During the recent 2016 Melbourne International Comedy festival, I picked a few acts I’d like to see and sent the list to my mates, in case they wanted to catch the same shows with me. Their reactions towards my choices ranged from dubious to dismissive: ‘So…your list has mostly female acts. Is that intentional?’ ‘Count…
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Sydney’s Kings Cross was once a happening party district, but with the lock-out laws still in place, late-night boozing just isn’t a thriving business any longer. Kings Cross is now almost a ghost town, and the city itself is in need of new and exciting ways to keep the party going. This is why, I…
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Australian writer Josephine Rowe’s debut novel, A Loving, Faithful Animal paints the portrait of the Burroughs family living in Melbourne during the 1990s. Written from multiple perspectives and presented in fragmented, often brutally descriptive prose, this book was applauded by writers Chris Womersley and Wayne Macauley respectively as ‘a novel of startling imagery and power’, and…
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Lady Sings It Better is a four women cabaret group performing at this year’s Melbourne International Comedy Festival with their show Here to Save the World. Maeve Marsden, Libby Wood, Annaliese Szota and Fiona Pearson bring with it a fresh and raucously hilarious perspective on the way the current discussion of feminism is framed in…
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If you’re looking for an exciting new theatre space to check out and the chance to see an internationally acclaimed play, look no further than A Man Walks Into a Bar, premiering on April 21st and running until May 7th at the Blood Moon Theatre in Sydney. Written by New Zealand born playwright, David Geary, the production features an…
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In the front window of Smith’s Alternative, a person is being eaten – or coughed out – by typewriters of varied vintage. I recognise the face of artist Nicci Haynes, eyes closed, contorted into expressions of fear or outrage. She spits binary code as she is rolled into existence by these machines. Uneasy indeed, these…
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The irony of the West’s close relationship with Saudi Arabia would be laughable, if it weren’t so troubling. When King Abdullah, of the ruling al-Saud family, died in January 2015, tributes gushed forth from world leaders. Prince Charles, David Cameron and Barack Obama, among others, flew to Riyadh to pay their respects to a man…
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It’s almost every little girl’s dream to dance the lead in Swan Lake. The chance to be the centre of attention amidst the grace and beauty of ballet at its most finest is just too enticing to resist. Admit it: even if you now couldn’t care less for ballet, there must have been some point in…
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The Wait (originally L’Attesa) is a French/Italian two-hander featuring Juliette Binoche and Lou de Laâge, two generations of talented French actresses, who unfortunately suffer under the weight of simple material that is—seemingly out of necessity—over-directed. Debut director Piero Messina is young as directors go (he’s in his thirties), and has an eye for intriguing and abstract visuals…
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In a recent article for Eureka Street, Ellena Savage wrote that perhaps one of the purposes of reading is to help ‘connect with feelings that don’t have words, that only have images like swirling sandstone’. Jennifer Down’s debut novel, Our Magic Hour, is concerned with these feelings that don’t have words—the inexpressible emotions and sensations…
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As a lifelong book nerd, I like to think I consume a balanced diet of fiction novels. I grew up reading books by Enid Blyton and Roald Dahl. I went through periods of reading books set in India (Vikram Seth, Arundhati Roy), America as seen by immigrants (Amy Lee) and the American south (Harper Lee,…
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Debuting to critical acclaim at the end of last year, Netflix has recently announced that Master of None – the comedy with a delightful penchant for bluntly calling out inequality – will be returning for a second season. Created by Aziz Ansari (Parks and Recreation) and Alan Yang (a producer on Parks), Master of None…
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Hail, Caesar! is about a day in the life of Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin), a devout Catholic who works as a “fixer” for the fictional Capitol Studios in early 1950s Hollywood. Essentially, his role is to keep the image of the studio from deviating from the norms of the time, that of white Christian wholesomeness….
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#OscarsSoWhite #OscarsSoStraight #OscarsSoMale. Yep, this year’s Academy Awards sure had a lot of criticisms and controversies heading into the ceremony. The Academy has since attempted to rectify the diversity problem within their membership, but this will happen over many years. This year’s Oscars were set to look almost like an exact replica of last…
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