See article in its original context here by K. E. Weber for Theatre People.

Susie Dee And Her Long Pigs

See article in its original context here by John Bailey for The Age.

The dark side of clowning is brought into focus with a new play.

While it’s become a bit faddish to declare yourself clown-phobic these days, pop culture has thrown us enough terrifying clowns in living memory to provide some underlying support for the claim – from Pennywise in Stephen King’s IT to serial killer John Wayne Gacy, the menacing US act Insane Clown Posse and their cultish Juggalo fans to Heath Ledger’s nightmarish turn as The Joker.

Last year, an English student posted creepy images of himself standing around the city in scary clown get-up; within days dozens of copycats had begun menacing people around Britain.

There is something unnerving about clowns, says performer Clare Bartholomew. ”The traditional make-up of a clown is made for a three-ring circus, where you might be half a kilometre away from the audience. That make-up is designed to show your expression to someone a very long distance away. If you put on all that make-up and you’re up close making a balloon animal for a child, it’s really scary.”

[more]

See article in its original context here by John Bailey for The Age.

Elizabethan drama downstairs

Fortyfivedownstairs’ inaugural Festival of Words and Music kicked off on Monday and while the two-week program of events is heavily skewed towards the melodic, a one-off performance by actor John Stanton will whet the appetites of fans of Shakespeare and Marlowe. And When He Falls threads together some of the sharpest monologues of the Elizabethan era to trace the 300-year history of the Plantagenet kings, the last of whom, Richard III, recently had another moment in the sun when his bones were discovered in Leicester. Stanton’s own history with the Bard has included a lauded production of Julius Caesar at MTC and a Helpmann Award nomination for his turn as Prospero in a production by the same company. And When He Falls plays the venue at 45 Flinders Lane on Thursday, with details at fortyfivedownstairs.com or 9662 9966.

See article in its original context here by Cameron Woodhead for The Age & The Sydney Morning Herald.

Reviewer rating:

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Zulya Kamalova
45 Downstairs, Until February 16

This intriguing cabaret-style solo show, deftly woven through short monologue and song, captures aspects of three different women caught in the tide of Russian history.

There’s the communist revolutionary Inessa Armand, who became Lenin’s mistress, agitated for the rights of women and tragically died young; a mail-order bride called Eva, revelling for a while in fairytale riches which can’t disguise the demeaning reality of her existence; and a semi-mythological figure, an incarnation of natural forces.

Evolution, Revolution and the Mail Order Bride is an excellent showcase for Zulya Kamalova’s voice. The Russian-born singer has a naturally dramatic sound that can skip effortlessly from ethereal ambient harmonies to the seedy glamour of jazz-inspired numbers. She’s an extraordinary vocal talent, backed here by piano, trumpet and cello.

[more]

Evolution, Revolution & The Mail Order Bride featured in The Australian recently!

See article in its original context here by Geoffrey Williams for Stage Whispers.

There’s a sparkling gem of an idea camouflaged deep within Evolution Revolution and The Mail Order Bride that deserves further exploration. The essential conflict in its current state is that musically, it is simply stunning, but dramatically, much less so – with a simplistic and perfunctory strain of ‘the wrongs men do’ carried through relentlessly. Not only is this problematic for the sexual politics of the piece, which remain surprisingly and steadfastly inert, but it also betrays the meaning, legacy and complexity of the lives that Ms Kamalova’s women led (and lead).

[more]

See article in its original context here by Liza Dezfouli for Australian Stage.

fortyfivedownstairs is one of those spaces that lends itself to atmosphere. Want to create a moody and evocative environment for your play? Put it on here. Evolution, Revolution and the Mail Order Bride by Zulya Kamalova, makes beautiful use of the space. A great pile of old stuff dominates the set, telling us that history and the detritus of lives will inform this work. Lighting and backdrop, including ravishing video images of the past, create a beautiful and worthy set, we have a mini orchestra comprising violin, electric mandolin, cello, piano, trombone – everything you need provided by musicians of calibre. And the girl, Kamalova, can sing, in terms of reaching those notes, she delivers. Kamalova is at her best with the witchy-poo, haunting, gothic Wendy Rule/Diamanda Galas style of singing; she’s not so hot with the more genre based styles. I didn’t love the timbre of her voice outside the delivery of the monstrous feminine vocals, but there’s no doubting her musicality.

