Eric SamulskiStage left
August 21st 2007 08:16
We've been to NIDA
I get a lot of stick for slagging off the Australian Film Industry.
This little old lady was yelling at me from a bus the other day;
But that’s cool with me. When a ship’s sinking everyone’s throwing shit overboard they think will float. Personally, I’d be emptying beer cans and strapping them to myself. When I say emptying, I mean drinking. And I’d be standing next to the nerdy small guy standing at the little end of the binoculars, he’s the one in the know.
“Tell me which way to swim, Mr Nerdy.”
Anyway, if taking on water was the only thing wrong with performance art we’d be lucky.
The thing is; while Australian Movie World languishes in this hopeless welfare-funded caravan to nowhere, the theatre/stage aspect of pay-for-seats art is soooo worse off.
Much worse.
I’ve seen three Australian plays in recent memory - two of the three have been woeful. It’s not just me – after one I’m canvassing the bar as a way of salvaging the two hours I’ve just lost clutching a life buoy – this guy walks past me and says;
“That was hard work.”
It was. And it wasn’t some school production it was at the Sydney Opera House – the Sydney Theatre Company, the…tragedy of it all.
I remember going to the Bolshoi in Moscow to see La Traviata. At the 15 minute intermission the queue for the bar is forty minutes long. The lead actress dies at the end as a result of “the wasting disease” (i.e., you waste away to nothing and die) so, the deathscene is she gets out of bed and falls to the floor – dead. Only problem, she’s about 150 kilos, a layer of dust lifted as she hit the deck. I wasn’t convinced – but that was post-Soviet Russia.
You rush up to the pointy end of the ship where the Captain is – you look out at the iceberg – you look back to the Captain and he says;
“Don’t worry, I’ve been to NIDA.”
Why is it so?
Until next time and happy film-making.
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