Review: The Wonderful World of Dissocia

The Wonderful World of Dissocia
Wharf 1, Sydney Theatre Company
Until 23 May
Tickets $30-$75
Bookings (02) 9250 1777
Critic’s Rating 8/10


The world of Dissocia, created by Scottish playwright Anthony Neilson, is like that little corner of your brain that fantasises and yearns to break out of routine and rediscover your inner child.

Lisa (Justine Clark) has lost an hour after a series of flights across the Atlantic and the only way she can get it back is to search for it in Dissocia - a little-known Wizard of Oz-type land where nearly everything is a cliché.

It’s a world which celebrates eccentricity, as we find insecurity guards (why guard something that is secure), a horny scape-goat and a singing polar bear.

The clichés get rammed home a bit too much but let your imagination go and you’ll find yourself entering a wonderful playground which sets you up for the opposing second half which I won’t give away.

Besides the wonderfully extravagant performances from a great ensemble, the creative collaboration behind the production is the true revelation.

Director Marion Potts, along with designers Nick Schlieper, Tess Schofield and Alice Babidge have created a world that not only transports you with the colour and light of the set but also brings you bursting into its beautiful and unexpected dreamlike end.

Review: Kafka's Monkey

Kafka’s Monkey
Sydney Theatre Company
Until 25 April
Tickets $30-$65
Bookings (02) 9250 1777
Critic’s Rating 9/10


During David Attenborough’s famous broadcast with mountain gorillas in Rwanda he turns to the camera and quietly utters: “There is more meaning and mutual understanding in exchanging a glance with a gorilla than with any other animal I know.”

From the moment Kathryn Hunter enters the vast stage space, in ill-fitting top and tails and with the gait of a monkey to address the "ladies and gentlemen of the academy", you know there will be an exchange rarely experienced in the theatre.

Initially a 1917 short story penned by Czech writer Franz Kafka and adapted for the stage by Colin Teevan - Kafka’s Monkey is an address by a lecturer about her existence as an ape five years previously.

Taken from west Africa and incarcerated in the cramp hull of a ship, she stumbles across the idea of imitating her captors to gain freedom from her cage.

As she analyses her new environment within human society, flashes of confinement return as she feels increasingly isolated. It’s at this moment you start to share that isolation as you look around at your fellow audience members (species) and hear their guffaws, applause and feel their breath.

This production from London’s Young Vic and directed by Walter Meierjohann is a theatrical delight not just for its effect but for the astonishing versatility in the physical and vocal skill of Hunter.

It is a performance at its most adventurous and brings the face of humanity eye to eye with our inner primate.

Review: Abigail's Party

Abigail's Party
Ensemble Theatre
Until 2 May
Tickets $23-$59
Bookings (02) 9929 0644
Critic’s Rating 7/10


With pineapple skewers, a rotisserie, Demis Roussos records, fibre lights and orange glass ornaments this production of the 1977 play Abigail’s Party swishes around like a vintage muu muu.

Beverley (Queenie van de Zandt) and her husband, Laurence (Brian Meegan) live at 13 Richmond Road and they’ve invited neighbours around. She is the perfect hostess as she prepares for a nice evening with new arrivals Angela (Tara Morice) and Tony (Ben Ager). We never get to meet 15-year-old Abigail but we can hear the festivities of her own party as her mother, Susan (Julie Hudspeth), seeks refuge at number 13.

This classic British play written by filmmaker Mike Leigh (whose most recent claim to fame was the Oscar-nominated film Vera Drake) is a dark portrayal of the middle class and their aspirations in keeping up appearances.

It’s keeping up appearances at any cost that Leigh frames with such devastating consequences, as the five people come crashing together and Beverley becomes more gregarious.

There’s a great amount of amusement in the design by Graham Maclean. But this fine production directed by Mark Kilmurry, goes past the swirling colours and captures the style of Leigh with its dark undercurrent as the characters come crashing together in the final and very dramatic moments of the play.

Review: Alchemist

As first published in the Sun-Herald.

The Alchemist
Playhouse, Sydney Opera House
Until 18 April
Tickets $30-$60
Bookings (02) 9250 7777
Critic’s Rating 7/10


Whether their racket is fake Nigerian trust funds, the promise of eternal youth or the chance to earn a quick buck, confidence tricksters intrigue us as we watch gullible fools fall victims to their schemes.

Just switch on A Current Affair for proof. But it’s far less funny when you’re the one who gets caught.

Despite the title, Ben Jonson’s 1610 play, The Alchemist, is less about alchemy and more about the way rip-off merchants get amongst almost anyone to part with their money in exchange for tantalising hope of riches. Wall Street shows us not much has changed in 400 years.

Lovewit, master of the house (Rssel Kiefel), is taking a sojourn to the country, leaving the housekeeper, Face (Andrew Tighe), his friend Subtle, the alchemist (Patrick Dickson) and saucy seductress Dol Common (Georgina Symes) with an opportunity to use the house as a base to run their racket.

From here they set about conning every soul they can lay their hands on. First there’s Dapper, a lawyers clerk (Bryan Probets); the local tobacconist, Abel Drugger (Lucas Stibbard); Sir Epicure Mammon, a bright-eyed knight (David Whitney); the gothic-looking deacon (Richard Sydenham); and the angry young Kastril (Scott Witt), decked out in his bling and oversized skater shoes.

Each queues up in a Mark Latham like conga line of suckholes believing the fantastical and whimsical promises of Face and his gang of three. Enter Surly (Sandro Caolarelli), the one person who can see through the masquerade and who attempts to undo their plot.

The brilliance of Jonson, a contemporary of William Shakespeare, is that his comedy portrays the failings of humanity with such life-like characteristics.

The Alchemist is written in such an over-the-top and melodramatic way it makes delicious material for the actors, allowing them to dive head first into the caricatures and the wit.

Director John Bell unleashes his cast and lets them rule the stage with a strut and playfulness. It is hard not to be caught up in the childlike antics of the rascals.

The physical and lyrical gags come fast as the performers do their best to outdo each other in a display the likes of which is rarely seen in theatre today.

Review: Radio

Radio by Al Smith
Gemeinschaft Dogs in association with Tamarama Rock Surfers
Old Fitzroy Theatre


The Old Fitzroy has had a pretty hit and miss year so far. But what is really working in the space in the underbelly of the fantastic old pub in the middle of Woolloomooloo is monologues.