[more]

See article in its original context here in the Daily Review.

Zulya Kamalova is an ARIA Award-winning singer who has made a career performing Russian and Tatar music to Australian and international audiences for almost two decades. She’s been in high demand for her musical prowess both locally and in Europe, but is now taking a step in a new direction with her self-penned musical tragicomedy Evolution, Revolution and the Mail Order Bride. In the show, she plays revolutionary Inessa Armand and her two alter-egos Eva and Maya.

We spoke to Kamalova about creating a new work and changing directions.

Evolution, Revolution and The Mail Order Bride represents a new direction for you. Is it daunting to be veering into a different artform?

Yes, definitely very daunting. But not as daunting now compared to half way through the process when I had realised what a huge task I took on. With the great support from Maude Davey, my director and co-creator, now I feel more excited than daunted.

How did the show come to be? What inspired you to step out of your comfort zone into something more theatrical?

My music started to become more theatrical and I realised how much I enjoyed being someone else rather than myself. I decided to create a new kind of show. So I churned through quite a bit of material, till I was drawn to Inessa Armand, the Russian revolutionary, who I found very fascinating for a number of reasons. Then I had to learn heaps about dramaturgy, research the philosophical and the psychological aspects etc. I wanted to do more than just tell one story so the other two characters were born as well. Three years later, it’s on! And I think it’s good. It’s gone its own way however, perhaps not exactly how I expected it to go, which just proves my point about evolution.

[more]

See article in its original context here by Richard Watts for ArtsHub.

Image: Zulya Kamalova’s Evolution, Revolution and The Mail Order Bride. Photo by Sarah Walker.
Art outside your comfort zone

‘My shelf life as a diver is quickly approaching its expiry date,’ laughs gold medal winning Olympian Matthew Mitcham, when asked why he’s decided to embrace a parallel career as a cabaret performer.

‘I have always been a pretty creative person, I think, but I’ve never really been given an opportunity to develop that side of me. And I really think it’s important for athletes to work on their Plan B for their lives after sport. I’m not going to be able to dive forever, and when I stop the sport, whether it be prematurely or because of my own choosing, I don’t want to have to start to build up a career from scratch; I’d like to hit the ground running.’

The ukulele-playing Mitcham, who made his cabaret debut at Perth’s Fringe World this week with Twists & Turns, based on his memoir of the same name, is not alone in turning his hand to a new skill. Across the country, artists are exploring the new and the unexpected in order to challenge themselves and push their creative practice in stimulating new directions.

One such artist is ARIA Award-winning musician Zulya Kamalova, whose first-ever theatre production, Evolution, Revolution and The Mail Order Bride, opens in Melbourne this week.

‘I was always attracted to acting, and my performances had become more and more dramatic and theatrical, and I realised that I enjoyed that …  And as with any career you go through ebbs and flows, highs and lows, and you go “What can I do now?”,’ Kamalova said.

[more]

Evolution, Revolution & The Mail Order Bride featured in mX today!

See article in its original context here by Anna Snoekstra for The Melbourne Review.

EVOLUTION, REVOLUTION AND THE MAIL ORDER BRIDE

February 2014

A new performance at fortyfivedownstairs transcends location, time and genre in an exploration of femininity.

Zulya Kamalova explores themes of femininity and sexuality in this layered musical tragicomedy. Originally from Russia, Kamalova started her career as a musician. “Playing with a band, my repertoire was getting more and more dramatic,” she tells me, “so I thought, ‘I’ll try this thing out’.

