Podcasts about red stitch theatre

UK director Emma Rice thinks the classic novel Wuthering Heights has many contemporary resonances, particularly around the origins of the character Heathcliff.  Rice turned the story into a rollicking play after successfully adapting other English folktales and films for the stage. She tells us about her career, which included briefly leading Shakespeare's Globe theatre before founding her own company Wise Children.Rwandan writer and director Dorcy Rugamba brings his moving theatre piece Hewa Rwanda: Letter to the absent to the Adelaide Festival. In it, he honours the family members he lost in the 1994 genocide, and the performance has a spiritual significance, accompanied by musician Majnun.Playwright Joanna Murray Smith joins actors Caroline Lee and Peter Houghton for a reading of a scene from her play Honour. Since it was first performed 30 years ago, Joanna says her perspective on the characters has changed. It's being staged at Red Stitch Theatre.

Theatre First Episode 361Stream podcast episodes on demand from www.biteszhq.com (mobile friendly).The Meeting – (Red Stitch Theatre, Melbourne, Australia)A secret imaginary rendezvous between two towering but polar opposite African American leaders plays out in The Meeting. The pair lived in the same era. Both were assassinated at age 39. One preached nonviolence, the other violent rebellion. I speak of Baptist minister and activist Martin Luther King Jr. And Muslim minister and activist Malcolm X. For more details visit https://www.redstitch.net/the-meeting-2022 For more Theatre reviews from Alex, visit https://www.bitesz.com/show/theatre-first/ Subscribe, rate and review Theatre First at all good podcast apps, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Pocket Casts, CastBox.FM, Podbean, Spreaker etc.If you're enjoying Theatre First podcast, please share and tell your friends. Your support would be appreciated...thank you.Theatre First RSS feed: https://www.spreaker.com/show/4988589/episodes/feed For more podcasts visit our HQ at https://biteszhq.com

Theatre First Episode 356Stream podcast episodes on demand from www.biteszhq.com (mobile friendly).Caught – (Red Stitch Theatre, Melbourne, Australia)After spending two years in a Chinese jail for organizing a protest that never happened a Chinese artist has given an exclusive interview to The New Yorker. The artist explains what led to his imprisonment and interrogation, which included beatings. He speaks about the abject conditions in appalling food, cockroaches are plenty, and not even a roof above his head.For more details visit: https://www.redstitch.net/caught-2022 For more Theatre reviews from Alex, visit https://www.bitesz.com/show/theatre-first/ Subscribe, rate and review Theatre First at all good podcast apps, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Pocket Casts, CastBox.FM, Podbean, Spreaker etc.If you're enjoying Theatre First podcast, please share and tell your friends. Your support would be appreciated...thank you.Theatre First RSS feed: https://www.spreaker.com/show/4988589/episodes/feed For more podcasts visit our HQ at https://biteszhq.com #podcast #theatre #stage #reviews #melbourne #australia #review #caughtreview#redstitchtheatre

Theatre First Episode 325Stream podcast episodes on demand from www.bitesz.com (mobile friendly).Heroes Of The Fourth Turning – Red Stitch Theatre, Melbourne, Australia Catholic guilt and US conservative politics are given a whack in the Australian premiere of Will Arbery's Heroes of the Fourth Turning.The play was a finalist for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.For more information visit https://www.bitesz.com/show/movies-first/p/blog/ For more Theatre reviews from Alex, visit https://www.bitesz.com/show/theatre-first/ Subscribe, rate and review Theatre First at all good podcast apps, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Pocket Casts, CastBox.FM, Podbean, Spreaker etc.If you're enjoying Theatre First podcast, please share and tell your friends. Your support would be appreciated...thank you.Theatre First RSS feed: https://www.spreaker.com/show/4988589/episodes/feed For more podcasts visit our HQ at https://bitesz.com #theatre #stage #reviews #melbourne #australia #podcast #theatrefirst

