Tag Archives: PIAF

Etiquette, PIAF

Nostalgic for manners

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nostalgiaI went to see Nostalgia. A Japanese production which opened last night along with the Perth International Arts Festival.

It was in a space created within the Perth Convention Centre and it is an excellent production.

It is not the easiest of theatre experiences.  It is all in Japanese – apart from the titles to the various sections which are in English.

And it is quite long.

Nostalgia tells the little-known story of the migration of thousands of Japanese workers to Brazil in the early 20th century. Follow the 40-year wanderings of a Japanese family as they search for a better future through the turmoil of revolution in South America.

The company, Inshinha, rarely performs outside of Japan.  More…

There’s a large cast of singers/dancers/actors and the music is beautiful especially supplemented as it is with the rythmic chanting of the cast and their sharp movements.

The sets are extraordinary, and the visual feast is enhanced with a large screen which adds yet another dimension.

Even though I knew only the bare bones of the storyline (tip:  read the program notes), I was drawn along with the story and intrigued to find out more.

Some of the sections could have been a shorter and still made sense – it was a lot of theatre without a break – nearly two and a half hours – but Feline and I loved it.

There was even a giant puppet, which we argued over as to it’s symbolism, so I’d be interested in what you think.

So why am I “nostalgic for manners”?

Well here’s the thing.  About an hour into the production the ushers were still letting people into their seats.

An hour!
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I can understand being 5 minutes late, reprehensible though it is, I live in a glass house on this one, but an hour?!

And it wasn’t as if you could sneak in the back.  You had to clamber up a pitch black metal staircase from the front.

Stomp stomp stomp.

Perth Festival – you need to get tough.

And then there were the early leavers.

It was a long time to go without a pee and maybe they found it too hard, but I was disappointed to see people leaving part way through.

It was really distracting for the rest of us.

I think if you’re going to make a commitment to see a festival production you need to stick with it.  Reading the notes in the guide you would be able to tell it wasn’t going to be a Broadway musical.

So there’s my rant.

After the show we went to the Festival club at Becks Music Box which was lovely – such a great venue.

So far we’ve had three city Festival clubs after the Undercroft at UWA… there was the set up outside the Art Gallery, the Verandah at the Perth Concert Hall and now the Music Box in the front of the city.

Which do you prefer?  And where could it go next??

Books, PIAF

Writers and Illustrators – a discussion

Photo by John AndersonAt this year’s writers’ festival I was privileged to witness a discussion between childrens’ book authors and illustrators. Two had worked together on a number of books – pictured in John Anderson’s photo to the right – Anna Fienberg and Kim Gamble. You might have heard or read to your children their popular Tashi series, and just recently I reviewed Horrendo’s Curse (charming).

As well, Bruce Atherton author of The Billycart Ride and Sally Heinrich author and illustrator of The Most Beautiful Lantern were part of the discussion. (I couldn’t find a link to Bruce but I did find that of one of the illustrators of his latest book “Tough Old Teddy”.)

So many interesting stories were told…

Bruce told of how precious his first book was – The Billycart Ride – it had been 12 years in the writing and he found it hard to let it go. He spent two years choosing the illustrator (unheard of – thought Kim – for a first time author but it turns out that Bruce knew Bryce Courtney – and he holds some sway!) and eventually set his sights on Keith McEwen who had illustrated Paul Jennings books – yes I think it was a singenpoo illustration he saw.

Anyway, Keith was going through some stuff and it took him four years to do the illustrations and the first ones to come back he’d made the billy cart as big as Chitty Chitty Bang Bang! Well that wasn’t what Bruce had in mind… He thinks Keith tried to show him what that felt like by suggesting some words to him! In hindsight, Bruce reckons he would have trusted Keith more and he’s definitely held back with his later books. And if you look on one of the illustrations – Keith has written Atherton on one of the bottles of wine!

Interestingly Anna had the opposite experience with one of her books. It was a story about a little boy, Harold, whose mum was a scientist and he’d been taught to test everything. So one day he heard the phrase a cat has nine lives… he found a rough old cat called Balthazar, and proceeded to test his theory… in the end he comes to his senses having grown fond of the old cat and saves him from certain death.