“It took me years. I realised it was such a huge task,” she continues, “the themes I was looking at were so immense.” Eventually Kamalova created three vastly different characters, all “swept away by circumstance”. Maya, an ancient Shaman, Inessa Arman, a Russian revolutionary and Eva, a modern day mail order bride. Teaming up with director Maude Davey, Kamalova was able to play all three characters herself.

[more]

See article in its original context here by Andrew Fuhrmann for TimeOut Melbourne.

Watch out Zig! Watch our Zag! Clare Bartholomew is coming for you next
Devised and performed by clowning supergroup We!3!, The Long Pigs is the kind of sinister oddity that could only be dreamed up in the wilds of north eastern Tasmania.

Enter the black-nosed clowns, dressed in an ominous medley of surgical gear and abattoir workwear. From rusty buckets they pour their spoils, hundreds of red noses, bloody trophies torn from their sunny cousins in clowning. But one nose is missing. And one of the three is hiding something from the others.

Clare Bartholomew, Derek Ives and Nicci Wilks were at the Golconda Circus Festival, east of Launceston, when they first conjured this strange vision of the darkside of the clown, working on ideas for an impromptu festival show.

“I had this big bag of red noses with me because I’d been teaching clowning at a festival workshop,” explains Bartholomew. “So I was just sitting and staring at this bag, and I thought, well, what if we came from the forest out there and we were clown scalpers, hunting red-nosed clowns.”

For a career clown, this might be thought a symbolic act of self-murder; “long pigs” is, after all, Melanesian Pidgin for “human flesh”. But for Bartholomew it’s more an opportunity to change public expectations.

[more]

Read article in its original context here by Kylie Northover for The Age & The Sydney Morning Herald.

Reds in the beds

Zulya Kamalova tends to sing songs imbued with her own personality. But for her debut one-woman show, Evolution, Revolution And The Mail Order Bride, the ARIA award-winning Tartar singer wanted to inhabit the lives of other people.

In the work, which she describes as ”musical tragicomedy”, she plays French-born feminist revolutionary Inessa Armand, who was famously a lover of Lenin.

”I wanted to be somebody else, just for fun,” says the Melbourne-based singer, who arrived in Australia from Russia in 1991. ”But in the end, you are still attracted to characters that resonate with you, so I chose this Russian revolutionary.”

The work tells the intertwining stories of Armand and two ”alter egos” (all played by Kamalova) and their struggle with economic, political and moral crises.

”I felt I understood her – she really felt strongly about this idea of revolution and because I grew up in Soviet times … even though we kind of knew it wasn’t quite right, we were brainwashed to believe that they were the good ideals,” she says. ”I could’ve made a whole play about her; her life is so rich and interesting, but that didn’t feel enough.”

Legend has it that Armand tried to introduce the concept of free love to the ideology of Bolshevik Russia, but her famous lover dismissed the idea as bourgeois.

[more]

Evolution, Revolution & The Mail Order Bride featured in the Age recently!

Read article in its original context here.

WINNERS OF THE 2014 VICTORIAN PREMIER’S LITERARY AWARDS

Winner of the Victorian Prize for Literature: Liquid Nitrogen by Jennifer Maiden (Giramondo Publishing)

Award for Poetry: Liquid Nitrogen by Jennifer Maiden (Giramondo Publishing)

In the cool medium of Maiden’s poetry Julia Gillard is considered by her mentor Nye Bevan, Kevin Rudd shares a flight with Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Eleanor Roosevelt plays Woody Guthrie for Hillary Clinton. The poems focus on the terrorist attacks in Mumbai, Breivik in Norway, dissidents in Beijing, the protests in Tahrir Square and Gillard’s use of power, alongside tributes to friends and family, the ox and the tiger, music and the power of poetry.

Award for Fiction: Coal Creek by Alex Miller (Allen & Unwin)

Bobby Blue is caught between loyalty to his only friend, Ben Tobin, and his boss, Daniel Collins, the new constable at Mount Hay. Bobby understands the people and the ways of Mount Hay; Collins studies the country as an archaeologist might, bringing his coastal values to the hinterland. Increasingly bewildered and goaded to action by his wife, Constable Collins takes up his shotgun and his Webley pistol to deal with Ben. Bobby’s love for Collins’ willful young daughter Irie is exposed, leading to tragic consequences for them all.