Theatre First Episode 313Stream podcast episodes on demand from www.bitesz.com (mobile friendly).Grace – Red Stitch Theatre, Melbourne, Australia Three women. Three generations. One long weekend in Copenhagen. Emma has finally ‘made it'. She is about to receive the Hans Christian Award – the ‘Little Nobel Prize' of children's fiction. With her mother, Beth, by her side to share in the moment, Emma is ready to celebrate the pinnacle of her career in a luxury Copenhagen hotel. But an unexpected visitor disrupts Emma's plans and threatens to upend her future. In a land of fairytales, three women discover and rediscover the power of stories – those we tell ourselves and those who make us who we are. For more information visit https://www.redstitch.net/grace-2022 For more Theatre reviews from Alex, visit https://www.bitesz.com/show/theatre-first/ Subscribe, rate and review Theatre First at all good podcast apps, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Pocket Casts, CastBox.FM, Podbean, Spreaker etc.If you're enjoying Theatre First podcast, please share and tell your friends. Your support would be appreciated...thank you.Theatre First RSS feed: https://www.spreaker.com/show/4988589/episodes/feed For more podcasts, visit our HQ at https://bitesz.com

Theatre First Episode 300Stream podcast episodes on demand from www.bitesz.com (mobile friendly).Iphegenia in Splott (Red Stitch)– Red Stitch Theatre, St Kilda, Melbourne, Australia Stumbling down Clifton Street at 11:30 a.m. drunk, Effie is the kind of girl you'd avoid eye contact with, silently passing judgement. We think we know her, but we don't know the half of it. Effie's life spirals through a mess of drink, drugs and drama every night, and a hangover worse than death the next day - till one night gives her the chance to be something more.This powerful new adaptation of the enduring Greek myth drives home the high price people pay for society's shortcomings.Winner of Best New Play at the UK Theatre Awards 2015.For more information visit: https://www.redstitch.net/iphigenia-in-splott-2021 Theatre First RSS feed: https://www.spreaker.com/show/4988589/episodes/feed For more Theatre reviews from Alex, visit https://www.bitesz.com/show/theatre-first/ Subscribe, rate and review Theatre First at all good podcatcher apps, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Pocket Casts, CastBox.FM, Podbean, ACast etc.If you're enjoying Theatre First podcast, please share and tell your friends. Your support would be appreciated...thank you.#theatre #stage #reviews #melbourne #australia #redstitchtheatre #redstitchactorstheatre

Theatre First Episode 287Stream podcast episodes on demand from www.bitesz.com (mobile friendly).The Cane – Red Stitch Theatre Melbourne, Australia Ravenhill's darkly humorous meditation on institutionalised violence examines how we judge the past, with its different values, by the standards of the present. Edward, the last bastion of an era that practised corporal punishment, is besieged by a mob of angry students and progressive values espoused by the new ‘Academy' system of schooling. His wife and possibly duplicitous daughter are engaged to save his legacy.For more information: https://www.redstitch.net/the-cane-2021 Theatre First RSS feed: https://rss.acast.com/theatre-first  Subscribe, rate and review Theatre First at all good podcatcher apps, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Pocket Casts, CastBox.FM, Podbean, ACast etc. If you're enjoying Theatre First podcast, please share and tell your friends. Your support would be appreciated...thank you. #theatre #stage #reviews #melbourne #australia  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Actor Jem Lai featuring in the dark comedy ‘Single Ladies’ presented by  Red Stitch Theatre in Windsor  Melbourne chats with the Sunday Arts Magazine team. Set in the sanitised grunge of Smith Street Collingwood, Single […] http://media.rawvoice.com/joy_sundayartsmagazine/p/joy.org.au/sundayarts/wp-content/uploads/sites/276/2020/03/Red-Stitch-Windsor-Single-Ladies.mp3 Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 5:51 — 2.0MB) Subscribe or Follow Us: Apple Podcasts | Android | Google Podcasts | Spotify | RSS The post Single Ladies – A Black Comedy with Heart appeared first on Sunday Arts Magazine.