Earlier this year they had a hit with the New Zealand play The Packer and now they have drawn together another quality monologue performance with Radio.

Born in the American mid-west in the exact mid-point of the twentieth century we are introduced to Charles Lebanon Fairbanks Jnr (Andrew Bibby) a suitably patriotic young American who grows up in the cushioned world of small time America during a nostalgic age when innocence and honesty were the assumed hall marks of the American national character.

Charles lives an almost utopian existence with his father and mother on a property in Kansas. Suddenly, someone from some government department work out that Charles and his family live the geographic centre of the country.

A junk yard mound in the front of their house soon becomes an icon as photo hungry tourists line up to be seen in the mid point of the great American nation. The family start making American flags to sell to the tourists and soon the poor and humble family are making more money than they could ever imagine.

But then one day, despite the fame, Charles' father decides that the family should pick and leave the tourist attraction home and head north to the cold flats of Dakota. Finding another property, much to the furious opposition of Charles' mother they move in to another small town.

To the surprise of everyone, Alaska joins the union as the 49th state in 1959 moving the geographic centre to - you guessed it - their house. The flag selling family continue their very profitable little industry.

As the Vietnam War approaches Charles is drafted into the army and is packed off to fight the Communists from where he is delivering the monologue.

Addressed to some lost love, Charles recounts his families existence, the funny and sad memories and finally the lost innocence of Vietnam.

Written by a young Scottish playwright it offers a very simple and elegant portrayal of America personified by young Charles. Unfortunately the metamorphosis that the country (and Charles) goes through with Vietnam is not explored further and leaves the story hanging in a world that is a little naive and lacking that extra oomph.

Nicely performed by Andrew Bibby, this is a good and solid production that works extremely well in the space with a simply effective design by Travis Green. It could have a been easily over-produced and over-performed, but this a play that is quietly contemplative and well delivered.


Until 20th September
Old Fitzroy Theatre
129 Dowling St
Woolloomooloo NSW
$16-24 plus bkng fee
Bookings 1300 438 849 or rocksurfers.org

STC opens the gates

The atmosphere at Monday night's Sydney Theatre Company 2009 season launch shows how quickly Andrew Upton and Cate Blanchett are changing the energy of the place.

With hordes of young actors, independent theatre artists, professional performers and a smattering of celebrity it was one of the most lively and convivial evenings I have had at the Wharf for ages.

There was a great sense of excitement in the air, with even a sense of relief, that a new administration and a new direction was taking over. The Artistic Directors made the deliberate point that they want to open the place up, making it more the SYDNEY Theatre Company than its previous incarnation.

There was such a great cross section of people there from all across the industry that you got the sense that Upton and Blanchett are really blowing away the cobwebs. They even had Youth Group playing at the end of the night. Everytime someone said to me 'they're a bit loud aren't they?' I was filled with just a little glee.

The evening started with a short speech from the AD's followed by Jonathan Wikipedia Biggins dryly comparing short speeches from the cast and crew of each of the shows lined up for next year.

It's an unusual season and not what I was expecting at all. But it does go hand in hand with a certain approachability and lightness that Upton and Blanchett are trying to introduce into the theatre company.

They have divided up the season into what they have branded 'Main Stage', 'Next Stage' and 'Back Stage'. It sounds almost as good as a flirtatious night out on Oxford Street but the new STC version is all about opening up communication channels and bringing emerging and burgeoning artists together with those that are established.

Kicking off the season is David Williamson's The Removalists. This will definitely give the box office a good old kick along with subscribers who love their dose of Williamson and those HSC students studying it next year. Directed by one of my favourite directors currently around on the local circuit, Wayne Blair, it will appeal to a wide range of punters.

This is then followed by Travesties, a UK import from Tom Stoppard who wrote the play in the early 1970's, reviving it and re-writing it in 1993. I can hear the collective sigh of relief from many of you saying 'Well, thank god it isn't another David Hare piece'. The play, which looks at 'revolutionary artists', has had a solid amount of re-mounts to justify a new STC version which will be directed by Mr Ralph Cotterill.

The Wonderful World of Dissocia by Scottish playwright and director at the National Theatre of Scotland, Anthony Neilson, is another UK import and is the type of programming that wouldn't be far removed from a Fergus Linehan Sydney Festival event. First produced at the Edinburgh Festival in 2004, this is fantasy theatre at its best. And if director Marion Potts can pull of a new version it should be one of the picks of the season.

Andrew Bovells' When The Rain Stops Falling quickly follows and is a work, as the title suggests, that delves into the world of the environment. Loosely based on the fantastic Tim Flannery history The Future Eaters, this is a direct import by Brink Productions that first premiered at the Adelaide Festival earlier this year.

My esteemed colleague at The Guardian Lyn Gardner called the next production as the most "blissfully funny and touching evening I've had in the theatre for ages". Elling which started off as a cult book in Norway to then become a film and then a play seems to have that quality of simple quirky story telling. It will be Pamela Rabe's second occasion as director.

Martin Crimp is featured next and many people I know are big fans of this UK playwright. His latest play The City will have its Australian premiere after a very successful opening earlier this year at the Royal Court. Directed by Benedict Andrews this is the other side of the coin to his earlier work The Country and confronts the ever present angst of urban life.

Poor Boy, a co-production with the Melbourne Theatre Company, follows next and sounds like it could be an interesting night, especially those that are fans of Tim Finn. Aimed at your 30-45 year old demographic (as much of this season is) it features original songs and lyrics by Finn which are framed by playwright Matt Cameron and director Simon Phillips.

Tommy Murphy's Saturn's Return makes a mainstage comeback after a first successful run at Wharf 2 (and playing now). I have heard very mixed reports on the play from a wide variety of people whose judgement I value but obviously Blanchett and Upton think it deserves another crack. It will be directed by everyone's favourite David Berthold.

The next production seems to be the one that many are chattering about as Blanchett opens the company up further and flies Liv Ullmann to direct Tennessee Williams' masterpiece A Streetcar Named Desire. There was a very strange comment in an article by Joyce Morgan yesterday that said 'Blanchett is confident Ullmann's production, which will tour North America, will shake off the shackles of the famous film that so often overshadows the original play'. I have no idea why you would bog yourself down in trying to shake off those (rather quite excellent) shackles but here's hoping that Joel Edgerton doesn't try to do a Marlon Brando. This should be a good meaty show.

