Cirrus@Austlit

'Journalist Jill Jolliffe’s work took her around the world, but her commitment to East Timorese independence endured'

'While companies try to remain optimistic, research shows the community is still hesitant to venture out for live performances.'

'The tale of marauding Martians is familiar sci-fi, but it’s less well-known that the book and radio play both have Australian antecedents.'

''Mary Pickford may have been America’s sweetheart,’ Mae West is recorded to have said, ‘but I’m their wet dream.’

'At the start of Stephen’s Sewell’s new play, Arbus & West, West, in her late seventies, wisecracks sexily with audiences around the United States and jibes with her long-suffering dresser and personal assistant, Ruby (played with poise and perfect-pitch by Jennifer Vuletic). As she rests during interval, the famous actress and singer’s witty sense of being irresistible seems undimmed, until Ruby tells her that the photographer Diane Arbus has died. It was suicide, she continues. West is rattled but feigns indifference. She is surprised, she says; surely there were enough people who wanted to kill Arbus, without her needing to do the deed herself?'  (Introduction)

'The language we use to describe fire, Chloe Hooper points out, gives it a creaturely shape: it has flanks, tongues, fingers, a tail. It licks, it devours. Fascinated by its mythic force, we talk about taming a fire as we talk about taming a beast, but when it comes to vast tracts of bush, we can only contain it and wait for another natural force, the weather, to extinguish the flames.'  (Introduction)

'The opening of Peter Carey’s satirical novel Bliss (1981), where the body of Harry Joy lies dead on the lawn while his spirit hovers above, is one of the most memorable in modern Australian literature. Harry’s laconic out-of-body narration hovers like a spare and airy jazz riff until a defibrillator jolts him back into the land of the living, and a newly recognised living hell. It’s not an easy scene to stage, and in Tom Wright’s adaptation at Melbourne’s Malthouse Theatre, it’s been dismembered.'  (Introduction)

'Leaves of Grass, Walt Whitman’s humanistic, wheeling manifesto of the American destiny underpins Australian playwright Joanna Murray-Smith’s one-man play, American Song, and the collection of poems form the credo and frame the questioning of its central character, Andy. The poems’ exploration of a world of natural beauty, sensual delight, and the limitless possibilities of a young country imbue his optimistic take on life. With Whitmanesque wonder, Andy shares his tale of early good fortune in winning the trifecta of a gorgeous girl, an adorable baby son, and, after adventures in New York and a period as a caring house-husband looking after infant Robbie, a great job in their home town.' (Introduction)