Award for Non-Fiction: Forgotten War by Henry Reynolds (NewSouth Books)

Australia is dotted with memorials to soldiers who fought in wars overseas. Why are there no official memorials or commemorations of the wars that were fought on Australian soil between Aborigines and white colonists? Why is it more controversial to talk about the frontier war now than it was 100 years ago? This powerful book makes it clear that there can be no reconciliation without acknowledging the wars fought on our own soil.

Award for Drama: Savages by Patricia Cornelius (Fortyfivedownstairs)

Savages is a cautionary tale about four friends who embark on the holiday of a lifetime, but their excitement is soured by anger, bitterness and disappointment. The pack forms and the dark side of mateship emerges. This is a tough and frank look at masculinity and the sexual behaviour of men in groups.

Award for Writing for Young Adults: My Life as an Alphabet by Barry Jonsberg (Allen & Unwin)

My Life as an Alphabet is executed with both humour and heart. We are introduced to Candice Phee: 12 years old, hilariously honest and a little … odd. But she has the very best of intentions and an unwavering determination to ensure everyone is happy. So she sets about trying to ‘fix’ all the problems of all the people (and pets) in her life.

Read article in its original context here.

SAVAGES by Patricia Cornelius

Judges Report:

Four Australian men prowl an ocean liner, cruising for sex, connection or simply acknowledgement of each other’s humanity. As the play progresses, their search creates unbearable tension. From the first page, Cornelius asks us to reconsider form as a function of character. Her blokes speak in rhyme, and sometimes in chorus, like an oratorio. Repetition and rhythm dominate, and many lines are not assigned to specific characters.

This is poetry, but it is poetry of paucity. One of Cornelius’ accomplishments is that we maintain empathy for her characters, despite knowing violence is only a breath away. The unspeakable becomes the inevitable in this chilling evocation of male pack behaviour.

[more]

See article in its original context here by  Limelight Magazine.

Jersey Boys star Michael Griffiths returns to Melbourne with his two sell-out shows, Sweet Dreams: Songs by Annie Lennox and In Vogue: Songs by Madonna at fortyfivedownstairs from Wednesday 15 January until Sunday 26 January 2014 as part of the Midsumma Festival.

From writer/director Dean Bryant, Michael Griffiths is both Annie Lennox and Madonna.

No accent, costume or wig. Lyrics plumbed for new meaning, melodies reinterpreted, all peppered with candid musings and remembrances from the moody songstresses themselves.

From the gender bending early days as one half of 80′s sensation Eurythmics through to her stunning solo career, her bittersweet lyrics share the confessions of her triumphs and her heartbreak. Featuring unforgettable songs like Why, Love is a Stranger, Walking On Broken Glass and There Must Be An Angel (Playing With My Heart).

Critics have raved about Griffiths performance, ‘intelligent, compelling cabaret…cleverly crafted, beautifully performed…Griffiths holds
us in the palm of his hand – an angel playing with our hearts’  (Jo Litson); reminds you why you fell in love with Lennox in the first place…Griffiths and Bryant have found a formula that works and surprises’ (TimeOut)

[more]

Zoe Knighton featured in The Age this week!

See article in its original context here by Clive O’Connell for the Sydney Morning Herald.

Reviewer rating:

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

Cathexis
Fortyfivedownstairs
December 16

This new group, a young and expert quartet dedicated to contemporary music, presented six works, juxtaposing Australian alongside Italian, American and Argentinian compositions that, against expectations, made a satisfyingly integrated experience.

While one or two pieces provided a less-than-emphatic impact, most achieved their intended targets: expanding the listener’s acoustic/sonic experience, displaying the talent and dedication of the executants, and every so often leaving you with the uneasy feeling that, somewhere along the line, the intended message has escaped you.

