Shop talk

Recently quite a few theatre bloggers have been tracking their creative processes: George Hunka, for instance, is logging some of his thinki...

Away from my desk: and then back again

Ms TN been making sad little meep noises all year about the increasing necessity to pull back on the blog and focus on my own work. Now, as ...

A divagation

I've often thought that the major weakness in Australian theatre is its writing. We have an astonishing design culture, an embarrassment...

Cybec readings

One for your diary. The MTC's Cybec Readings, developed under the watchful eye of associate director Aidan Fennessy, offers an eye-catch...

Writings, of various kinds

I'm slightly surprised, given the heat the issue has generated, that there's been no response within our sea-girt shores to my ALR p...

The Salon des Refusés

As TN readers will know, the judges of this year's NSW Premier's Literary Awards declined to shortlist any plays, sparking a debate ...

Plays - second class literature?

A quick blurt, for those who think the artform that's inspired lacklustre talent like Shakespeare, Ibsen, Churchill, Beckett, Brecht, Ch...

Drama as literature

Having spent today addressing an empty screen in the increasingly vain hope that the god of critics will bestow some benediction, or at leas...

Ross Trust play readings

Before I miss the boat, let me alert you to Flashpoint, a series of readings of new writing for theatre. The scripts being performed are all...

Parallel importation: a disaster for Australian writers

Update: The Australian Publishers Association, the Printing Industry Association of Australia, the Australian Literary Agents’ Association a...

Inspiration elsewhere

Every now and then the absurdity of my existence bursts on me afresh. There is that French existential sense, ie, M. Camus (how cool was he?...

Scriptoria unbound

The virtual library thing is now escaping from Borges' imagination and into the real world. Consider, for instance, the Australian Scrip...

Alison's Authorial August

As I have always suspected, being an Author is not the same as being a Writer. It might even be something like the opposite. I'm beginni...

Jetlaggish meditations

Your faithful blogger is back is town, with a baroque case of laryngitis incubated on the long-haul flight and an even more spectacular dose...

Interview: Marius von Mayenburg

If you were looking for a model of a writer in the theatre, you could do worse than point to Marius von Mayenburg: playwright, translator an...

A series of digressions

Little Alison is still in reset mode. On Wednesday night she saw Lucy Guerin's Aether, a work of exquisite complexity and beauty, but ca...

Hard lines

Next week the MTC is running its sixth annual Hard Lines Play Reading Program, presenting selections from four new plays by Peter Houghton, ...

Coupla things

First, on Sunday afternoon, I'm co-ordinating the conversation on a Writers Panel to be held at fortyfivedownstairs. The putative title ...

What is it about writers?

Ms TN has never understood the concept of "writer's block". I agree that sometimes one can't write and, as Orwell said, if...

The old and the new

A couple of events worth noting: one looking back at the "New Wave" theatre of the early 1970s, and the other showcasing some new ...