French playwright Yasmina Reza is then up in what is a big return for Gale Edwards as director. God of Carnnage is Reza's 2006 play which first premiered in Switzerland but wasn't produced in English until last year. Reza is a very popular playwright in Europe and I saw much of her work at the National Theatre of Slovenia while I was living there. Always interesting and always amusing and always with that typical French insight, starring Jeremy Sims I am quietly looking forward to this show.

The Wharf Revue is next. No need to elaborate.

The Mysteries: Genesis is then next and marks the start of the new Actors Company, herein known as The Residents. From the little information provided about what the Residents will be it appears to be a much better and fluid version of the first. Indeed, it will hopefully be more in the spirit of what an 'ensemble' really is - a pool of people you draw from on a project by project basis. Performed at CarriageWorks and directed by Matthew Lutton, Andrew Upton and Tom Wright this look like being quite an epic production. As a big supporter of Lutton and Wright, this appears (on paper) as suitably ambitious.

The final show is literally an unknown and has already provoked an angry response from some grumpy STC subscriber in the Herald today;

Sydney Theatre Company's star-struck obsession with famous names has hit a new low in its season next year.

Subscribers are being asked to put down money sight unseen for an untitled play (sorry, "project", which sounds so much more Hollywood). No cast is announced, not even excellent regulars such as Peter Carroll or Pamela Rabe. There are no clues to what it is about, not even whether it is a comedy, drama or musical.

We are supposed to pay, more than a year in advance, solely on the name of a Hollywood film director, Steven Soderbergh, with no theatre credentials.

Sydney theatre-lovers are entitled to more than a blatant excuse for others to rub shoulders with the rich and famous.

Peter Deegan, Erskineville

Maybe the STC should have asked Peter from Erskineville to come to the launch on Monday, because if that is anything to go by, next year's season appears to be populated by a healthy mix of the new, the established with just a little celeb shenanigans.

And besides we've seen Peter Carroll and Pamela Rabe all year. It's good to have a bit of a break.

Review: The Age of Consent

The Age of Consent by Peter Morris
Tamarama Rock Surfers and Bareboards Productions
Old Fitzroy Theatre


As I previously reported, this show directed by Shannon Murphy has already attracted undue criticism from that loud little section of our society - Talk-Back Radio Puritan Wowsers.

The Age of Consent is made up of two monologues that intertwine. Set somewhere in the UK, the first story deals with a type of JonBenet Ramsey story with mother Stephanie Dunn (Caroline Kemp) doing everything she can to make her young daughter famous.

The other monologue, and was the target of the media hype, touches on the life of murderer Timmy (Ivan Donato) which is loosely based on the young killers of James Bulger who were recently released from prison.

The two stories act as different sides of the same coin. On one hand you have Stephanie doing everything she can to enter the world of fame and celebrity while you have Timmy who has spent his formative teenage years in gaol and is set for release back into society away from the prying eyes of the media.

The two performers are placed on a very simple set without any bells and whistles leaving them to re-tell each story straight to the audience.

Stephanie tells of how she gets Raquel, her young daughter, to start performing in local pantomime shows. At first she comes across as an enthusiastic, if not a little naive, young mother with high ambitions.

Quickly, however, you work out that Stephanie's enthusiasm is verge onto child abuse as she creates a pressure cooker of strain on the daughter.

Timmy, from his gaol cell, explains life on the inside while the prying eyes of the media focus in on him as his day of release approaches. He stands firm against the judgement of those outside who want to see him locked away forever and is determined to get on with his ordinary life as anonymously as possible.

Both of the monologues are models of beautiful writing that swirl around providing humility and humanity to their judgements and their failings.

The wonderful thing, apart from Murphy's elegantly simple directing, is the performances by these two actors. I have never had the opportunity of seeing either of them before, but the delicacy and control with which they took on the roles was quite remarkable.

It is quite possibly the best show this year at the Old Fitzroy and I highly recommend it. It's just a shame that the Puritan Wowsers who denounced this show can't get their head around the complex nature of humanity and art. Something which this show has in spades.


Until 23 August
The Old Fitzroy

Review: Stoning Mary

Review: Stoning Mary
Griffin Stablemates


There's a point in Stoning Mary when the penny drops and you suddenly feel like there's a big elephant in the room that no one really wants to talk about.

Petrol prices, the cost of bread and public transport demand our attention leaving little time to consider the very real tragedy unfolding just the other side of the Indian ocean.

And for playwright Debbie Tucker Green the elephant is Africa and it's about time we
started looking at it square in the eye.

Thirteen actors stand, framing the wall of the small Griffin Theatre like a police line-up waiting for some interrogation. And in some ways, it is an interrogation but it isn't the characters who are the focus of attention, but rather the audience passively looking on.

Tucker Green has taken everyday media stories reported from one of the most ignored corners of the world and forcefully asks the question, what if this was happening to people like you. It could be contrived, but Stoning Mary is one of the most confronting nights to be had in the theatre this year.

The playwright gives a strict instruction for the director "All characters are
white". It seems almost medieval as you watch the play unfold, until that is, that big elephant starts to stir and the obviousness of it glares at you.

One by one the stories play out - a couple are both suffering from AIDS and have to decide who receives the one prescription they have between them. A child soldier comes back to his parents on the home front. A young woman faces a public stoning after a revenge killing.

With great performances from a cast that in some cases could be a little too young for the roles, this is a poignant and harrowing piece of theatre intricately directed by Lee Lewis.

The lighting and costume design from Luiz Pampolha and Alice Babidge is also delicately appropriate but it is Yael Stone's remarkable performance as the young woman facing execution that is the real trophy of this production. It is worth seeing just for her.


Until 21 June
$22-29 MCA Ticketing 1300 306 776
SBW Stables Theatre
10 Nimrod Street Kings Cross

Review: My Name is Rachel Corrie

My Name is Rachel Corrie
The writings of Rachel Corrie edited by Alan Rickman and Katharine Viner
Bareboard Productions and B Sharp


I never know anything about plays that I am going to see. Unless its part of the well-known fare of Shakespeare, Pinter, Beckett or Brecht.

But every now and again a play comes up that breaks the mould and I am forced to read something about it due to some interest or controversy. It doesn’t happen often, but with My Name is Rachel Corrie it certainly did.

I tend to ignore most media reporting about shows coming up primarily due to their predictable press release nature, but my attention was quickly attracted to this show because of a little anonymous titbit in The Australian.

