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There are 5 interviews this week and our guests talk about their own journey to where they are now as well as a current event, show or exhibition. Along with inside stories, interesting anecdotes and descriptions.

Special guests this week include:

11:20 to 27:29 mins–Festival Director Richard Sowada is a friend of Sunday Arts and is here again to tell us all about the American Essentials Film Festival 2017 on at Palace Cinemas in Melbourne from 11 to 24 May (and different May dates in other capital cities). In its second year it showcases independent American cinema, both new and retrospective. Richard outlines all the different steps he took  as a ‘one-man-band’ which gave him a wide range of experience in film programming. Then he got a job as Head of Programs at ACMI for 9 years! In this festival,  Richard tries to highlight the remarkable contemporary movements and voices but also tries to tie them in with a sense of continuity with the past. He also feels that tailor-making the programs to individuals is very important. He likes films to shift people’s perspective and teach them new things.  A thread through this year’s festival is film-maker David Lynch who is hot property at present due to a new TV series of Twin Peaks. This includes a doco about Lynch, mainly about re his visual art, which gives valuable insight into his films. Other bio-docos are on Armistead Maupin and Charles Bukowski; and films include Postcards From The Edge and American Pastoral–both based on books.  There is also a theme of ‘Magic Realism’ with films like Sylvio and Wiener-Dog.

27:33 to  29:12 mins–David has a quick chat to Bec from the popular show- Chicks Talking Footy– at JOY 94.9. She’s at the Pride Cup at Yarra Glen which celebrates diversity and inclusion in sport.

29:12 to 38:08 mins–Dean Michael is Arts & Culture Co-ordinator at Brimbank City Council and is here to talk about the newly named Bowery Theatre at St Albans Community Centre (STACC)–in Princess Street, St Albans. Dean has been a teacher, a performance artist and a Vic AIDS Council worker.  In the last 15 years he’s worked in local government with the Bowery Theatre being his main project in the last 2 years.  Dean talks about the influential and avante-garde performing artist, Leigh Bowery, after which the theatre is named.  Originally a Sunshine boy, he is little known in Australia but very well-known overseas.  They wanted a bold artist’s name to be associated with the newly-built Theatre to flag that this is the direction the theatre is going. There is an exhibition on Leigh Bowery (on for another month) with many personal items of his donated by his family. The theatre is the first publicly accessible theatre in the municipality of Brimbank. They just started ‘developing’ an audience so they’re trying out risky stuff, such as Yana Alana–which went very well. They want to program for the very diverse community there, including kids, and see how it pans out over 12 months. The theatre is also connecting with and supporting local artists. Dean talks more about the growing & vibrant West and its increasing attractions.

38:26 to 50:08 mins–Writer and Director Daniel Lammin is here to talk about his play Awakening on at fortyfivedownstairs from 10 to 21 May. Daniel did Arts at Monash Uni intending to be an actor but found directing and playwriting more appealing. This was encouraged by Monash Uni’s Student Theatre. He generally writes dark, challenging material. Awakening is an adaptation of the classic German play Spring Awakening by Frank Wedekind. Daniel has always wanted to do something with the play and decided to collaborate with the Monash uni drama students getting their thoughts, feeling & opinions and adding his own–thus, together, making a new piece which speaks to us now, even more than it already does, about the teenage experience. The play had a short season in 2016 right at the time of the Safe Schools debate was at its height–also informing them that needs of young people are being swept aside in a dramatic & ignorant fashion. Someone from  fortyfivedownstairs saw the play and was most impressed and invited them to do a longer season there. The original play deals with high school kids and issues such as masturbation, sexuality, homosexuality, sexual assault, and the full gamut of experiences and questions teenagers have.  The uni students wanted to stick close to those.  There are 6 talented actors in the play aged between 19 to 24.

