Saturday, November 09, 2019

Swim Between the Flags by The Faculty of Fine Arts and Music, University of Melbourne


A great spot to celebrate artistic achievements and production ... congratulations Gabbie et al
A glorious, focused on taxing topics such as climate change period take that swims with the deepest  passions and intensely moving evocation of complex world of risk taking, friendship and loyalty ...
 No matter how you work, in the garret or on the floor, it is great to surround yourself with talented creatives who have ‘skin in the game’. That’s why I value teaching at VCA. All of my colleagues are practising professionals and bring those skills and experiences to their teaching, and the steady stream of guest lecturers allows for multiple perspectives on how to create work.


   In case you wondered …


… Why theatre and poetry matters
As Auden says, poetry is “a way of happening”. It takes the passage of time, the reality of loss, the absorption in a sharpened kind of seeing or hearing, and makes all these into speech that can survive (as Auden also insists) and help others survive. Its task of “turning noise into music” is thus irreducibly political, a sustained resistance to commodified, generalised language and the appalling reductions of human possibility that this brings with it. Far from being a decorative adjunct to social or public life, it represents the possibilities to which all intelligent and humane social life should point. “Poetry saves the world every day.”



Well, he did write plays …








RT’s Reviews & Marginalia : Shakespeare — He should have no readers!

  The Bumper Sticker Is Wrong – Mistakes Do Define Us



General infallibility is a tempting proposition. Treating an individual’s attitudes and preferences as givens – as matters beyond debate or criticism – might seem to promote human dignity by forcing us to treat all views as equally worthy of respect. But such an outlook is likely, if anything, to have the opposite effect. This is because taking seriously a person’s capacity to make mistakes is critical to taking seriously their capacity for rationality. Only by recognising that people are capable of error can we properly value anyone’s goals or engage in rational debate. – Aeon

Theatre Company 2019
Presented by: Theatre and Production
This original devised work is the graduating piece by Theatre Company 2019 – the first graduates of the Bachelor of Fine Arts (Theatre) – developed in collaboration with graduating Production students. The work was conceived, researched, written and designed by the students themselves and reflects their commitment to ensemble collaborative practice and the creation of new Australian work.
Swim Between the Flags is a formally ambitious work in two parts: a not-so-distant past, where imminent emergencies are ignored, and a possible future, where speed, excess and violence have become the new normal. Should we laugh or cry when everything begins to move too fast – too furiously?
Swim Between the Flags observes some of the urgent issues of our time with humour, intelligence and imagination.

Content warnings: 
Part 1: adult themes, stylised depictions of violence, explicit language. Part 2: adult themes, stylised depictions of violence, strobe, haze and loud noises.
Image: Theatre Company 2019, image by Lachlan Woods.
We strongly encourage booking in advance for all of our events. This guarantees your seat, and allows us to communicate any unforeseen event scheduling changes with you. Please note, tickets are required for entry to paid events. 




Theatre Company 19's graduating work Swim Between the Flags (Friday 8 November – Tuesday 12 November ) was conceived and written by the students themselves reflecting their commitment to ... Gabriella Imrichova.

Swim Between The Flags

There’s growing visibility and demand for the work of female artists of the Renaissance and Baroque periods, from The Museo Nacional del Prado showcasing the work of Sofonisba Anguissola and Lavinia Fontana as part of its 200th anniversary programming, to Sotheby’s achieving record-breaking prices for female Old Masters, to D.C.’s National Museum of Women in the Arts current “Women Artists of the Dutch Golden Age.”
Anguissola was a celebrated portraitist in the late 16th and early 17th centuries whose fame earned her a place as a lady-in-waiting to Isabel de Valois at the court of King Philip II of Spain. Fontana worked around the same time in Rome and Bologna, disregarding the limits of genres imposed on her sex, even painting from the nude—a practice from which women were generally excluded at the time.
Michaelina Wautier, Two Girls as Saint Agnes and Saint Dorothea, 1643-59
As often happens when trying to right some imbalances, it starts with breaking the loop of being too unknown to be featured but needing to be exhibited to become known.
Art historian Katlijne Van der Stighelen first rediscovered the Baroque painter Michaelina Wautier in the 1990s, but found it impossible to get support for an exhibition as museums would not risk gambling on an unknown artist. It was not until the Flanders tourism department decided to invest heavily in a three-year exhibition program, beginning in 2018 with Peter Paul Rubens and Baroque painting, that she finally got her chance.
Until of course someone finally “takes a chance” only to find out that yes, there is a thirst for more diversity of voices in all domains.
The response exceeded anything Van der Stighelen or MAS could have hoped for. Both the national and international press were attracted by the “surprise element” of an artist so technically accomplished, yet completely unknown. By the time the show came down in September 2018, some 40,000 visitors had seen it—about four times the usual number for a summer show at MAS, according to Van der Stighelen.
Artemisia Gentileschi, Mary Magdalene as Melancholy


THEATRE COMPANY '19

The inaugural graduating class of the Bachelor of Fine Arts (Theatre). These nine emerging artists have honed their performance, devising and collaborative skills through studio based training and applied practice in a range of settings and contexts.
Meet graduate
Swim Between the Flags













Why Theatre Isn’t My “Other” Job



Only two per cent of actors actually make a living from acting alone and 90 per cent of actors are out of work at any given time so that means, more often than not, actors have to make money elsewhere. – Metro News

Rise up: How stage show I'm With Her is putting women's voices first


Nine stories of real-life resistance in the age of #MeToo, where women are not only pushing back against sexual assault but taking up the fight for gender equality, are about to hit the stage in Sydney










Who Gave You The Right To Tell That Story? Ten Authors On Writing Fiction About Identities Other Than Their Own


“The conversation is often depicted in the media as a binary: On one side are those who argue that only writers from marginalized backgrounds should tell stories about people who share their cultural histories — a course correction for an industry that is overwhelmingly white — while on the other are those who say this wish amounts to censorship. For those following closely, it can feel as though the debate has gotten stuck in a rut.” Here, a group of writers including Jennifer Weiner, N. K. Jemisin, Victor LaValle, Laila Lalami, Monique Truong, and Sarah Schulman discuss why they write outside their identities. – New York Magazine










Despite Difficult Conditions And Sniping From Tabloids, British Theatre Companies Continue Their Work In Prisons



“Last year The Sun ran a story that started: ‘Convicts at a drug-plagued prison performed a lavish version of musical Les Misérables for the public – to boost lags’ morale.’ Two years earlier, in the same paper, a story ran that ‘prisoners in Britain’s creaking jails are to be taught art, music and drama in a desperate bid to slash reoffending’. In 2008, the Daily Mail reported: ‘A sick joke: terrorist signs up for comedy classes at top-security prison.’ So why do these companies do it? Because the evidence that it works is overwhelming.” – The Stag

Extinction Rebellion’s Street Theatre, And How Climate Change Is Treated In An Actual Theatre


Before it lost public sympathy with a badly misjudged action on the London Underground, the British activist group’s agitprop had had a good deal of success, thanks to its “instinctive understanding of public theatre.” Critic Kate Maltby looks at Extinction Rebellion’s successes and missteps alongside the current Old Vic production of Duncan Macmillan’s Lungs, starring Claire Foy and Matt Smith as a couple of climate-anxious white millennials. – The New York Review of Books