Hello again. Long time no see.

I'm back. I think. I may even try to establish a new website as this looks terribly old.

In the meantime, here's a little foray I took into the world of ABC's The Drum.


More to cultural capitals than a new musical theatre

If you had a sense of deja vu reading the comments last weekend by musical theatre producers John Frost and Rodney Rigby calling on the New South Wales Government to build a Broadway-style venue in Sydney, you're not alone.

More HERE.

One for the records

Today's the day I've set aside to upload reviews from the past couple of months. I will back date them as I go along. This is long overdue, highlighted by a couple of my Melbourne readers as well as the misinformed comment by 'Cerberus' (what is it with anonymous or pseudonym comments??).

Cerberus made me think quite a lot over the weekend when s/he left the comment;
Sometimes critics get it wrong, or at least don't reflect the opinion of the audience. Witness "Lying Cheating Bastard" at the Old Fitz, which received almost unanimous praise except from N Pickard. Yet his Fairfax masters declared it the box office success of Sydney in today's Herald. I saw it two nights ago, had to sit in the aisle because of the overflow crowd and was transported with delight along with the rest of the audience. Nice to see that a very good show is critic proof.

Aside from the fact that they didn't bother to read my review properly, the logic of Cerberus' argument is very interesting as a way to see some of the backward steps some of us have taken when dealing with reviews or reviewers. Sometimes I think many people think the art of criticism is objective. It isn't and never will be and is the double edged sword of the profession.

Criticism is subjective and critics can only ever hope to pen what they thought and what they felt on the night. Is it possible that a critic can 'get it wrong' in the first place?

Michael Billington famously admitted he got Sarah Kane 'wrong' when he started reviewing her work back in the 1990s.

I really like the fact that Cerberus thought the show at the Old Fitz was the best thing since sliced bread without a single fault, but s/he forgets that we saw the show on two separate nights in front of two different audiences with two different performances. The magic of theatre is it is never the same and I am more interested in knowing what it was about the show Cerberus liked so much.

But the saddest part of Cerberus' comment is that in a world where critics 'get it wrong' is a world desiring a uniformity of opinion. In a Cerberus world, all reviews would be the same and a difference of opinion wouldn't be seen as constructive or illustrative - they would be seen as just 'wrong'. It is a world that wants to place the critic against the theatre practitioner.

I honestly thought we'd moved on from this type of argument - but apparently not.

A couple of months ago Guerilla Semiotics had an interesting post regarding the nature of theatre reviewing. In the post, Jana asserted that "as anyone involved in a creative practice can attest, constructive criticism is an act of extreme generosity. To receive honest, informed and in-depth feedback is invaluable if one is to grow as a practitioner of absolutely anything - and it often requires knowledge of the person, the art form, the conditions of production."

Jana, who is of a Croatian background, has a very similar point of view to me (who studied theatre directing in another ex-Yugoslavian country, Slovenia) on the role of critic. She explains that in these countries, 'critics were not seen as the enemy, or as a superfluous part of the sector, but a necessary link between an art form and an audience, both an arbiter of taste and an interpreter.'

In Slovenia the critic is theatre practitioner is playwright is director is actor. Can you imagine that happening in Australia?

When considering the nature of theatre reviewing, it's important to discern between the two very different modes of reviewing in Australia - the online discussion and opinion piece with the published review in a newspaper or magazine.

In a printed review there is a finite amount of space within the confines of an editorial policy and is subject to sub-editing. The fortune of it is you are writing to an audience vastly larger than an industry specific blog and you quickly learn the art of being concise.

In the online forum you can write a review of between 300-1000 words with the freedom of unlimited space which can be published within the bounds of your own self-censorship. But its written for a more niche reader who will have a knowledge and a more specific interest in the art form.

Both forms share the one intrinsic benefit - they add to the sharing of ideas and to the debate about what our artists and cultural industries are presenting within our community and our society.

But how should a critic write a review in a mainstream publication? Does a critic have a responsibility to the industry? To the artist? To the reader? Or does the critic have a responsibility just to themselves to publish simply what they think?

Jana's article makes the very important point that if critics portray a world "in which everything is great, and everyone wonderful [it] lets the audience down in a very serious way. The readers stop paying attention to unreliable information."

The film industry recently went through this debate when they were targeted as a collective for being too positive about locally made content against their more critical judgement of foreign films.

But as she also says, a lot criticism in Australia (whether positive or negative) attracts (most particularly on blogs where there is the ability to comment) its fair share of anonymous or pseudonym bile. Ostensibly this flows from the one essential truth about criticism - it can only ever be subjective.

As I upload my reviews, bring on the constructive debate because I am really interested in what anyone thinks about shows and where our views diverge or converge. But leave the critic v theatre industry argument where it belongs - otherwise it all gets very boring.

The Right of Reply

A playwright in Sydney has taken revenge on a theatre critic after a negative review was printed in the Sydney Morning Herald last week.

Mick Barnes, the writer of Unit 46, wrote an opinion piece printed in the same newspaper today calling on critic Jason Blake to 'sort out his melancholia'.

Barnes, a former critic himself, quotes from the book Rotten Reviews that says that reviewers "are a poor lot indeed, ill-paid, despised all around, and often wrong, but they have their pride."

Or more amusingly he also quotes Kurt Vonnegut who says they are "like a person who has just put on full armour and attacked a hot fudge sundae or banana split."

The play which opened at the Factory Theatre in Marrickville is due to travel to the Edinburgh Fringe later this year after a rather successful run in Adelaide recently where it received positive responses.

