Grounded by George Brant

Blue Cow Theatre Inc

Directed by Annette Downs, starring Jane Longhurst

Review by Anica Boulanger-Mashberg

Technology may have changed the methods of war yet perhaps not, Brant suggests, the human experience of it.

 

Image from Blue Cow Theatre Inc Website

‘Grounded’ after briefly favouring love and family over her military career, the Pilot (Jane Longhurst) returns to work where instead of guiding her craft in the great ‘blue’ of which she still dreams, she finds herself dropping her daughter at daycare and reluctantly driving across the desert to the strange daily mundanity that is war at a distance. Now a drone pilot, she fights and kills remotely, but she suffers and struggles here and now. Her actions might be distant but the trauma of them is very present.

Don't Think Twice

A Double Bill:
Partly It’s About Love... Partly It’s About Massacre (Fiona Sprott) and
Andrew Corder Thinks Twice (Finegan Kruckemeyer)
Tasmanian Theatre Company
Backspace Theatre
May 27, 2010
by Anica Boulanger-Mashberg

If you think you can’t make fantastic theatre out of one actor in one small theatre, then think again. Think twice, if you will excuse the cheap pun.

As a rule, I don’t adore one-person shows. I find them hard work, and I get lonely: I crave interactions on stage. But with the Tasmanian Theatre Company’s latest offering, I am reminded that restriction is not always a negative, but rather can be the generator of great beauty and surprising moments.