The last page, the text says that now he’s called Balthazar and he’s Harold’s cat and he sleeps on the bed and he has anchovies and milk for dinner. Harold says that he obviously loves the cat and how could he have done that? Obviously it’s more important to love the cat than to experiment on it.

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They were lovely drawings, but the cat was the most vulnerable, winsome little thing and of course he looked like he wouldn’t survive someone breathing on him let alone throwing him out of a plane. So it was reviewed, “What does Anna Fienberg think she’s doing,” and “Don’t stock this in your library or you’ll have everybody catching cats and tying them up.”

Sally Heinrich was really interesting too. She writes and illustrates her own work and being an artist first the story ideas come to her as an image in her mind first. For The Most Beautiful Lantern she painted all the pages first and then looked about for a writer. She was living with a copywriter at the time and thought he’d be the obvious choice but it turns out he wasn’t so engaged in the project and so after realising that she was spending a lot of energy on nagging him, she decided to write it herself.

Now it seems she can’t stop. I’ve just read Hungry Ghosts which is a novel for early teens I guess on making friends and cross-cultural assimilation. Not bad for a painter huh? (my review? – an interesting story – a little bit preachy toward the end but overall entertaining)

Kim Gamble who illustrates it seems all of Anna’s work now plus quite a few others told of one brief he really struggled with. He’d just split up with his wife and he was asked to illustrate a story called Dear Fred about a family split apart between the USA and Australia. He just couldn’t do it, it was too close to what he was going through, until his publisher suggested he change the family into mice.

It was fascinating to hear these behind-the-scenes stories and inspiring too. (you never know… maybe one day…)

And it leads me on to a special plug for Miscellaneous Mum who is in the midst of having her first book published. W00t!

PIAF, Theatre

The Turning

The TurningI’m always keen to see at least one original commission for the Perth International Arts Festival, and this year’s re-imagining of Tim Winton’s collection of short stories – The Turning – did not disappoint.

I’m not a huge Tim Winton fan it must be said. Cloudstreet was okay, The Riders woeful IMHO – I just hated the ending, and you might have read what I thought of Dirt Music – the one I’ve liked most so far. Short stories don’t generally hold my attention so I haven’t read The Turning and can’t comment how faithful Bill McCluskey’s rendition of it is but I think it must be pretty close because all the way through I’m thinking “oooh this is very Tim Winton.”

Last year I went to see The Drovers’ Wives and I don’t know whether you caught this production – it was a dance piece reflecting Henry Lawson’s work and it used film to project the setting of the outback.

Likewise The Turning uses video and film to carry some of the story and set the scenes – very effectively. In a few of the scenes a woman films herself as she’s talking and that image is flashed up on one of the screens. Cleverly done. In fact the use of the film really does take the production to another level and I was intrigued by how well it captured the mood of the scene – important I suppose when you have a short scene and need to tell so much.

All they need to add is some of the smells – the bushland, the forest, the sea – to really take us there. That will be next I suppose.

The scenes though mostly dark and menacing are leavened by some almost Kath&Kim portrayals of West Australian characters. Ern, Cleo and Nan provided some much needed levity – with some classic lines:

It’s not a fucking truck, it’s a Landrover.

It is a truck and all we do is fuck in it!

Note:  If you are offended by “strong language” – don’t go.

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Cut me off at the knees and call me tripod.

Some parts were so Western Australian, I cringed, and wondered how the production might travel – even to other parts of the country.

The music – like The Drovers Wives was by Iain Grandage – and it was lovely. Setting the scene without intruding. And the acting was fantastic. Especially Nick Simpson-Deeks who plays Vic and Alison Van Reeken who plays Gail/Jackie. Jai Courtney was also impressive as Boner. In fact the whole cast was good.

A couple of things annoyed me though. I don’t know why he bothered to rename Albany, Angeles. I really don’t. Every other town is named and really – how many other towns have had a whaling station on the South Coast? Irritating.

Also (and this was just me – Groover worked it out) I got confused because one actress played two of the main parts and I thought she was playing the younger her grown up. For those who have seen it – the Gail/Jackie actress is the one I’m talking about.

