EMAIL FROM KERRIE LEVINSON

21st of Decemeber, 2020

Kerrie Levinson is a Grandmother for Refugees who was in the group of 4 of us who went down to Melbourne for the first-ever Grandmothers Against the Detention of Refugee Children demo and meeting. She is only partially sighted but charges around the city like there's no tomorrow. She lives at Bundeena and coming up by ferry and train has never stopped her attending the GFR regular vigils at the Queen Victoria Building and other demonstrations for refugees all over Sydney.

Kerrie wrote to ask me if I could give her some poems that would be suitable to read at her family concert on Christmas Eve with grandchildren in attendance aged between 6 and 14.

#CoronaBC – MY KITCHEN (TABLE SURGERY) RULES

17th of June, 2020

“Most of us are just trying to get through the day without getting fired, fat or offending anyone.” -The Tangent Queen

I try to shop locally and my favourite Australian Nobel Laureate immunologist and head of the Doherty Institute, Professor Peter Doherty is my scientist of choice. He has a laconic Australian sense of humour and a nice line in self-deprecating Luddite jokes.

#CoronaBC – DESISTING WITH DEEPAK

10th of june, 2020

‘Open letter to Stephanie Dowrick’ first performed at Madam Fling Flong in Newtown for the 2010 Sydney Fringe by Cathy Bray in a show on Australian ambivalence towards America called Mad Woman’s Breakfast. Eat my Bush! First published in MAD WOMAN’S BREAKFAST in 2011 by Picaro Press.

#CoronaBC – Isolation, Quarantine and Home Schooling by Cathy Bray

26th of May, 2020

Okay I admit it, my creative output during the whole isolation debacle has consisted entirely of long Tweets and Facebook replies and laughing at my own jokes – so no changes there!

However in my own pathetic defence, I keep thinking of predictive stuff that I thought of years ago, so I will bore you now with those.

My pre-Coronian observations…

Tangent Queen on Ronald Searle

10th of March, 2018

So what do Brexit, the Burma Railway, refugees, political satire, St. Trinians and Bart Simpson have in common? The answer: Ronald Searle.

HOW TO RULE THE WORLD

This perfect political satire set in the ‘Canberra bubble’ is a cup flowing over with painful exposes of the hypocrisy of all those sucked into the vortex of political expediency. The first few acts are a joy to watch as we swim easily back and forwards, picking up the nuances thrown over the actors’ shoulders like bait from a fishing trawler.

SPRING AWAKENING

Okay I am going to go out on a limb here and use the word ‘tender’ in a theatre review.

The casting of Spring Awakening has been done so carefully by Director Mitchell Butel and his ATYP team that we are given nothing but ‘real’ teenagers (no ‘fierce’ Mean Girls here). I was relieved to find that the music and the choreography at no time distract us from the drama and never relieve the intensity of the teenagers’ lives…

THE FATHER

You’d think I’d start with the perfection of John Bell’s crumbling, bruised, hallucinating rendition of the father and Anita Hegh’s desperation as his devoted, surviving daughter.  But my focus has to be on the power and accuracy of the script and the way the lighting and sound design integrate the dark spaces of memory loss so seamlessly via the literal blackouts between scenes. 

an afternoon with Julian Burnside, Prof. Pat McGorry & Father Rod Bower

I am getting better organised in my old age and so we drove up from Sydney and arrived so early at Gosford Parish’s Anglican Church to hear the eminent psychiatrist and humanitarian, Professor Patrick McGorry AO and the brilliant barrister and humanitarian, Julian Burnside AO QC, that we were able to wander down the deserted week-end streets of Gosford until we found a trusty American coffee franchise of incredibly friendly locals… 

Ladies in Black

Talk about return to childhood…LADIES IN BLACK is a you beaut, 1950s bobby dazzler. And not just because I survived part of the script (as a 1970s teenager) almost verbatim but because this lovely sardonic Australian look-back at that very uptight time, will appeal to anybody who has ever waited in terror for final exam results or walked the gangplank of their first casual interview and got the job.

King Lear

I always go to big productions of Shakespearean tragedy with trepidation – I have a great fear of going to sleep in theatre. I blame my bio-rhythms and enforced pre-theatre ‘sleeps’ in darkened rooms as a child. Of course it’s all right if you are at The Globe because you are on a hard wooden bench with no back or standing in ’the pit’ making sure you don’t show any lapse in political and historical correctness…