In fact, I had heard about the play’s controversy previous to that article with cancellations of productions in the US etc etc.

It wasn’t until an anonymous person posted a link to the images of Rachel Corrie’s death on my site that the reality of her death and the stories in the newspapers came crashing together. I had been living in Slovenia when her death had occurred, and caught up in my own little world, I had missed the headlines.

But the majority of the audience would not have missed the headlines. As you file into the small intimate space of Downstairs Belvoir, a table is on your right and manned by a couple of Amnesty International volunteers. Its a little detail that you don’t see every time you go to the theatre that reminds you this story is based on very true events.

In My Name is Rachel Corrie, we find the title character (Belinda Bromilow) in a typical student home room. It has the usual clutter and cheap postcards on the wall. Gradually, she takes you into her confidence and emerges you in her typical student existence. What she does at college, the boys she is interested in, conversations with her parents, conversations with friends.

It also opens you up to her bright eyed and bushy tailed view of the world. That bridge you find yourself on from adolescents into adulthood, as you take on the universe in whatever way you can. She is typical of many.

But then again, not so typical. One day she takes herself off to Palestine, to work with the International Solidarity Movement to protest in support of Palestinians.

What strikes you most about Rachel Corrie’s writings is the way that writers Alan Rickman and Katharine Viner start every scene with a date. I had wished that the performer had punctuated those dates just a bit more, because with that context you realise he very short space of time it takes for events to unfold for Rachel Corrie.

Rickman and Viner provide an edition of her writing that gets to the heart of one girls life. And she is a girl in her parents eyes. As her father says to her in one of his letters, "I'm proud of you, but I would rather be proud of somebody else's daughter."

But they were always going to have a young fighter on their hands. At the very end of the production, old footage is shown of a primary school age Corrie giving a speech to her school about poverty and hunger in the third world. It, along with the Amnesty table compound how real this story is. It's the sadness of her tragic tale and the passion of someone so much better than who you are.

It is a simple production that doesn’t try and do too much to the script. It unfortunately doesn't take full advantage of the space in the theatre to really eye-ball the audience and I wish that the intimacy between the performer and the audience had been played with a lot more. But Bromilow’s performance is energetic, clear and elegant. This is a play very much worth seeing.

Belvoir Theatre Downstairs
$23-29 Until June 1.
02 9699 3444 belvoir.com.au

Review: Motortown

Motortown by Simon Stephens
little death productions

One of the best things about reviewing theatre is to follow the creative journey of actors, directors and designers as they develop, experiment and diversify.

Ben Packer, a young director who is originally from Sydney but now residing in the more advantageous city of Melbourne, is one of those talents who I am having a joy watching.

Initially I saw him direct Krapp's Last Tape at the TAP Gallery before he embarked on the VCA Directors Course. For a few years, I didn't hear about him until he returned to Sydney with the production of Mercury Fur, which many of you know, I picked in my top five shows of 2007.

He has come back to Sydney again with another production at the Stables Theatre, Motortown by UK writer Simon Stephens.

Textually the plays are similar in that they sit under the umbrella of Brit-grit urban drama with that pessimistic view of the future in that Armageddon type of way. (The play was written in four days around the time of London's acceptance as Olympic host city and the London bombings a few days later.) But Packer has directed Motortown in a way that is totally removed from his previous outing with Mercury Fur.

Mercury Fur was a delight with visceral language, bright lights and loud sounds in the in-yer-face indie type of way.

Motortown however shows Packer's search to find simplicity in design, simplicity in direction and simplicity in delivery. It is a search that for me is delightfully refreshing after the constant stream of independent productions that feel a need to hammer home the message of the play in triplicate (text, followed by lights, followed by sound and music, followed by some god-awful multimedia image).

I remember when I was at a festival in Berlin with collection of theatre academies from all over Europe. One particular director that I befriended came from the Academy of Krakow in Poland. An intense man who liked a drink, I remember asking him what he was searching for with his direction. His answer was simple - 'stillness'.

Motortown follows the return of British soldier, Danny (Sean Barker) from Basra back to his homeland. Danny, like generations of soldiers before him is trying to settle back into his less public world with his family and friends and also deal with the big questions around why he was ever in Iraq.

He finds himself quite alone, with only his autistic brother Lee (Simon Corfield) sticking by him.

Danny, however, starts to spin out of control when he is forced to face the reality that much of what he remembers of his life back home is shrouded in a nostalgia that has been fantasised. His ex-girlfriend rejects him as too violent and soon he tries to find some meaning in his loss of importance as a mere civilian through strangers.

This is when the plays starts to fire-up and his cold state of being begins to freeze as though he is almost on auto-pilot - as he would have been back in Basra.

The beauty of what Packer has done can be summarised as a search for stillness through restraint. There are no electronic sound effects just the sound of a popper used to mark the beginning and end of a scene. Nor is there flash lighting, just a general wash that comes up and down.

Packer resists the temptation to make Danny like Mamet's 'Edmond' but instead keeps a firm hand on the mood so that the audience is swamped by the pure simplicity and almost aggravating stillness. You can feel the audience wanting for there to be a denouement, but Danny's flat line emotions dictate a more powerful feeling over the audience.

Sometimes the effect works, and sometimes it doesn't. But its a journey I want to see more of. A journey that is exciting in an industry constantly trying to outdo each other.


SBW Stables Theatre
10 Nimrod St Kings Cross
www.griffintheatre.com.au

Review: The Vertical Hour

The Vertical Hour
By David Hair
Sydney Theatre Company

Full text version of review in today's The Daily Telegraph


David Hare has become a British institution through his scripts that take big picture politics and slam them face down into a domestic situation.

His latest play, The Vertical Hour, is no different and brings the politics of the American invasion of Iraq to a deserted part of Shropshire in west England.

Philip (Christopher Stollery) an expat Brit living in the US has brought his fiancé Nadia (Victoria Longley) an ex-foreign correspondent and now academic at Yale, across the Atlantic to visit his father Oliver (Pip Miller) in Shrewsbury.

Oliver’s inquisitive nature and Nadia’s American confidence establishes a meeting of personalities that is at once tense and strained. Oliver represents the stereotype of British sensibility who despairs at what the Americans are doing in their global politics.

When explaining to Nadia why he was so against George W Bush’s invasion into Iraq he puts it plainly – “I knew who the surgeon was going to be, so I had a fair idea what the operation would look like.”

