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Site-specific theatre and performance has become all the rage in recent years. At their best, such productions allow for a mutually illuminating dialogue between venue and work; often they also use the space to refresh our experience of performance itself by immersing the audience visually and spatially in the work with the performers. Last week I
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Tristan und Isolde, Stuart Skelton, Gun-Brit Barkmin, Ekaterina Gubanova, Boaz Daniel, Ain Anger, WA Symphony Orchestra, Asher Fisch, Perth Concert Hall, August 16 and 19 Since becoming Principal Conductor and Artistic Advisor of WASO in 2014, Asher Fisch has been assiduously cultivating the orchestra’s sound and profile and ambitiously extending its repertoire and programming. A
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Last week I was in Adelaide for the final week of the Festival and saw a series of works – both monumental and intimate – dealing with political, social and psychological crisis, conflict and catastrophe; loss and trauma; grief and mourning. There were glimmers of hope, healing or at least consolation, but all in all,
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The performances, talks and conversations I’ve attended or participated in over the last two weeks of the Festival (which closed at the weekend) have raised lots of questions for me about the relationship between art and life. The eponymous title of Iranian playwright Nassim Souleimanpour’s play Nassim suggests that it may (or may not) be
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Lisa Reihana, Emissaries; Zadok Ben-David, Human Nature; Pilar Mata Dupont, Undesirable Bodies; Christopher Charles, Banjawarn; Kimsooja, Sewing/Walking and Zone of Nowhere: Most of the Festival works I’ve engaged with this week have awakened my sense of place. This is an especially fragile and contested question for white Australians generally, white Western Australians in particular, and
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A festival is at once a communal act of celebration and of commemoration. The Dionysiad was a celebration of the God’s gifts and a commemoration of his dismemberment and rebirth; the Last Supper was a celebration of the Passover and an anticipation of Christ’s imminent sacrifice; and every Feast Day is held in honour of
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Actor, writer and regular Daily Review contributor, Humphrey Bower has been engaged by the Perth Festival as a “Festival Navigator“. He navigates its first week of performances below. The opening ceremony Gnarnk-Ba Karla Waarnginy (‘Speaking Fires of our Mother’) took place at the west end of St George’s Terrace: hardly the most obviously scenic spot, despite
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I begin writing this, my first blog post as ‘Festival Navigator’ for the Perth Festival 2018 on the long haul back to Perth from Minneapolis: 7.5 hours across the US, the Atlantic and the British Isles to Paris; a 7 hour layover at Charles de Gaulle; then another 6.5 hours across Europe and Turkey to the Middle East;
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‘Portrait: Jérôme Bel’, Autumn Festival, Paris: ‘Disabled Theatre’, ‘Pichet Klunchun and Myself’, ‘The Show Must Go On’, ‘Un Spectacle en moins’ The Autumn Festival in Paris runs from September through December each year, staging contemporary dance, theatre, music and exhibitions in venues across the city and surrounding suburbs in the Île de France. The most
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I’ve been an admirer of Simon Stone’s work since his early productions of Spring Awakening and Platonov with The Hayloft Project in Melbourne, and especially his extraordinary production of Thyestes in the Tower Room at the Malthouse in 2010 (which is being revived at the 2018 Adelaide Festival). A meteoric rise followed with further productions
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