GRIFFIN ARTIST BLOG

NEW BLOG

It’s official. We’ve moved. To start off the new year with a bang we’ve made a new blog. Keep in touch here. 

2012 NSW Premier’s Literary Awards: winners and shortlists

Our very own Vanessa Bates, whose production of Porn.Cake. was part of Griffin Independent this year, has been selected as joint winner of the 2012 NSW Premier’s Literary Awards with Joanna Murray-Smith.

Here are the Judges’ comments on both winning plays:

‘Porn.Cake.’

Judges’ comments

Two reasonably well-off couples with no kids in a contemporary city have hit middle-aged ennui. They know the world is complex and full of mysterious things, some of which they have sensed and experienced, but they prefer instead to be gripped by the ephemera of modern living: text messages, cooking shows, affairs, conspicuous consumption, porn fetishes, the temporary wonders of the internet, and so on. Through intimate monologues and the repetition of key phrases and scenes, Bates charts the decline of two interrelated couples as they move from passivity and listlessness, loneliness and disappointment to feelings of deep loss and sadness. Ultimately, however, our quartet garner a glimmer of compassion and understanding, both for themselves and those they profess to love.

Honest, often cringe-makingly so, funny and heartbreaking, this play contains writing for the stage of the highest standard. The rhythmic contrasts between the cake scenes and the monologues are refreshing and invigorating — one judge commented that the writing is indeed delicious. What is especially remarkable about the play is its employment of a genuinely innovative and inventive approach to storytelling. Fugue-like in its precision, passages are repeated with variations until a new and richer theme develops. In this sense this is a powerful work for the theatre, one that embraces the notion that a playscript is a blueprint for performance. This is the work of a wise, funny, gifted writer with a highly original mind.

And ‘The Gift’

Judges’ comments

Two couples meet at an exclusive resort. The older couple are almost retired, comfortable and have his trade machine business to thank for it. The young couple — there because they won a competition — have a young daughter and are trying to make a go of it in the arts, him as a conceptual artist, her as a journalist. They bond over a mutual love of honesty and lack of pretence, though there is a wariness from the older couple, Ed and Sadie, about the worth, sense or point of the young Martin’s choice of career. When Martin saves Ed from a near-drowning, the rich older couple offer to give Martin and Chloe anything they want. Anything. When they meet again in a year’s time, Martin and Chloe tell the childless older couple that what they want is for them to take their four-year-old daughter.

Smart, witty and funny, this play takes huge and courageous bites at some contentious aspects of modern living — the self-obsession of the affluent, entitlement with regard to creative self-actualisation, middle-aged marital stasis, pretension and aspiration, and the unchallenged belief that self-fulfillment ranks above all else in the hierarchy of human needs and responsibilities. The combustible combination of all of the above leads us along the path to a shocking moral compromise. It is a very thoughtful, highly intelligent and skilfully crafted play by a writer at the height of her powers.

To check out the comments for the other shortlisted plays, click here.

STC appoints three Resident Directors

Sarah Goodes, Kip Williams and Sarah Giles will take up positions of Co Resident Directors at Sydney Theatre Company from 1 January 2013. Each will direct a main stage show in 2013 and as part of their roles will conduct workshops and script developments, take part in STC’s Rough Drafts program and facilitate readings and dramaturgical assignments. They will participate in artistic programming and propose development projects, while exploring opportunities for career path development for emerging artists. Additionally they will represent STC at industry events and take part in the company’s education and community programs.

Andrew Upton said “I’m very excited that these three directors, each of whom have developed and honed their skills at STC in recent years, will play key roles in the day to day artistic life of the Company. They bring to their roles intelligence, a keen awareness of the issues facing our industry and an inspiring understanding of the power of theatre. I’m looking forward to working closely with them in developing a defining vision and style for the STC of the future.

“STC is a big company that produces a broad range of work and I feel very strongly that we need more working directors embedded in the centre of the action. With the whole artistic team I’m keen to really nail the kinds of works that only STC can pull off, in terms of style, scale and quality. While they have established their own credentials as directors, Sarah, Kip and Sarah are in the early stages of their careers and so will bring a new energy and point of view to the Company’s work” Upton said.

To read the rest of the article, click here.

Cut & Paste Christmas Special

To mark the end of a massive year, we’ve put together a Yuletide edition of CUT & PASTE at The Bondi Pavilion Theatre.

It’s a late afternoon kick off (bar open from 3pm) and we’ll have a BBQ on the balcony, DJ’s in the bar and a bad santa (that’s Leland Kean btw).
…

Teen Diary Readings 3: Bullet with Butterfly Wings Edition

After sell out events at The Sydney Writers Festival and Wheeler Centre in Melbourne the public thirst for humiliation and pain remains unabated. Teen Diary Readings returns to it’s ancestral home at the Surry Hills Library this December!

Come join writer Zoe Norton Lodge, NOTV’S Lucy Phelan, The Wonderful Lucinda Gleeson, Unconventionally Rugged Looking Enya Enthusiast and “self published” Novelist Patrick Magee, screenwriter Niki Aken, Producer/Musician Christopher Sharp and others as they read from that tome of angst and self hatred: their teenage diaries.
 

Thursday December 6.

Free Event.

Book here.

AUSTRALIAN POETRY SLAM NATIONAL FINAL

Slams began in Chicago in 1986, made it through hit TV and radio shows, were spit by Kanye West and David Chapelle. Miles Merrill brought them to Australia in 1996 and took it national in 2007. Now Australia’s Poetry Slam reaches it’s finale at Sydney Theatre.

In small towns and suburbs across the country, communities have gathered in libraries, youth centres, bars, and festivals to choose their local poetry heroes and send them off to storm stages in capital cities.

Almost 1000 Australians opened up in front of the mic this year. Now two slam champions from each state and territory will face an epic finale at Sydney Theatre. They will wrestle your imagination, wet your lashes, inspire you to, raise your fist and shout, “HELL YEAH! ME TOO!”

Selected audience members decide who will win a $12,000 tour to the China Bookworm International Literary Festival, the Ubud Writers’ and Readers’ Festival and Sydney Writer’s Festival.

Featuring Australian Poetry Slam Champion 2011, Luka Lesson and NZ Poetry Slam Champion, Ali Jacs. Music by DJ Tom Loud and hosted by Miles Merrill.

Saturday 1 December

8pm

Sydney Theatre

$30

Your ticket to the National Final also doubles as entry to a free screening of ‘Louder Than A Bomb’ - Wednesday, 28th Nov, 6pm at State Library NSW.

BOOK HERE.