After all these years it's still Liza with a zing

Regal yet humble, the Cabaret star still has energy and talent to enthral her fans, writes Nicholas Pickard.

FIRST REVIEW

It's the eyes and the giggle that do it for you - that innocent glare that Liza Minnelli flashes at you to give you a window into the career of a musical star who has been honing her talent for more than 50 years.

The voice has become shaky and the body isn't as agile as it once was but this is Liza - with a Z - and no one in the packed 2000-seat auditorium at the Sydney Opera House was complaining.

When she appeared dressed in her white sequins it felt like the roof of the Opera House was about to lift off. Everyone rose to their feet for the star who first came to Australia with her then husband, Peter Allen, 42 years ago.


Full Review Published HERE.

Who's Who in Creative Sydney?

For your interest...

Creative Sydney is a new festival of ideas that gives creative people the platform to discuss how we can make Sydney the best place in the world to create new film, art, design, music, technology, events and more.

It is part of Vivid Sydney, a unique new public festival featuring Luminous music festival at Sydney Opera House, Smart Light Sydney and Fire Water. Vivid Sydney is one of five anchor events in the first ever NSW Master Events Calendar created by Events NSW on behalf of the NSW Government.

And there will be a festival celebrating the wealth and diversity of the city’s creative talents from May 27- June 13.

As part of that Creative Sydney will be recognising the outstanding talent we have in Sydney; artists, performers and producers, and the people working behind the scenes to build the culture of our city.

They’re applauding the work of 100 Creative Catalysts, individuals who have developed original projects, products or services within their creative field, and who inspire and support other creative people.

And they want your input. Who inspires you? Creative Sydney is open to suggestions as they compile the Creative Catalysts list. They could be friends or peers, people you admire or icons you want to emulate.

Post your nominations on Facebook by April 3.

Register for the newsletter for updates and full launch details at http://creativesydney.com.au/

Follow on Twitter: http://twitter.com/creativesydney


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For the purposes of Creative Sydney the creative industries include: advertising, architecture, visual art, computer software & web development, design (interior, graphic, object), fashion, photography, film, video, animation, performing arts, music, literature and publishing, radio and television, crafts and video games.

Count it. One Billion Dollars.

In today's paper;

"THE State Government has agreed to fund a $1 billion project to finally bring the Sydney Opera House in line with its designer's vision.

"Although a deal has yet to be signed with the Opera House board, Treasury officials indicated two weeks ago that the Government was willing to provide the money needed for the restoration."

One billion dollars. That's one expensive photo opportunity.

The saddest part of this is that only two months ago the State Government through their funding agency, Arts NSW, signed off on the death of four major regional music festivals - the Bellingen Jazz Festival, the Tyalgum Festival, the Bangalow Festival and the Camden Haven Music Festival.

To give this some perspective, the Bellingen Jazz Festival last year received $11,000. Similar amounts were cut from these other festivals.

At the time, director of the Camden Haven Music Festival Alvena Ferguson said, "while the Sydney Festival, which engages mainly overseas performers, received in excess of $4 million, many regional events such as ours, which contribute so much to the economic and cultural life of country communities, have not been supported".

No doubt Mrs Ferguson will be breathless at today's announcement.

Just imagine for a second what you would do with $1 Billion. We all know there are major problems at the Opera House which need to be rectified. We all know of the importance of this cultural icon which is recognisable around the world. But at a time when household income is dropping and a recession is about to take hold, wouldn't this money be better spent on community, regional and grass roots arts and music programmes?

$1 Billion could go to Carriageworks to assist them in properly paying young artists for their festivals.

$1 Billion could go to every independent theatre production in the state to assist them in staging costs thereby increasing the share of box office revenue for co-operatives.

$1 Billion could reinstate the role of regional performing arts organisations such as the Northern Rivers Performing Arts to create and tell local stories.

$1 Billion could assist Councils across the state to implement programmes of creative renewal such as the one now happening with Renew Newcastle.

$1 Billion could be filtered to local community theatres like ShopFront to expand their youth contemporary arts programmes.

$1 Billion could finance the renovations and rebuilding of theatres such as Marian Street and the New Theatre.

$1 Billion could see visual and performing arts programmes implemented in every youth centre in the state.

$1 Billion could see more community access to major arts events and productions off-setting the ticket price for those on lower incomes.

$1 Billion could see the purchase and up keep of the diminishing amount of arts spaces and studios in the inner city.

$1 Billion could finance a state-wide Don Dunstan style of public art programme throughout the state.

$1 Billion could provide musical instruments for every kid in every primary school.

$1 Billion would totally revolutionise the way the arts and music are created and consumed within our state.

Where would you like the $1 Billion to go?

Dust off those tutus

This blog is now in its third year which also means we are turning another fresh page of performance as each of the companies launch into their programmes for 2009.

As our economy readies itself to take a huge punch in the guts, '09 has a different flavour to it than previous years. You won't have seen to much evidence of it just yet but you can be assured cultural organisations across the country will really start to feel the heat by the end of year. (Maybe Kookaburra was our canary in the mines with their collapse a few months ago.)


As Government support shrinks and corporate sponsors dry up, programs will inevitably alter, staffing will become limited and projects will be smaller. On a social level, this is going to be a devastating couple of years. Creatively, it's a god send.

