The festival that was!
Tonight my boyfriend and I saw our last performance of the Sydney Festival - nine events later, and 3 weeks after it all began. The opening night street party was a lot of fun. We ambled from from location to location, surrounded by a vibe which was fun, friendly and great music. All the shows but one - the dance performance called Entity - were excellent and I would definitely give them the thumbs-up. Do not worry, I won't now describe all nine shows in detail - I'll just give you a flavour, describing my top 3.
Before I do, a quick note to the Festival organisers. I want to congratulate you for programming a really diverse and excellent array of shows - I am one very pleased Sydneysider as a result. And to everyone else, if you haven't been to Sydney Festival events before, next time it comes around check out the programme and get yourself tickets to a few events - hopefully you'll come away feeling as enriched as I do.
This was my overall number 1. This was a very clever, touching, and funny one-man-performance, telling the Alvin Sputnik's tale. The mix of projected animation, some melancholic guitar strumming and singing, plus a very engaging Alvin Sputnik made for a moving, magical show.
This was an awesome show. As the name might suggest, it has a few things to say about Christianity - Catholicism to be specific. It attracted quite a few criticisms from some conservative Christians, so I thought I would copy here the comments I left on the show's comments page, which sums up my feelings about it:
I found Bigger Than Jesus to be a thought-provoking, stimulating and an entertaining piece of theatre.
Rick Miller's willingness to engage and question his own religion is important, as it is for any one of a particular philosophical outlook - whether it be religious, secular or how ever they chose to define it. This honest examination is important and as a non-Catholic, I admired his bravery in really questioning his own religious/philosophical background. Most interestingly, he presented nuanced viewpoints, without either dictating or hiding or apologising for the idea that faith is complex. And he did all this in an original, amusing and thought-provoking manner. I highly recommend this to anyone who is interested in understanding the world :)
Wow - that was tonight's performance, and like the previous two, was a fantastic piece of live theatre. It was also a one-man show, with the creator/performer Anthony Black telling the story of Atom in a gripping way on a fairly bare stage. Despite the bareness of the staging, the lighting is brilliantly effective, so that Anthony Black convincingly portrays a range of characters, from his baby crying, and wife, to his older colleague, and his cockney-London father. Despite Atom's apparently successful life, he questions its meaning in such a way that you're left asking the same questions about your own life - a tour de force.
Posted
by Michael