Reviewers in Sydney have been a little less accommodating than their South Australian counterparts.

Diana Simmonds at Stage Noise called it "a horrid little piece and it's a mystery why anyone would want to do it; and a bigger mystery that it was apparently "the hit show of the Adelaide Fringe". Perhaps it was a crappy Adelaide Fringe year."

Helen Barry at Australian Stage said the play "is weighed down by ponderous slabs of dialogue which see the actors wrestling with intense soliloquies full of references to Greek mythology and lofty dead poets."

And my review printed in the Sun Herald, for what it's worth, is below. But you can make up your own minds. It closes at the end of the week.


Unit 46
Factory Theatre
Until 19 July
Tickets $25-28
Bookings (02) 9550 3666
Critic’s Rating 4/10

I have a friend who lives with extremely annoying neighbours in the inner west.

Noise complaints, barking dogs and bad taste in music is just the half of it. My friend has her revenge on them by stealing their wireless internet.

Whether or not it was the intention of playwright Mick Barnes, the blessing of Unit 46 is that you only have to spend 80 minutes with two of the most annoying neighbours you could come across.

Tim (Leof Kingsford-Smith) lives in the apartment above Diane (Lucy Miller) in a block of 56 units. Each night, they spend their time at home reflecting on their lonely existence and thinking of ways to annoy one another.

Tim, an angry misogynistic ex-public servant won’t put out the garbage. Diane, a chardonnay swilling English teacher living below, bangs the ceiling with every movement Tim makes.

The two actors are both fine performers who don’t miss a beat and manage to make their characters so aggravating the play becomes unbearable to sit through. Neither of them has any redeeming character traits, so you can’t help but feel that the playwright must have been in a very dark place at the time of writing.

Both are painfully neurotic and unremorsefully self centred that it makes whatever living conditions my friend is suffering practically angelic.

I’ll be recommending this show to her but, then again, she already has annoying neighbours.

Has SAJ gone on strike?

Sorry everyone. SAJ lost his mojo there for a while and found himself in a land far, far away. One reader woke me from my slight slumber this afternoon with a message with enough profanities to sink a small ship.

I've started and stopped and started and stopped reviews on The Pig Iron People, A View of Concrete and the Importance of Being Earnest so many times it isn't funny. Is this what they call writers block? That blank look at the screen and nothing remotely passing through the fingers to the keyboard.
Or maybe my brain decided to stay on holiday even after I physically returned two months ago.

Despite the delay, I thought that I would have a quick look around the traps at a few things I missed in recent headlines.

The Sydney Festival launched two weeks ago (on the worst possible day for a publicist - the election of Barack Obama as US President-Elect) but it seems that the programme is resonating with the public quite well.

La Clique, of course, has already sold out and I heard through the grapevine that the Sydney Theatre Company's The War of the Roses was doing much better than anticipated. In fact their publicist was able to confirm that the epic production starring Cate Blanchett and Robert Menzies "broke the one day sales record for Sydney Theatre Company, selling 1814 tickets on Monday 10 November. It even surpassed "the previous record that was set last year by The 25th Annual Puttnam County Spelling Bee when 1285 tickets sold in one day."

There has also been a overwhelming number of launches which I have to look at closely including Company B, Bell Shakespeare and the Seymour Centre. Last week Griffin also launched their '09 season with an interesting twist - the starting time for their shows will all now be 7pm breaking the long-standing convention of an 8pm start.

In other news, I should draw your attention to the fact that our Rudd Labor Government has this nauseating tendency to have a war on everything (fuel, groceries, unemployment, drugs, homelessness, whalers, pokies, doping in sport etc etc etc blah blah blah).

But now his Government has turned its attention to our little world with some type of war on artists through its instruction to the Australia Council of the Arts to create some protocols for artists to work under. It fits in comfortably with their other new policy of censoring the internet.

If you haven't checked out the draft of the artists protocols on the Australia Council website, I advise you to saunter over and check them out. They're a hell of a read. Interestingly, the draft protocols will only apply to "recipients of government funding". So for those outside the funding loop, eat your heart out.

The nine page document has the simple aim helping "artists and arts organisations
understand existing laws that impact on any work they might do with children." It goes through the usual standards/requirements of police checks, parental permission, restrictions on nudity and sexualisation.

At the end of the draft document, there is a 'draft funding agreement clause' which, if you apply for funding you will no doubt have to sign when you submit your application. In its present form it says something along the lines of the following;

You agree that if you will be employing people under the age of 18 in this Project, with or without financial compensation, that you will comply with the Australia Council’s Protocols for working with children in art as well as any relevant laws as they exist in the state or territory in which you will be working. This may include obtaining background checks, permits and parental consents. If you fail to do so, we may immediately terminate our agreement with you and require you to return the funding provided to you under this Agreement.  

What is interesting about this paragraph is the term "with or without financial compensation" and it appears that it may have caused a minor headache for the staff at the Australia Council.

In quite an astonishing article, David Marr revealed that the Arts Law Centre of Australia, while doing some research into how artists can legally work with children, came along this fine bit of legislation;

Employment of children when they are naked or when any other person is naked is specifically prohibited.

Bang.

So, as Marr puts it, "Bill Henson has broken the law. So has every artist in Victoria, NSW, Queensland and Western Australia who in the past few years painted or photographed a naked child ... The laws of those states forbid the employment of naked children anywhere and any time. That includes on the stage, in films and in artists' studios. They must not be naked and most of those states do not allow them to work where anyone else is naked either."