But the debate of politics gets murkier as it is revealed that Nadia’s association with the Bush administration includes her role as an academic adviser prior to the invasion. It is this event that makes her unpopular professionally and socially.

Through showing us the characters and personalities that lead every day lives within extraordinary events playwright Hare humbles us and asks the question of his audience – what would you do if you were in this situation?

It’s a humbling question, but not quite enough to really keep you engaged for the length of the play. Potentially, Iraq and the problems around it could have been investigated more thoroughly and exposed ideas and themes that you don’t find in a feature article in a newspaper or in a documentary.

Julian Meyrick’s direction is considered, deliberate and clever with performances from a cast that deliver powerful performances. It is, however, the script that can’t travel the full length and doesn’t reach the explosive emotional finale. The stakes in this setting are just not high enough.

Drama Theatre, Sydney Opera House
Until March 22 $56-77
02 9250 1777
www.sydneyoperahouse.com

Review: Blowing Whistles

Blowing Whistles by Matthew Todd
Downstairs Belvoir St Theatre


It’s Mardi Gras season and in case you weren’t aware, theatres, bars and galleries across the city are putting on celebratory events that culminate in the big Oxford St parade.

One of the big events is theatre production Blowing Whistles which is appropriately set on the night before the big Mardi Gras parade. Living in the inner city of Sydney, Jamie and Nigel are celebrating their tenth anniversary when the two decide to spice up the celebration and go online to entice young Mark to come over for the night.

Like many long-term relationships, time has pulled Jamie and Nigel apart. Mark’s presence magnifies this great emotional distance which culminates in challenging their desire to repair the bridges.

Blowing Whistles by UK writer Matthew Todd was originally produced in London and has been adapted by Focus Theatre for Australian audiences. Adaptations of British plays in Australia often don’t work because of the stark social differences and attitudes. This play, however, breaks the mold and captures a spirit of Sydney that is unique.

Central to its success is the sharp and biting humour of the playwright whose jokes neatly translate with local references. Particularly in the first half of the production, wave upon wave of laughter will ensure that this play is a crowd favourite at this time of year.

Unfortunately, the production is bogged down by a script that could afford numerous cuts and some staging that needs to be a lot tighter. But with extremely charismatic performances, this production is a relief from often less than successful Mardi Gars festival fare.


Belvoir St Downstairs, 25 Belvoir St Surry Hills
$25-32
02 9699 3444 www.belvoir.com


Image credit: Bob Seary

Review: Dickens' Women

Review: Dickens’ Women by Miriam Margolyes & Sonia Fraser
Sydney Theatre
16 October 2007

Full-text version of review published in The Daily Telegraph

British actor Miriam Margolyes is quickly becoming a darling of Australian audiences. Already appearing in a Harry Potter film, Blackadder and being the voice for a wide range of characters in Babe and Happy Feet, she is now capturing audiences with 23 different characters from Charles Dickens’ writings.

As recently as two weeks ago, she appeared on Andrew Denton’s Enough Rope, giving a charming and raw interview to the man infamous for giving just enough rope. Margolyes, such the woman she is, took it all and so much more.

Margolyes is quite a small women, but what she lacks in height she compensates with a booming voice that reaches to the very last row of the theatre. With this, and her infamous ability to caricature, she takes us on a journey through Charles Dickens’ life using the women of his life as key markers that defined who he was.

Starting from Dickens’ tumultuous relationship with his mother who forced him to work in a boot cleaning factory in Georgian England she follows the path not only through his novels and letters but the women he loved, the women he offended and the women he disdained.

Throughout, Margolyes steps out of the characters and then, one on one with the audience she gradually opens up the core of his life and the way his writing reflected a time and age in England that has now become a caricature for modern audiences. This coupled with Margolyes innate ability to portray the vulgar, the dainty and the tragedy makes for an evening that shifts between hilarity to sadness.

Directed by Sonia Fraser, it is a simple and elegant nights theatre. John Martin subtely adds to the mood on the piano and Nigel Hammer’s lighting, although sometimes a little too dark, appropriately shifts the mood and tone of Margolyes traverses through the great writers life.


http://www.dickenswomen.com/

Review: Mercury Fur

Mercury Fur by Philip Ridley
Stablemates, Griffin Theatre
28th September 2007

This the full text version of the review which appears in The Daily Telegraph

Just when you think you have seen some very good theatre of late, a production like Mercury Fur comes along and raises the standard to a whole new level. This is theatre that taps you on the shoulder and smacks you in the face. It is theatre that is vibrant, muscular and breath-taking.

But be warned, this is not the show to go to on a first or second date, as one unlucky couple did on the night that this reviewer went.

When Mercury Fur by British playwright Philip Ridley first opened in the UK in 2005, it fiercely divided critics and caused such contention that Faber & Faber refused to publish the text. This production which has travelled from Melbourne has been similarly divisive.

Mercury Fur is set in derelict London. It’s a dark fairytale world where society is on the brink of destruction, where gangs rule the streets and solitude is hard to find. Unless, of course, you can get your hands on some magically potent butterflies.

Elliot (Luke Mullins) and his younger brother Darren (Xavier Samuel) are on the search to find an abandoned warehouse so they that can get prepared for the arrival of party guests.

However this is no ordinary fiesta. In this derelict world there is just one party guest who arrives to act out his ultimate sexual fantasies on what the characters refer to as the ‘party piece’. With much of the physical violence occurring off-stage, the text replaces it with a language that is deliciously colourful.

It’s a despairing and brutal world which breaks down borders and nationalities and brings home the clear message that destruction is so much closer than you think.

Director Ben Packer along with designers Adam Gardnir, Danny Pettengil and Kelly Ryall have created a suitably horrific production with a cast that fill their roles with such vitality that by the time the curtain falls, you become totally disorientated. This is a roller-coaster of a play

But for the young lovers who attended on this particular night, the sight of the boyfriend leaving without saying goodbye might caution other viewers to choose carefully who you take. Either that, or go it alone.

Review: Bone

Bone by John Donnelly
Seymour Centre
21st September 2007

What a brilliant idea. Bring the very best of independent theatre productions from the previous year and repackage them as a festival.

When I heard Bone, a new play from young British playwright John Donnelly was featured, I made sure that it was on my list of must see theatre. It doesn’t disappoint.

Three characters are discovered on stage, framed on all three sides by floor-to-ceiling plastic sheets. They face the rear as the lights evoke a huge roaring fire and the crackle of timber surrounds the audience.

