Dragging my feet like a reluctant school child. I’ve been on the verge of writing so many times and yet prioritized everything above this task. It’s a fear of mine – deep and dark and quiet, cruel and steady, so casual in it’s proliferation – apathy.

I dread apathy. I fear complacency. I feel compelled to guard against it. I sometimes feel the righteous burn of wanting to rid it from those around me who weakly concede “but that’s how the system works,” or “that’s just how it is.” We lack imagination and ambition with that line of thinking and I can’t help but feel the deep need to build on the legacy of what has got us this far: the vision, bravery and fortitude to do something new, something better. Read more

As a teenage girl, Kafka’s A Hunger Artist was a story I read and re-read. This would only seem strange, I suppose, if it was true that Teenagers are NOT the most philosophical (and existentially angsty) humans on earth… and if I didn’t grow up in a small town which I despised for being small and a town. Reading was a consolation. Reading Kafka even more so. I could have spent a lot more of my time flirting with and then dodging teenage pregnancy, but instead I was reading A Hunger Artist, and thinking about the tragic cruel truth behind Kafka’s portrait of the fickle, skeptical general public. If you wasted your childhood in more interesting/sexy ways, perhaps you’d like to read the story here: https://records.viu.ca/~Johnstoi/kafka/hungerartist.htm
(Though NOT reading it will in no way prevent your curiosity in Clockfire Theatre Company’s latest offering: A Hunger Suite) Read more

Read more

Shag pile, shag pile everywhere – even climbing up the walls.

And just as well, too. I need somewhere soft to lean into, while sitting in the dark breathing in the words of Declan Greene’s Max Afford Playwright’s Award winning play premiering at Griffin Theatre Company – the provocatively titled “Eight Gigabytes of Hardcore Pornography.”

The Internet.

The latest in a string of many human lead historic revolutions – following the mechanical and the sexual – to improve and yet collapse the world as we knew it in the same moment. Read more

It is rare that I’ll venture from the word-heavy comfort of my true love (text-based theatre) and meander into the muscular flesh-fest of contemporary dance… but I do from time to time. This special occasion is a triptych presented by Sydney Dance Company in their 45th Anniversary Year – two new works and a remounted work from yesteryear.

Not practiced in the language of (nor the world of) dance, I feel fairly limited in my ability to articulate the specific thoughts and experience of watching phrase upon phrase of movement. I watch trying to form a sense of how to articulate a moment or an image – and so watching becomes in part an exercise in writerly craft -a previous example of trying to write about dance (Specifically a SDC show) can be found here: https://classic.augustasupple.com/2012/03/2-one-another-sydney-dance-company/ . To build my dance articulation muscle I’ll continue to exercise because I am not yet sophisticated in my viewing, nor in my language in responding or reviewing dance.

Lucky the Sydney Dance Company is so robust in it’s history and vision, that the likes of a reader and writer like myself could not possibly dint their reputation as I fumble about in the top drawer of my language skills to find something coherent to say. It’s taken me too long to pluck the courage up to say something… but now at least I have.
Just in time for the show to move on from Sydney to a bright horizon. Read more

I have no doubt: the personal is political. But who are these “persons” making things of their own politics, and politics of their own person? If we are to examine closely: the politics of me, you, us – would any of us be able to guess how any of our personal politics could steer 90 minutes of entertainment? Read more

Swathes of heavy cloth, canvas, or calico – the thick sails of a ship or the drop sheets in a house mid-renovation. Scuffed grey floor. Some chairs. Functional, nearly sculptural. A neutral zone for the scenes to smear and blend, I’ll know where I am because I’ll be shown or told through light or line or a hum of sound. Read more

It’s taken me a while to actually write about this show. Several factors contributed to what can from all external evidence would suggest as a dragging of ones feet (pen?) – but it’s more like the cogs and the levers have been clamorous inside my head and heart about this piece – more so than I had anticipated straight after the show. My internal machine noisy. Read more

It took me some time to write about “The Godot” currently playing at the Sydney Theatre, produced by the Sydney Theatre Company. I knew that the delighted opening night foyer, the thunderous applause and the casting of two of Australia’s most accomplished celebrity theatre actors in the lead roles of Di-di and Go-go was a recipe for success. The desire to peck out a rapid-fire review was diminished: after all this play is about Waiting. Ruminating.

So I thought I’d follow its lead. Read more

Romeo and Juliet – you know the blurb “The greatest love story of all time? Certainly. But it’s also a prototype for some of culture’s other great narratives: the rebellion against generations past, and the need to escape from a predetermined future. One of the most thrilling things about young love is that often it is forbidden. And that very act of prohibition makes it all the more alluring.”

And so when we know the story so well – the star crossed lovers who end up destroying their lives (and the lives of those around them) – that in the production it becomes more about the journey than the destination. Read more