Here’s an interesting one… Today, 8 December, marks the 354th anniversary of women first appearing professionally on the English stage as actresses. Funny, isn’t it, that the theatre should ever have been so exclusory of women when I’ve always viewed it as a place of refuge, welcoming of practically anyone provided you could remember your lines and hit your mark. The suspended reality, the camaraderie when you and the rest of the cast are nervous and about to appear before an audience, the hiding behind another persona, the acclaim when it all goes well. I haven’t acted for what feels like a … Continue reading Quiet Please, There’s a Lady on the Stage

Once upon a time there was a play at Queensland Theatre Company called The Magic Hour about the darker side of fairy tales. I know that what comes next should be a story with good and bad, and a heroine smart enough to know the difference. And of course a happy ending. Always a happy ending. Except there’s nothing happy about the endings of any of the fairy tales retold in The Magic Hour. In fact, the only happy ending was the one when the performance finished and the lights came up. The Magic Hour is two and a half hours … Continue reading Happily Never After with QTC’s The Magic Hour

So, I have this friend called Oscar. Or Panda. Or Pandasaurus Rex. Really it depends on who you’re talking to. Whatever you call him, he’s a total firecracker – a tightly wound ball of electricity, hyperactivity and sensitivity packed into a 5ft human body. I first met him through friends here in Brisbane, dressed in black leather hot pants, some sort of harness/waistcoat thing, and a face covered in silver paint. I think there may have been nipple clamps and a gimp mask involved, it’s a hazy, tequila-fueled memory now. I wasn’t sure whether to embrace him or freak out … Continue reading SHIFT by WRUFFnTUMBLE

“Damn everything but the circus!” said E.E. Cummings one day, clearly fed up with his literary life. “The average ‘painter’ ‘sculptor’ ‘poet’ ‘composer’ ‘playwright’ is a person who cannot leap through a hoop from the back of a galloping horse, make people laugh with a clown’s mouth, orchestrate twenty lions.” Ol’ Edward Estlin was obviously having a bad day when he said that, but I do understand his jealousy of circus performers a little. Not because I particularly want to tame lions or leap through a hoop from the back of a galloping horse (trust me, I REALLY don’t want to do … Continue reading Toying Around With the Gandini Jugglers