This begins what are three intertwined monologues that dive deep into the fire of the soul as each of them retrace personal catastrophes.

Helen (Vanessa Downing) recounts losing not only all her cattle during an outbreak of mad cow disease, but also her husband weighed down by the financial catastrophe. Jamie (Peter Barry) is out on an night with the lads just before his tour of duty to Iraq and Stephen (Ryan Hayward) keeps up appearances in the corporate world as he loses his grip.

It is an astonishing script from a playwright with a voice so clear and crisp you can’t help but anticipate where he will go next.

The direction by Tanya Goldberg is assured and delicately delivered with a brilliant ensemble of actors who display their craft in the most compelling way.

And the debate still rages... but it's still all white on the night

For those of you new to this little blog site that concerns itself with all things artistic and cultural, let me recap on what has been happening this last week.

In short, I made a brief summary post about an essay published in an Australian performing arts publication about the lack of multi-racial casting on the stages of Sydney. It fit nicely with another event that occurred when the major Shakespearean company, Bell Shakespeare, cast an Indigenous actor for the first time in this country's history as Othello.

It was merely a summary, but it seems to have gone a little berserk and the traffic flow into the site has gone through the roof. At the same time, my esteemed colleague Mink Tails was diving into this blog, making excellent and passionate comments as well as having an excellent summary of the essay on her blog.

But, for fear of losing the central focus here and diving into an 'i love my stc/i hate my stc' argument, let's steer back to the nuts and bolts of what Lee Lewis said in her essay. (But I implore you all to read the full text, for fear that certain quotes I select below could be taken out of context, which I will desperately try not to allow.)

'This essay,' Lewis writes, 'argues that aggressive cross-racial casting of the classical repertoire is needed in order to subvert the 'inevitability' of White-centric theatre. It is a necessary step if we are to rid our mainstages of their current, implicitly colonial, practices and make them a cultural territory that is fully engaged with the socio-political complexities of representing hybridisation'.

That is the central theme of her essay, and I applaud her for making it.

Since reading her research and her ideas, it has started to put a barrier between myself and so much of what I am seeing at the moment. She is bloody well right and what is sad is that these arguments have been made before and nothing has been done about them.

A few weeks ago I had the fortune of teaching some high school students from a number of schools in the Penrith area of Sydney. These classes were made up with ethnically diverse students from a wide variety of backgrounds. We worked on devising short pieces of theatre which would culminate with a performance evening in front of their peers, friends and families.

It hasn't been until now, that I reflect on the workshops and realise how out of touch the mainstages are to the world that these students live in. Cultural diversity, ethnic diversity and racial diversity is the norm for them. How must main theatre companies look to them when they see a constructed world that does not reflect their own?

'The construction,' Lewis continues, 'of the all-White cast in Sydney as the 'natural order' is inherited from the British theatre, which functioned as the cultural face of imperial politics of domination. Our mainstages have yet to mount a serious challenge to this state of affairs. An all-White cast in a classical play on a mainstage in Sydney in 2007 is a nationalist strategy for reaffirming the dominant fantasy of Australia as an all-White nation...'

In the essay, Lewis makes fantastic arguments and provides excellent evidence that irrefutably shows that the cultural diversity of the Australian stage is at best, lacklustre. At worst, it verges on racial exclusion. When you compare the diversity that is gracing the stages of progressive institutions such as Performance Space, Sidetrack and Opera Australia, you get a sense of who is being left behind.

I would, however, give more weight to the role that programming plays in the lack of multi-racial casting. Someone mentioned in the previous post the speech that Richard Wherrett gave about anglo-centric programming and to be honest, I don't think that there is any evidence that the mainstage theatre environment has changed much since that speech was given in the mid-90's.

The conservative programming of mainstage theatre in this city is a central problem to the acceptance of a more diverse stage and until we start to develop audiences with more diverse points of views, more diverse texts, more diverse theatrical practice and scripts that don't prescribe to the US and UK stereotype, it will be very hard to move beyond the present situation.

Don't get me wrong, I like to hear what writers in the US and UK are talking about and the mainstages do those productions competently, but I would really LOVE to hear what Biljana Srbljanovic is saying, or Gao Xingjian, or Sabina Berman, or Yukio Mishima, or Andre Hieng, or Maribel Carrasco, or Jose Ramon Enriquez, or Noda Hideki, or the Presnayakov Brothers.... or maybe even someone from Sydney.

There is a tunnel vision in the diverse cultural impact of texts used by mainstage companies in Sydney. That is a hurdle they and their audiences need to get over if there is any hope for a more diverse cross section appearing on their stages.

Lewis uses Barrie Kosky as an example to be emulated. Again, I couldn't agree more. While I was studying theatre in Slovenia, I would occasionally indulge myself, catch the train a few hours north to Vienna and have a sticky-beak at what Kosky was doing at the Schauspielhaus. The production that stays in my memory more than any other was his production of Medea, starring Melita Jurisic in the title role.

At the beginning of the production, Kosky gets Jurisic to speak in Croatian, while someone in the lighting box did a voice over translation into German. Such a simple acceptance of diverse culture and language that enhanced the theatricality and impact of the play in such profound and beautiful ways. And not to mention pointing a big finger at the sore on the butt of Western Europe and what to do about those 'damn Eastern Europeans' who look so similar to us, but are so poor.

Lewis suggests the term 'Third World Looking Person' in preference to Non-English Speaking Background in the essay. She quotes Ghassan Hage who explains that 'when white people who embrace the White nation fantasy look at a migrant, what they differentiate between are not those who are NESB and those who are not, or those who are European and those who are not, but those who are Third-World looking and those who are not.'

From a theatre viewpoint, I think that the non-English speaking background influence has as much to do with the way that non-White actors look. The intolerance towards those that have an accent sits uncomfortably with our romantic notion of the days when actors spoke in Received Pronunciation - and this intolerance is stifling our theatre.

Lewis' essay is so much more comprehensive than I can give justice to in a short blog entry, but the study she gives to the situation is compelling. She is careful not to point the blame, and prefers to blame professionals for being naive. But at the end of the day, it really doesn't matter whose fault it is. What matters is how we are going to change and when.


Image: Luke Chueh, Black in White

Racey Issues

Sydney Theatre Company Director Lee Lewis appeared on page three of Saturday's Sydney Morning Herald calling for more racially diverse castings.