7:00 Acknowledgement of country7: 05 Alice and I chat about Tell it like it is, an interactive forum on First Nations hip hop celebrating the First Nations people's voice and featuring acclaimed artists Munkimuk, Oetha, Neil Morris, Philly and special guests. Arts Centre Melbourne, Oct 31st 7:15 Peter Miller from Deakin University on ex-parliamentarians lobbying for multinational alcohol and gambling companies and Senator Rex Patrick's concerns about former Defence Minister Christopher Pyne becoming a consultant for EY to assist expansion of their defence business. 7:30 SlutWalk Melbourne: Alice chats with Mev Taylor about Slutoween, the fundraiser held on the weekend and Slutwalk coming up in November16th. 7:45 Denis Muller from the University of Melbourne discusses the history of media suppression in Australia and what we might expect from the two parliamentary inquiries into press freedom. 8:00 Daniel James, Yorta Yorta man, freelance writer and social justice advocate, joined us in the studio to talk about the dire situation of Aboriginal young peoples in remote communities on Newstart allowance drawing on research by Jon Altman and Francis Markham. Daniel won the Horne Prize in 2018 for his essay Ten More Days. 8:15 Julian Meyrick, director of Control currently playing at Red Stitch Actors Theatre, calls in to tell us about the play by Keziah Warner, developed through Red Stitch’s INK program. MusicArtist                         SongOetha                        CruisinDRMNG Now            Aboriginal LandByrdz                         Black Lives Matter

Stream podcast episodes on demand from www.bitesz.com (mobile friendly).Theatre First Episode 212Pomona (Red Stitch Theatre, Melbourne, Australia)There’s a secret place right inside the concrete heart of the city. Pomona. Nobody knows what’s in there, it’s like a place time forgot. But every day a delivery van arrives and departs. What’s going on in there? Do you really want to know? Or do you simply have no choice?Alistair McDowall’s dark and genre rich horror story is gripping from start to finish. A powerful modern thriller that asks what lies beneath the veneer of contemporary civilisation and what price must you pay to find it.For more information visit  https://bringitonthemusical.com.au/Theatre First RSS feed:   https://feeds.megaphone.fm/ivetheatrereviews  Subscribe, rate and review Theatre First at all good podcatcher apps, including Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts (formerly iTunes), Stitcher, Pocket Casts, CastBox.FM, Podbean, ACast etc.If you're enjoying Theatre First podcast, please share and tell your friends. Your support would be appreciated...thank you.#theatre #stage #reviews #melbourne #australia #pomona #redstitch  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Dance Nation (Red Stitch Theatre, Melbourne, Australia) (review)Dance Nation follows a troupe of pre-teens as they navigate the hyper-sexualised, ultra-competitive world of competitive dance. In this world of sequinned leotards and six-foot trophies, the dancers themselves – their needs, their hopes, their fears – matter least.Dance Nation is a comical and excruciating look at the moment when girls become aware of their own power – and of its limits. Performed by a cast of mature women, the dissonance between a 13-year-old’s dreams and what they will ultimately achieve is stark.Barron’s writing reminds us of the ferocity of the children we once were.For more information visit  https://redstitch.net/gallery/dance-nation/Theatre First RSS feed:   https://feeds.megaphone.fm/ivetheatrereviews Subscribe, rate and review Theatre First at all good podcatcher apps, including Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts (formerly iTunes), Stitcher, Pocket Casts, CastBox.FM, Podbean, ACast etc.If you're enjoying Theatre First podcast, please share and tell your friends. Your support would be appreciated...thank you.#theatre #stage #reviews #melbourne #australia #dancenation #redstitch  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Marcie and Tom talk to Mark Wilson, director of "Sweet Phoebe", a stageplay about a couple and a dog (with the titular name Phoebe). This adaptation, both funny and disturbing, is a study of relationships and a celebration of the 25th anniversary of the original play by acclaimed Australian playwright Michael Gow.   Currently playing at Red Stitch Theatre until March 3rd Originally aired February 10th. Segment produced by Tom Parry and Marcie Di Bartolomeo, edited by Marcie Di Bartolomeo. Photo courtesy of Work Art Life Studios and Black Photography