50:41 to 1:15:41 mins–Ted Gott is the Senior Curator of International Painting and Sculpture–1300 to 1980 from the NGV and is here to talk about Van Gogh and the Seasons: Melbourne Winter Masterpieces 2017 on from 28 April to 9 July. Ted’s department has worked on many of the blockbuster exhibitions at NGV but he didn’t curate this one. Sjraar van Heugten is the curator.  He’s an independent art historian and former Head of Collections at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. Ted describes himself as the ‘sorcerer’s apprentice’.  Ted and our hosts discuss Vincent Van Gogh himself including his– endless attraction & mystique, being one of the greatest artists in history and the intangible emotional/spiritual qualities that make him an ‘It’ person. Van Gogh only had a 10 year career from 27 to 37yo, starting with Rembrandt-like Autumnal colours in the first 5 years, then discovering colour and French Impressionism AND in the 2.5 years before he dies he moves to the south of France where he experiences, for the first time, ‘heat and searing sunlight’–unlike anything he experienced in the Netherlands, the UK or Paris. It is there that ‘his visual language explodes and out comes this extraordinary volcano of colour’, obvious brushmarks and liberal amounts of paint and this ‘freeform maelstrom of energy that creates absolute masterpieces’. After this amazing description of Van Gogh’s artistry, Ted then goes into a biographical account of Van Gogh’s life to get an idea of how it affected his work–including the very important role of Vincent’s younger brother, Theo, in his life.

1:16:25 to 1:38:07 mins–Award winning musical theatre performer and Entertainer Rhonda Burchmore is here to talk about her career and her new show with Lara Mulcahy called ABBA-solutely Fabulous  on at the Palms at Crown on 20 May as well as other dates in Geelong and regional areas in Victoria. They’ve already performed at Rooty Hill RSL! and in Sydney which went very well. Rhonda was in the original production of Mamma Mia in 2000 which even preceded the Broadway production! She describes meeting Benny and Bjorn in 2000 and then Meryl Streep at the time of the Mamma Mia movie. She also got to have dinner with Colin Firth (aka Mr Darcy)! She met Lara there and they became friends and then besties. They recently decided to write a story for themselves and base it on ABBA as it’s been 40 years since they came down to do concerts in Australia. It’s not just a tribute to ABBA it’s their story of obsessed ABBA fans never getting to a concert. Rhonda talks about the difficulties having just 2 people for some songs and about the physical comedy with– contrasting body shapes, lycra and platform boots! There is also a lot of ‘eye-candy’ within the accompanying band. Rhonda is also performing at the Robarta Bar in St Kilda for JOY’s Radiothon launch on 11 May.

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Special guests this week are:

15:23 to 32:09 mins–Composer and Lyricist Anthony Crowley is here to talk about his musical-comedy Motor-mouth Loves Suck-face; An Apocalyptic Musical on from 6 to 23 October at Chapel off Chapel.  Anthony talks about being inspired by Jesus Christ Superstar and also old-school musicals when young, and how he’s now selling his new musical to the public by releasing some songs and using words like Armageddon and zombies and satire. He gets income through this work but supplements it by writing plays, directing, teaching and acting. Motor-mouth Loves Suck-face has teenagers at a party discovering the world is ending that night, and that they can only escape through a cosmic wormhole that will open just before the end. Unfortunately a zombie apocalypse gets in the way! Anthony describes it as a lot of fun, with a satirical edge.    He also describes the themes and modern issues which the musical represents as well as the target audience. As an aside, Anthony mentions he worked with composer Henry Krieger (Dream Girls)as his lyricist for a project involving Kristen Chenoweth !! Our hosts force him to elaborate.

33:23 to 48:27 mins–Baritone Michael Jones is part of Lyric Opera who are putting on the first Australian production of Malcolm Williamson’s black comedy / spy thriller Our Man in Havana which is part of the Melbourne Fringe Festival.  It’s on at the Atheneum 2, 188 Collins Street Melbourne on 17, 20, 22 and 24 September.  Michael talks about his background and long and colourful singing career, often being in the right place at the right time.  He starts in New Zealand and then London, Cambridge’s Kings College Choir, Westminster Abbey choir and then travelling the world with the Choral Scholars. Then positions at the University of Queensland and Trinity College at Melbourne Uni, doing a variety of work involving singing and choirs. Our Man in Havana is an opera never performed in Australia before. Based on Graham Greene’s book it is a spy spoof and black comedy set in the 1950s, about a vacuum cleaner salesman in Havana who gets a job with MI6 because he needs the money to support his daughter’s expensive tastes. Michael talks about the opera–a tour de force– and the Australian composer who he’d worked with in the 1970s. He also describes some of the plot and characters, the Atheneum, and how opening night went.