You have just two weeks to respond to the Australia Council's draft protocols ... which in light of the Arts Law Centre's revelation would seem a bit of a futile process ... unless of course we start advocating for even more unpaid work in the arts industry.

In other news, Crikey writer Alex Mitchell has revealed today that Edmund Capon will be leaving the Art Gallery of New South Wales after 30 years at the helm. Before this story gets too out of hand, my understanding is that the rumour is absolute rubbish.

The Sydney Morning Herald has already swooped but there is nothing in the article. It's just the same old rumour doing the circuit again.

More later and those reviews a little bit sooner than that.

The herbal cigarette

What is it with the Sydney theatre scene and herbal cigarettes? Every time an actor walks out on stage, pulls a pack of durries from their pocket and lights up, I count the seconds until I can smell that nimby pimby smell of ginseng, red clover and apple.

The striking contrast between the hideous odour of the herbal cigarette with what is usually a bit of a grungy or darker scene is totally absurd. Can you imagine Humphrey Bogart sucking down a bit of ginseng while luring Ingrid Bergman? Or Paul Henreid offering a bit of rose-hip to Bette Davis?

Before I face the wrath of all the anti-smokers in the world, let's make one thing very clear; Herbal cigarettes are not safe to smoke. Some brands, particularly those made in China, contain tobacco and have high levels of tar and nicotine. The smoke from brands that have no tobacco or nicotine still deliver similar levels of tar and carbon monoxide to those in tobacco cigarettes. Therefore herbal cigarettes are potentially harmful to health.

Thankyou Quit Victoria.

If an actor needs to have a cigarette on stage for whatever reason, can't you please just pull out a cigarette. Because puffing away on those grass stain variety of cigarettes is one of the most distracting things you can do on stage. No one in their right mind would smoke a herbal cigarette, so why is your character doing it? Is your character a vegan as well?

We must, for once and for all, please stop this vicious politically correct hangover. Just a few weeks ago I was in a theatre in Europe, the actors pulled out some fags and there I was, totally distracted and intently waiting for the smell of petuli to discover - you would never believe it - the smell of tobacco! The relief I experienced was indescribable.

Not only that, we are now forcing our hypocritical and ridiculous standards on visiting theatre groups. "It's OH&S darlings". For goodness sake. 

Of course, and the Arts Alliance will hopefully support me, if an actor does not want to face a cigarette night after night for their health, just don't smoke on stage. Just don't do it. Spare yourself, spare us and spare your colleagues.

But if it is absolutely necessary for someone to stroll on and light up, can you just stick with tobacco. The rosehip is really getting far too much and it looks (and smells) totally ridiculous.

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.

WYD wash-up: NSW put on a great party (even if it snubbed most)

As first published in Crikey.


It’s amazing what the NSW State Government can do when it puts its mind to it.

For a week they set up road closures and bus lanes in the heart of the city that created an urban-wonderland for pedestrians and cyclists.

The much maligned rail network was suddenly on time, efficient and quick.

Live music events filled venues from the harbour to the Domain, public debates and discussions were held in halls and a major theatrical event was staged to an audience of thousands creating the ultimate spirit of festival.

The sheer infrastructure of World Youth Day surpassed even APEC and must have made those that run major sporting, cultural and arts events in Sydney weep with envy.

The Greens have alleged that in total the NSW State Government provided at least $108.5 million which included substantial costs in police, public transport, emergency services and road works. This is in addition to half the $41 million costs to the Australian Jockey Club for the use of Randwick Racecourse as a temporary place of worship and as a camping site and does not include the $22 million that the Commonwealth threw in.

Just imagine what type of event could be staged in Sydney for close to $150 million that was for all citizens. The possibilities are endless. Sports fields could host major carnivals. Regional theatres and public halls could be given a breath of new life. It could be a week long event that would reach from the very east to the very west.

It was a model of commitment and a fantastic orchestration of infrastructure. But the problem always will be that World Youth Day was an exclusive event controlled through the compulsory registration of participants. It has left a sour taste in the mouths of those not involved with this particular strand of religion.


Unlike the Olympics or the Sydney Festival, the people of Sydney found themselves catering to a very specific cross-section of society. I can only imagine how the Protestant factions of the Christian Church felt over the last seven days.

There’s something to be said for the tolerance of people who live in Sydney. For those that lived in the inner city, taking the swarming masses of pilgrims in their stride, a secret code emerged. Faced with the youth group chants on your way to get milk or bread, you would come across a local non-participant and give each other that look of understanding that said, "Don’t worry, it will all be over soon."

For the victims of child s-x abuse they saw a real opportunity to engage with the Church, the Vatican and the Pilgrims. The Foster family was on the minds of everyone, not to mention that taxi drivers who listen all day to talk-back radio. But in the end, it was a closed shop. The Foster family didn’t get what they wanted and neither did victims of child abuse.

Others were more freely engaged. A protest of one thousand people gathered in the gay heart of Oxford Street to voice their concerns about the Catholic Church and their dominant political and social policies. Lesbians and gays joined with socially liberal Christians, atheists, disaffected Catholics and representatives from Broken Rites.

They made it clear during all of their speeches that they weren’t anti-Catholic but rather they demanded tolerance and acceptance. Even when a stray group of young American pilgrims found themselves in the middle of the protest they were greeted with smiles and good humour.

And it was smiles and good humour that really summed up the week. I found myself on the final day of World Youth Day sitting on a pub balcony watching the thousands of pilgrims returning. Sitting with a few locals we waved and cheered them for no particular reason.

