Jill Jones wrote:
> Hmm, interesting article. If you think it's odd that Sellars is burbling on
> at length about Australia's wine industry (significant in some respects but
> hardly huge) he is currently the artistic director of next year's biennial
> Adelaide Arts Festival - Adelaide is the centre of some of Australia's major
> wine producing areas. Methinks he's sampled quite a bit of it.
>
> His summary of 'Australia for Americans' obviously misses a lot. I think you
> have to do a bit more than "imagine if the United States had been founded as
> a penal colony and had no Abraham Lincoln, no Henry David Thoreau, no Martin
> Luther King Jr."
>
> And calling Robyn Archer, that singer, writer, cabaret performer, ace
> yodeller, festival director of I don't know how many events and out-there
> leftie lesbian, "something of a beloved figure second only to the Queen Mum"
> is totally hilarious but just a touch wide of the mark.
>
> But for the benefit of any New Yorkers who can get to the festival, the
> shows, films etc should be good. I haven't seem all of them but Cloudstreet
> is terrific if just for the fact that people who normally would never go to
> the theatre will happily watch a production that goes for over five hours.
> Lantana is a good film and anything by William Yang is always worth seeing.
>
> The boss of my organisation (the Australia Council) has gone over there and
> there's been much toing and froing and on again-off again stuff about the
> festival ever since Sept 11. The official word here was that the BAM people
> wanted it to happen as they felt a need for the show to go on as a lot of
> other performances and tours were being cancelled (including Nick Cave's).
> Don't know if that was just hype or not, but the show did go on with some
> small adjustments, including increased security.
Thanks so much for this take on the story, Jill, including all the
background info. I debated over posting the link because of such offensive
parts like the bit you quote re penal colonies vs. Abe Lincoln et al. (yuck,
talk about cultural cringe!), but it seemed like the news about the show
itself was so exciting as to make it worth getting out even in this
unfortunate text-frame. And I told myself it wasn't as bad as those really
obnoxious Foster's ads in the mid-90s. (It wasn't, was it?)
Cheers,
Candice
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