I often feel that theatre has a lot to do with mortality. Unlike other art forms, theatre depends on us giving over units of our own lives in order to participate. When it works, theatre transforms those pieces, amplifying our experience of being alive and heightening our awareness beyond that of the everyday. But of course, anyone who has seen enough theatre will agree that the opposite can be true – bad theatre can suck away at your life force, intensifying the feeling that by the act of living you are also slowly dying…
Photo by Stephen Henry: Spectate (2017)
Read MoreIt's hard to explain what I do. At parties, when someone asks. On forms, with a field for occupation. Or at census time, when the government demands that everything fit into categories.
It's easy to feel like the government doesn't really understand me. Because I don't have a sole occupation, or an employer. I have a portfolio career - a full time workload broken down into various modes of employment. Sometimes contract, sometimes part time, sometimes tiny scraps of work that fit together to make a living.
After a stupendously busy year, I wanted to sit down and map out my modes of employment. To somehow illustrate what my portfolio career looked like...
Read MoreBad art preaches a simple understanding of life, where there are good people and bad people and some people win and other people lose. It leads us to believe that the answers should be easy. That we should be strong, and that being strong will make us better than other people. Strong people aren’t conflicted, they don’t experience dilemmas. Strong people are winners. Simple.
Read MoreIn the house I grew up in, there were always a few prints hanging on the wall. The sort of typical domestic paintings you'd find in a family home. Ornate flowers and gentle landscapes, the beach, a meadow, a street scene.
I hated them. Watercolour monstrosities each one. Calm and passive, empty decor posing as art.
Jump forward nearly a decade. I'm working on AV Design for HE DREAMED A TRAIN - a show set in someone's lounge room. For an integral part of the design, I have to find a print to hang on the wall...
Read MoreIt's September, which means Brisbane Festival, which means my bank account is feeling the strain of too many ticket purchases.
Earlier this year my partner and I spent some time adventuring through Europe, where we kept up a rapid-fire pace of theatre attendance. By the time we got to London we were hitting up to 3 shows a day. And I was astonished at how affordable we could make it.
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