The local drunk kept yelling at those carrying banners and flags asking where they were from. This was always followed by a cheer. We waved goodbye and found ourselves exactly the same as when the arrived. Nothing has changed and it is such a shame that after all that money, after all those people and all that effort, most of us -- the Foster family -- weren’t included.

Art Monthly editor plays into Hetty's hands

As first published in Crikey today.

Editor Maurice O'Riordan is a total fool for putting the image of a naked young girl on the latest cover of Art Monthly. After so much effort, so many carefully crafted messages and an industry united, this boofhead comes along and inflames an already sensitive public issue.

Not only is his decision misguided, it lacks a total understanding of how to influence public policy and play the media game. It is so misguided that today we have a situation where every single person who first condemned artist Bill Henson is now singing in unison against the artistic community with calls for laws and protocols to be introduced.

Those in the arts community have been left standing with their pants around their ankles and can now expect a royal bollocking from Hetty Johnston and her Bravehearts wowser club. In fact, the visual arts community was abuzz over the weekend, with one source revealing that on this particular occasion, they might not get behind their own -- in fact, they might leave O'Riordan out to dry.

You would expect an editor, a journalist, someone who is engaged with the written word and with the art of debate to be a little more tactful, but it appears that O'Riordan has lost all perspective on this issue.

The Australia Council for the Arts has now been left like a shag on a rock trying to, again, defend the integrity of artists. The council’s CEO Kathy Keele was even resigned to saying that "continuing to argue extreme positions is not creating any greater clarity."

Keele is absolutely correct and O’Riordan finds himself in the same camp as Johnston. To successfully engage with a debate of this magnitude you have to see that there are always two sides to any story and you must respect the opposing side. O'Riordan has lost that respect and by trying to rub Hetty Johnston's nose in the Henson debate he will ultimately lose.

Arts Minister Garrett hit the nail on the head saying the magazine was being needlessly provocative.

Let's put this into context. During the Henson debate, it was clear that the gallery's decision to put the images online and on the invitations was naive to say the least. But the arts community got behind Henson and the gallery to defend their right to freely create an exhibition of the photographs.

O'Riordan, by taking art out of context like the gallery did with Henson’s photographs a month or so ago and placing an image that could concern the community onto a magazine has unnecessarily thrown fuel onto the fire.

And now the proponents of arts censorship are on board. They have had time to re-form, re-think and re-formulate their public comments. You can’t imagine a worse case scenario.

Kevin Rudd said yesterday, "we're talking about the innocence of little children here. A little child cannot answer for themselves about whether they wish to be depicted in this way."

NSW Premier Morris Iemma chimed in, "this is an issue of child protection."

And Johnston led the chorus, "this is manufactured by adults for the pleasure of adults, the financial benefit of adults, whatever it is. This is an adult desire being projected on to children."

According to the Sydney Morning Herald the magazine editor, Maurice O'Riordan, "could not be contacted for comment yesterday". That’s hopefully because he knows that he has made a very stupid mistake.

It's that time of year again

The 2008 Helpmann Awards® nominations (don't you just love the little trademark next to award names), named in honour of Sir Robert Helpmann who is undoubtedly this country's most prolific and well known arts figure, were announced today.

Last year it was a pretty tough year with Hedwig, Keating, the Lost Echo and Honour Bound really taking the cake. This year's batch however is a bit on the uninspiring side, mainly due to a weaker year for the professional theatre industry - in Sydney especially.

The big story of course is that Billy Elliot has eleven nominations. The not so real big story is The Hatpin got snubbed. What a surprise.

In the theatre category, best direction of a play has drawn up Benedict Andrews' Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf, Neil Armfield's Toy Symphony, Barrie Kosky's The Tell-Tale Heart and John Tiffany's Black Watch.

Not bad, but a little ho-hum.

Why isn't Aalst in there? It was the most astonishing production of the Sydney Festival that was the ants pants on all of the above. In fact Aalst only has one nomination, Kate Dickie for best female actor.

Peter Brooks' Sizwe Banze is Dead is also mysteriously missing. (Now, that's a snub!)

An Audience With Stephen Sondheim is nominated as one of the best 'special events', which would have been alright if the compere, Jonathan Biggins, hadn't relied on Wikipedia for his research. I think the ABC's Choir of Hard Knocks might pip the Biggins fiasco at the post.

The best choreography category is probably one of the toughest. Tanja Liedtke's Construct is in company with DV8's To Be Straight With You, Chunky Moves' Glow and The Australian Ballet's After the Rain© (another copyright symbol??).

So to is the Best Visual or Physical Theatre Production award which places James Thieree's Au Revoir Parapluie, Chunky Moves' Mortal Engine, Cirque Ici's Secret and Branch Nebula's Paradise City.

Considering that I absolutely loathed Secret, for me it makes it a tight contest between Au Revoir and Paradise City.

There's heaps of other categories in opera, live concerts and music. So for all the other nominations etc etc check out the full list.

The Helpmanns Registered Trademark Awards Night will be held on 28 July.

Image: Jonathan Biggins

Tardiness

The truth is, I managed to escape Sydney for the long weekend and spent four glorious days in Melbourne.

And no, I didn't see any theatre, hear any live music or go to a gallery. It was a pure and simple fiesta of drink, food and friends.

So I apologise for late blog deliveries, but coming up over the next few days is a long-overdue review of the brilliant Pillowman production on at Company B, as well as reviews on the new Bell Shakespeare Hamlet, Altar Boyz at the Seymour Centre and Miss Julie at B Sharp.