In near darkness, the combined membership – flute Lina Andonovska, trumpet Callum G’Froerer, percussion Matthias Schack-Arnott, keyboard Peter de Jager – played Stephen Feigenbaum’s barely audible Angel, a series of monochromatic whispers that move into recognisable form only to die out.
[more]

The House of King play reading featured in The Age yesterday! See online article here

anon., Evoke and CATHEXIS featured in the Herald Sun today! See online article here

See article in its original context here by Chelsea Clugston for Onya Magazine.

Why?

Why?

For God’s sake… Why?

I have to admit that, sitting in the audience and hearing this opening, I wasn’t sure what to expect with Larrikin Ensemble Theatre’s ‘Boy out of the Country’.

I wouldn’t have been surprised had someone burst out with “Stella!” at that point, wrenching the audience from pre-show whispering to emotional turmoil. But if there’s one thing I’ve taken away from this experience, it’s to leave the expectations at home.

‘Boy out of the Country’, written by award winning poet and playwright Felix Nobis, is currently premiering at Melbourne’s fortyfivedownstairs. On the surface, it follows the story of a brother returning to his country town after seven years absence, to find the home he remembers nearly gone and his family embracing the change.

A combination of subtle humour and rough language showcases country-town Australia in a highly entertaining light. However, the play is no carefree comedy. Its clever use of humour paves the way for a confronting, at times poignant exploration into what it means to be family, to own land – and to lose it.

[more]

See article in its original context here by Elizabeth Quinn for Weekend Notes.

 
Heading down to the basement space of fortyfivedownstairs is like entering a subterranean nether world. What happens down there is a reflection of what’s new and interesting in Melbourne theatre and cabaret. The current production makes the leap from the Cold War cabaret of Miss Jugoslavia and the Barefoot Orchestra to something a bit closer to home.

Boy Out of the Country takes place in a small town on the rural fringes of an unnamed sprawling Australian city. Property values are being inflated by the rezoning of large tracts of land into residential areas to make room for housing estates. And where there’s the whiff of money in the air, family bonds are placed under threat.

[more]

See article in its original context here by Dina Ross for the Australian Book Review.

It’s a story biblical in resonance: prodigal son Hunter returns after seven years in the wilderness, to find younger brother Gordon finalising a lucrative real estate deal; the homestead’s boarded up, ageing Mum has been moved to a tiny flat, and the Utopia they knew as boys is set for redevelopment. The brothers come to blows, family secrets are uncovered, and the stage is set for a ninety-minute meditation on belonging, loss, self-discovery and the relentless pace of progress.

In less skilful hands, Boy Out of the Country’s plot could seem well-worn, even trite. To playwright Felix Nobis’s credit, he takes an old story and reinvents it as fresh and relevant. Much of this is due to the play’s clever structure, written in taut, idiomatic verse that eschews the tum-ti-tum of Banjo Paterson and energetically replicates the flow of everyday speech. Touching, funny, raw, bittersweet, the play is at once uniquely Australian and thematically universal.

[more]

See article in its original context here by Nick Pilgrim for Theatre People.

45 Downstairs in Flinders Lane has become the go-to space for some of Melbourne’s freshest and most dynamic theatre.

Recent plays such as ‘Savages’ By Patricia Cornelius and Thérèse Radic’s ‘Café Scheherazade’ highlight both important political and personal journeys; these new works will surely become time capsules to absorb and dissect for years to come.

Presented by the Larrikin Ensemble Theatre, ‘Boy Out Of The Country’ by Felix Nobis is no exception.

Helmed by a veteran cast of five, regional Victoria’s desperate economic underbelly is sliced open for all to see.  A humble family is divided by past indiscretions, clutching honor to their chests, yet possessing an unyielding drive for a better future.

[more]

See article in its original context here by Cameron Woodhead for The Age.

Larrikin Ensemble’s ‘Boy Out of the Country’ crackles with Aussie idiom and wit

Felix Nobis’ Boy Out of the Country is a tale of sibling rivalry and family secrets, of nostalgia for the lost world of childhood and confronting the reality of rapid social change. It’s a play infused with the vitality of Aussie idiom and melodrama that crackles with understatement and wit, and has been brought to life by a talented cast of actors. There’s a lot to admire.

