Rick Everett (horizontal) and Dean Cross (vertical) in Snow on Mars. Photo Branco Gaica
I was delighted to see that Snow on Mars, our production in last year’s Sydney Festival, won the Sydney Theatre Award as Best Production for Children. Continue reading
Filed under Art
The Festival of Sydney is on again.
I took the grandson to Hyde Park for the opening free events for families.
We loved the Tangle Garden, devised by Polyglot Theatre from Melbourne.
It’s a fabulously simple concept – invite kids and parents to build their own communal artwork, a jungle of tangled coloured elastic, then play in it.
The stage is a forest of golden poles, topped with interesting shapes. As the music starts, pleasant, environmental and a bit New Agey, we are issued with balls of elastic and given some simple instructions. Continue reading
Filed under Art
Mirazozo, Sydney Opera House forecourt.
Waiting in the entrance queue for an hour (our own silly fault for not buying advance tickets online) gave us plenty of time to admire that other great sculpture that dominates the harbour.
It also gave me time to think up all sorts of headlines about ‘overblown art’, ‘so much hot air’…etc…
…and to read the program notes several times. This work from Nottingham has all been made by hand, it’s travelled to 38 countries and been seen by more than two million visitors. It’s a ‘luminarium’, a sculpture people enter to be bathed in radiant light and colour.
At last we were at the front of the queue, where we parked the strollers, took off our shoes, reminded the grandchildren that there are no toilets inside a luminarium and stepped in through the plastic flap. We were warned we should only stay twenty minutes, because others were waiting. It’s great that it’s so popular.
The ceiling is impressive...
...and we're encouraged to relax and listen to the new age music.
I like it, but 20 minutes of this will be sufficient.
It does make for interesting photography, even if you don't know what you're doing.
So, our verdict? It was impressive on the outside, though dwarfed by the Opera House itself, and a bit predictable on the inside. I would have liked to have seen more variety in the various internal spaces. The one area with a pillar inside it (pictured) was a welcome break, but when the vents pumping in cool air are highlights, as they were for many children, it suggests that more thought could go into constructing different events, textures and sounds inside the inflatable sculpture. But these are quibbles. I’m glad we waited so patiently.
NOTES: Entry to Mirazozo costs $10, or $8.50 per person for a group of four or more.
Filed under Art, Travel-Australia
My play Snow on Mars opened last night. I’ll leave the serious reviewing to others, but thanks to the audience who came, laughed, gasped and applauded, and to Gale Edwards (director) Kim Carpenter (producer/designer) and the fabulous hard-working cast and crew from Theatre of Image. No-one can say it’s not a wonderful production to look at.
Rick Everett and Deborah Kennedy
Waylon (Rick Everett) runs rings around the planet.
Filed under Art
What’s the good of having a website if you can’t use it to plug your own work?
The program for next January’s Festival of Sydney 2011 has just been announced. John Malkovich and Emmylou Harris will be in it. So will Phillip Glass, Paul Kelly and Archie Roach. And so will I, with my latest theatre piece Snow on Mars, written for Kim Carpenter’s Theatre of Image. It will be in the York Theatre at the Seymour Centre from January 7-16.
Putting this play together has been a long process over several years, since Kim set up an initial conversation with Australia’s only astronaut, Andy Thomas. We had a lot of probing questions for him of course… Continue reading
Filed under Art, Travel-Australia