Stream podcast episodes on demand from www.bitesz.com (mobile friendly).Sweet Phoebe (Red Stitch, Melbourne Australia) (review)Helen and Frazer have worked it all out. Together. Supportive of one another, they’re taking all the steps towards great mutual success. So surely they can deal with dog-sitting Phoebe — even if they’d rather not.For more information visit  https://www.mtc.com.au/plays-and-tickets/season-2019/the-lady-in-the-van/   Theatre First RSS feed:   https://feeds.megaphone.fm/ivetheatrereviews Subscribe, rate and review Theatre First at all good podcatcher apps, including Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts (formerly iTunes), Stitcher, Pocket Casts, CastBox.FM, Podbean, ACast etc.If you're enjoying Theatre First podcast, please share and tell your friends. Your support would be appreciated...thank you.#theatre #stage #reviews #melbourne #australia Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This week, Richard is joined by Director Mark Wilson to chat about Sweet Phoebe on at Red Stitch Theatre, Artist Simon Terrill pops by to talk about CCP's newest exhibition: major photographic survey of Crowd Theory, and ACMI curator Fiona Trigg chats about The Clock installation at ACMI.

This week Richard chats to artist, taxidermist and jeweller Julia deVille about their solo exhibition Wholeness and the Implicate Order,Alicia Sometimesdigresses about their fascination with science with their show Particle/Wave on at Melbourne International Arts Festival; Monash University student creator Michelle Robertson discusses accessibility with FIGMENT at Monash Performing Arts Centre,Rawcus Artistic Director Kate Sulan talks about the MIAF show Song for a Weary Throat;Stephen Nicolazzo wraps things up with Suddenly Last Summer, displayed by Red Stitch Theatre.

Stream podcast episodes on demand from www.bitesz.com (mobile friendly).Lovesong  (Red Stitch Theatre, Melbourne)A love affair told over many years. As Maggie and Billy prepare for a critical week together, their former selves re-emerge.From youthful exuberance to the complexities and loyalties of age, we follow Margaret and William throughout the years as they move towards a shared future and, ultimately, the solitude that follows.Lovesong offers a haunting and fragile story about love, memory and growing older. Written by multi-award-winning playwright Abi Morgan (Splendour), this delicate, poetic and moving production will feature an original live cello score.For more details, visit:  https://redstitch.net/gallery/lovesong/  Theatre First RSS feed:   https://audioboom.com/channels/4839371.rssSubscribe, rate and review Theatre First at all good podcatcher apps, including Apple Podcasts (formerly iTunes), Stitcher, Pocket Casts, audioBoom, CastBox.FM, Podbean etc.If you're enjoying Theatre First podcast, please share and tell your friends. Your support would be appreciated...thank you.#theatre #stage #reviews #melbourne #australia Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Richard sits in with Blak-Queer Futurism (at Midsumma) curator Alec Read,White Face Crew Co-Founder and cast member Jarod Rawiri for La Vie Dans Une Marionette (Life In A Puppet) at the Arts Centre Melbourne, and Ella Caldwell pops in to chat all things Red Stitch Theatre for their 2018 program.

As Richard's final podcast for the year - Daniel Santangeli pops in for the Midsumma review; Kate Champion spiruks the NICA students exhibit Please hold; Eva Seymour and Morgan Rose chat about Red Stitch Theatre's newest work Desert, and Fleur Kilpatrick chats to Richard on the phone about the year's highlights from Shoot the Messenger.

This week's episode of Uncommon Sense sees our host Amy Mullins conduct four very interesting interviews on the subjects of arts, politics and academia. Ben Eltham comes in for his usual segment on federal politics. Author and academic Dr Cordelia Fine chats with Amy about her new book Testosterone Rex: Unmaking The Myths of Our Gendered Minds. Director Aidan Fennessy and actor Peter Houghton of Red Stitch Theatre discuss their play about political corruption, The Ways Things Work. John Pilger has an in depth discussion with Amy about his new documentary The Coming War On China.