David MCed last night (17 Sep) for the Melbourne Rainbow Band’s concert For Weddings (and a Funeral). He talks about the beautiful classical pieces played in the concert and our world-class band itself.  Plus an interesting anecdote on the connection between the Wedding March and Shakespeare.

55:49 to 1:16:39 mins–James Hewison is  Head of Film Programs at ACMI and is here to talk about various events but mainly the doco Mapplethorpe: Look at the Pictures on from 22 September to 11 October exclusively at ACMI with a special Q&A session (about Mapplethorpe, controversy and censorship) with renowned photographer Bill Henson on 25 September. James has been at ACMI for 5 months.  Previously he worked as a Film Consultant, including doing some ongoing film curating for MONA Museum, in Hobart, for Dark MOFO. He also did the theatrical distribution of films for Madman and was the executive director of MIFF. At present, ACMI have a number of docos happening including Louis Theroux: My Scientology Movie and also Wiener–about a US Congressman and a sex scandal. James goes into detail about the Mapplethorpe doco and provides additional info about the man himself including his relationship with Patti Smith.  Mapplethorpe was a very talented and also controversial photographer who really pushed the boundaries of the artform especially with his S&M photos.  This and the fact that he was uncompromising, and openly gay, really fanned the ire of the Christian Right.  The feature-length doco covers this along with his family-life, friends and love-life with numerous interviews and photos.

1:17:05 to 1:30:51 mins–Dylan Cole is the writer and performer of the show Blank Tiles–on at the Lithuanian Club from 16 to 23 September and also part of the Melbourne Fringe Festival. Dylan has a theatre and comedy background. He’d studied drama at Deakin Uni and has a day-job at the Arts Centre.  Regarding comedy, he started with stand-up but found he was more suited to character comedy which also fit better with theatre. In this play Dylan plays a scrabble world-champion who is suffering from memory loss.  The idea for the play germinated from Dylan’s love of words, puns and neuroses and he thought Board games fit these criteria. He researched tournament scrabble and the unusual contestants–many of whom spent days memorising words. From there he thought about what could happen to a contestant to make it a story and came up with memory loss–a devastating loss for this activity and a very dark subject. Memories shape us and form our identity so what happens when we lose them? Adding comedy to this is walking a fine line and Dylan discusses how he did this with our hosts. He likes to premiere his shows at Fringe because the audiences are so generous.

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Then it’s back to films with The Essential Independents: American Cinema, Now film festival on from 17 May-8 June 2016. Brendan saw the opening night film Time Out of Mind (2014) starring- an against type-Richard Gere who plays a recently homeless man. Many of the films areslower-paced and more character driven than their more commercial counterparts. It also includes classics like Midnight Cowboy. And for horror fan Brendan there’s Near Dark (1987)–an early film by Oscar winning director Kathryn Bigelow. Another favourite for Brendan is Sofia Coppola’s 1999 film The Virgin Suicides. Also there’s the very controversial film Cruising (1980), starring Al Pacino, which gays saw as an attack on the community at the time. Interestingly, a 40 minute film called Interior Leather Bar (by James Franco) is being shown along with Cruising,  which is a re-enactment of the 40 mins cut and lost from the film. Other interesting films are I Smile Back with comic Sarah Silverman plays a dramatic role.

