theatARGH
thoughts and frustrations on Melbourne theatre through bright young eyesArchive for emerging
Review of Cellblock Booty, Sisters Grimm
The factory of Sisters Grimm (although I’ve always imagined it more like a dank, sweaty, suburban cinema glistening with faux-gold trimmings, condoms hanging from the chandeliers and globs of lube in the hairy velvet carpet) never stops churning. Fresh from last year’s trash extravaganza musical Bum Town and a season of Mommie and the Minister at the Adelaide Fringe, Ash Flanders and Declan Greene have regrouped with a new cast, as well as some familiar faces, in the Collingwood Underground Arts Space for Cellblock Booty. It’s a furiously energetic, high-camp homage to the women in prison sexploitation films of the seventies and easily represents some of the most painfully, painfully, devastatingly funny work of the company to date.
Review of Tenderness, Platform Youth Theatre
While, as Alison Croggon rightly pointed out, there are significant stigmas surrounding the creation and production of youth theatre in Melbourne, there are also constant reminders of what a captivating scene that it can be when given the chance. Platform Youth Theatre’s Tenderness is a fantastic example; a bold and unashamedly dark exploration of youth issues, it effectively challenges the assumption that young people are not emotionally mature enough to take part in, or respond to, a theatrical and highly stylised representation of gritty material. Furthermore, Tenderness is not just theatre for “youths”; it is theatre showing adults how theatre can be done.
Interview with David Ryding, Emerging Writers’ Festival
David Ryding is a very tall man. He is also a scriptwriter, director and arts administrator with a keen interest in installation art. David is Director of the Emerging Writers’ Festival 2008, now in its fifth year, to happen in Melbourne from 9th to the 11th of May. I recently had a chat with him about the Festival, what it means to be an ‘emerging’ writer, and the future of writing in Australia.
ENTER theatARGH
Some people think that it’s terribly self-indulgent to start up a blog; that by publishing your views on the internet, you believe they are worthy of some precedence or authority above their own. I don’t especially blame them. The internet really is brimming with blogs of pointless diatribes about boyfriends and bourgeois burdens. I’m part of the MSN Messenger / Myspace / Facebook generation and I’m sick to death of it too. However, this blog has a purpose. It’s not about me and how much my lyf sux!111 (lolz) – we all have issues, right? Rather, it’s an exploration of one of my passions. Theatre. In particular, Melbourne theatre. And what’s going so very wrong with it (as well as what’s going right). Read the rest of this entry »