Hosts, Jim and Christian, interview actor Francis Greenslade, best known for his televisions roles opposite Shaun Micallef in Mad as Hell and Denise Scott in Winners and Losers. Greenslade is also a seasoned stage actor and speaks about his upcoming role in Red Stitch Theatre's production of You Got Older. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hosts, Jim and Christian, interview actor Francis Greenslade, best known for his televisions roles opposite Shaun Micallef in Mad as Hell and Denise Scott in Winners and Losers. Greenslade is also a seasoned stage actor and speaks about his upcoming role in Red Stitch Theatre's production of You Got Older. 

Red Stitch continues their environmentalist theme for the season in Extinction, written by the powerhouse creative talent Hannie Rayson and directed by the critically acclaimed Nadia Tass. On the International Union for Conservation of Nature and natural resources red list (IUCN), Australia is classed as having 35 of its discovered species extinct. The fraught task of resolving this issue, beneath the ever present spectre of national and international environmental strife, is the primary concern of the performance. Harry Jewel, played by Colin Lane, is a mining magnate turned mild environmental altruist after hitting and killing an endangered quoll in his four wheel drive. He is the political foil for Andy Dixon-Brown, played by Brett Cousins, a practical yet idealistic man and practising veterinarian who holds the natural world sacrosanct, and is suffering from a terminal illness akin to Parkinson's. Dix, played by Natasha Herbert, is the director of the CAPE institute and Andy's 50 year old sister. She leans pragmatically towards Harry Jewell's camp, and is passionate about establishing an objective, statistics based approach to the rescue of endangered species - essentially, that if the species numbers drop below 5000, then they're not worth the expense, financially and to the detriment of other species who might still have a chance.  Piper, played by Ngaire Dawn Fair, a  conservation biologist, is her opposite number, the sexy young idealist, who firmly and energetically believes everything can be saved, from her cancerous 12 year old dog Beast to the terminally endangered tiger quoll. Whether or not the fact of Australian eco-apocalypse is high on your list of immediate concerns, this play is going to put your value system under pressure. In the hour and a half, you will be forced to take a stance somewhere on the slippery, uneven ground of environmental politics, and the moral nuances of the current Australian environmental crisis. The cast tackle many obstacles in their struggle to come to terms with how best to address the situation of a changing country, a changing world, which seems to be gathering momentum on its plummet toward an environmental apocalypse. Yet this is play is flawed. I do not believe that it conquered the classic perils of the polemic political play, awkwardly failing to be compelling, engaging and subtle as it is so keenly self aware of its own highly political agenda. It felt as if the dramatic relationships between the four characters had been loosely cobbled together to forge a thin veil for what is really just a tedious outlining of all the different arguments currently dominating the environmental debate.  The characters attempted to convince us of their humanity - mainly via loose plotlines focusing on the shifting sexual (read 'human') dynamics between the group - before switching comfortably back into parroting some lukewarm political sentiments that, delivered with no lack of passion or pathos from the actors. For me, this marriage of the general arguments surrounding the issue of environmentalism and the earnest, chest-beating noble-oratory aphoristic style of the dialogue did not make compelling theatre. Which is unfortunate, as the cast is not short of talent. Colin Lane showed some classic comedic timing, of which there really should have been more - there are plenty of jokes scattered around the play, and some good, funny, horribly awkward situations. Although the humour of the play is poorly executed, but it is still there, and I could appreciate what was trying to be achieved. However for some reason there seems to be a total lack of chemistry between them - the relationships that are put at stake in the performance never matter to the audience, because they are never made to matter. Their ostensibly significant motivations of family or love are just thrown in by name and barebones behavioural reference, without ever proving to the audience that these relationships are valuable. Furthermore, the set is fraught with a multimedia program that starts as an interesting novelty and is halfway abandoned by the mid section, that became more distraction than enhancement. I was disappointed, as the beginning of the play uses music, sound effects and film in a way I found highly moving - the script says it all: 'Introduce the sound of the quoll’s heartbeat softly. This underscores the action to the end of the scene'. There was a profound silence in the audience as the heartbeat that had been present for the last ten minutes, the heartbeat we had all wanted to continue, halted as the lethal injection was given to the badly wounded quoll. The final scene of the play, where Piper finally confronts Andy, I found a confusing mess, both in clichéd language and melodramatic behaviour, to a degree worthy of The Bold and the Beautiful, not helped by a soppy pop-score playing over the projection of a quoll scurrying around in the bush, thus restoring balance and hope to the universe. This play attempts to do so much and in my opinion, therein lies it's problem. There is no steady theme, there is no likeable character. Everyone is flawed and nobody is redeemed. The penultimate scene of the play had audience members around me sighing, or even laughing, at a scene not meant to be funny, it was so unconvincing. And frankly, I don't know exactly where to lay the blame, where everything went so wrong. Was it the writer delivering clichéd dialogue, normative, predictable plotlines and a thematic fiasco? Did the director micromanage the actors into robots? Have the actors failed the script? Either way - decide for yourself.  Extinction is showing at the Arts Centre every day until the 13th of August. Head over to artscentremelbourne.com.au for more information and bookings. Written by Jim Thomas

