Marriage is rich ground for conflict, having inspired countless dramatic examinations of hetero marital dynamics through the centuries. In this new adaptation of the 19th century classic, recognisable conversations about gender roles, freedom, and love demonstrate the timelessness of marriage stories under patriarchy.
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We’ve all heard of Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, and maybe even Codependents Anonymous but this MA: Motherholics Anonymous. For all those people who just can’t separate themselves from their clingy, controlling mothers, MA is a safe space amongst fellow mother addicts.
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Bringing together spoken language and instrumental music under the theme of rhetoric illuminates the forms’ similar concerns of pace, rhythm, voice, and flow in constructing a whole performance piece. The study of rhetoric as argument and persuasion was popular in comparison and unison with composition during the 18th century and, as such, in this concert, Bach Akademie Australia illustrates the literary influence of rhetoric on a range of compositions by Johann Sebastian Bach.
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Gone with the Wind is an iconic American story with the novel by Margaret Mitchell earning a Pulitzer Prize in 1937 and selling more than 30 million copies worldwide. The movie adaptation in 1939 was also a great success, winning the Academy Award for Best Picture and breaking the record for the highest earning film ever when it was released. But it nearly didn’t make it to the screen.
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As we continue to face worsening climate catastrophes and conditions, many across Australia are calling on the nation to embrace the traditions of custodianship that Aboriginal people have been using to care for the land for millennia. Ten years on from the first production of Terrain, Bangarra Dance Theatre revisits the meaning and messages of caring for Country under the direction of new artistic director Frances Rings.
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Fewer and fewer people these days have memories of pulling into the local video or DVD rental store to choose the selection of titles you would consume over the weekend. The closure of Blockbuster in 2014 felt like a huge blow to the industry as streaming services like Netflix took over. In the years since, more and more small, independent rental stores have met the same fate. Coil is an homage to those days and the memories so deeply embedded in films.
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[NOTE: This review contains a major spoiler in the second to last paragraph. Audience members who wish to be surprised are advised not to read it.]
When the #MeToo movement went viral in 2017 it began exposing the complicity of the entertainment industry in maintaining and covering up predatory power dynamics between older male gatekeepers and younger women new to the industry who saw their exploitation as a necessary stepping stone in their burgeoning careers. But that power dynamic was not new nor was it limited to Hollywood. Hannah Moscovitch’s 2020 script illustrates the same patterns alive and well in academia and the writing industry.
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In the Year of Magical Thinking, her memoir about the sudden death of her husband, Joan Didion writes, “Grief turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it.” Grief is figured as a foreign, unknowable place that welcomes unsuspecting grievers like Frank after tragedy. Frank isn’t sure how he got here or how to get home but he’s slowly piecing together the puzzle of his grief.
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The most obvious fear about dying is the ceasing to exist part but one also has to consider all the preliminaries: will you be seriously ill or injured? Will you be able to stay at home or with family? Will you end up isolated in a care facility? These are the practical fears of dying that have only been exacerbated over recent years with the incredibly deadly COVID-19 outbreak in Victorian aged care facilities that killed hundreds of people in 2020 and the Royal Commission into Aged Care of 2021 that recorded countless instances of abuse and neglect across the country.
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Most people are routine orientated. They’re how we structure our lives and ourselves, form new habits or get rid of old ones. Routines are how we show our productivity, our values, and how we work towards our dreams. That’s why they’ve been a cornerstone of addiction recovery for decades, baked into the rhetoric along with the Twelve Steps to help newly sober people reorder and rebuild their lives.
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Night Writes 