Author: Kate Foy

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‘This Is the Stuff’ – a Memorial for Bille Brown AM

Bille_Brown-3In case you haven’t already heard via news and the social media, QPAC is hosting a memorial service for Bille tomorrow afternoon (Monday 4th February) from 4pm. Tickets were available for the event but had gone within 12 hours or so.

This caused some distress for the many who admired and loved one of Queensland’s finest theatre artists. QPAC responded to some gentle suggestions from various quarters that a live-streamed event would do the trick, sharing what will be an hour-long tribute from family, friends, and colleagues around Australia and to the rest of the world.

If you would like to get more information, go to QPAC’s page and read how to link in.

I am honoured to have been invited by Queensland Theatre Company, the place Bille and I met all those years ago, to speak and to perform some of Bille’s writing during the event.

Hope you can join us.

Kate

 

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Review: Out Damn Snot – Shake and Stir at La Boite Theatre Roundhouse

Images: Dylan Evans

Let me get one thing out of the way up front. I’m not at all keen on shows where adults play kids. The sight of 20-somethings leaping around pretending to be children can be embarrassingly awful, twee, and an insult to kids who just don’t behave the way they are often portrayed on stage. I wondered how kids felt about this and thought about sending along another reviewer to get a different perspective. However, Miss 8 was not available for the opening night of Shake and Stir’s Out Damn Snot directed by Ross Balbuziente. That left me to face my misgivings. Whilst I still think there’s a missed opportunity here to use children to play children in plays for children (some company care to have a go?) there is no doubt that this hilarious, very physical, beautiful-looking show written and created by Shake and Stir’s artistic directors Ross Balbuziente, Nelle Lee and Nick Skubij is great fun for kids and their adults.

I wasn’t sure what the kids in the audience would make of the two sisters Mackenzie (Amy Ingram), Kimmy (Nelle Lee) and little brother Heath (Nick Skubij). Given that they knew the actors were grown-ups, would they buy into the game that these were kids like them? Given their own capacity to role play on the fly, I’d say the young audience were perfectly accepting of these mad adults releasing their own inner kids and mucking about cartoon-style in a magic world. Buy this and it becomes a different experience. I really did enjoy the simplicity of the actors’ child-like (not childish) observations of game-playing and one-upmanship. My favourite is the one where we both try to tell a story simultaneously; you start and I have to join in and do it with you. Know the one? Magic! Ms Lee and Ingram release their inner-child with this lovely little slick schtick. Continue reading “Review: Out Damn Snot – Shake and Stir at La Boite Theatre Roundhouse”

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Claire Christian (Interview 33)

I had the pleasure yesterday of speaking with Claire, the current Director of Empire Youth Arts. We chatted about the work being done by EYA in Toowoomba and the surrounding regions in southern Queensland.

Over the past couple of years I’ve seen a lot of the work being done in the various after school and performance projects which EYA has produced. The scope and outcomes are impressive, to say the least.

Claire expanded. “Some … that I’m really proud of include a partnership with Toowoomba Flexi School for National Youth Week. We also worked with the boys from Optikal bloc to create a documentary. We facilitated a Child Protection Week project with some young children at Rockville Primary school, and provided them access to a couple of visual artists.”

In addition, during 2012 there were two IMPACT Ensembles: the first was a production of Blackrock which Claire speaks about in the interview. She notes that it was particularly exciting for the group who had partnered with the Toowoomba Says no to Violence movement, and held a Young Men’s Forum day as part of the overall project.  The second IMPACT Ensemble a production written, performed and designed by the ensemble members has just closed. Claire and I chat about the value of this particular project in the interview. Continue reading “Claire Christian (Interview 33)”

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Review: Managing Carmen – Queensland Theatre Company at QPAC Playhouse

Opening nights can be times of high anticipation or high anxiety depending on which side of the stage you happen to be. They are never dull and are usually also suffused with excitement especially if it’s a world-premiere and, in Australia, if it’s a new David Williamson play.

So it was on Thursday at the Playhouse in Brisbane for Managing Carmen which we all knew well in advance from the marketing is a play about a champion AFL football player who likes dressing up in frocks. Cue dozens of blokey jokes …

The fact that Williamson has written a sweet and clever morality tale with tolerance at its heart is a measure  of how the big man of Australian drama can catch a moment in that fabled zeitgeist out there and spin it into a yarn that’s funny and true. He’s done that throughout his career, been labelled at one time as ‘the Chekhov of Australian drama’ for the way he lines up aspects of Australian culture and its middle-class foibles and then pokes mullock. The comparison, like all such, are odious. He’s Williamson and critics have had their way with him over the years. Like his work or not, consider it trite or profound, berate him for the lack of epics or large-scale social criticism in his astonishing output, Williamson’s work is something to celebrate. His latest is a gem to treasure. Continue reading “Review: Managing Carmen – Queensland Theatre Company at QPAC Playhouse”

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Review: Landscapes – Velocity Dance at Empire Theatre Studio

Images: Empire Theatre

It’s been a week of theatre as dance and dance as theatre for me – Tender Napalm at La Boite in Brisbane and, in its first public showing by the group, Landscapes, which is billed as a program of developmental dance in Toowoomba.

Under the direction of Alison Vallette (Velocity Studio’s Director and Creative Producer) Landscapes is a delightful confection of individually choreographed pieces: Vacancies of the Heart (Jen Murray), Common Ground (Gabriel Comerford in collaboration with Caitlin MacKenzie) and Unity (Frank Monsembula) all of which are performed by Toowoomba dancers.  This is part of the ongoing, year-long Homegrown season from the Empire Theatre, and one of the more exciting innovations to have emerged from Australia’s largest and arguably best regional theatre. This season has attracted new audiences to small-scale theatre, music and now dance productions at the Empire’s great studio/rehearsal space located backstage of the auditorium.

Landscapes may be developmental in its newness or in that it has provided the opportunity for young dancers to work with more experienced colleagues, but its innovative blending of various dance genres to explore local issues – being an outsider, or fitting in, or the floods that unsettled and continue to affect those who live here – is a real step up for dance in the city. Continue reading “Review: Landscapes – Velocity Dance at Empire Theatre Studio”