Red Stitch continues their environmentalist theme for the season in Extinction, written by the powerhouse creative talent Hannie Rayson and directed by the critically acclaimed Nadia Tass. On the International Union for Conservation of Nature and natural resources red list (IUCN), Australia is classed as having 35 of its discovered species extinct. The fraught task of resolving this issue, beneath the ever present spectre of national and international environmental strife, is the primary concern of the performance. Harry Jewel, played by Colin Lane, is a mining magnate turned mild environmental altruist after hitting and killing an endangered quoll in his four wheel drive. He is the political foil for Andy Dixon-Brown, played by Brett Cousins, a practical yet idealistic man and practising veterinarian who holds the natural world sacrosanct, and is suffering from a terminal illness akin to Parkinson's. Dix, played by Natasha Herbert, is the director of the CAPE institute and Andy's 50 year old sister. She leans pragmatically towards Harry Jewell's camp, and is passionate about establishing an objective, statistics based approach to the rescue of endangered species - essentially, that if the species numbers drop below 5000, then they're not worth the expense, financially and to the detriment of other species who might still have a chance. Piper, played by Ngaire Dawn Fair, a conservation biologist, is her opposite number, the sexy young idealist, who firmly and energetically believes everything can be saved, from her cancerous 12 year old dog Beast to the terminally endangered tiger quoll. Whether or not the fact of Australian eco-apocalypse is high on your list of immediate concerns, this play is going to put your value system under pressure. In the hour and a half, you will be forced to take a stance somewhere on the slippery, uneven ground of environmental politics, and the moral nuances of the current Australian environmental crisis. The cast tackle many obstacles in their struggle to come to terms with how best to address the situation of a changing country, a changing world, which seems to be gathering momentum on its plummet toward an environmental apocalypse. Yet this is play is flawed. I do not believe that it conquered the classic perils of the polemic political play, awkwardly failing to be compelling, engaging and subtle as it is so keenly self aware of its own highly political agenda. It felt as if the dramatic relationships between the four characters had been loosely cobbled together to forge a thin veil for what is really just a tedious outlining of all the different arguments currently dominating the environmental debate. The characters attempted to convince us of their humanity - mainly via loose plotlines focusing on the shifting sexual (read 'human') dynamics between the group - before switching comfortably back into parroting some lukewarm political sentiments that, delivered with no lack of passion or pathos from the actors. For me, this marriage of the general arguments surrounding the issue of environmentalism and the earnest, chest-beating noble-oratory aphoristic style of the dialogue did not make compelling theatre. Which is unfortunate, as the cast is not short of talent. Colin Lane showed some classic comedic timing, of which there really should have been more - there are plenty of jokes scattered around the play, and some good, funny, horribly awkward situations. Although the humour of the play is poorly executed, but it is still there, and I could appreciate what was trying to be achieved. However for some reason there seems to be a total lack of chemistry between them - the relationships that are put at stake in the performance never matter to the audience, because they are never made to matter. Their ostensibly significant motivations of family or love are just thrown in by name and barebones behavioural reference, without ever proving to the audience that these relationships are valuable. Furthermore, the set is fraught with a multimedia program that starts as an interesting novelty and is halfway abandoned by the mid section, that became more distraction than enhancement. I was disappointed, as the beginning of the play uses music, sound effects and film in a way I found highly moving - the script says it all: 'Introduce the sound of the quoll’s heartbeat softly. This underscores the action to the end of the scene'. There was a profound silence in the audience as the heartbeat that had been present for the last ten minutes, the heartbeat we had all wanted to continue, halted as the lethal injection was given to the badly wounded quoll. The final scene of the play, where Piper finally confronts Andy, I found a confusing mess, both in clichéd language and melodramatic behaviour, to a degree worthy of The Bold and the Beautiful, not helped by a soppy pop-score playing over the projection of a quoll scurrying around in the bush, thus restoring balance and hope to the universe. This play attempts to do so much and in my opinion, therein lies it's problem. There is no steady theme, there is no likeable character. Everyone is flawed and nobody is redeemed. The penultimate scene of the play had audience members around me sighing, or even laughing, at a scene not meant to be funny, it was so unconvincing. And frankly, I don't know exactly where to lay the blame, where everything went so wrong. Was it the writer delivering clichéd dialogue, normative, predictable plotlines and a thematic fiasco? Did the director micromanage the actors into robots? Have the actors failed the script? Either way - decide for yourself. Extinction is showing at the Arts Centre every day until the 13th of August. Head over to artscentremelbourne.com.au for more information and bookings. Written by Jim ThomasSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hosts Beth and Adalya are joined in the studio by Rory Kelly, actor in Red Stitch Theatre's production of Trevor. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hosts Beth and Adalya are joined in the studio by Rory Kelly, actor in Red Stitch Theatre's production of Trevor. 