In a recent post, Marcus Westbury makes an excellent case for the creative benefit of a recession as he reflects on what the 90s meant for Melbourne's artists and musicians.

Looking at a post boom Melbourne it is easy to forget how much of what i love about this city is the product of the last great recession of the early 90s. Its laneway bars, its smart graffiti, its living CBD, its distinctive inner suburbs of eclectic shops and retail strips, its creative community are not the product of arts agencies or central planning but of the fertile ground, cheap space, and hard working initiative of a decade ago. The city is a rich ecology not created through central planning but grown in economic detritus and forged in the harsh and searing furnace of hard times.

He is absolutely right. NSW has been in recession for around twelve months and already artists are answering the call by setting up cheap initiatives, breaking into illegal spaces and creating new forms of arts creativity. It has only just began and it's burgeoning - but thank the Lord - it has started after a drought of ten years.

This newest financial crisis will no doubt spur things on a bit more.

As the learned Mr Westbury points out;

Yet recessions can be great times for low budget cultural initiatives. Space - the almost impossible to find holy grail of artists in the boom times - becomes relatively cheap and available. Higher levels of unemployment means that talent has more time to experiment and innovate and less temptation (or opportunity) to chase big bucks elsewhere. Large scale cultural production - with it’s expensive overheads and high costs - becomes relatively more difficult. Small scale production - which works best when there is a very high ratio of initiative and labour to expenses and overheads - benefits immensely from the rapidly falling costs.

Just look at what is happening post-Lanfranchi's; warehouses around Surry Hills, Redfern and Newtown are opening up, the brilliant Imperial Panda Festival is growing and the POPE license is finally dead. Space and talent are opening up.

Hopefully Federal and State Governments will follow the lead and stop constantly throwing money at photo opportunity funding initiatives and start supporting local artists and projects to give the industry more sustainability and a creative ecology.

For those of you with a taste for the larger budget productions, enjoy 09 because it will be the last for a while.

Which brings me to the whip-round of the performance calendar across Sydney...

Interview with Daniel Brine - new Artistic Director of Performance Space

It's a journalist's worst nightmare. After organising a time, date and venue, reading background information, preparing questions and conducting an interview with a subject, you suddenly lose the recording due to some technological malfunction or misadventure.

The fact that I had flown all the way from Sydney to London to catch Daniel Brine, the newly appointed Artistic Director of Performance Space before his arrival in Australia made it that little bit more painful. The fact that I lost the recording on my MP3 player on the last leg of my journey after twenty-one days of keeping it safe made it just pure frustration.

Kindly, Daniel afforded me some extra time while he was in Sydney for a quick catch up during a handover week with the outgoing AD Fiona Winning who has left after nine years.

The changing of the guard at Performance Space and Brine's appointment to the role of Artistic Director is one of the biggest changes to occur in the contemporary arts scene internationally this year as he fills what he describes as 'Fiona's very, very large shoes'.

It's extraordinary that not one major newspaper in this country has reported on the change. But we've seen this laziness before and know that they are able to editorialise similar appointments. Performance Space is no small-to-medium organisation out the back of hickville. It is, quite simply, a company that is at the forefront of contemporary art experimentation and presentation with an international reputation in excellence. And not a single column inch was spared by any news outlet.

My first meeting with Brine found us at the headquarters of the Live Arts Development Agency UK where he is finishing up his role as Associate Director. Based in a converted old girls school, the headquarters couldn't be more English with a beautiful old lawn courtyard with a walled garden nestled behind one of those typical London squares with a canopy of leaves. It's quite an oasis in the Shoreditch area of London just ten minutes walk from the hustle and bustle of the Liverpool Street financial district.

The day I arrive the stock markets worldwide had lurched downwards, Halifax Bank of Scotland had collapsed and suits were loitering in office buildings reconsidering their career choices. Maybe it is a good time for Brine to get out of the UK.

An Australian, Brine has been based in the UK for over eleven years after working for Live Arts, the Arts Council England and the NOW Festival. His biography reads like a degustation menu of contemporary performance, curating Live Culture at the Tate Modern, You Are Here for the Liverpool Biennial, Performing Rights for Performance Studies International Tanzquartier and China Live at the Chinese Arts Centre. He has even worked with Forced Entertainment, La Ribot, Blast Theory and Janine Antoni.

A quiet and considered man, Brine has acquired that slight English accent despite his heritage. "My move back to Australia is not about returning home, it is about going to work at Performance Space," he explains.

The industries in Australia and the UK could not be more different. In a forward to one of the many books that Brine gives me he co-writes with Lois Keidan (of Live Arts as well) and David Micklem from the UK Arts Council;

"Over the last decade or so there has been a growing sense that artistic directors and programmers across the UK are expressing greater interest in work that pushes at the edges of our expectations of what theatre could be. Some venues are actively programming experimental works. Others are expressing a keenness to explorethe opportunities for taking their audiences on new journeys. Whilst it is acknowledged that this work is challenging, sometimes difficult, often compelling and engaging, it is also work that can attract new audiences, offer new experiences, and add bold new strands to a venue's programme. Whether it is the National Theatre collaborating with Shunt, Duckie's events at the Barbican, Noble & Silver at Soho Theatre, or Gob Squad working on the main stage of Nottingham Playhouse it is increasingly evident that theatres in the UK are excited about a new set of relationships with experimental artists and companies."

