A few months ago I met Jana Perkovic and after perhaps an hour of being totally excited by each other’s minds, she asked if I’d like to do a podcast with her. Now podcasts are basically my favourite thing. I love the way they catch us in our cars or bedrooms or at the gym and just open our minds to the world outside. I feel like I’ve been waiting years for someone to ask me exactly what Jana asked and I’m so happy that it was her who came along, as I have so much respect and love for the work she does. We were quickly joined by our producer, Kieran Ruffles and we got to work on Audio Stage.
Audio Stage is about acknowledging the vast intellectual wealth we have here in our arts community. We wanted to give our country’s best performance makers, arts commentators and academics a chance to speak about the issues that define our industry and whats more, we wanted them to do it long form. Too often when artists speak in public, they must operate in show-selling soundbites. This is about trying to counter this and offering up to you delicious, expansive conversations from amazing minds. Basically, if you enjoy this blog or Jana’s Guerrilla Semiotics, we think you will probably enjoy this loving, passionate, chatty and unashamedly intellectual series.
Our first season explores the topic of performance history and documentation. Live performance is defined by its live-ness; by its perpetual present. So what happens to our art when that present is past? Do we embrace its intangible mortality and let it die? In doing so, we would be sentencing generations of future theatre-makers to operate (in the words of Julian Meyrick) “as if theatre was a terra nullius” and taking from them a wealth of wisdom and creativity.
In the first episode, our guest is the extraordinary Robert Reid, playwright, director, one third of Pop-Up Playground’s key creative team, a PhD candidate in theatre history and a great populariser of performative play in Australia.
Discussed in this episode:
What we know of our history?, melodrama, vaginal knitting, the shadow cast by The Summer of the Seventeenth Doll, stage directions: yes or no?, scripts as historical documents, improbable character descriptions, and the potential historical value of internet comments.
New episodes will be released every 2 weeks, and we have made quite an effort to make them as accessible as possible, on a variety of platforms. Stay tuned and enjoy!
Listen to the episode:
You can subscribe to Audio Stage in iTunes or Player FM, or listen on the official website.
Thanks to Sarah Walker for the use of her photo. Graphic design by Jana.
School For Birds 