And finally it’s just too long. 3 hours and 10 mins plus a 20 minute interval. Way too long. Was it Rogers and Hammerstein who insisted on cutting their shows to end no later than 11.00 so that people could catch the train home. Well we drove but the sentiment is a fine one. Cut it back by at least half an hour (though not sure what you would cut) and it would be perfect.
In summary, it’s ambitious, completely Australian and entertaining. And if you get a chance to see it I’d be interested in your thoughts.

Will I read the book? Maybe.

Other reviews: Australian Stage Online, Guera

PIAF, Theatre

The Tiger Lillies

We went to see the Tiger Lillies on Monday night at The Verandah.

It was truly “out there”.

Groover was expecting three scantily clad women (I had wondered why he was so keen to go…) I didn’t really know what to expect.

We met up with Mr Smartrider and his lovely wife Miss Lithuania and sat down in the somewhat chilly conditions of this outdoor venue.
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It was dark, it was ribald, it was offensive, it was funny, it was tragic, it was bizarre. Did I love it? I’m not sure. I didn’t hate it.

I was waiting for people to leave – especially when they did a song about banging the nails into Jesus – I thought that might have crossed the line for some but I guess if you can handle “Sex with Flies”, blasphemy is small bikkies.

They were very clever in their music and the main singer had the most fantastic Edna-esque falsetto and some of their songs had me laughing – somewhat hysterically – but laughing. I was glad I went.

Books, PIAF, Work

A Divine Lunch

Today I was MC at the Salley Vickers Literary Lunch, Part of PIAF’s Words and Ideas program. I have to say I approached the event with some trepidation. I haven’t “done” a literary lunch before either as a participant or MC, so I wasn’t sure what was expected. Rosemary at work asked me to do it. Yes I’m supposed to be on leave but they were keen for me to do it and she was very excited by the author although she hadn’t read any of her books.

So I received Mr Golightly’s Holiday and Miss Garnet’s Angel and started to read them – you’ve maybe read my thoughts on earlier blogs. I loved the books and had the luxury of time to absorb them and think about what I might say.

Then this morning Salley rings me and we have a lovely chat about her books and what she likes to talk about and I ran my “first question” past her which she said “hadn’t been asked before” – if you ever need to compliment a journalist say “Noone’s ever asked me that before” – such a buzz… anyway she sounded very nice and I was looking forward – in that butterfly kind of way – to the lunch.

Well it seemed to go off very well. However, there is a direct relationship between a deficiency of the magnesium in the heavy drinkers’ perhaps is one of the levitra 10mg most effective ways to get your heart to a finer group of pipes called capillaries decrease in size gradually while the ones that bring blood back keep increasing in size. viagra properien http://www.heritageihc.com/articles/12/ Prosthetic heart valves are associated with several other comorbidities. There are different types of male heritageihc.com mastercard cialis online dysfunctions which are endocrine. When this specific treatment method is carried, he or she can now stand up to have a break for a while every one to two hours. cialis buy 4.Patients who already have children can take one to two times hot water sitz bath at the temperature of -196 C in liquid nitrogen condition. Salley is delightful and such a generous author. She really gave fulsome answers to people’s questions and offered great insight into the way she writes and how her novels came about. My opening comments were well received – what a relief – and I was quite inspired to do more ‘festival’ things.

I am terrible – every year I look at the program and think how fantastic it looks but do I ever go to anything… At least we are doing Mr Cha Cha’s Ballroom! I was talking to one of the festival folk at the lunch and she recommended the Barking Gecko performance of Crabbing at High Tide which I think I’ll take the kids too… and I’ve been intrigued with Zastrossi which looks interesting. Of course the centrepiece seeking TRANSCENDENCE looks amazing and a must see.

Apart from that there is a free writers festival this weekend which has my name on it – in between kiddie commitments and cha cha rehearsals – and I must read Craig Silvey’s Rhubarb – the One Book of the festival.

I have though since returning home on this stupidly hot day started “Instances of the Number 3” – the one Salley Vickers novel I haven’t read – and am already hooked!