Maybe that is where he sees the future role of the company he is about to take over. His respect for Performance Space is immediately obvious. "The role of the company internationally places it as one of the top three organisations presenting inter-disciplinary practices. It's part of the international infrastructure of contemporary performance," he says.

What's most interesting about Brine's experience is his role in developing unique and tangible avenues for artists and the arts industry to have a dialogue. Whether it be through publications, conferences, events or library resources, it is clear that his greatest strength is the way he inspires conversations.

If he brings his experiences in creating dialogue to Australia's shores it will be a much needed element to an extremely fragmented and fractured industry. Do we have a situation where it is increasingly evident that theatres in Australia are excited about a new set of relationships with experimental artists and companies?

As he takes me on a tour of the agency's premises he explains that the three pillars of Live Arts work is based around offering resources, professional development services and projects. "As you can see, we are not a performance space and we do not present works. Live Arts is more a resource, an organisation that brings together artists and venues to expand the cultural sector," he says.

He escorts me to an astonishing library where from floor to ceiling, tapes, DVDs and books document years of performance and contemporary arts writing. It's the sort of place you could spend months in, pulling out one DVD and then another until your eye catches something else you have always wanted to watch.

"Working at Performance Space gives me a chance to build more resources and focus on professional development through consultation and strategic thinking. It will also allow me to bring together art form practices particularly in film and dance," he says emphasising that until he takes up his position and has time to listen to the staff at Performance Space, speak with artists and the industry, the future direction of the company could involve anything.

The role of Performance Space after their move two years ago from their home of twenty years on Cleveland Street in Redfern to Carriageworks is one of the greatest challenges Brine will face. Winning oversaw the transition but it is now Brine's role to consolidate. Performance Space no longer enjoy the privilege of being a stand alone performance and artist space, now sharing the converted train yards with a family of other similar minded arts organisations under the umbrella of the financially restricted Carriageworks management.

Seeing him a month later in the cavernous Carriageworks building and a world away from the well manicured lawns of the old girls school he is realistic about the challenges facing him.

"It's clear there is a challenge of making big things and there are big issues in the industry that need to be addressed," he says.

But it's not just the issues facing the fragmented industry, it is also the mere size of the Carriageworks space. "A lot of people told me that Carriageworks was big, but I had no idea it was this big," he says. "It is an enormous space to fill."

But you can see the excitement in his face ... and the adrenalin. Asking him about our conversation four weeks earlier in London and how he feels now that he is in Sydney he is comforted with the fact that the organisation feels 'familiar' to him.

Hopefully, before long, all of us engaged with the arts will also become familiar with Daniel Brine and the future path he will carve in inspiring creative dialogue between all the spheres of performance in the country. An enormous space to fill indeed.

STC is getting down and dirty

I have received two really interesting press releases from the Sydney Theatre Company in as many weeks.

From their first release, the company is taking the bold step and putting on late night live music down at their Dickson Street home. It is billed as "a new regular series of free post-show gigs".

It's good that this sort of stuff is starting to happen in our performance spaces around the city and it is great that the STC is taking the lead. I just wish it was more regular and more widespread.

The first gig was last weekend and showcased Justine Clarke and The Kents who performed "a distilled blend of 60s jazz, pop and bossa".

There will be another gig in a month's time, so contact the STC if you want more info.

The second release which they sent out today really cheered my soul - and thank god finally, finally, finally someone is putting this film on!

I paste the release for you below.

STCinema
presents

The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark

Saturday 28 June at 1.30pm
Sydney Theatre
All tickets $10

STCinema returns in June when Sydney Theatre and Bell Shakespeare co-present Poor Theatre’s acclaimed cinematic adaptation of Hamlet.

Filmed in the back streets of Melbourne, The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark played to sell-out crowds at the 2007 Melbourne International Film Festival and earlier this year Malthouse Theatre hosted a season of encore screenings.

Directly following the screening at Sydney Theatre, there will be a panel discussion featuring Marion Potts (currently directing Bell Shakespeare’s interpretation of Hamlet), Oscar Redding, the director of Poor Theatre’s The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark and actor/director Jeremy Sims, who took on both the title role and the role of director in Pork Chop Productions’ memorable theatre production.

STCinema’s screening of The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark follows successful screenings last year of Riflemind-related films curated by Andrew Upton and Philip Seymour Hoffman and Sydney Theatre’s Australian premiere screening of I’m Not There.


Venue Sydney Theatre, 22 Hickson Road, Walsh Bay
Date Saturday 28 June 2008 at 1:30pm
Cost All tickets $10

Bookings (02) 9520 1999 or sydneytheatre.org.au


If you can recall Theatre Notes raved about this film which is a pretty good impetus.


Image: Beth Buckanan (Ophelia) & Richard Pyros (Hamlet)

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/

The sphere of influence grows...

Over the last few months some theatre and arts related websites have emerged from the garden bed and are offering some interesting perspectives on the industry.

The first one I have become aware of is The Australian's Lynden Barber who has set up the blog site Eyes Wired Open. He describes himself as a "freelance journalist specialising in film and music, a feature film script-assessor and an occasional film studies lecturer".

I knew Lynden a couple of years ago as my boss when he was the Artistic Director of the Sydney Film Festival.

