What? How did that happen? Christmas again? WHAT? Read more

November was a busy month. Lots of shows on. Lots to direct. Lots to see. And amongst that was Novemberism -a brand new festival for playwrights that seemed to pop out of nowhere, containing a collection of collectives, writing opportunities and conversations. On one of the many Saturdays of Novemberism, I struggled in the swelter of a slow-to-start summer to The Old 505 Theatre. I went in search of a panel discussion on Auto/biography in theatre, hosted by John McCallum and with contributions from Kate Mulvany (The Seed), Rebecca Clarke (Unspoken), Noelle Janaczewska (Good with Maps) and Phil Spencer (Bluey). Read more

I’ve been thinking about story ownership.

Quite a bit actually. Read more

It is a daily question in my life:

Why bother?
As a director, producer, writer, dramaturg – I certainly seem to have enough to do without the extra stress/time demands of reviewing shows. Read more

There’s a computer game that many of my friends play called “Civilisation” (I know, this may seem to be an odd start to this post but I thought an interesting one) which is a game in which the player spends hours empire building. It’s an interesting game because it asks the player to imagine building a society that is victorious – and sometimes this means re-inventing history or re-thinking a strategic political position. Read more

I’ve had my head down the last few weeks in rehearsal for WOMEN POWER CULTURE season (A festival designed by Louise Fischer to celebrate women playwrights and directors) – and I’m also busy reading plays right now for Playwriting Australia… so apologies for the delay IN MY OUTRAGE!!!

WHAT THE…? ARE YOU SERIOUS? Read more

More than ever before in my artistic life, I have been asking myself what it means to live as an artist – not work as an artist (that is an entirely different question) – but how should one live?

When starting a project I always let the people I’m working with know a few of my ground rules: Read more

Salon 2 Women in Theatre Research: Conversation started by Gail Cork (Australian Script Centre), Elaine Lally (University of Technology Sydney) & Sarah Miller (University of Wollongong).

(Here we are in a small theatre… a ring of women and two men… where are the artistic directors? Busy at one of the other Salons? Or perhaps they think they’ll read the paper later?) Read more

OK. Let’s talk about new work.

There seems to be a bit of discussion around plays – new plays and old plays, adaptations, reinventions, notions of “Australian” work, “new Australian plays”, the issues of the development of plays, the question of new play production. Discussions about women playwrights and their representation in main stage theatre programs… there’s even discussions about classic plays – and the Australian canon… Read more

As it gets to the narrow end of the year, it’s not surprising that I seem to be dipping into moments of introspection and retrospection – as I gear up for production – namely Vanessa Bates’ The Night We Lost Jenny and Alana Valentine’s The Sex Act for the season of Women, Power and Culture – and Platonic a site specific work by Playwriting Collective 7-ON.

After a massive 2010, 2011 has been a time of finding balance and scale. Read more