This dance work, a new creation from choreographer/director Byron Perry, works well as a brief little satire on the human bias toward imaging the world in dualist categories, and particularly in terms of binary oppositions. I have to quote the program here, because I really like their way of describing the show: “Through movement-based conversations, [...]

Actress Elsie de Brauw is in Melbourne town this week for the International Arts Festival. She’s starring in Opening Night, renowned Belgian director Ivo van Hove’s adaptation, with Amsterdam’s Toneelgroep, of the 1977 film of the same name, by John Cassavetes. In that film, Cassavetes, performing opposite Gena Rowlands and Ben Gazzara, depicts the progress [...]

Dale Ferguson’s set is astonishing. Every three-stars-or-less crummy hotel foyer you’ve ever encountered sprawls ubiquitously across the vast Sumner Theatre stage; a pastiche of beige carpet, peeling wallpaper, fake wood panelling, faded leather couches, wrought iron side tables and plastic pot plants — a meticulously crafted nightmare for anyone who has travelled on a budget. [...]

The Melbourne International Arts Festival kicks off this Friday with, among other things, The Blue Dragon, the latest high-tech-high-art spectacle from famed French-Canadian director Robert Lepage. It’s his sequel to The Dragons’ Trilogy, an auteur classic that established Lepage’s international reputation in the mid eighties. The Dragons’ Trilogy ended (after six hours) with Pierre Lamontagne, [...]

“I find working with Beckett to be a joyous experience. Not the individual moments, this or that poignant passage, but his skill and genius is so, so graceful, and uplifting. I’m constantly inspired by it.” That’s Conor Lovett, currently touted as one of the world’s foremost Beckett specialists. He has just left Brisbane after performing [...]

Stifter’s Things is a composition for five pianos with no pianists. It is a play without actors. It is a performance without performers. Instead, things are placed before us, beautiful things from ages past, things that have fallen into decay but which have been restored or renovated or reinvented. The performance is the presence which [...]

As explained last week, Curtain Call hearts arts festivals. Short of somehow evolving a fully integrated arts culture, a society where the arts are not only valued but are regarded as intrinsic to the moral-civil-imaginative life of a city, festivals are the best way of engaging people with their local arts community, and also of [...]