His site has become a bit of a hive of activity, as he debates with the Australian Writers Guild (AWG) about the standard of script writing in Australia. There is his initial article in The Australian where he posits that "the industry suffers from deep-rooted cultural problems that consistently militate against the possibility of compelling scripts emerging at regular intervals".

This got up the nose of the AWG who penned together a response in the same paper's op-ed pages placing the blame at the feet of directors uninterested in producing another persons script and a lack of money.

A great debate that I think that the theatre industry desperately needs to have as well.

I have also become aware of a new blog by ex-SMH theatre reviewer James Waites. It is my understanding that he is quite a man of principle who got pushed out from the Herald after giving Les Miserables a bad review. Sound familiar?

It's an interesting site, but terribly hard to navigate and it lacks a good comments section that gives blogs some life.

There is also a pop-culture and arts site run by FBI Radio's Matt Levinson. I stumbled across it the other day and it is an interesting read that captures the heart of the inner city youf culture of music and creativity.

Since the creation of FBI Radio in inner city Redfern, Sydney has experienced a renaissance in the local music and arts scene. This station has gradually fixed itself as a central point where all the latest news of good local music and arts is broadcast.

They have heaps of arts programmes and have funky young reviewers out and about to see what's going on in the city. We are finally creating a good community feel that Melbourne has had for oh-so-long.

Yes... this year is going to be exciting I feel. Don't be left behind.

Allocation Exhausted

UPDATE: For the latest in Sydney Festival news please CLICK HERE for my live blog.


Just hours after launching the Sydney Festival 2008 programme, the headline act Bjork has already sold out. Is this a sign of things to come for the ever popular Sydney Festival?

This, Fergus Linehan's third year at the helm, looks to be the most successful festival programme yet and is an exhilarating foray into a musical wonderland and a spectacle of dance.

Breaking with the tradition of exclusivity, Linehan has dispensed with the conga-lines of security buffoons and invited the entire city to the opening night festivities. There'll be no door list for this event.

Kids will be invited into the central plaza of Martin Place for festivities as they write down their 'hopes and dreams for Sydney in the year ahead'. These hopes and dreams will then be broadcast on massive projections throughout the night, reminding us all of our inner innocence, our inner faith. The Place will then transform into a massive outdoor dance venue to the beat of DJ's and local and international musical acts.

The evening will crack along as Brian Wilson and Paul Kelly stage a huge free concert in the Domain. This will be coupled by live bands pumping out salsa, tango, jive under the trees in Hyde Park. Macquarie Street will upstage St Mary's cathedral as three couples from a Sunday Telegraph competition will walk up a red carpet aisle with 20,000 onlookers.

Now, that's an opening night. "Welcome, welcome, welcome."

The programme for this year's festival is really a salute to two distinct areas, Australian Dance and Indigenous Arts which are both represented proudly and with attitude.

For the last couple of years there have been grumble-grumblings from the local community about the lack of Australian content. This year makes amends and Linehan has programmed a thorough series of events that appropriately showcase what many consider to be the real export of Australia's performing arts.

At the apex of the dance programme is the About an Hour series, which returns once again to the Sydney Opera House. It will include the new work from Chunky Move, a contemporary story from Stephen Page, Lucy Guerin's Aether, Kate Champion's The Age I'm In, Shaun Parker's This Show Is About People and the last choreographic work from Tanja Liedtke Construct.

Coupled with three works from Spanish choreographer Nacho Duato and the Compania Nacional De Danza who last came to the Sydney Festival in 2001, this should be a treat of a festival for those who like a bit of toe-tapping.

On the Indigenous front, Linehan has brought together a beautiful programme that cuts across the artistic boundaries of classic Australian musical ballads, urban rock, physical theatre and South Australian story-telling.

For many the Kev Carmody retrospective concert at the State Theatre will be an event not to be missed. Especially when you have a line-up of singers such as Paul Kelly, Dan Kelly, Tex Perkins, Clare Bowditch, The Drones, Missy Higgins, Steve Kilbey and Sara Storer all singing the classic anthems from Carmody's prolific and beautiful career.

The Black Arm Band will also burst out onto the Indigenous stage, but this time at the Opera House with a concert that will feature the stunning vocals of Ursula Yovich (I saw her pick up the microphone late into the night at a party a few months ago, and I implore you to believe the hype... she is awesome), Archie Roach, Bart Willoughby, Emma Donovan, Ruby Hunter, Dan Sultan and again Kev Carmody.

In association with Company B, the festival will also be presenting BIG hART's Ngapartji Ngapartji which when translated from the local South Australian dialect means "I give you something, you give me something." Central to what is billed as a beautiful theatrical journey is the belief that this country must do more to protect and promote local indigenous languages. So watch as the theatrical journey then becomes one of shared cultures and a beautiful candle for honest reconciliation.

The central focus of this year's festival is well and truly music. You are already too late for Bjork, but don't despair because there is also Beach Boy musical visionary Brian Wilson, Sufjan Stevens, Fourplay, Martin Craft, Mice Parade, Joanna Newsom performing with the Sydney Symphony, The Triffids, slam poetry and afro-pop acts from South Africa, the Finnish Iiro Rantala Trio, Pink Martini, the Spanish Harlem Orchestra, Meow Meow, and my pick of the musical genre - accordion-playing revolutionary Kimmo Pohjonen.

