New Poll - Aussie Theatre (New Works)
Mon, 14 Feb 2005, 04:29 pmcrgwllms17 posts in thread
New Poll - Aussie Theatre (New Works)
Mon, 14 Feb 2005, 04:29 pmNew poll topic: Is Australian theatre dying?...How do you feel about producing more Australian work?
Adapted from a reader suggestion. Two items I left off the bottom of the options list, but reproduce here for his benefit...
If someone like Jeremy Constable was going to open a theatre company in Ballarat in 2006 then I would contact him on Jez_Tazdevil_13@hotmail.com and have words that are good, with him.
This is not an advertising poll Jeremy, please refrain from such attempts to make yourself known, even if you do graduate a bachelor of arts next year and exist for comic relief.
The Poll-tergeist
[%sig%]
Theatre, by definition, lives
Wed, 23 Feb 2005, 02:45 ammick suavely wrote:
>
> Critics and press departments insist that everything is
> lovely in the garden : but those prize winning blooms are cut
> flowers. the beds are empty, the bulbs rotting, the soil no
> longer nourishes. The blooms will soon go off, and there will
> be nothing with which to replace them.
Really? Last I heard, the critics and the press (The West Australian) were the ones saying that theatre was dying....an attitude that I feel is fundamentally wrong because it tends to bring about the very appearances it speaks of. The more Ron Banks writes that the theatre is dead, the more people are going to get out a DVD instead. Yet if he proclaimed it was thriving, there's a good chance more people would check it out...and hey presto, it's suddenly thriving! And yet theatre continues as it always has, regardless of these 'observations', and oblivious to them.
Continuing your plant analogy, theatre is a mutating weed that springs up tenaciously in the most inhospitable environment regardless of whether you care for it or feed it, regardless of whether you think it's pretty or important or not, or whether you try to uproot it, transplant it, or stamp it out.
It mutates to absorb the resources around its local environment...it can adapt to utilise the most advanced and stunning technology...it can feed off its own parents, it's own history...it reflects and comments upon its surrounding social structure...it infiltrates rapidly around the world...and yet it relies on none of that, needing only someone to observe it in action for it to exist.
It may lie dormant, temporarily unobserved, waiting for the right conditions of light and atmosphere...but it continues to live and breathe. Occasionally it flowers and spreads its seeds in a wide arc, affecting the senses of those who come in contact with it. Other times it seems to hibernate, seen only in specialised glasshouses or reserves. But just because you can't see any flowers, doesn't mean there aren't living roots.
Most other forms of entertainment are becoming more and more synthetic, and can be stored safely on the mantlepiece gathering dust. Theatre grows, blossoms, wilts, dies, regenerates, grows and blossoms again; and will always be - alive.
Cheers
Craig
>
> Critics and press departments insist that everything is
> lovely in the garden : but those prize winning blooms are cut
> flowers. the beds are empty, the bulbs rotting, the soil no
> longer nourishes. The blooms will soon go off, and there will
> be nothing with which to replace them.
Really? Last I heard, the critics and the press (The West Australian) were the ones saying that theatre was dying....an attitude that I feel is fundamentally wrong because it tends to bring about the very appearances it speaks of. The more Ron Banks writes that the theatre is dead, the more people are going to get out a DVD instead. Yet if he proclaimed it was thriving, there's a good chance more people would check it out...and hey presto, it's suddenly thriving! And yet theatre continues as it always has, regardless of these 'observations', and oblivious to them.
Continuing your plant analogy, theatre is a mutating weed that springs up tenaciously in the most inhospitable environment regardless of whether you care for it or feed it, regardless of whether you think it's pretty or important or not, or whether you try to uproot it, transplant it, or stamp it out.
It mutates to absorb the resources around its local environment...it can adapt to utilise the most advanced and stunning technology...it can feed off its own parents, it's own history...it reflects and comments upon its surrounding social structure...it infiltrates rapidly around the world...and yet it relies on none of that, needing only someone to observe it in action for it to exist.
It may lie dormant, temporarily unobserved, waiting for the right conditions of light and atmosphere...but it continues to live and breathe. Occasionally it flowers and spreads its seeds in a wide arc, affecting the senses of those who come in contact with it. Other times it seems to hibernate, seen only in specialised glasshouses or reserves. But just because you can't see any flowers, doesn't mean there aren't living roots.
Most other forms of entertainment are becoming more and more synthetic, and can be stored safely on the mantlepiece gathering dust. Theatre grows, blossoms, wilts, dies, regenerates, grows and blossoms again; and will always be - alive.
Cheers
Craig
- ···
- ···
- ···
- ···
- ···
- ···