I’m going to come out in the open and admit something. I love doing my tax. Read more

I have been flicking through my diary – backwards as well as forwards – as Oscar Wilde once said “I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.” Read more

As someone dedicated to new Australian writing AND independent theatre it is extremely remiss of me not to have previously attended a production by subtlenuance (Paul Gilchrist and Daniela Giorgi). Read more

A grubby, dank apartment hovers over a black abyss. Read more

A long tangled web of video tape pours down onto the stage – glinting in the half-light like seaweed in a forgotten cave. Read more

A summer night. Friends in t-shirts and hoodies roam the empty streets of Bermagui – drinking, climbing things – cars, fences, railings, garden beds. Loud music. A car with a dirty windscreen. The windows down. Hot chips. A bonfire at the beach. Rugged bushland surrounds the beach. A campsite. A girl you might kiss. A friend you might owe money to, you might fight with… Read more

It was one of those grey washed winter Sydney days when I made my way to see Terminus – I had heard the buzz around town and had flirted briefly with buying tickets. Read more

So… you want to do something in The Rocks that doesn’t involve putting up with come-ons rude tourists…

…That isn’t set in a beer soaked pub which boasts it’s major draw card as overpriced schnitzel?

Perhaps you want to do something after work on Friday that makes you laugh?

Or perhaps you want to impress your new love-interest with your “in-the-loop” cultural discernment?

I thoroughly endorse the work of Tim Andrew – I believe one of the great minds of my generation.

And I have a painting in my lounge room to prove it.

I’ll be there on Friday night for the opening (before scuttling off to a show) –

I invite you to come hang out… 6.30pm… I’ll even introduce you to him… He’s a really nice chap…

You’ll like him.

Read more

Seagulls are, as any ornithologist knows, carnivorous scavengers. Pack birds. Birds that possess a unique mob-mentality and a very clear pecking order. Baby gulls bully their parents with powerful squawks. They will ready to elongate their necks and let forth an alarming noise when courting or challenging other gulls. As a teenager trapped, growing up in the pastoral “paradise” of a northern NSW coastal town, I would sit on the dunes and watch as the gulls scurry about, robbing teenage surfer boys (and their accompanying bikini babes) of their fat, hot chips swaddled in butchers paper. I’d watch the gulls squawk and flap, demanding chips. I’d watch the surfers squawk and flap at the seagulls. I’d overhear the myths (or were they?) of if you give a seagull an aspirin (hidden in a chip) they explode.

That was half my lifetime ago. Read more

It has been an amazing week at Griffin Theatre with the Festival of New writing – the Playwright’s muster, The Griffin Award announcement, even a series of 24 hour play generators – but the event I was most keen to see was on Wednesday night. Whilst my usual reviewing colleagues set out for the opening of the star-studded Seagull, I pulled on my gloves, wrapped myself in scarf and coat and ventured to Heartbreak Hotel – dateless and desperate for a good time. Read more