Night Writes sat down with writer and performer Mel Ree to discuss her upcoming show Mother May We as part of the Griffin Theatre Company Griffin Lookout program.
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There are many myths about the colonisation of Australia used to justify the invasion and genocide, to demand gratitude from First Nations people, and especially to erase the language, culture, and lives of First Nations people prior to colonisation. Writers like Yuin, Bunurong and Tasmanian Bruce Pascoe and plangermairreenner of the Ben Lomond people Jim Everett-puralia meenamatta have worked for decades to dispel some of the myths that persist today. This new play from Palawa playwright Dylan Van Den Berg takes up the task to rewrite the understanding of queerness amongst First Nations cultures.
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This review comes from Night Writes guest reviewer Josephine Lee
Merlynn Tong’s Golden Blood is a feverish, drug-induced, dream-like, fire-cracker adventure of two Singaporean Chinese orphaned siblings who are forced to become adults when their parents die before teaching them how.
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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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After weeks of rain, a coming-of-age story set under the summer sun was a sip of sweet relief. But not everything in Paradise is as good as it seems with a rogue orange vandal on the loose and a neighbourhood watch more invested in peace than justice. Maybe a blast from the past is exactly what this neighbourhood needs to shake it out of its stuffy ways.
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Two strangers meet in a park ostensibly for a simple hook-up. But they each want something from the other and they aren’t being entirely honest about it either. As darkness falls and the sounds of evening traffic creeps in, the carefully hidden aspects of their lives begin to infiltrate their rendezvous and unsettle their strange acquaintance.
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The last time Kendall Feaver’s work appeared on Griffin’s stage was the dense and jagged examination of mental illness The Almighty Sometimes. In this new work, Feaver takes on an equally thorny topic of sexual assault on university campuses, as well as the implications for feminism, racism, and the power imbalances that uphold these sacred institutions of knowledge.
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Melbourne and Sydney, art and commercialism, love and money; whether it’s the 1980s, 2014, or 2021, the battle is the same with each side deeply entrenched in their beliefs about success and happiness. In David Williamson’s 1987 play, artists butt up against producers, funding bodies, and even the audiences all for the integrity of the art. But what’s really at stake?
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The image of the tortured artist is a popular one; the sad sack, the alcoholic, the neurotic recluse. But even for artists who might be considered “normal”, there remains the rather insistent self-doubt: “Why am I doing this?” In Debra Oswald’s solo memoir performance, she explores the life events leading to her career as a writer and the many, many trials she’s faced over that career.
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The concept of home and what having one gives to you are things many Australians are lucky enough to take for granted. Stability, safety, a memory of where you’re coming from, and a plan for where you’re going; small things denied to so many. In this autobiographical solo show, Oliver Twist examines his own experiences with starting over as a Rwandan refugee.
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