Art Smitten - The Podcast

Molly, Jim and Rebi chat with Amy Boyd, manager of the Vivien Anderson Gallery, about the 2017 Women's Show, featuring 20 Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander female artists, including Maree Clarke. The exhibiton is running until March 25.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Rebi and Molly chat to Brunswick Music Festival programmer and performing musician Chelsea Wilson. The festival runs over 2 weeks from Sunday March 5-19.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Sandra Thibodeaux’s The Age of Bones is an ambitious, playfully political Indonesian-Australian coproduction now being hosted by La Mama in Carlton.  For a play that extols (and some might say preaches) the virtues of working together across national and natural borders, it’s very pleasing to see how the production itself has exemplified this cultural harmony at every stage of its development. It also comes to Melbourne as part of the Asia-Pacific Triennial of Performing Arts festival, which, for some of the younger audiences of La Mama, might be delivering them their first taste of surtitled theatre, except for maybe opera. This will certainly be a very gentle introduction for them. About half of Thibodeaux’s dialogue is performed in Indonesian, while the other half is performed, unsurprisingly, in English. It also makes magnificent use of puppetry and projections as a backdrop to this story of a 15-year-old boy, Ikan (Imam Setia Hagi) who is lost at sea. Lost because that is the last

The Homosexuals, Or Faggots, is a new stage production at the Malthouse written by local theatre maker Declan Green, of Sisters Grimm, and directed by Griffin Theatre Companies artistic director Lee Lewis. I’ve been a fan of everything I’ve seen of Declan Greens works, and The Homosexuals, Or Faggots is no exception. It is a contemporary farce, set in a luxury apartment in Sydney owned by a married gay couple Warren and Kim,  played by Simon Burke and Simon Corfield, Kim and Warren are both white cis gay man, Warren is a journalist and Kim is a university lecturer on gender. The events of the play take place over one night, during mardigra, Warren is setting up to do a photo shoot with a young male model Lucacz, played by Lincoln Younes when Kim unexceptedly arrives home from a conference after being ‘cyber bullied’ by a student Bae Bae played by Mama Alto, Bae Bae, publicly critisized Kim for using the term ‘biological gender’ during one of his lectures. Warrens frien

Smithers reviews actor turned writer Camilla Blunden's solo show All This Living. Click here to listen to our interview with Camilla.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Molly interviews Nella Themelios, one of the curators of High Risk Dressing / Critical Fashion, an exhibition that's on at RMIT Design Hub in Carlton until March 18.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Aquarius is a three-part feature film depicting the life and struggles of its central character Clara, an ageing music critic played by Brazilian actress and former Golden Globe nominee Sonia Braga. The film opens in 1980, where Clara lives with her family in Aquarius, an elegant nineteen forties apartment on the beachfront of Recife, a seaside town on Brazil’s east coast. During a family celebration, it is revealed Clara is a breast cancer survivor. Flash forward thirty-six years, Clara is a 65-year-old widow, addressed as Dona Clara, who faces disaster when developers threaten to tear down the old building and replace the Aquarius with a modern luxury condo.   As the last remaining tenant, Clara is faced with increasingly sizeable offers from the company headed by Diego, a young ambitious business graduate. Attached to the apartment’s sentiment and memories, Clara refuses to leave despite obvious pressure from her three children, who are keen to bolster their wealthy late father’

The one person show is an exhilarating performance for both player and audience. For one, the performer is completely alone on the stage and must accept the accompanying pressures and risks. There is nobody to pick up the slack if the performer forgets a line, bumbles a scene, loses energy or has an attack of self doubt. If the audience reacts poorly to a line, or to a scene, or an act, there is nobody else to share the mortification with.    And yet when the stage belongs to one person, that person claims the full attention of the audience. This is so valuable, as nuances of body language, lines, timing, which might be diffused by many bodies on the stage are made far more powerful. It also means that audience laughter, applause, and anticipatory silence is the sole victory of the performer. The audience can detect the high stakes, and is intoxicated with the adrenaline and energy on stage. This energy allows the performer  to retain control of their attention and emotion, independently, for a

The Love Witch is a 2016 release written and directed by Anna Biller. It follows the story of a young beautiful witch Elaine, played by Samantha Robinson, who uses spells and potions to make men fall in love with her and ultimately kill them. The movie itself is shot on 35 mm film and is visually a homage to technicolour 1960s and 70s sexploitation cinema. The use of this film gives the movie a soft visual quality and sort of decentralises it in time - this is emphasised by the 70s costuming but with modern cars and mobile phone technology.  The film opens on Elaine driving away from San Francisco with her narrating how she had to leave after the overdose and death of her first husband. This scene uses rear projection photography to film her driving from the bonnet of the car - much like in Hitchcock’s The Birds. This allusion to a period thriller and the blood red of her car, outfit and lipstick suggest that there in something sinister afoot. She is then pulled over by a police man - raising the t

