Off again
Yes, your indefatigable blogger is off to the States for the next month, to
do some poetry readings and a couple of appearances as a Fantasy Author in
Los Angeles - those interested can find the details on my diary at
http://www.alisoncroggon.com/poetry/diary.html. I will be, believe it or
not, a Visiting Scholar at the University of Southern California (yes,
that's Doctor Croggon to you...) Wish me luck in the halls of academe - I
promise not to turn into a flower child or a starlet harlot, and I'll be
back in early December.
Before my departure, I am obliged to award the coveted Golden Knob Award for
Services to Performing Arts Criticism during the Melbourne Festival. You can
check into the Knob-Jockey Awards ceremony and presentation by clicking
through to Critic Watch at http://criticwatch.blogspot.com/.
In the meantime, you can meditate on the trenchant criticism of critics in a
recent Guardian article , in which Michael Coveney discusses the death of
British theatre criticism: "Great critics are rare birds; rare birds need a
welcoming aviary and the zookeepers are not on the lookout for such special
and specialist breeds of plumage any more...The long, slow haul of a career
as a critic, with its period of apprenticeship, dedication and accumulation
of wisdom and experience ... is suddenly becoming a thing of the past."
The sad thing is, I'm not sure that it was ever a thing of the present in
this culture.
Read more at http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
Test Pattern by Angus Cerini, directed by Nadja Kostich. Platform Youth
Theatre, Northcote Uniting Church Hall, 251 High St, Northcote.
Theatre for Young People conjures visions of da-glo sets, dire scripts,
performances from the Wiggles School of Acting and simple-minded sermonising
on the Issues Facing Young Persons. (I still remember, with a shudder, a
play about the internet I witnessed years ago in Adelaide, in which bright
young things travelled through a cardboard version of cyberspace, meeting
celebrities like Joan of Arc).
If I were a Young Person - and even I was young once - this kind of stuff
would put me off theatre permanently. To its credit, Platform Youth Theatre
- a northern suburbs theatre for people aged between 16 and 25 - refuses to
patronise the young, and in Test Pattern the company applies the techniques
of innovative theatre to the real-life experiences of "Generation Y".
Platform has gathered a distinguished design team for this production, so
it's not surprising that Test Pattern looks and sounds completely gorgeous.
Marg Horwell's set is stylishly simple: it consists of around half a dozen
curtains, hung one behind the other the length of the hallway, made of
lengths of white string suspended from the ceiling. With Richard Vabre's
inventive lighting, these curtains create a flexible imaginative space: they
can become opaque walls, permeable visual barriers, screens for projection,
or delicate veils of shadow giving texture to the action.
Read more at http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
All the best, and au revoir
Alison
Alison Croggon
Blog: http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
Editor, Masthead: http://masthead.net.au
Home page: http://alisoncroggon.com
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