The article by reviewer Bryce Hallett centres around an essay by Lewis entitled "Cross-racial casting: Changing the Faces of Australian Theatre." The SMH forgot to mention that it was published by Currency House as part of their Platform Papers series, which you can find more about here.

The SMH reports that "Lewis argues that the failure of the Sydney Theatre Company, Bell Shakespeare Company and Company B Belvoir to cast diversely risks marginalising ethnic groups".

Lewis goes on to say that "a multicultural stage costs money and, as theatres see their funding under constant threat and their hopes for the future dwindle, they decide to mimic the government's isolationist immigration policies and retreat to [a] conservative, risk-averse, funding-safe, white-casting agenda."

It's an extremely interesting and fraught topic that Lewis raises and I won't say too much until I read the entire essay. Of course, this is not the first time that this issue has been raised. Almost always the debate then dives into one about conservative programming by the major performing arts companies which they quickly brush off as nonsense. But the fact is that the amount of plays that constantly get programmed that are straight off the plane from New York and London is enormously aggravating and is getting oh-so-predictable.

And the Independent sector, where Lewis comes from, doesn't fair that much better.

Currency House's timing couldn't be more perfect, in the week that the Australian Bureau of Statistics released its latest census results showing the increased cultural diversity of the country.

Other interesting debates about race include one that was raised a couple of years ago when the BBC director-general described the corporation as 'hideously white'. Jacqueline Lo and Helen Gilbert wrote an excellent paper in 2002 that looked at the history of our multicultural, post colonial and inter-cultural society and how theatre did and didn't reflect that change.

The Australia Council also commissioned a research paper in 1998 on 'the representation of non-English speaking background people in theatre, film and television' which you can view a summary of here.

Of course this doesn't even cover the wide range of forums and discussions that the theatre community have been holding that cry poor to the white institutional theatres. You can find various types here, here and here.


Image: cjnetworks.com

Stephen Jeffreys: guiding Sydney's stages

As published in ArtsHub Australia

by Nicholas Pickard
Thursday, June 07, 2007

The Sydney Theatre Company headquarters is one of the most beautiful places during the day. On a long finger wharf that’s nestled in the heart of Port Jackson, the view pans out to the east, with the Harbour Bridge arching over the waters that glides from the river out to the Pacific Ocean.

At 10am, I am introduced to Stephen Jeffreys, a tall and amiable Englishman who has one of those rich home county voices that has that quiet and respectable authority to it.

The two of us are decked out in our fair skin and we cover for shade on one of the beautiful decks that takes in the harbour. In no less than one minute, a waitress swiftly announces that we are in the way of preparations for lunch and shuffles us down to the blaring sun of the morning. Welcome to Sydney.

Jeffreys is synonymous with the rise of new theatre writing that hit the British stages during the late 80’s and 90’s. As resident literary manager of the Royal Court, he implemented a revolutionary programme that put new British playwriting at the centre of the rich platter of theatrical delights that that little island has to offer.

Names such as Sarah Kane, Jez Butterworth, Mark Ravenhill, Conor McPherson and Marius von Mayenburg were tried and tested as part of one of the most aggressive playwriting programmes ever introduced in the theatrical world. And it was the rise and rise of Jeffreys programme that has made him one of the most well known writers in the United Kingdom. It was his play The Libertine that caught the attention of actor John Malkovich and was then presented at the Steppenwolf and then turned into a feature film.

It was the British summer of last year that STC Artistic Director, Robyn Nevin flew to the UK to meet with Jeffreys wife, Annabel Arden who is a director most notably known through her work at Theatre de Complicite. Approaching Arden with the idea of directing something down at the Wharf, it was suggested that the play they should produce be one written by Jeffreys.

The collaboration was agreed on by the party of three and the result is The Art of War now showing at the Sydney Theatre Company. Jeffreys explains that The Art of War “is part of a trilogy… although it didn’t start out like that.”

“I did a play in 2001 with Annabel in California called Wind Interruptions and the idea behind it was to do a political play in a post modernist way to find a new style for that kind of work. The style of was an imaginary coup with little bits of 20th century history from all over the place and it out of chronological time - and I said to her at the time that I think that there are another couple of plays that will belong to this one.

“And I described a very sketchy idea to Robyn which was called The Art of War which was about warfare and Sun Tzu’s ideas of warfare. And she thought immediately that this was the right idea to do”.

Immediately Jeffreys set about writing the third part of the trilogy, before he had even finished the second. The result, after intense collaboration with Arden and the STC’s Actors Company is what he calls “an unsual play.”

“This meat of the play,” he says, “is in the Iraq scenes which I became very interested in researching. And I discovered that when the Americans were planning to invade that there were some dissident voices in the US army who were essentially saying they can win a conventional war against the Iraqis. But what will happen when they get to Baghdad, is that instead of fighting the US directly, if they have got any sense at all, they will take the Sun Tzu theory and not oppose the initial invasion. What they will do is they will take all of the key guys out of uniform and keep them in the background for six months and fight an insurrection – which is precisely what happened.

“The Americans have got themselves in a classic situation that Sun Tzu would have avoided. To be embroiled in an endless conflict without any clear strategy, where you are just bleeding resources the whole time”.

Jeffreys has framed the present conflict onto Sun Tzu’s theories with three different strands in the story. There first is the story set in Iraq in 2003, the second a series of love affairs and the final part is a business story centring around an Australian company. All twelve actors from the company are on stage almost the entire time and the result is what Jeffreys describes as “a free flow between the chorus part of the work and the more naturalistic play which is going on around them”.

Jeffreys couldn’t be a more qualified literary influence for Sydney’s performing arts.

He spent nearly 11 years as literary associate of the Royal Court and he holds workshops in the UK and often travels to countries to work with emerging writers. While he has been here, he held workshops with a young group including Hilary Bell, Greg Woodland, Nick Simpson-Deeks, Patrick Carr, Jack Douglas, Jane Harrison & Nicki Bloom.

While researching this article and looking at his website, I noticed one of the major selling points of his workshops is – What Theatres Want. “I will tell you exactly what they want,” he says. “They want the writer to speak with their own voice. I always start from the point of view that you can’t actually teach someone to be a writer unless they have got something to say, some urge to put it out there. And they either have that or they haven’t got that.

“I am really against the word ‘develop’”, he explains. “I don’t think that plays nor films are ‘developed’ actually. When a producer tells you that they are ‘developing’ something – you think, actually you are not. The writer is sitting there writing it and every couple of weeks you meet this guy for a coffee and you think it is work. But it’s not. The work is done. It’s the person sitting alone in a room.