Then of course the is the usual crazy fiesta at the Hyde Park Barracks Museum and the Beck's Festival Bar with acts such as De La Soul, Mudhoney, Amp Fiddler and Spank Rock.

Hyde Park will also be transformed into a Festival Garden with Sydney Arts Journo's favourite summer watering hole the Famous Spiegeltent making a welcome return bringing acts like La Clique with it. Next door in the garden will be the Cirque Ici Tent where Johann Le Guillerm will perform mad circus performance nightly with two electro-acoustic live musicians.

For the theatre set, this is not really the festival for you. Previous years have delivered a feast of the text based magic, but apparently Linehan couldn't find appropriate acts for this years festival. Despite this, there are two shows coming from the National Theatre of Scotland - Black Watch, which tells the story of Scotland's iconic 300-year old Black Watch Regiment and how it has a head on collision with the new 'war on terror'.

The NTS will also present at CarriageWorks, Aalst, a show developed with the Belgian theatre company Victoria. Based on a true story, it is a domestic theatrical journey which follows the trial and conviction of a husband and wife who murder their infant daughter and young son.

My favourite theatrical rebels and theatre-event convention breakers, Urban Theatre Projects present another show this year The Last Highway. Performed in a service station in Bankstown the show will centre itself on the characters that come in and out of the station - sex workers, taxi drivers, shift workers and no doubt your token hoon in his pumped up noise machine.

The stunning and magical James Thieree, nephew of Charlie Chaplin, also makes a very exciting return for the third year in a row with Au Revoi Parapluie. If his previous two shows are any guide, this will be a theatrical delight.

The rest of the festival is made up of all the usual free outdoor events, domain concerts and quirky events made to get everyone in Sydney at least touched by this beautiful event. The pick of them for me is Haircuts by children, where local ten year olds will offer free haircuts at salons in Parramatta and Darlinghurst. The bill says 'after a team of children participate in a series of training workshops with local professional stylists, everyone is invited to get a free haircut.

But, if I was you, I'd get in early. This festival is going to capture a city and send ripples of creativity into a state of mass fiesta... and without a doubt the ticketek website will be in a constant state of 'Allocation Exhausted'.


Sydney Arts Journo Festival Picks

Theatre
Black Watch - National theatre of Scotland
James Thieree - Au Revoir Parapluie
National Theatre of Scotland - Aalst
Ngapartji Ngapartji at Belvoir St
Urban Theatre Projects - The Last Highway

Dance and Performance
Nacho Duato and the Compania Nacional De Danza
Lucy Guerin - Aether
Cirque Ici
La Clique at the Famous Spiegeltent
Tanja Liedtke - Construct

Music
Sufjan Stevens
House of the Holy Afro - Third World Bunfight
Pink Martini
Chromeo
Kimmo Pohjonen

A show about people

As published in Arts Hub.
Friday, 5 October, 2007


Shaun Parker is the consummate collaborator. Despite being only a short time out from premiering his new work This Show Is About People at the Melbourne International Arts Festival, he is still writing the piece.

“What’s really good about doing interviews like this is that I can talk it out, and the things that will come up I will take back to the rehearsal,” he says as I sit down with him at a café in Sydney just before his departure.

This Show Is About People has been three years in the making so it’s no wonder that the Robert Helpmann Scholar has got used to constantly revising the piece and reacting to feedback from peers.

“When I came back to Australia from Europe, I had this piece in my head where I wanted to just do a show that was about people. A piece that looked at the human condition and the duality of life – light and dark, violence and peace, man and woman, freedom and confinement.”

For the Australian choreographer who has also worked as a singer, dancer and physical theatre performer for the last fifteen years, arriving at such a work has been a lifelong journey.

As a young boy, Parker was unable to speak until he was six years old due to a long series of speech impediments. “But strangely enough,” he says, “I could sing. My mother said she would walk in and find me singing all the songs on Playschool! I could sing the words of the songs, but I could not speak them.”

For Parker, this lifelong connection to song represents a starting point for his collaboration in creating This Show Is About People. “I wanted to create a soundtrack to people’s lives”, he says.

“You see, there is just so many dehumanised dance pieces and an overuse of multimedia”, he adds. “I want to start a rebellion by just using people and telling simple stories using performers who simply use their bodies.”

This Show Is About People, which will premiere at the Melbourne International Arts Festival and then tour north to the Sydney Festival in January is a close collaboration between Parker and musical directors Mara and Llew Kiek. Using five dancers and five singer/musicians, the creative team frame the action of the piece in a waiting room with the score intertwining the lives of the performers.

“When my mother was diagnosed with secondary cancer, just before I commenced the first stage development of this work, she was thrown into a period of grief and questioning,” he explains.

“I remember sitting with my mother in the waiting room of the Oncologist’s surgery, and when I looked around at the other families and patients who were also waiting, they too had their own questions – each as specific and potent as the next.”

This close-to-home experience directly impacted Parker’s initial creative processes so that by the time the origins of the piece where discovered the setting was drawing itself to the idea of a waiting room.

Asking Parker whether he had the opportunity to see Swiss director Cristoph Marthaler’s latest work Seemanslieder at the Sydney Festival earlier this year, a piece which is also set in a waiting room and where characters communicate in song, he shakes his head. “I am kicking myself that I never got to see that. So many people have told me how wonderful it was!”