[more]

See article in its original context here by Sarah Adams for artsHub.

A play that welds together the theatrical with the literary, leaving you lost in your own imagination.

While most theatre engages you in the moment, drawing you into what is happening right in front of you, literature leaves you to fill in the blanks, allowing you to create imagery of your own by drawing on your own memories and reference points. Felix Nobis’ Boy Out of the Country manages to bridge the divide between these two art forms, creating real-time engaging theatre, but also allowing the audience to drift off into the world of the characters’ stories, picturing many things for themselves.

The script starts off simply enough and the story structure is not unfamiliar. Hunter (Martin Blum) returns to his small country town after seven years away to find his childhood home boarded up, his mother gone, and the utopia he used to play in prepped for a new housing development.

Sibling rivalry reaches fever pitch when he discovers his brother Gordon (Matt Dyktynski) is set to benefit from the sale of the home. Conflict between brothers and over filial obligation ensues, leading both down a path of self discovery about who they once were and what they have become. The heated dialogue between the two is offset nicely by the character of Sgt. Walker (Christopher Bunworth), who mediates when the pair end up at the police station.

[more]

See article in its original context here by Jane Canaway for Australian Stage.

Boy Out of the Country | Larrikin Ensemble Theatre

It’s a while since I’ve heard an audience gasp in shock at a character’s actions onstage but the depths of sibling bastardry portrayed in Felix Nobis’s Boy Out of The Country certainly hit the spot.

Tightly written for the most part, with only a couple of flat spots, Nobis explores the multifaceted issues of family, belonging, acceptance and growth in this true-blue Aussie tale of two brothers.

Nobis opens by laying his cards on the table and presents a simple scenario that would be familiar to all Australians: Bad-boy Hunter returns to his small-town home after an unexplained seven-year absence to find his elderly mum moved into a nursing home, his rundown childhood home about to be bulldozed to make way for a new housing development, and his former flame married to his clean-living brother, Gordon.

[more]

See article in its original context here by Elizabeth Quinn for Weekend Notes.

See article in its original context here by John Bailey for The Age.

Stage: Treading the Boards

Keene to catch up

The Keene/Taylor Theatre Project was one of those sit-up-and-listen moments in Melbourne’s theatre history: from 1997, writer Daniel Keene and director Ariette Taylor spent five years in an intense collaboration that produced seasons of work marked by a rare clarity of vision and execution. The project came to a close in 2002, but they’re getting the band back together for a special one-off performance on  December 2. Titled Three Graces, the night will feature the Australian premiere of Keene’s Marie and Marguerite as well as his older work The Rain, both directed by Taylor and performed by Helen Morse and Marta Kaczmarek. The event is in tribute to the late Patricia Kennedy.  Bookings:  fortyfivedownstairs.com

Playwright Daniel Keene. Photo: Roger Cummins

See article in its original context here by Charlene Macaulay for the Footscray Star.

From city to country

Footscray actor Chris Bunworth will take to the stage for Boy out of the Country. 

FOOTSCRAY actor Chris Bunworth is heading back to the stage for his latest role. Mr Bunworth, who has held a range of roles on the stage, TV and film, including Underbelly, Winners and Losers, Neighbours and Beaconsfield the movie, will don the navy blue to play Sergeant Alfred Walker in the world premiere of Boy out of the Country. The show, which premieres tomorrow, is based on a property stoush between two brothers over who inherits the family farm.

See article in its original context here by Elizabeth Quinn for Weekend Notes.

Cold War served hot hot hot

There are some forms of entertainment that allow the audience to sit back and let it all wash over them. And then there’s Miss Jugoslavia and the Barefoot Orchestra.

There is nothing passive about being in the audience at fortyfivedownstairs when Tania Bosak is stalking the boards. Her unique brand of Slavic cabaret is confronting, discordant, chaotic, but never ever boring.