“What they want is your own voice. A lot of writers seem to think that you have to fulfil a lot of prescriptions of what a play is or how a play is constructed. Really, when a literary manager is reading between ten and twenty plays a week, they want to open it and think - there is something original here, they don’t want to hear imitations of people.

“Its amazing! When we did a play by Jez Butterworth called Mojo, which is about gangsters, six months later you get a whole bunch of scripts with severed heads in the fridge and stuff like that. Or The Weir, suddenly there was a bunch of plays set in an Irish pub. You think, well if we just had a big hit with a play set in an Irish pub, why would we want to do that? It’s incredible how imitative people become”.

The Art of War plays at the Sydney Theatre Company till Saturday 30 June.

For tickets and more info, visit www.sydneytheatre.com.au

Review: Splendour

Splendour by Abi Morgan

Harlos & Queensize Productions

Old Fitzroy Theatre

March 8, 2007

As I made my way to the Old Fitzroy, a small tissue box shaped theatre in between the Woolloomooloo slums and bright lights of Sydney's red light district, the heavens were opening up.

A storm was heading our way from the southern coast and rolling in, painting the sky charcoal grey and bright red, as the sun slipped under the clouds from the west of the city.

The weather created an electricity in the air - where people breath deeper and the heavy air swirls through your hair and you feel small in front of the sky's expanse.

Gathered with one hundred others in the theatre waiting for the house lights to go down, the audience carried the electricity together into the stalls. Bouncing off us, was the light reflected from the set of a thousand or so glasses, piled onto one another floor-to-ceiling.

Something is going to be broken tonight I suspect.

All the main press are there, from the Sydney Morning Herald, the Sun Herald, the Daily Telegraph. The typical invitation opening night crowd surrounding them.

Darkness. The four performers come from underneath the audience and enter the space for their story to be told. White chairs frame the space in front of the thousand glasses as one performer desperately begins to clean up a mess on the floor. Something is broken already.

A foreign journalist has come to an Eastern European city to photograph a General in the midst of a war. They are Eastern European, you can tell... It's the gregarious shoes, coats and make-up. And the way they drink. But it could be anywhere really. Eastern Europe is convenient, stereotyped and so very far away from Westerners. But terribly familiar.

The wife is there, boasting of her accessories. The wife's friend, desperate for approval. The translator with a passion for kleptomania and incorrect translations. The frustrated journalist waiting waiting waiting.

The characters bounce off each other circling, sitting, drinking, looking afar. Passages flip back and you start again and then time races forward and back again. What on earth is going on? But you catch up, as you sink into this house that overlooks a city that's slowly been torn apart.

The phone keeps ringing. Mariana will answer it. The Housekeeper.

Can't we leave. No, the car doesn't work. When will the general be here. Soon. He has to sign some papers.

Eastern Europe zooms closer into view. This is Serbia. It is Belgrade. I recognise the bombed bridges I saw. The gutted apartment blocks.

This is Bosnia. It is Sarajevo. It is Srebrenica. I recognise the tanks I saw. The gutted parliament. The bullet holes in the wall. The barbed wire.

I'm too close to this. And in my mind it's getting closer as the play transcends the words and the circling and the chatter on the stage and the truth of the situation emerges in a way that sweeps over your head and slams you in the middle of your back into your heart.

This production is brilliant, uncomfortable and surprising. But you have a choice to sympathise with it, or resist it and view it from the comfort of your sofa at home.

With one final gasp the production ends. The house lights go up and you leave. I walked out into the nights sky. The rain had passed. It was a night that reminded me of Belgrade. The humidity, the storms, the heaviness that weighed upon the people of a city. And it weighed upon an audience in Woolloomooloo too.

Image courtesy of Harlos: Gertraud Ingeborg, Elaine Hudson, Angela Bauer, Esti Regos

Review: A Day in the Death of Joe Egg

A Day in the Death of Joe Egg by Peter Nichols
Darlinghurst Theatre Company & Whoosh Productions
Friday March 2 2007


It's 1967. Rag pile carpets, velvet trousers and Maxies. Casino Royale is the 007 of the time and the United States is becoming embroiled in a theatre of war known as Vietnam.

The Cold War is at its heights, Israel occupies the Gaza Strip, China tests its first hydrogen bomb, Che Guevera is executed and Keith Richards is charged with the possession of drugs. How things change!

And forty years after its premiere in London's West End, A Day in the Death of Joe Egg has a revival in a little corner of Sydney's red light district.

Sitting with my companion as the audience shuffles in holding their white wine and lolly flavoured spritzers, I take in the sets realism. There's the rag pile, a retro glass cabinet and pot plants. I feel like I'm a lounge lizard wandering through a second hand furniture shop in Newtown.

Katherine Duncan-Jones in New Statesman explained that A Day in the Death of Joe Egg "was well ahead of its time in 1967, when it received the compliment of the Lord Chamberlain's disapproval. Someone in his office reported on it snootily as 'a play about an oversexed schoolteacher in Bristol with a handicapped child, written, I suspect, by an oversexed schoolteacher in Bristol with a handicapped child'."

Thankfully, forty years on, the Lord Chamberlain's office is outdated, but Joe Egg still resonates as a text that quietly discomforts you towards its maddening end. It is most well known for its monologues printed in every 'I'm an actor and I need help' guide.

As a play, the structure of it is still disarmingly fresh and relevant. It's not so much the dilemma of how the couple deal with a disabled child within a naive society that strikes, but rather the feeling of being like Atlas, trying to stop the sky falling in as your humanity spurts itself out.

It's a humanity that admits failure.

Whoosh's production at the Darlinghurst captures 1967 as though you were seated in the back of an Austin Mini. It's a beautiful and good looking car in very good condition. But there isn't enough head room where I am seated. The windows are a little small and my knees are up to my chin.

It as though they try to honour too much of 1967 and then miss the opportunity to see how the text could play out with a more contemporary appreciation. You can smell flashes of 2007 and it is when they discover this that the production really lives. Whoosh's artistic policy is to, amongst other things, present 'contemporary interpretations of classics'. If they had used that as a basis of this production they might have found even more engaging moments in a play that really does travel the distance.


Image: Jonathan Gavin & Julia Davis
PHOTO BY: Cameron Baird for Sensory Creative