This will be swiftly followed by sneak peaks into the Sydney Film Festival which started last week and even more theatre openings after that - and there isn't a Hetty in sight.

It's actually a pretty jam packed month on all fronts. Keep your eye out for Chris Mead's latest essay to be published in Platform Papers where he asks the very simple question - Where are the stories by our ethnic writers?

Speaking of ethnicity (or lack of) in our theatre, my fellow blogger Ming Zhu Hii has penned her own response on the Lee Lewis Cross Racial Casting essay which also appeared in Platform Papers. Ming-Zhu's essay is actually one of a plethora of great articles in the most recent Real Time with coverage of emerging artists in Sydney and the current Brisbane Festival.

And I would encourage you to closely follow SAJ's dear friend John Wardle as he battles the political nightmare of Macquarie Street to get these new entertainment laws through both houses of State parliament. His Raise the Bar website has all the latest developments, changes and threats. His is a worthy cause that will do more for NSW than any arts grant could, so if you have time send him some support, moral or otherwise, click on http://www.raisethebar.org.au/

Kevin Rudd and the art of mistakes

That reactionary Prime Minister of ours found himself undone when he decided to become moral arbitrator and chief art critic for the Commonwealth;

"Photographs of naked 12- and 13-year-olds at a Sydney exhibition shut down by police are revolting and have no artistic merit," Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said when shown the photographs.

Well that sorts it then, doesn't it? Unfortunately not.

Rudd joined a chorus of condemnation with class captain Hetty Johnston leading the pack;

"It's child exploitation, it's criminal activity and it should be prosecuted, both the photographer Bill Henson ... but also the gallery because these are clearly images that are sexually exploiting young children," Ms Johnston said.

Johnston and Rudd are certainly going to have nice fight on their hands if they want to keep that line.

Luckily they have friends.

The Daily Telegraph is unashamedly one of them. Yesterday’s editorial took the cake;

“Creative elites have long used the defence of "art" to get away with words and images that in another context - that is to say, outside of art galleries and among normal people - would result in condemnation or criminal conviction.

“Try publishing art photographer Bill Henson's child-obsessed work in a mainstream publication.”

Anyone else see the irony?

Interestingly, none of the staff arts writers at the paper have written anything about it. Instead, the editors at the paper have sent out urban affairs reporters, who did themselves proud.

In today’s Daily Telegraph Janet Fife-Yeomans (who?) gives comment;

“Bill Henson is not the only one who should be charged over his photographs of young, naked girls and boys. Their parents should join them.”

Where do these people come from?

I actually feel pretty sorry for these kids. One minute they are the subjects of an art exhibition and the next minute news outlets see it fitting that the portraits are taken out of the four walls of an exhibition and pummelled to a mass mainstream audience.

David Marr thinks it is a farce;

“ROLL up, roll up. Get your tickets now. Bookings will be coming in from round the world: Australia is putting art back in the dock. What a spectacle it will be: prosecutors thundering; experts talking Caravaggio and Mapplethorpe; defence counsel declaring Bill Henson the greatest thing since Titian picked up a brush.”

This isn’t a farce and is one of the most serious censorship issues to come up since Ken Park was banned in Australia.

The champions of censorship are clear about their intentions. They want an artist in our country charged and jailed because they slam down their own hysteria onto the entire community. And that is the most perverse thing about this whole debate.

According to Marr, another exhibition in the inner west suburb of Leichhardt was closed down a few weeks ago because it was “about Palestine's troubles”.

This is a debate about values, opinions and ideas. And the worst outcome for all of us is that artists, curators, writers and directors will start self censoring… self censoring even more, that is.


Around the traps, here is what is being said;

Robert Nelson in The Age
A furore has ensued over this censorship, as this Melbourne artist is one of Australia's foremost photographers, with international standing. Cases of censorship are damaging to a country's cultural reputation overseas; because a nation that values free speech must also protect artistic freedom.

Clive Hamilton in Crikey
If we lived in a society of sophisticated people with mature s-xuality, one that respected children and the integrity of their maturation process, then there could be no objection to the Henson exhibition.

Melbourne Arts and Culture Critic
The last time that NSW Police were stupid enough to venture into art censorship in 1982, was also at Roslyn Oxley Gallery. Then they fueled the career of painter Juan Davila. I don’t know what they hope to achieve this time as Bill Henson’s career is well established, but the price of his photographs is sure to rise with the increased controversy.

Chris Merritt in The Australian
If the case goes ahead, the defence would need to show the photographs had been produced and used for a genuine artistic purpose - the same argument used in the Oz trial in London in the 1971. Mr Simpson said it would be relevant that the photographs were part of an exhibit at an art gallery and had not been displayed in one of the main streets of Sydney. Other photographs by Bill Henson are on display at the High Court in Canberra and at the Art Gallery of NSW.

Chris Boyd in The Morning After
The bastille has been stormed by those who vociferously deny that context counts here. That an image in an art gallery -- or in your family photo album -- is identical to that same image if it were printed in a magazine to advertise clothes or posted on a porn site.

The State of Origami

For my dear Victorian readers, I should explain that tonight is the first of three State of Origin Rugby League matches.

I prefer to refer to it as State of Origami, which isn't meant to refer to the elegant simplicity of origami, but rather the sheer boredom you would suffer if you had to watch it for eighty minutes.

HG Nelson was interviewed on Radio National this morning and thanked the radio announcer for giving tonight's game a bit of publicity.