The Honey Bees is a stage play written by veteran playwright Caleb Lewis and directed by Ella Caldwell, starring Eva Seymour, Christopher Brown, Rebecca Bower, Mara (Kat-Marek) Kaczmarek and Katerina Kotsonis. It is now showing at Red Stitch Theatre on Chapel Street in St Kilda's East, and is running until the 16th of July. Caleb Lewis' gradually and masterfully details his characters in a dexterous juggling of intersecting plotlines and overlapping relationships. His writing is enhanced by the strong direction of Caldwell, who proves to be a master of the long pause, drawing silences between characters out to a length just long enough to be painful and not tedious, creating an atmosphere of tension from the first interactions of the play. At the centre of the drama is Joan, a bitter yet charming Polish immigrant, both bee-keeper and now elderly mother, who rules her long standing (yet struggling) apiary with an iron will. Daryl is her estranged, middle aged son, vulnerable and ambitious, living in his dead fathers shadow. His younger sister, Clover, remains inert in a life resigned to helping her mother with the apiary in placeof her own ambitions as an artist. Kerry, Joan's employee and Clover's lover, is a gruff, tough farmhand who dreams of leaving the apiary - a place she perceives full of broken dreams and stagnant lives - and eloping for the city with Clover. And finally, there is the mysterious Melissa, a teenager from Sydney who enters explosively into this already strained dynamic. She proves to be the moody and abused catalyst for change and highly charged drama. A void at the heart of every character is left by the long dead but seemingly omnipresent spectre of Harry, Joan's husband, and the father of Daryl and Clover, who's actions in life prove to be the impetus for much of the desperate love and hate in the play Desperate is the key word to unlocking much at the heart of the performance, and is highlighted in a quote from Clover: Quote: ' A bee might fly over 800km in their life, and only ever produce less than a teaspoonful of Honey' End quote To a honey bee, this might be a fine achievement, but to a human audience, this fact sounds unbearably pitiable. So much hard work produces such a meagre teaspoon of positive creation. And indeed, like the struggling honeybee, all the characters have their own vast, lifelong journeys, riddled with resentment, abuse, sacrifice and lies, for such minuscule moments of sweet honey and happiness. The play seems to stress that there is only a teaspoonful of sweetness to life at times, a point emphasised in a devastating fashion by the countless tragedies realised throughout the performance, which ultimately bares the ugly truths that lurk hidden within the infinitely subtle and complex relationships that human beings invariably encounter. The set design is economic and well utilised, with strong unity between lighting and audio creating powerful atmospheres that were compelling and engaging. Furthermore, there are strong performances by the cast all round, but the standout performance is by Marta Kaczmarek as Joan - a powerful tour de force worthy of the award winning actress. You can get tickets to a performance of The Honey Bees at redstitch.net/honeybees. Once again, it is running until the 16th of July. Review written by Jim Thomas Photo credit: Jodie Hutchinson. Featuring: Eva Seymour, Marta Kaczmarek and Christopher BrownSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Honey Bees is a stage play written by veteran playwright Caleb Lewis and directed by Ella Caldwell, starring Eva Seymour, Christopher Brown, Rebecca Bower, Mara (Kat-Marek) Kaczmarek and Katerina