There are moments in my theatre going which feel like shooting stars. Those very quick and wonderful moments where we feel like swiveling your head around and saying “Wow! Did anyone else just see that?” And sometimes the answer is a “resounding YES!” (as in the case of Sam Strong’s Speaking in Tongues) and sometimes the answer is “What? No. I must have missed it.” But the fact remains that when you experience that moment of catching a shooting star – or a piece of work – you feel happy for the fact that your faith is restored in shooting stars.

Half World was one such occurance. Read more

There are stories from my childhood that sit in the back of my mind and the front of my heart, that I carry with me on my day to day choices. These stories, on the whole came from cross-legged aloneness, my neck curled down staring at a page… or else from the even and often animated voice of my parents thoughtfully reading to me in my bed. Most of the titles are perhaps not recognisable in the wider world of popular culture:
Honey the Sugar Glider Rich Richardson, illustrations by Diana Petersen (1975), Barnaby and the Rocket story by Lydia Pender, illustrations by Judy Cowell (1972) – stories about nature and conservation and valuing animals and forests. (It was after all the early 80s…) Read more

“There’s the girl who’s new. There’s the quiet girl. There’s the girl with no boyfriend. And the one with too many. There’s the girl who looks different, the girl who’s asking for it. And there’s the girl who’s just… just looking at me wrong. She doesn’t even know she is – but she is. And then there’s me. The girl who’s scared of nothing. The girl they say rumours about.”

The world is a brutal place. Always has been. The fight to survive has been competitive, relentless and has lead us to the here and now. Technically, if we are as Darwin suggest the fittest who have managed to survive – the survivors are fighters. The survivors are brutal. Survivors of society – us who are walking around – are charged with genes honed to fight, programmed with the need to survive at all costs. We are all, in some way, fighters – who and what and when we fight varies – but all of us have that instinct driving the human race forward. Read more