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I read The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenedis, which was great, not unlike the Pittsburgh Mysteries by Michael Chabon. Also read The Weird Sisters, and now The Family Fang, which has a quirkly plot (adult brother and sister return to family home of their parents, who are performance artists) and uses light humour to examine the foibles, pretensions and naivety of the adult children, scarred as they are by their parents. Back history is delicately recalled, assumed and the narrative keeps moving.
In other news, I had another "theatre is crap" moment. Why don't I enjoy performance anymore? It was an open studio weekend at Vitalstatix. It was partly the misguided belief by artists that the development process is interesting to anyone not involved in the piece; and also because the development/research process being used was quite lame. I could give examples, but I'd only feel narky. My sister talked about the irony of listening to middle class dancers evaluating whether their discussion was inclusive of the audience, without noticing that their discussion, held in a circle on the floor, was physically inaccessible to middle aged audience members, who did have interesting stories that would have helped with the development of their piece on local activists... Am probably also annoyed with myself for not managing to get myself to the Jack Charles or Don Walker performances at the Cabaret Festival; for missing the recent Black Theatre pieces in Sydney and generally not finding theatre very accessible with an under 2 year old. (In fact, is anything palatable if you've had to source a babysitter? It this why people pay $250 to go to Womadelaide, because it's kid friendly?)
In other news, I had another "theatre is crap" moment. Why don't I enjoy performance anymore? It was an open studio weekend at Vitalstatix. It was partly the misguided belief by artists that the development process is interesting to anyone not involved in the piece; and also because the development/research process being used was quite lame. I could give examples, but I'd only feel narky. My sister talked about the irony of listening to middle class dancers evaluating whether their discussion was inclusive of the audience, without noticing that their discussion, held in a circle on the floor, was physically inaccessible to middle aged audience members, who did have interesting stories that would have helped with the development of their piece on local activists... Am probably also annoyed with myself for not managing to get myself to the Jack Charles or Don Walker performances at the Cabaret Festival; for missing the recent Black Theatre pieces in Sydney and generally not finding theatre very accessible with an under 2 year old. (In fact, is anything palatable if you've had to source a babysitter? It this why people pay $250 to go to Womadelaide, because it's kid friendly?)
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