"There just hasn't been any media attention around this game," he said. "I am pouring over the newspapers today and not a damn thing about the game tonight."

The beautiful irony would not have been lost on those boring pinko lefty Radio National listeners.

Which brings me to the small fall-out from the article I wrote this week about a certain opinion piece by Michael Duffy that appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald on Saturday.

Published in Crikey on Monday, I had a good old fashioned rant that defended the role that the arts (and more particularly artists) play in our little corner of the world.

Central to my argument was that; "Art is going on all around you Michael, with or without the support of you and your colleagues in the media. Australians attend more theatre and live performance than they do sport. But one look at our media organisations and you'd never know it."

A comment to the article by 'Sandy' was a very interesting response to the article that I think a lot of people would have;

"I'd like to see the end of both of these wasteful elite slush buckets, but at least the sports people deliver some results and help large numbers of people feel good," he said.

"And really, Nick, if you were running the news, would you replace the sports coverage with analysis and previews of the high art scene? Not if you wanted anyone to keep watching," he said.

This is something that I have been thinking a lot about recently. Over the weekend I flew up to Brisbane to check out the Super 14 match between the Queensland Reds and the NSW Waratahs. And you know what, it was really quite boring.

And that wasn't just me. That was the response from the 20-odd thousand people in the stadium. At times it was so quiet, I wasn't sure whether I was in a museum or at a big and bright spectacle that we call 'sport'.

Indeed, the Queensland Rugby organisers practically pre-empted a boring match and hired drummers and musicians whose job it was to get the spectators cheering. And boy did they work hard.

And this isn't the first time that I have experienced a boring game of Rugby. I have experienced it at AFL matches, Rugby League matches and soccer matches. Sometimes you can get a really exciting game. In fact, odds on, you probably experience a really exciting footy match at about the same frequency as you experience a really exciting theatre production.

I am starting to think that the people in our little corner of the world are MADE to think that sport is this big, bright and beautiful thing all the time. The roaring graphics we see on television all the time, the hysterical commentators make you think that something really, really exciting is happening.

But it isn't really. It is sometimes but you need to fuel the interest with booze, cheerleaders, drummers and load sounds.

Feel good indeed. And yes, I would replace the sports coverage with analysis and previews of the arts. And I'd get Ray Warren, Eddie Maguire and Sam Newman to host the bloody thing too.

UPDATE: What a shock! Maybe people are catching on. This in Crikey today;

State of Origin suffering a popularity crisis in Sydney

For the first time in a long time -- perhaps a quarter of a century -- much of the build up to this year’s State of Origin series has focussed on the inability to get a capacity or near capacity crowd at tonight’s opening match at ANZ Stadium.

The ARL will need a good walk up crowd on the night to get anywhere near last year’s 75,000, which was still short of capacity. Ticket sales are reported to be in the region of 60,000, but anything less that 70,000 will raise further questions about the true state of the game of rugby league in Sydney ...

Arts funding sticks to status quo

As first published in Crikey.

For the arts, this year’s budget is less about a "Creative Australia" and more like steady-as-she-goes, as Arts Minister Peter Garrett follows on closely from predecessor George Brandis. However, it's what happens over the coming years that could be of most concern to the arts community.

So far, very little has changed from the previous financial year, with the previous government delivering one of the largest injections of federal money to the arts just twelve months ago. Garrett has pretty much maintained the funding for the coming twelve months, adding a few small flourishes of his own that give a little push to arts institutions to foster new talent and new creativity.

The biggest change we will see this year is the creation of Screen Australia, a Howard Government initiative to merge the Australian Film Commission, Film Finance Corporation and Film Australia into one national peak body. It has been kept by Garrett and provided with $103 million for the coming financial year.

A closer look at the finances reveals that this is a funding cut to the film industry when you look at the overall provision of the three organisations from previous years. But a Garrett spokesman has told Crikey that the new 40% producer rebate for qualifying production expenditure will hopefully make more of the film industry "rely less on direct funding".

ArtStart, the controversial programme that will provide artists with improved access to social security has been ignored this year but Crikey has been told that it's "still an election commitment and has not dropped off the radar".

Regional Australia has also been left off the map after a continuing request for $24 million in touring and presentation funding was ignored. The Arts Minister has tried to offset that cut with the creation of a $10 million Creative Communities initiative that takes the arts to outer metropolitan and regional areas.

As well, the Australia Council for the Arts, already hit with an "efficiency dividend" of 2% earlier this year, gets a slight increase in total government funding to $173.2 million. This will no doubt please the major performing arts companies, the small to medium performing arts sector and the visual arts and crafts industry, who profited most from Howard’s previous budget.

But after the slight increase this year, future budget estimates show that Federal Government funding plateaus despite inflation rising by 4%. As well as these increasing costs and the efficiency dividend, the Australia Council will also have to find $6.6 million to fund Garrett’s Young and Emerging Artists program, which aims to increase the exposure of performing arts companies to schools and young people.

Kathy Keele, Australia Council CEO has guaranteed that grants to artists, despite the rising costs, will not be affected. “We are putting in place measures to maintain our funding for artists and arts organisations by streamlining the organisation and making $2 million in administrative savings,” she said.

Another organisation hit by the efficiency dividend has been the National Library of Australia which sees funding drop $600,000 to around $57.6 million for the coming financial year. Already running off the smell of an oily rag, the cut to the NLA has angered many, not only within literary circles but also those who understand the importance of storing digital information – a costly and complicated exercise that will keep the nation's public records for years to come.

