Art Smitten - The Podcast

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

Andrew, Hamish and Gill chat to Padraic Fisher, director of the National Wool Museum in Geelong (the city he left New York for!) about the Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibiton, on loan from the Natural History Museum in London, which they will be hosting until May 14.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Finley chats to actor Charles Purcell from the cast of Theatre Works' production of Ross Mueller's play, Lifetime Guarantee, about the politics of putting on a conservative work that features queer characters. Click here to listen to Finley's review of the show.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Andrew, Gill and Hamish chat to folk rock musician William Crighton about his first time performing performing on a paddle steamer and returning to the place of his childhood, the Murray River, for the Riverboats Music Festival in Echuca-Moama.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Andrew, Hamish and Gill talk to 18-year-old violinist Lily Hidgson-Spence, Stonnington Symphony Orchestra's Emerging Artist of the Year, about her upcoming performance in The Classics series in Malvern gardens at 7pm, Saturday February 25.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Andrew, Gillian and Hamish chat to actor Alice Qin about her Australian theatrical debut, Little Emperors, on at The Malthouse until February 26. Click here for Matthew Toohey's reviewSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hamish, Gillian and Smithers chat to actor, writer and director Camilla Blunden about her new solo show All This Living, on at The Butterfly Club from February 22 to 26. Click here to listen to Smithers' review.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Gill chats to sculptor and ceramic artist Penny Byrne about Brutal, her politically charged exhibition that's on at the Linden New Art Gallery in St Kilda until March 8.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Smithers reviews Simon J Green's horror short film The Darkness.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Privatisation of Ward 9B follows a desperate psychiatrist, Doctor Craven (played by David McCrae) in his efforts to supplement diminishing public funding by dragging his patients into the merciless world of economic enterprise. Written in 1991 at a time when the Hawke-Keating government was privatising public services such as airports, airlines, telecommunications and banks, Bill Marshall’s social message still rings clear - we bring an emphasis on profit making and cost cutting into the provision of public services at the peril of those most vulnerable in society. As I was born in the year it was written, I’ve only ever known these services to be private, and wonder if the setting had a more meaningful impact on the audience’s members from an older generation. Walking into the intimate black box theatre at La Mama, a nurse seated in the corner of the stage judged our every movements. It was as if we had entered a psychiatric ward as patients instead of a theatre as audience members, for

Faith is a difficult concept to explain to non-believers. I was never raised religiously, or even with any sort of a belief in a god. As such, I generally struggle to connect to stories of faith and to characters who so strongly experience faith, and it takes something special to make me truly understand what these people are going through. But Martin Scorsese, with his latest film Silence, has managed to do just that. Himself a lapsed Catholic, he may just be in the best position to convey the intricacies of faith. Silence is the story of two Portuguese Christian missionaries in Japan in the 17th century, a time when Christianity was forbidden and severely persecuted. It’s based on a novel of the same name by Shusaku Endo, a Japanese Christian author, which in turn is based on a real set of historical events. The two missionaries, Rodrigues and Garupe (Andrew Garfield and Adam Driver), travel to Japan in pursuit of another priest by the name of Ferreira (Liam Neeson) who had gone to Japan many years ea

The only time I ever went to the circus was easily ten years ago, somewhere in Melbourne where I remember only feeling a little bad for the animals on display there. My second outing to the circus being this, I must say, that no animals were harmed in Cirque du Soleil’s Kooza; apart from if you count the man dressed as a dog who urinated on an audience member at one stage. I go into Kooza having a background in Theatre myself, both in acting, design and technologies such as lighting and sound. What Kooza does brilliantly isn’t just a circus act, but also a brilliantly staged and designed theatre act, which encompasses live music and a story which doesn’t need to told, instead, shown. The story of Kooza itself is about a boy in rags, who has a kite which closely resembles what he wears; grey, lifeless, and sagging. As he fails to send it high into the sky, a package is delivered to him, a jack in a box which comes alive, and transforms the world the boy resides in. The first act of the play i

Hamish and Christian chat to New York triple threat Lisa Ramey from the cast of Cirque du Soleil: Kooza, performing in Melbourne until March 26. Click here to listen to Hamish's reviewSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hamish, Gill and Smithers chat to Peter Blackburn about what it's like to direct a re-imagining of a classic Chekhov play, in this case Stupid F**king Bird, Aaron Posner's 'remix' of The Seagull, on at Metanoia Theatre until February 26.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Theatre has been my thing for a few years now, easily being my best subject in high school alongside Media. Thus, I’ve been a lot of theatre, both good, bad, amateur and professional, yet I’ve never seen a La Mama production until now. Todd in Venice is a Midsumma Festival show on display at La Mama from February 1st-5th. Written by Sofia Chapman, a musician and writer who has previously had plays on at La Mama, Todd in Venice details Anges Kermode and Michael Bark’s travels in Italy, where they come across the peculiar Todd Ash. Chapman’s story can be best described as a look into human emotion, sexuality, discovery and lust or love. Kate Hosking, Alex Beyer and Joseph Lai appear as the main cast, with Terry Cole and James Adler supporting as Guido and Doge of Venice respectively. Each character within the play are very separate to each other, meaning very different personalities clash on stage. Anges is a very direct woman, however consistently changes her mind and decisions, worrying about money one secon

Hamish, Gillian and Smithers chat to actor Peter Houghton about his latest role (or rather, roles) in the Victorian premier of Aidan Fennessey's The Way Things Work, on at Red Stitch Actor's Theatre until March 5.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Christian chats to Kent Morris, CEO of the Torch Project about Confined 8, an exhibiton on at The Gallery in St Kilda Town Hall that features 140 artworks by 130 Indigenous artists in or released from Victoria prisons.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Molly talks to Arts House Artistic Director Angharad Wynne-Jones about their participation in the 2017 Asia-Pacific Triennial of Performing Arts with Kok Bunny by Luke George and Daniel Kok, Times Journey Through A Room by chelfitsch and Kagerou - Study of Translating Performance by the Hamanaka Company.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.