I can indeed see similarities between the two creative’s. Parker, like Marthaler uses music as a core part of creating his vision for the piece. But even though the concepts of these two works are similar, Parker centres his process around the performer as dancer. As well as this, his choice of music, Bulgarian mountain music along with counter-tenor Early music, is far removed from the sea-shanty and 60’s pop music of Seemanslieder.

“The Bulgarian singing invokes for us a sense of community and belonging,” he explains. “One song, Neven Tsafti sung by Silvia Entcheva and Mara Kiek speaks of the Wild Marigold that is growing between the paving stones. It is a healing flower. It is waiting, ready to be found, but there is no-one there to pick it. Many of the Bulgarian songs speak of small tales of everyday life, yet their underlying meaning speaks many words.”

“The Early music is mostly a selection of medieval songs by counter-tenor Tobias Cole and musicians Nick Wales and Llew Kiek. This time it is the men who drive the medieval music, which for me, provides an essential link to religion, to a belief system,” he says. “The importance of the men leading this music, sits satisfyingly in opposition to the women’s Bulgarian vocal songs.”

This blending of dance, movement and music has been something that Parker has been refining as a creative process since his days studying at the Victorian College of the Arts over fifteen years ago.

“I began my work with live singing in response to my childhood experience. I related to its form. However, as well as closing my eyes and listening to music, I was sure I could fuse it with the body, where they would co-exist within the same theatrical space. This led to my first dance work in 1992, at the VCA, where Duane Morrison and I created an original score for voice and piano. Then in 1996 whilst dancing with Australian Dance Theatre, I created Worldes Blis, in which I collaborated with an Early music ensemble and sang as a counter-tenor.”

Even Meryl Tankard used Parker’s amazing gift for music and utilised it as part of her creations INUK and Seulle.

This time, however, Parker is at the helm of his first full length work, and he clearly wants to bring all of his experiences together and strip them right back to the very basics. “I want audiences to feel something. To think something. That’s all I want.”

I imagine that little boy standing in front of the television at home, unable to express his thoughts, but able to sing from the heart. I imagine that that is what his piece will be like… a song from the heart.



Credits
Director and Choreographer Shaun Parker
Musical Directors Mara Kiek & Llew Kiek
Set and Costume Designer Robert Cousins
Sound Designer Peter Kennard

Collaborative Performers:
Anton, Matt Cornell, Marnie Palomares, Guy Ryan
Collaborative Musicians
Jarnie Birmingham, Tobias Cole, Sylvia Entcheva, Llew Kiek, Mara Kiek

the smell, the taste of summer...

Sydney is hot. Over the weekend, Ourania, the Goddess of Summer sent her winds howling down the eastern coast of this island continent and announced her arrival like the Queen of Sheba.

With the heat, seeds burst, flowers bloomed and the insects and animals came crawling out of their winter slumber and the air was filled with an excitement as if the world had organised a grand welcoming party for the sun.

My thoughts travel to Ljubljana. It's summer 2001 and the beginning of my time of absence. Leaving a dark and windy Sydney, I arrive in the middle of a full blown heat wave.

No matter where you are, summer always smells the same. I am not sure what it is, what neurones are released or what senses are enlivened, but the smell of summer always evokes a nostalgia for me.

Summer in Europe is a paganistic celebration that bows to the god Dionysus. It's three months of rebirth, wine and intoxication.

Even in little Ljubljana, a city of no more than 270,000, the drinking, the intoxication and the celebration is coupled with an unquenchable thirst for praznik - festival.

One particular festival which has occurred every year since 1992 is Trnfest held at a community cultural centre named after the country's iconic poet France Preseren.

Without the limitations of archaic liquor licensing or entertainment laws, a festival takes place in the back streets of Ljubljana where the young and the young at heart come together in the one venue to see theatre and dance, look at art work and dance to a line-up of bands, DJ's and musicians.

It's the smell of bursting flowers, of a green canopy of trees lining the city, of afternoon beers watching the world go by. It's the smell of comfortable heat, of anticipation, of roasted corn, of sweat and it all dances to the beat of celebration.

Nostalgia is a beautiful thing. Here's to summer.

What?! Another forum...

Yes ladies and gentlemen - when one isn't sure how to do something, having a forum on it seems to be de rigeur in Sydney at the moment.

And I hereby announce another forum - yes another one - but this time with the Shadow Arts Minister, Mr Peter Garrett.

Here is the article I wrote in Arts Hub today:

Shadow Arts Minister Peter Garrett's nationwide artist forums will make their way to Sydney after a successful session in Melbourne last Sunday, where over 200 practitioners and stakeholders gathered.

"There was an excellent turn out of local artists and the discussion was lively and passionate, just as you would expect," said Mr Garrett.

"A number of key points were made by artists and we'll certainly be looking to incorporate that feedback into our policy deliberations over the coming months."

In what has been deemed by many as the first serious engagement by a Federal minister with artists from the ground-level, the forums hope to give artists and arts advocates the opportunity to voice their concerns and hopes for the future of Australia’s cultural life.

The forum in Sydney follows a successful City Talk hosted by Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore that looked at the creative future vision for the city. That event attracted over 1000 people.

Garrett said the forums were an important component of the Australian Labor Party’s programme of connecting with artists and involving practitioners in determining arts policy.

