Opinion | Australian Arts Review

Staging power: David Williamson’s portrait of Citizen Murdoch

December 18 - Opinion, Theatre

The Melbourne Theatre Company’s (MTC) production of David Williamson’s 2013 play Rupert has finally made it to Sydney, via Melbourne and Washington, in late 2014. Along the way, the MTC has acquired the services of Ameri...

Seams, dreams: the hands behind classic Hollywood costumes

December 15 - Exhibitions, Opinion

Few, if any, contemporary costume designers are household names. Some occasionally capture the zeitgeist and break through from big (or small) screen to mainstream fashion – think Catherine Martin and her recent ‘G...

PM’s Literary Awards: how reading opens us to a world of pain

December 11 - Books, Opinion

On Monday night, the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards were announced with a tie in the fiction category between A World of Other People by Steven Carroll and the Booker Prize and Queensland Literary Award winner, The Nar...

ABC feels pain of broken promise: prepare for cut-price broadcasting

November 20 - Latest News, Opinion

Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull has announced a further cut to Australia’s public broadcasters. The ABC’s budget will be slashed around 4.6% per year, or A$254 million in total, over the next five years. SBS wil...

Heritage performing arts and the case for funding

November 10 - Opinion

Last month it was reported that the 161-year-old Royal Melbourne Philharmonic (RMP) choir and orchestra has lost its annual grant from the Melbourne City Council and may also lose State Government support for its tenancy...

Paul Keating’s Creative Nation: a policy document that changed us

October 30 - Opinion

Today marks 20 years since the publication of Creative Nation. An ambitious and expansive project by Paul Keating’s Labor Government, it was the first Commonwealth cultural policy document in Australia’s history. Its ini...

Gough Whitlam, young people and public support for the arts

October 21 - Latest News, Opinion

Gough Whitlam’s legacy in the arts first hit me as a little indie-music nerd in the 1990s. The inner-city Sydney band The Whitlams made a funny little music video about their namesake, a bloke who was part fairy-tale, pa...

Circus training instead of school sports? Now there’s an idea

October 20 - Circus, Opinion, Performance

What if social policy-makers knew how beneficial circuses were to the community? This was the provocation pitched to circus producers, trainers, performers and academics who met in the Melba Spiegeltent at the Circus Oz ...