Kotsonis. It is now showing at Red Stitch Theatre on Chapel Street in St Kilda's East, and is running until the 16th of July. Caleb Lewis' gradually and masterfully details his characters in a dexterous juggling of intersecting plotlines and overlapping relationships. His writing is enhanced by the strong direction of Caldwell, who proves to be a master of the long pause, drawing silences between characters out to a length just long enough to be painful and not tedious, creating an atmosphere of tension from the first interactions of the play. At the centre of the drama is Joan, a bitter yet charming Polish immigrant, both bee-keeper and now elderly mother, who rules her long standing (yet struggling) apiary with an iron will. Daryl is her estranged, middle aged son, vulnerable and ambitious, living in his dead fathers shadow. His younger sister, Clover, remains inert in a life resigned to helping her mother with the apiary in placeof her own ambitions as an artist. Kerry, Joan's employee and Clover's lover, is a gruff, tough farmhand who dreams of leaving the apiary - a place she perceives full of broken dreams and stagnant lives - and eloping for the city with Clover. And finally, there is the mysterious Melissa, a teenager from Sydney who enters explosively into this already strained dynamic. She proves to be the moody and abused catalyst for change and highly charged drama. A void at the heart of every character is left by the long dead but seemingly omnipresent spectre of Harry, Joan's husband, and the father of Daryl and Clover, who's actions in life prove to be the impetus for much of the desperate love and hate in the play Desperate is the key word to unlocking much at the heart of the performance, and is highlighted in a quote from Clover: Quote: ' A bee might fly over 800km in their life, and only ever produce less than a teaspoonful of Honey' End quote To a honey bee, this might be a fine achievement, but to a human audience, this fact sounds unbearably pitiable. So much hard work produces such a meagre teaspoon of positive creation. And indeed, like the struggling honeybee, all the characters have their own vast, lifelong journeys, riddled with resentment, abuse, sacrifice and lies, for such minuscule moments of sweet honey and happiness. The play seems to stress that there is only a teaspoonful of sweetness to life at times, a point emphasised in a devastating fashion by the countless tragedies realised throughout the performance, which ultimately bares the ugly truths that lurk hidden within the infinitely subtle and complex relationships that human beings invariably encounter. The set design is economic and well utilised, with strong unity between lighting and audio creating powerful atmospheres that were compelling and engaging. Furthermore, there are strong performances by the cast all round, but the standout performance is by Marta Kaczmarek as Joan - a powerful tour de force worthy of the award winning actress. You can get tickets to a performance of The Honey Bees at redstitch.net/honeybees. Once again, it is running until the 16th of July. Review written by Jim Thomas Photo credit: Jodie Hutchinson. Featuring: Eva Seymour, Marta Kaczmarek and Christopher Brown

Playing Roberta Williams, a journey through Red Stitch Theatre & being a mum. What an interview to mark episode 20 of Coming Up Next, as one of the top actors in the country drops into the chat cave, and we get deep in the silly.

Playing Roberta Williams, a journey through Red Stitch Theatre & being a mum. What an interview to mark episode 20 of Coming Up Next, as one of the top actors in the country drops into the chat cave, and we get deep in the silly.