One of the positives from this year’s budget is the creation of a resale royalty rights scheme for visual artists that will cost $1.5 million over the next three years. The funding will assist in creating an independent collecting body that will ensure that artists continue to get paid for works when on-sold to other buyers.

“This scheme will bring Australia into line with similar resale royalty arrangements operating in the United Kingdom and Europe and will embody the recognition that visual artists’ rights extend beyond the first sale of an artwork,” Mr Garrett said in a statement on Budget night.

The creation of a new National Film and Sound Archive as an independent statutory authority is another big step and will receive an allocation of $105.2 million over four years.

“As well as continuing its important activities in relation to the national audiovisual collection, the government believes it is important that the National Film and Sound Archive has a strong role in public outreach,” Mr Garrett said.

It’s a solid first budget for Mr Garrett, setting him only slightly apart from his predecessor. He is slowly showing his stripes in favouring additional funding for young and emerging artists. It’s a small step, but it could be the tip of an iceberg as he slowly forces the institutions that previously found favour with the Howard Government to increase their involvement with young people and start investing in the future creativity of the country.

Nothing even compares to going to the Rugby

My father loves Rugby. Not that other poor excuse for a game referred to as 'League' but the Rugby of his youth when he played in the rough and tumble of Parramatta first grade.

He used to take me to as many games as he could afford, the highlight always being when we played the All Blacks. The atmosphere as it whips up with the teams running onto the field. The Haka, the staring down, the whoops and cheers.

You can see the glint in his eyes when the Wallabies are close to scoring a try. He lifts his huge frame and starts yelling at the players. If they don't score, his exasperation is a most marvellous thing to behold.

It's a shame I don't really share the same level of passion for the game as he does. I like it and am always captivated by the spectacle, but take me to the theatre any day and I am just like my father at a Rugby match. Without the whooping that is.

After many years of not going to any Rugby matches with my father I thought it was about time for us to revisit something we had always done when I was a kid. So I went online and I got us some tickets to the upcoming Wallabies v All Blacks match in July.

I go onto the website, select the match and order the two tickets. I click next and go to the checkout. $280.

What?!

$140 per ticket, to not even sit near the half way line. In fact, we are down near the goal posts. Bloody miles away.

$140 for that?! And thousands of people pay this? In fact 83,500 people pay between $79 and $164 for tickets to a Wallabies match. We are talking about approximately $8 million in ticket sales alone. For one day.

Suddenly I find myself harking back for the days when that beautiful game was amateur... and cheaper.

Or maybe just harking for something that's the price of a theatre ticket. Who's the fool that said theatre was expensive? What rubbish.

Pick a night, any night this week and compare the prices between thirty blokes running around on grass with a football and some damn fine theatre.

$20 online ticket special to see the STC's Serpent's Teeth HERE.
$29 to see Toby Schmitz giving it his all at Belvoir St HERE.
$26 for a Beer, laksa and a show at the Old Fitzroy HERE.
$28 for D Reserve tickets to the Ballet HERE.
$30 for some comedy at the Darlinghurst Theatre HERE.

And you could see all of that in one week and still get change from one ticket to the Rugby.

Theatre affordability? It already is. (And there aren't any 'no alcohol areas')

Exclusive: Cut backs start at the Sydney Opera House

In what is the first sign that inflation and a looming recession has started to affect Australian arts organisations, the Sydney Opera House has already instructed managers to remove at least one staff member from each department of the organisation.

"In some cases, where people have left or are leaving, many managers are just choosing not to fill the position again," a Sydney Opera House source has told Sydney Arts Journo*.

A general staff meeting was held late last month where the new management team addressed the staff body.

"Morale is pretty low at the moment and many people are already looking around for other employment opportunities," they said.

But staff at the Opera House could be disappointed as arts organisations across the country have to tighten their belts now that the effects of the US recession have started to trickle down into the Australian economy.

The cumulative impact of interest rate rises and sharp increases in food and petrol has meant that the spending power of many people is substantially lessened across the board.

The Federal Government, who is due to hand down its budget on Tuesday night, will also reduce spending on the arts as it too tries to tighten its belt across portfolios.

The Australia Council has already promised that any cuts will not impact on arts funding and instead will be directed at slimming down the organisation's administrative costs.

But State Governments will surely not be as conscientious and will just pull arts funding and put it elsewhere. Community arts organisations will be the first to really feel the pinch.

The next twelve months are going to be pretty tough across the country and eventually arts organisations are going to have to decide between cutting programmes or administrative costs. We have seen the Opera House's first step and it will be interesting to see whether it will go another.

I will be covering the 2008/09 Budget next Tuesday for Crikey with an arts wrap published on Wednesday. It should be an interesting year and it won't be a question of whether the ALP will cut arts funding - but rather how much they will cut it by.


*SMH Eds - when you write about this, just use 'Sydney Arts Journo' to explain where the story came from.

Just in case you didn't notice

Sydney Arts Journo has gone through a bit of a makeover. Primarily because I was sick of looking at the old lime green walls... probably a lot like the rest of you felt.

I also wanted to streamline the website a lot more and make it a bit easier and cleaner to navigate. Gone are the stupid google ads, gone are the superfluous links. Michael Webster suggested it looked "gay"... whatever that means. But I'd be interested in knowing what the rest of you reckon about the new design.

If anything, it's a lot cleaner with clearer listings on the side and an easier tool bar at the top of the page to return home and contact me.

