It’s not uncommon for conversation with a loved one to continue after their death, especially if the passing was sudden. But Grace and Bardy have more than loose ends to tie up. It would seem that Bardy’s death laid the stage for the revelation of more than a few secrets from beyond the grave.
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In 2010, Serbian performance artist Marina Abramović completed one of her most famous performances, The Artist Is Present at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, where she sat still and silent opposite an empty chair in which audience members were invited to sit and stare at her. The work ran from March to May and garnered responses from art critics, celebrities, and ordinary people from all over the world. The Stella Prize winning novel by Heather Rose, now adapted for the stage, imagines the lives of some of the audience members to Abramović’s performance and the impact it had on them.
Continue reading →Before many people were forced to turn their homes into their workplaces during 2020, office politics were likely a dull daily normality. But, with some distance, how ordinary were they? Well, Actually Productions used the space of the global pandemic to closely examine how inequality and sexism manifest in office microaggressions and not-so-funny colleague banter.
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If global crises like climate change or COVID-19 make anything clear, it’s that the wealthy and the poor are living in completely different version of reality. Some can have whatever they want whenever they want it while others are literally struggling to keep their heads above water. This second instalment of a trilogy in Javaad Alipoor’s “state of the world” theatre-making takes on wealth, power, and Instagram.
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Every few months someone on Twitter will dig up a famously ironic quote from scientist Clifford Stoll in a 1995 MPR interview discussing the future of the Internet: “I think it’s grossly oversold and within two or three years people will shrug and say, ‘Uh yep, it was a fad of the early 90’s and now, oh yeah, it still exists but hey, I’ve got a life to lead and work to do. I don’t have time to waste online.'” Thinking about how wrong he was is either funny or chilling, depending on your own predictions for the future.
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American policy analyst Michele Wucker in her 2016 book the Gray Rhino referred to dangers people choose to ignore as “A highly probable, high-impact threat: something we ought to see coming, like a two-tonne rhinoceros aiming its horn in our direction and preparing to charge.” Inspired by this quote Grey Rhino explores the way people deny, ignore, and procrastinate on impending problems to their own detriment.
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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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When the future or even the present feel so pressing it can be difficult to see the relevance of old stories and traditions. But in this collaborative performance between Bangarra Dance Theatre and Sydney Theatre Company, the past is shown to be ongoing with powerful lessons that ancestors can teach about resilience and care.
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Friendships are delicate things and they can grow brittle with age as people set into their ways and rhythms. So when a new voice gets injected into an old script, it can make or break the very foundations of the friendship. In this case, it even ends in death.
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Edward Albee’s searing critique of 1960s American polite society is a classic but that doesn’t exclude it from examination as time, opinion, and attitudes change. In this production the text gets held up to the light, prodded a bit; does this thing still hold up? Does it still ring true?
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Night Writes 