After previous ALP policies, particularly Creative Nation which received criticism from both within and outside the artistic communities, it will be vital that these forums inform the Shadow Arts Minister of the changes required to further advance the artistic industries.

"As the Shadow Arts Minister it's vital to hear what artists working in our community have to say on the issues that affect them," explained Garrett. "'Your Shout' is a chance for those artists to have their opinions heard and considered."


** This forum has been postponed until further notice**

SMH goes for the cynical approach

The Sydney Morning Herald decided to portray last night's excellent discussion about the creative future of Sydney as a bit pie in the sky today.

"In 2030 postcards of Sydney will feature the streets of Marrickville, Darlinghurst and Cabramatta as well as the Opera House," Ben Cubby's page 7 story started.

"Poker machines will be turfed out of pubs, painters will sell their work tax free and stockbrokers will be sent by their bosses to study fine arts instead of business administration," Cubby wrote.

It's such a shame that just to grab a bit of headline they had to go for the over written first paragraphs. If you had been there, you would have realised that the event was so much more than the asides that the Herald has decided would make a better story opening. It all ends up making the arts community, AGAIN, look like idealistic fools.

The Daily Telegraph* ran a page 3 news item that centred around a major theme of the evening - that of gambling and poker machines.

"Sydney is doomed to be a cultural wasteland because poker machines and prohibitive licensing fees are killing our culture, Belvoir St theatre boss Neil Armfield said last night," Simon Ferguson, Arts Editor wrote.

"In a deliberate attack which drew gasps and applause from a packed Town Hall conference," Ferguson went on. "Mr Armfield said Melbourne had a bright artistic future while Sydney's was in doubt, thanks to the State Government's reliance on gambling and licensing revenue."

Ferguson went on to quote Armfield - "'The government feeds on our city's addiction to gambling like a dealer feeds on a junkie's addiction to smack,' he said, slating home the blame for this to "the pubs, clubs and their unholy alliance with the NSW ALP'."

Now, THAT was one of many serious ends of the evening. Ends which proposed serious recommendations to the community and to the Lord Mayor to sort out our creative future. It was not, as the Herald reported an event where 'solutions and detail were perhaps a little thin on the ground'.

Here are just some of the recommendations made last night;

• an audit of all abandoned buildings in the city centre with a view to designating some of them for the use of arts communities,
  
• a stop to further arts infrastructure funding which should now be directed towards the development of artists themselves,
  
• advise to introduce some protections for artist communities that already exist in the city centre,
  
• an investment in the training of arts educators with a view to stand as the best arts training ground for our neighbours,
  
• a review of liquor and gambling laws to allow musicians back into pubs,
  
• proposals to use more public spaces cleverly so that art and the urban landscape can co-exist more,
  
• proposal to allow buskers back onto the streets of Sydney,
• the advocacy by government to business to promote the funding of events that aren't necessarily multi-million dollar events,
• advise to arts communities to communicate better with politicians,
• and (ironically) a plea to the media to start profiling the arts more positively.
  

Solutions thin on the ground indeed!

There was also a call last night for an advocate for the arts and artists to be a bit more public, with most pointing to the Lord Mayor. I think, however, Neil, that you have just promoted yourself.


*I write reviews for The Daily Telegraph, so could be accused of bias... but then again, I have been rabbiting on about the quality of arts journalism in the Herald for a while now.


Image: The now defunct artist community at Lanfranchi's.

Busking in Sydney

Buskers and Sydney have always had a tenuous relationship. So tenuous, that a few years ago the city implemented a busking policy. It's extraordinary reading, and includes a busking permit, which you must apply for as well as rules and regulations around different types of busking and what you can and can't do in each particular type of busk (sic).

The Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority is having a little re-think of it's 'Busking policy for the Rocks & Circular Quay'. Today they are meeting to discuss the present policy and to hear submissions from interested parties.

In an email I received from the Musicians Section of the MEAA, I discovered that busking is illegal for musicians in the Darling Harbour area, west of the CBD. This (less than attractive) concrete wonderland for tourists only permits street performers and no musicians. It seems a bit ironic that they ban musicians from busking in one of the ugliest parts of the city for fear of giving it some life.

Years ago, the state government had to decide what to do with this old industrial area on the fringe of the city centre. There were two arguments. One was to turn it into a large park, for the use of families and city workers. The second was to lay down some concrete, plant a casino and as much ugly architecture as possible to sell stuffed koala's from. The latter won.

The second interesting issue is the ban on buskers from having a CD on display. The email from the Musicians lobby says:

Musicians are banned from having a CD on display. Most musicians, especially the better ones, have recordings these days. A passer by stops, and says” That’s fantastic – do you have a CD?” – What would you do? Buskers face on the spot fines, and losing their licence. Musicians are not big hustlers like circus acts. Consider a classical guitarist, concentrating on their craft… these musicians, especially the better ones, need more understanding. I will be requesting that a musician be allowed one only CD on display. I feel this is a commonsense solution to a genuine problem. We don’t want to eradicate the better Musicians, leaving only the lost souls on smashed guitars strung with fishing line requesting a ciggie mate!


Buskers are a significant element to the cultural life of the city. They are a magnificent addition to life down at Circular Quay, they bring life to the dead-end of Central Railway Station, and more significantly, buskers are usually amazing musicians using the streets as their rehearsal rooms.