For those of you not up-to-date with Google updates or RSS feeds, I invite you to contact me if you would like to be updated when a post is published. You will be able to subscribe and unsubscribe with ease.

It is also a fitting way to celebrate eighteen months of blogging, over five hundred posts and more than forty-five thousand visitors. None of this, of course, would have happened without the support of theatres, organisations and the arts community. Or without that brilliant blog community who stretch from Melbourne, NY and London.

Blog on.

But what on earth is it?

I think it is absolutely marvellous that the Sydney Film Festival has hurled itself into the 21st Century by establishing an official film competition.

The Sydney Morning Herald has reported that the Sydney Film Prize, worth $60,000 is the biggest in Australia.

I have stolen a photo of festival director Clare Stewart holding the prize from the Herald website (sorry). But the question has to be asked.... what on earth is that award supposed to be?

Some smarty-pants sub-editor at the Herald called it a Blue Pavlova.

The look on Stewart's face seems to be crying out 'Do I really have to eat this?!'

The Sydney Film Festival website calls the prize "a unique award created by Dinosaur Designs, pictured above".

'Unique' is certainly a word for it. Hideous could be another.

Don't get me wrong - I am a big fan of Dinosaur Designs, having bought numerous things from them over the years. But this award, it almost looks edible or maybe an oversized brooch that a friend has brought home from a community college class.

I think it could also be an excellent feature next to a pool. Surrounded by terracotta, it could be stunning.

But lets look at the practicality. Suppose it is handed over to a prize-winner, they hold it up into the air, the blue rocks reflecting into the crowd. They then go home, exhilarated that they now have $60,000 and a trophy.

The question then gets asked - where can I put it. It will roll off a mantle piece. If you put it on a table, people might think it's a big coaster. You can't put it in the bathroom, just in case someone uses it as a soap dish.

What do you do?

Now there's a short film plot, if ever I saw one. What's the theme for Tropfest next year??

Image credit: Tamara Dean, Fairfax Media

The Serpent's Teeth

This is not a review but merely some thoughts before I go off and see this production again.

But until that happens, I encourage you all to see Daniel Keene's new play at the Sydney Theatre Company, The Serpent's Teeth.

I was going to resist looking at what the blogosphere and my fellow critics were saying until I had returned, but curiosity got the better of me.

All of them have written quite tepidly about the production and one from my own newspaper totally missed the shocking beauty of the two plays. But criticism is so damn subjective isn't it?

It's the type of play that you have to sit with for a few days, a few weeks at the very least. To get perspective on what the STC have delivered in a short few words over night is damn impossible in my mind. Criticism is so subjective.

It is exhilarating to see the STC produce this work and in so many ways it asks a hell of a lot of a mostly superficial Sydney audience. I can just see the production team saying to themselves - have a bite of this and see how you go.

The Serpent's Teeth dives deep and dark. It asks clear questions about grief, about death, about responsibility and about humanity. It is, above all, confronting.

Admittedly, I think one of the two pieces is a lot weaker, production-wise, than the other. But I have to go back and see it to make sure.

I don't think that I have had the need to see a production twice for a very long time.

I suppose what I am saying is, beware the critic that has a deadline on this one. There is a lot more than meets the eye...

Brag, brag, brag

If there is one thing that I can't be accused of - it's that I don't have my finger on the pulse.

As one of my esteemed colleagues once said, 'your blog is like going to a party and hearing all the latest gossip'. Indeed.

But two events this week brought a wry smile to my face.

The first is the Sydney Morning Herald, again, picking up a story of mine which I broke weeks ago. I just wish they would credit me somehow - I always credit them. My story HERE, their story HERE. Do you think Media Watch might be interested?

(Speaking of which, I'm going to break another story in the next day or two - watch the mainstream zone in.)

But the second event was even better. The son of Fearless Nadia (Mary Evans), who was depicted in Theatre Kantanka's latest production read my review in The Daily Telegraph and quickly booked tickets to go and see the show with his whole family the next day.

The startled cast and crew of the show were absolutely stoked, as they had been unable to track down the man who is now in his late seventies.

He took down notes throughout the show and made a speech at the end praising the show for its accuracy and even commenting on how lead actor Chris Murphy looked so much like Mary.

Now, that's a great little yarn.

100 Best and Brightest

Looking at the list of the 100 best and brightest just a little more closely, it becomes increasingly intriguing.

Not only is it intriguing that the list has its good share of usual suspects that already have themselves in the ears of policy makers group - or your Strong, Gonski and Throsby group.

You also have a good dose of the 1990's brash commentariat group - or your Kosky, Polson and Sheehey group.

And you also have your missed opportunity for some non-institutionalised alternative discussion group - or why isn't Chris Mead, Marcus Westbury, Ben Eltham, Simon Wellington, and Andrew Frost on the list group.

As well, there is the where are our illuminous right-wing intelligentsia creative Australia group - the Andrew Bolt, Miranda Devine, Janet Albrechtsen, Keith Windshuttle group.

But you also have the is that really their full name group - starring the Nicholas George Grant Marchand and Astrid Elizabeth Grace Wootton group.

Best of all however, is that The Australian newspaper has even put the sexes and states for each of the participants - an extremely convenient guide in case their is any confusion. In a crowded room of one hundred, you will be able to call out "Mr Andrew Denton Male NSW!" or "Ms Sue Nattrass AO Female VIC!"

It's going to be a marvellous weekend and I can't wait. I'll be reporting from Canberra for Crikey, so stay tuned.

Signing off Mr Nicholas Robert Pickard Male NSW.