MAN ABOUT TOWN

In an Age article today entitled 'Arts festival nearer to choosing new head' , increasingly out-of-touch arts scribe Robin Usher once again displays just his reactionary outlook with the following comments in a piece about the process of appointing the next MIAF Artistic Director: "It is understood the short list also includes Adelaide Festival's director, Brett Sheehy, who appears a more obvious choice [than Mark Yeoman]. Not only does he have vastly more experience of Australian conditions — he was director of the Sydney Festival before moving to Adelaide — but also he is more likely to return the Melbourne Festival to its traditional programming mix." Now, forgive me if I fail to grasp your logic here, Robin - but why should a "traditional" approach to programming - which in your eyes includes opera and symphony orchestras, as you don't hesitate to suggest - make Sheehy the 'obvious choice' to take over from Kristy Edmunds? Obvious in your...

My comments on the MTC's production of The Pillowman have generated a range of comments, one of which I'll reproduce here, as it generated what was going to be a short response, but which has grown to a length that I think is deserving of an entirely new post. Anonymous said... Valid comments Richard but a little perturbed that you can publicly review a show after only seeing half of it. If you paid for the ticket then I suppose, fair enough but if you were there on a freebie, I'd be inclined to be a little more careful in the way you attack it regardless of where your comments are posted. 2/6/07 14:34 Hello Anonymous 2/6/07, and thank you for helping spark not only a response to your comment, but helping me articulate what this blog is about, and why I do what I do. To whit: Aside from the fact that I saw two-thirds of the production in question, not half, which I feel is more than enough to inform my intellectual and emotional response to th...

It's not often, as you're huddled in an armchair on a Saturday morning, leafing through The Age and waiting for your hangover to abate to a more manageable level that will actually allow cognitive thought and beyond-basic motor functions, that your own name unexpectedly leaps off the page you're attempting to read and sears itself into your retinae. Ten years ago, essayist and author Mark Davis published his remarkable, timely and well-argued polemic Gangland ; an exhaustively detailed critique of the poisonously pervaisive influence of certain coiteries of commentators over Australia's arts and media. Not surprisingly, said cultural gatekeepers closed ranks after the book's publication and in a classic example of shooting the messenger, launched a series of venomous attacks upon Davis and Gangland in order to discredit his hypothesis that "an older generation of cultural apparatchiks, used to being at the centre and having a strong media presence, more or les...