The fact that the Authority deems it necessary to regulate busking says more about the time on their hands and it is absurd that musicians are banned from the Darling Harbour precinct. Surely, common sense will prevail and they will lift this ban and permit musicians to have the cover of their latest CD on display.

It isn't enough that most people don't really pay attention to the musical talents of the buskers, but you also have a government agency putting limitations on what they do.

If you want to get involved send an email to the authority and let them know what you think of the policy and how they should improve it.

Review: Gerard Masters Trio & Matt Keegan Trio

Gerard Masters Trio & Matt Keegan Trio
The Wine Banq
11 March 2007


From Elizabeth Street, in the centre of Sydney's business district, I walk down the long stairs to the underground wine bar. The girl at the front counter is engrossed in a book, waiting for the dwindling patrons to wander in.

What are you reading?

It's this book that a friend gave me. It's an old French novel.

She hands me the well-thumbed copy. The Story of O.

How are you finding it?

I only just started it, but it's really amazing.

I pay my money and enter the basement world of the bar with its soft furnishings and soft lighting. An L-shaped venue, with a few lounges on one side and then a long room where you can eat some of the fine food served, or even better, drink some of their divine choice of wine. A bar that clearly draws on the inspiration of the sophistication of the New York scene.

It was a dear friend's birthday and she had organised a group of us to stake out the Wine Banq bar for the evening. Her husband was playing in both the trio's this evening. The gathering is spread out over various places around the room, as I take up a stool with two of my dear friends and we start in on our first bottle, a D'Arenberg High Trellis Cabernet Sauvignon.

Her lover one day takes O for a walk, but this time in a part of the city - the Parc Montsouris, the Parc Monceau - where they've never been together before.

The wine is served in a deep fine glass that allows the nose of the fruit to swell and lift up out as you take your first mouthful. The flavours explode and the deep sense of satisfaction that a fine red brings to the soul sinks you into the chair.

'Here we are,' he says all of a sudden. Here we are: the taxi comes to a stop on a fine avenue, under a tree - those are plane trees - in front of a small mansion, you could just see it, nestled away between courtyard and garden, the way the Faubourg Saint-Germain mansions are.

The Gerard Masters Trio is playing away up the far end of the room. The pianist, the acoustic bass, the drummer. Original compositions with deep chords and strong emotions that are expressed with a mix of classical piano and the best of traditional jazz. Music that would be perfect for a late night rendezvous with a fine glass of red.

When she was made up, her eyelids lightly shadowed, her mouth very red, the point and halo of her nipples rouged, the sides of the lips of her sex reddened, a lingering scent applied to the fur of her armpits and her pubis, to the crease between her buttocks, to beneath her breasts and the palms of her hands...

In a far corner of the bar are a noisy group of nineteen year olds. Young men and women obviously on one of their first excursions out after work as they begin their career climbing that corporate ladder of excess. They are well-heeled, but talk like they are still out in the schoolyard. The pianist asks them to please quieten down and they respond with a wave of the hand and yell at him that the bar is a public place. I hold my breath.

It was explained to her that as long as she was in this chateau it would always be this way: she would see the faces of those who violated her and bullied her, but never at night, and in this way she would never know which ones were responsible for the worst of her sufferings.

The trio continue despite the noise, to harmonise and evoke tunes that float between funk and soul and then simmer back down to thoughtful compositions. The wine gets better by the mouthful and my friends and I talk the hour away, our attention turning from each other, back to the music and back to one another again. Another bottle is ordered. A Marlborough Pinot Noir.

Then he sat down next to O, bent her backward and kissed her. She asked him if he loved her. 'Ah, yes! I do love you,' he answered, then got up, stood her up too, and gently pressed his cool palms, then his lips, to her welts, to all her welts.

The trio break to allow Matt Keegan and his crew to come on and finish off the night. I make my way across to the lounge chairs near the entrance and join a few others, as I imbibe my favourite wine. I glance up to where the girl at the front door is sitting. She sits there engrossed, as jazz tracks float up from downstairs and she absorbs her French novel.

'I love you' - he pronounced those words without stirring an eyelash. It was he who added wood to the fire, lit the pink opaline lamp by the bed. Then he told O to get into bed and to wait for him, as he was going to sleep with her. When he returned, O put her hand to turn off the light: it was her left hand and before darkness engulfed everything the last thing she saw was her ring.

Matt Keegan gets his saxophone out and with his bass player and drummer turn the energy of the night up a few clicks and start to get the place a bit more funked up with a little more rock. Music that gets you moving your body, your head nodding and your foot swinging. The Pinot Noir is flowing through me. Conversations get excited. They get paced. The wine is just wonderful.

Speaking, saying anything - that was the difficult part. Her lips were afire, her mouth was dry, the saliva wasn't there any more, an anguish composed of fear and desire had her by the throat, and the hands she had recovered control of were cold and clammy. If she could have but closed her eyes, at least. But no, two gazes pursued hers, stalked hers; she could not elude the hunter, nor did she wish to.

Soon enough, you get to the point where too much wine maybe enough. My eyes start to hang heavy. My senses are being overloaded. The jazz, the conversation, the noisy nineteens, the pinot, the girl at the top of the stairs reading the book.

I put down my glass. Say goodbye to my friends. Grab my bag and walk back out into the night air.


Image: Matt Keegan
Extracts from The Story of O by Pauline Reage, 1965