Wednesday, July 18, 2012

The Unsuitable Case of Me


By Kylie Eastley
Festival of Voices 2012
Peacock Theatre, Salamanca Arts Centre

Dean Stevenson
As clichéd as it may be, there is a time for us all when we feel the need to revisit our past, reflect on our present and, depending on what we find, determine what our future will be. Cynics may call it a mid-life crisis, while Jungians may call it a transition period which requires patience and compassion for oneself as well as those around us.

After the house has lost its fullness, the pub has lost its history, the chairs have lost their comfort and tea has lost its heat, you find yourself doing the most dangerous thing-measuring the man you are, without the woman who left you.

Tasmanian playwright Finnegan Kruckemeyer has written a familiar tale. A man who when faced with the break-up of a relationship travels back through his history; the family home, his childhood friendships and loves to ‘find himself’.

He wrote the story and left space for the accompanying songs that were written and performed by Hobart musician Dean Stevenson. On the final night of the season as part of the Festival of Voices I sit behind Finnegan, who is seeing the finished work for the first time. An opportunity to gauge the authors response as well as my own.

Space Invaders


by Ben Walter
SAC Birthday party
31st March 2012
Salamanca Arts Centre Hobart


It is almost, it is not yet the serious time of year, when winter focuses our engagement with art and we require concentrated determination to leave the house. Today has been warm and long, there is time to dabble and lingering is on, we could (if we wanted) examine each brick and each beam; but not too closely, for in this climate it is all about strolling past these small installations. Aren't they spectacles we should expect to find when dallying?

Monday, July 16, 2012

Stompin's 21st Birthday Book Launch

by Wendy Newton
7.00pm Wednesday 11 July 2012

If only the floorboards could speak. 

I'm at Stompin's 21st birthday book launch waiting for Premier Giddings to arrive and someone mentions the floor.  How it needs funding for repairs.  I look past my boots (embarrassed that I've only just realised they're muddy and the Premier will be here any minute) to the scuffmarks, scratches, gouges, the sgraffito of dance history that leaves its legacy etched in Braille on the pine. Stories on the boards. 

It's a pity they'll disappear. It's only sanding that's needed, I'm told.