Monday 28 May 2012

Congrats!

A big hand for the two Patrick White winners - Patricia Cornelius for the Fellowship, and Phillip Kavanagh for the Award! Congratulations from 7-On. It's always fantastic to see a fellow playwright feted,  and in this particular case, the plaudits couldn't go to two more deserving artists. We can't wait to see what these awards encourage them to create.


And on the subject of inspired and inspiring work: You have ONE WEEK LEFT to see Vanessa Bates' 'The Magic Hour' at Fremantle's Deckchair Theatre. The play has been garnering rave reviews and standing ovations, and features the acting and singing feats of the lovely Ursula Yovich. It's directed by Chris Bendall, with music by Joe Lui. Vanessa describes it as 'fairytales with a black twist'. Read all about it here.


Wednesday 23 May 2012

Platonic

Platonic, one of our current 7-ON projects, is part of NIDA's inaugural Independent Program. We're collaborating with Gus Supple as director and producer, and working to develop the project for pop-up and other like spaces. Our plan is to get Platonic on sooner rather than later—by the end of 2012.

What is friendship in our contemporary world? When we’re all on a first-name basis. When parents urge their kids to think of them as friends. When you can have nine-hundred, a thousand Facebook friends? Have we sidelined friendship in favour of currying contacts? Does it matter if your cat or your iPhone is your best friend?

In short plays, monologues, songs, interruptions, and yes, in forms yet to be discovered, 7-ON responds to this theme. Byron may have called friendship ‘love without his wings,’ but 7-ON and Gus are embracing its earthbound nature, and designing Platonic for an intimate setting near you.

Thursday 3 May 2012

Women Playwrights, Again and More

You may remember back in August of 2011 7-ON was involved in a 'Solutions Roundtable' funded by the Australia Council to debate/ thrash out/interrogate the ongoing lack of representation of female playwrights in Australian stages.

The Roundtable (along with a previous Women Directors' Forum) led to a review of the dilemma headed up by researcher Elaine Lally.

When the Review was released it made front page news in the Sydney Morning Herald, plus a good article in The Age. There's been nothing further in the newspapers since - though we understand that it is possible there may be - but the Review itself makes interesting reading, and sets a pattern for action to take into the future. We hope it will mean that a real commitment to supporting the work of women playwrights equally with their male peers may - at last - happen.

You can find the Review on the OzCo website here.

It includes a link to a survey that will remain live for about 3 weeks, in order to capture the sector’s responses to the report. This will help inform next steps. It can be found here.

The following links should take you to the newspaper articles mentioned above.
There is also a follow-up article on page 9: 
It’s also on Page 5 of The Age:

Further news is that all of the theatre MPAB companies and Theatre Key Organisations are now using the Creating Pathways reporting guide (loosely based on the EOWA reporting mechanism) to identify opportunities being provided or promoted to women directors and playwrights. It’s retrospective reporting, so the first data will be collected in February 2013. The OzCo has also set up an Action Learning initiative, that may benefit some women creative leaders.