro” before Kylie came into view. A well-known figure in Waterloo, Kylie Coolwell is the writer of Battle of Waterloo, which was an attraction at Wharf 1 Theatre from June 1-27. She is also the owner of Agro, Princess and Snoop.
Rhymes with Silence
107 Projects, Redfern
May 16-24, 2015
A timely offering as the Parramatta Eels linked arms this weekend [May 16] in support of the campaign to end domestic violence, Rhymes with Silence, a collection of new short plays, explores its subject with earnest candour. The 13 plays, written by nine playwrights featuring 26 actors working with 12 directors, have been carefully crafted into an artistic whole beginning with despair and ending in hopefulness.
Bright orange signage emblazoned with the words, “innovation, sustainability and community”, welcomes visitors at all major entrances to the Australian Technology Park (ATP). Banners along all pedestrian and bicycle pathways throughout the site also include the word “heritage”, but they all ring hollow to local residents’ groups as the government proceeds with its plans to sell the ATP.
Once again the totally relevant and exciting Théâtre Excentrique has chosen to present a play that disturbs and challenges its audience. The conflict between personal feeling and public policy dramatised by Anouilh’s Antigone is as important to us today as it was to occupied France in 1944, the time of its first performance, and to the fifth century Athenian audience of Sophocles’s tragedy.
An unseasonably cold night in April was leavened by the heartwarming performance of Con Nats’s Haircuts as part of the 33rd Greek Festival of Sydney. In its own gently observant fashion the play celebrates the ways in which the more expressive Mediterranean migration beneficially modified the less expansive Australian culture, and at the same time explores the resistance of communities to change in the iconic little world of the barbershop.
“Central to Eveleigh” includes a stretch of publically owned land known as the Australian Technology Park, which among other things, houses the Eveleigh Locomotive...
On the topic of sex, from Adultery to Zen, there seems no angle left to be viewed. No word, particularly the more visceral, left to be said. However, in the final presentation of Subtlenuance’s Table Talk Trilogy exploring the often socially divisive topics of politics, religion and sex, And Now to Bed offers individual insight into sexual choices, affirming difference and acknowledging the centrality of sexuality in the construction of personal identity and the finding of emotional fulfilment.
The Coalition government took Operation Sovereign Borders – a military-led response to “combat people smuggling and protect Australia’s borders” – to the September 2013 federal election. Apocalypse Theatre initiated an immediate response by inviting playwrights across the country to create plays examining this widely debated policy and the selected plays matched to directors and actors. For 12 nights 24 new Australian works, largely presented as staged readings, consider what it means to seek asylum.
Collaboration between Braverman and Phillippou has created a unique, often amusing but above all deeply moving piece of theatre. “Wot? No Fish!” is a solo performance based on real people and events with no aids other than an initial introduction to the taste of gefilte fish dipped into beetroot and horseradish sauce, a shoebox and an overhead projector. Braverman delighted his audience with his presentation of the family life of a Jewish couple in a twentieth century London’s East End through the artwork of the husband, Ab Solomons.
WATERLOO: On Thursday November 6, from 4 to 5.30pm, The Factory Community Centre hosted a fantastic workshop on making a zine, a self-published booklet, led by prolific zine creator, Nicholas Beckett.
On entering the theatre space the audience is met by an apparently simple but devastatingly beautiful set combining in its elements the themes of this wonderfully presented story of struggle, personal, political and universal.
WATERLOO: Nick Valentine, a Black Dog presenter, spoke on the topic “Breaking down depression and developing resilience” at The Factory Community Centre on Wednesday morning, October 15.
Her cupboard is limitless capable of hosting a panorama of characters and scenarios as Cristina interrogates her father, Robert, mother, Gwen and sister, Anna, girlfriends and an old boyfriend. At times these significant others...