Casey Affleck has been in the paper a lot recently for not the right reasons. Without getting involved or placing an opinion of the alleged allegations against Casey Affleck, I believe his career in Hollywood and acting should not be judged by his actions outside of acting. This is my own personal viewpoint, and shall be throughout my review of Manchester by the Sea.   Directed by Kenneth Lonergan, Machester follows the events from the perspective of Joe Chandler, a handyman from Quincy, Massachusetts, after he receives a call of word that his brother is having a heart attack. Arriving too late in Manchester, Joe is given the guardianship of his brothers son Patrick. The majority of the film is in the present day as Joe tries to figure out what to do with Patrick, whilst having a total disconnect to the town itself. For the rest of the film, flashbacks are used as exposition to explain why Joe is the way he is, and how he came to leave Manchester to live in Quincy in the first place. Without spoiling any

Gill and Molly discuss their thoughts, feelings and impressions of Aaron Posner's play Stupid Fucking Bird, before, after and during the intermission of its new production byLightning Jar Theatre, playing at the Brunswick Mechanics Institute until February 26. Click here to listen to our interview with director Peter BlackburnSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Andrew and Molly interview Adelaide Fisher, Ariel Cameron and past Art-Smitten host Will Dawson about their brand new community arts festival Happenstance, taking place along the Merri Creek in Coburg North on Saturday February 25.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Molly, Andrew and Jim chat to actor, producer and director Shane Savage about North of Eight's production of Mark O'Rowe's play Terminus, on at The Courthouse Hotel until March 11.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Andrew, Molly and Jim chat to theatremaker Nicole McKenzie about one-person show, Being a Good Person is Bloody Hard Work, now being performed at Hares & Hyenas in Fitzroy as part of the Sustainable Living Festival.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Christian interviews Rosie Jones, director of the documentary The Family which premiered last year at the Melbourne International Film Festival and is now in limited release. Click here to listen to Christian's reviewSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Molly and Andrew chat to Angela Conquet, the Artistic Director of Dancehouse, about their participation in the upcoming Dance Massive festival, which runs from March 14-26.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Andrew, Gill and Hamish chat to Gary Hillberg, one of the two artists behind the video art exhibition, Montages: The Full Cut, 1999-2015, now showing at the Shepparton Art Museum until May 19.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Family is Rosie Jones and Anna Grieve’s ominously titled documentary about a bizarre Australian cult that was finally discovered by police in the late 1980s. Consisting mostly of corrupt doctors and forcibly adopted children, its leader, Anne Hamilton-Byrne, proclaimed herself to be the female reincarnation of Jesus Christ. She had prophesised a coming apocalypse and was desperately trying to build a master race of bleach-blonde stolen children that could survive it. Anne’s sect had the numbers, the resources and the influence to secretly spirit away 28 children from teenage pregnancies to her remote property in Eilden, Victoria. Anne could tell any member of “The Family” who to marry, who to divorce, where to work, where to live, and when to drop everything and relocate to avoid detection. She told them they would be punished for eternity if they dared disobey her. Her “children” never questioned this, since being starved, beaten and bullied with the promise of eternal

Theatre review, An intimate look into the human cost of China’s decades long one child policy. Playing at the Malthouse A’beckett Theatre, Melbourne. A tale of two cities one family, and the reflective story of a billion, Director Wang Chong navigates the immense human consequence of the One child Policy, with an ambitious production, that overthrows many old stage techniques in favour of relevance to the 21st Century. The story in which our characters navigate is one that is highly symbolic, frequently changing between English and Mandarin and contorting time and space to convey states of mind and connection between the characters. For instance Kevin speaks to his mother Diane via the phone her face projected onto the backdrop, but she speaks to him directly through the tapestry which backdrops the set, to punctuate a particular point and thus breaks the illusion of distance, as though it were always an illusion. There is a rhythm and timing to this play that is wonderfully executed. The play beg

Lifetime Guarantee is a new theatre production written by Ross Mueller.    It follows the lives of a group of people living in perhaps Melbourne,in perhaps the present. The two principle charters are Charlie, a young architect and property developer, and Dan, an slightly older news reader. Dan has just left his wife and children to be with Charlie. Charlie has just hired a personal assistant Jodie, who is new to the city. Jodie's dad has tracked her down in this new city and Dans ex wife got picked up in a bar by Jodie's dad.   It's all very intricately woven, and cleverly written. Unfortunately, I found all the characters quite dull, and one dimensional , with exception to Jodie who actually goes through some character development.    There were some really beautiful moments, but over all I found the work to be a bit conservative, this may be because I went into the show viewing it as a piece of 'queer theatre' which it turns out it wasn't.    It seemed like it wasn't quite