With the help of lighting and shadow and some good old-fashioned wall projection, the audience takes a journey into the Cold War experiences of Tania Bosak’s father Rudy. A talented musician of Croatian descent, he played in an orchestra where fellow band members were informers, in the atmosphere of mistrust that prevailed behind the Iron Curtain in the late 50s and early 60s.

[more]

See article in its original context here by Liza Dezfouli for Australian Stage.

Spectacle and orchestra, a mash-up of punk, jazz, Balkan gypsy folk and big brassy carnival scores – it’s all here in a show touting itself as ‘Cold War served warm.’ Tania Bosak shares family stories, mainly that of her father’s defection from the former Yugoslavia, in a theatrical performance of original music, her first score and an astonishing night of sound compelling you to witness all the pain, drama, secrecy and longing of displacement.

In the late 1950s, Bosak’s father, a musician travelling with a large group (which included a few informers) from behind the Iron Curtain on a trip to Belgium, defected at great risk to himself and eventually made his way to Australia. Tania Bosak’s Barefoot Orchestra – musicians Phil Byswater (sax), John Delanyer (guitar),Aviva Endean (clarinets), Anita Hustas (bass), Justin Marshall (drums), Kynan Robinson (trombone), Dan Witton (tuba and bass) – presents the essence of this dramatic saga in a show which doesn’t use narrative but rather invites us to make our own meaning out of what we hear: the effect is a musical romp through the history of twentieth century Eastern Europe. The radiant Bosak(who was actually a ‘Miss Yugoslavia’ runner-up, in a contest held in Melbourne when she was only 15) identified as a ‘Yugoslav,’  but when war broke out and fractured Yugoslavia in 1991, she was told she was actually Croatian; a moment which formed the beginnings of this concert. Bosak’s an accomplished musician, singer, comedian and stage performer; here she assumes the persona of an intense, slightly mad gothic noir/dominatrix/circus master/conductor to the band, leading the musicians in an ‘art music’ extravaganza.

[more]

See article in its original context here by Tony Reck for Real Time Arts.

The wrath of Plath

In staging Barry Dickins’ fantastical script about Sylvia Plath’s suicide, director Laurence Strangio, contracts the expansive 45 Downstairs warehouse space into an intimate pocket; one situated before a foreboding barred window. Imaginatively transposed to London, England, February 11, 1963, the audience is further seduced by an attention to detail that often characterises Strangio’s directorial efforts.

Mattea Davies’ design is a microcosm of Sylvia Plath’s mental duress: punitive order set amongst emotional chaos, and accentuated by a Shakespearean storm that, apparently, was the worst ever recorded at that time in England. Thankfully, centre-stage is not consistently occupied by a self-gratifying human presence; instead there is a gas oven inside which a luminous pilot light reminds the audience that this appliance is both heater and exterminator. Plath was arguably of Jewish descent and, as in history, her grasp on life is as tenuous as the arbitrary decision that underpinned the Holocaust. Sylvia Plath will die tonight: this will be the celebrated poet’s last night on earth.

[more]

See article in its original context here by Kathy Evans for The Sydney Morning Herald.

George Bernard Shaw defined patriotism as ”a conviction that a particular country is the best in the world, because you were born in it”, but musician Tania Bosak has always suspected there is much more to it than that.

Growing up in Australia, she believed she was the daughter of Yugoslav immigrants. All that changed on an ordinary day in 1991 when she came home to be told by her parents that she was, in fact, Croatian. The Yugoslav wars had broken out with bitter conflicts erupting between different ethnicities and feelings of nationalism were running high.
It came as a shock to Bosak, then 24, though she had some awareness of a secrecy that shrouded the family’s past.
Gradually stories began to emerge. Her musician father, she learnt, had defected from the former Yugoslavia to Belgium in 1958 along with two other men, while on tour with his folk band. Dispirited by the poverty and lack of opportunities under communist rule; dazzled by the freedom they witnessed in other countries, shortly before they were due to return, they went into hiding for three months.

[more]