Month: March 2011

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Review: Dead Cargo – !Metro Arts Independents 2011

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Another week, another show – this time from the !Metro Arts Independents 2011 series. It’s always fun to be at the first performance of a premiere play; there are no preconceptions, nothing to prepare you for what is to come. Well, I lie (a little) about this, having chatted last week with Nigel Poulton the director and also co-writer (along with long-time collaborator Tim Dashwood).

Nigel warned me that some audiences may be confused by the play. He went on that it was, among other things, ‘about’ hanging on to things long past their use-by date – whether those things are psychological or material – obsessions, preconceptions, needs, words, things, and even people.  So, as I sat pre-show looking at the dozens and dozens of suitcases on the set of Dead Cargo, I began to start threading together the clues Nigel had given me with what I could see in front of me. I had the suitcases sorted; they were the material expressions – symbols – of the ‘invisible baggage’ we carry about with us. Right.  I was starting to feel a bit more confident – getting my head ready for the kind of play that I’d be seeing. I fancied it would be a bit of psycho-realism with expressive movement.

I knew about the movement – see the aforesaid interview re Meyerhold’s Theatrical Bio-Mechanics in Related Articles (below). I knew the script had been written by Messrs Poulton and Dashwood – what to expect in that regard? No idea – this would be a first exposure to their work, at least for me. The set – great by the way – looked messy, deliberately so. Was it meant to stand for the detritus of our lives, maybe? At this point I ran out of clues and started chatting with a friend. What I didn’t do was to read the program. As it turned out, I’m glad I didn’t because there was a clue in the Director’s note which would have sent me on quite another track to the one I pursued during the show and on the drive home. So I’m going to riff a little in this review on how a play – or this particular play – worked on me, about how it sent me down particular tracks in my head. Continue reading “Review: Dead Cargo – !Metro Arts Independents 2011”

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Brisbane’s Matildas: the winners and a few thoughts for next time

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By now the results of the 2010 Matilda Awards for excellence are know pretty much throughout Brisbane’s theatre community. Here they are if you missed them.

Matilda Commendations:

Best Mainstage Production:
Hamlet (La Boite)

Best Independent Production:
boy girl wall (The Escapists at Metro)

Best Direction:
Michael Futcher for Grimm Tales

Best Female Actor in a Lead Role:
Leah Purcell in The Story of The Miracles at Cookie’s Table

Best Male Actor in a Lead Role:
Leon Cain in I Love You, Bro

Best Female Actor in a Supporting Role:
Melanie Zanetti in The Little Dog Laughed

Best Male Actor in a Supporting Role:
Dan Crestani in Grimm Tales

Best New Australian Work:
The Bitterling by Sven Swenson

Best Emerging Artist:
Amy Ingram for acting in Fat Pig and Single Admissions

Best Design (set, lighting, sound or costume):
Greg Clarke for design on Grimm Tales

Matilda Awards

  • Leon Cain for I Love You Bro’
  • The Escapists
  • Eugene Gilfedder for his body of work in 2010
  • Leah Purcell for her direction of ACPA and for The Story of the Miracles at Cookie’s Table
  • David Berthold for his repositioning of La Boite Theatre Company and direction of Hamlet and I Love You Bro

Many of us couldn’t be at the Judith Wright Centre for the awards ceremony. However, some sense of how it felt was relayed through live-tweeting from those at the venue.

Were there any surprises? Not really. All the winners were deserving of their Matilda accolades and of our congratulations; it was a good year for theatre by the independents and the two subsidised companies.

The big five Matildas for special achievement were, according to some, duplications of winners in the big list and the difference between the ‘Commendations’ and the ‘real’ Matildas (as one commenter noted) is confusing. Maybe this needs clarifying.

What remains to be done for next year? A few thoughts:

  • Consider refreshing the voting committee – not because they did anything other than a great job for no reward – but because it’s a good thing to give others the opportunity to become involved.
  • Consider spreading the event beyond the small room at the JWCoCA. Live tweeting with images brought a sense of the occasion to those who couldn’t be there – but live streaming would really extend the Matildas beyond Brisbane – and it’s not hard to do. And finally
  • Consider adding an audience choice category, or come up with some other way of getting the wider theatre-going public involved in the Matildas. They are ready and eager to do so judging by the response to this site’s Groundling Awards this year.

Congratulations to all nominees, the winners and to the Matilda committee.

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QR Codes: bus-shelters, drink cans, awards ceremonies – fancy a bit of fun?

This post is something different – a little bit of social networking experimentation. Just say you were at an awards ceremony equipped with your smart phone but you don’t, for whatever reason, have a list of the nominees, and you wanted to be able to share the results as they were announced to those who are not there. Would you like something on your phone to do this? Do you dare have your phone on during the ceremony? Of course you do. Just put it on silent and turn down the screen brightness.

A quik segue about QR codes first; they’re those square barcode-like images that you’ve seen perhaps without knowing what they are. They’re on websites, of course, but also on bus-stop billboards, the sides of drink cans, in programmes – to name a few. The potential for arts organisations’ marketing – special deals for your followers, up to date and additional useful information – is huge. You could put an entire program and extra notes, for example, in a QR image or put one on your show’s posters and flyers. Just imagine! The paper saving is enough reason to give it a try. The implications for design layout are intriguing as well.

What you need to translate the black and white squiggles into meaningful matter is an app called a QR (Quick Response) Reader installed on your phone – there are lots free for downloading. Now you can scan QR Codes wherever you find them: using our example from a website which would lead you to where there was a list of the nominees for the awards ceremony. In a few seconds you will have the page or post containing the information right there on your phone.

Like this one …

qrcode

 

So, if you want to play, the first thing to do is to get the QR reader installed on your phone. Go to the iTunes store where you will find a slew of them – free and paid. Download the one you want and install it on your smart phone. I’m using QR Reader for the iPhone. As with lots of free apps you have to put up with a reasonably non-intrusive ad at the top of the screen. Paid QR readers are ad-free.

Open the QR Reader app on your phone, scan the QR code in this post, and admire the result.

PS This QR image (above) leads to all the nominees for tonight’s Matilda Awards.  Now you can follow along if you miss out on a programme – or just show how truly geeky – aka ahead of the pack – you really are.

If you want to know how to embed and use QR codes for your own use, check out the 2amt blog post from August last year: What’s a Theatre To Do? and get some ideas. I believe there’s a follow-up post to this coming soon.

If you’re ready to have a go at embedding QR codes on your own materials, then you can’t do any simpler than Kaywa, which generates the code you need to embed in your blog or site. I did this to generate the code above. I  typed in the URL of the nominees’ page on the Matilda’s site, hit the ‘generate QR code’ button, and pasted it in this post.

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It’s Matildas Night in Brisbane

Tonight is the night the Brisbane theatre community has been waiting for – the announcement of the Matilda Awards for achievement in theatre during the past 12 months or, rather, during Season 2010. The Judith Wright Centre of Contemporary Art is hosting the event, and it bids fair to be a great night for all. We tip that controversies will flow after the event, as they always do but, hey, what’s an award ceremony without a bit of bite. The main thing is to celebrate the achievements of the nominees and the winners and, by extension, the work of the local theatre industry which grows year by year. Good luck to everyone and to the committee of the Matildas who keep them going year after year.

… and we hope someone will be live-tweeting the event for those who can’t be there.

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