Special guests today are:

08:12 to 25:31 mins– Gabrielle Savrone is a director, performer and co-owner of the Owl and Cat Theatre and is here to talk about their latest show –Flesh Eating Tiger on from 31 May to 4 June at 34 Swan St Cremorne. Gabrielle got the acting bug at about 12 and got an agent at 14.  She did bit parts on TV shows while at school but later followed a managerial/corporate path until a trip to New York brought her back to what she loved i.e.making theatre. She studied theatre-making at Deakin and wrote plays which were performed at Fringe shows. Also, via her acting coach, she got to go to a conference in Alaska where she did theatre workshops, readings and performances at night. Now she goes every year. She will be directing an Australian play there this year (written by Amy Tofte who won an award for it) and is taking her actors with her. Gabrielle and creative partner Thomas Ian Doyle took over the Owl and Cat Theatre in Richmond about 18 months ago. Amy Tofte’s play- Flesh Eating Tiger– is about a man addicted to alcohol and struggling with his sexual identity and a woman who is married but addicted to the man. It’s a play within a play which blurs the line between reality and theatre/fantasy. She talks about trying to be entrepreneurial due to funding cuts e.g. having a cocktail bar on Saturday night where people can chill and having a ‘pay what you want Wednesday’ for people short of funds for a play.

26:58 to 42:55 mins– Mary Lou Jelbart is the Artistic Director at fortyfivedownstairs–here to talk about upcoming events– Shorts@45 on 6 June and Resident Alien on 25 May to 12 June.  She was a broadcaster at Radio National and at 774 where she reviewed theatre and visual arts and loved it. But she wanted a change so she took some time off and came across an empty gallery in Flinders Lane 14 years ago. They set it up as a gallery to alternate with performance for 6 to 7 years and then they took over the derelict floor below and turned it into an atmospheric theatre space. Mary Lou and David talk about a play he’d seen that had just finished there called Shit by Patricia Cornelius. Mary Lou then talks about Shorts@45 which started last year and came from a proposal -by playwright Dina Ross- that people loved hearing stories read to them. And in this case, the author reads it. Mary Lou talks about the 2 authors —Rod Jones and Arnold Zable–and their books,  in this year’s first event on 6 June. The event is more intimate than a book-signing and the audience can talk with the author. At the same time as Shorts@45 there will be a play called Resident Alien about Quentin Crisp and in his apartment are shelves of books.  This is a solo show with Paul Capsis playing Quentin who was an eccentric, ballsy, clever and very out gay man in the UK at a time when it was not accepted at all.  Paul is a great performer and looks right for the role and is likely to put on a performance you’ll never forget.

55:11 to 1:11:57 mins–Andrew Walker from the record label Jazzhead tells how he started this company back in 1996 with Joe Camilleri from The Black Sorrows. Joe found that there was no outlet for Jazz musicians to release products.  Andrew and our hosts chat about Jazz itself and also discuss the difficulties of running a label in today’s climate including piracy and also the poor sound quality of digital transmission especially for Jazz and Classical music.  Streaming can be good because people experiment with music but the volume of it is not high. Our hosts play some unusual new jazz music from Peter Knight and his band Way Out West who are launching their album – – at The Malthouse on 11 June.  Andrew talks about the band and the Japanese instrument they used on the piece. They meld the music with sounds of the streets and other elements and also use horns which have a jazzy sound. Also, longstanding Jazzhead contributor- saxophonist Rob Burke– has a project with an Italian guitarist, playing Sardinian folk songs. They’ll be launching their record on 3 June. Burke lectures at Monash Uni and has had some music projects under its banner. As as part of its teaching processes, Monash brings in some luminaries from overseas. Andrew talks about how many records they release each year, their availability, their music on TV, selling music overseas, touring and what’s next for him. To buy music go to their website–all the links are there.

1:13:12 to    mins–Director and actor Denis Moore is directing the classic play Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? –on from 14 June to 10 July at the Winterfall Theatre in Kew.  Denis learnt production at NIDA and drama at Flinders Uni in SA.  He joined the APG  (Australian Performing Group) at the Pram Factory in Melbourne in 1979. He then freelanced from 1981 as an actor and director. He talks about NIDA and also his longevity in the industry.  Denis describes the play as a marital war that goes on and on between a married couple and then also with a younger couple who come to visit. Denis has worked before with Michelle Williams who’s a co- founder of Winterfall Theatre, which is putting on the play, and is also starring in it.  He’s also worked previously with another main actor–Chris Connelly. Denis talks about the playwright Edward Albee and his worry about giving rights to companies as he does not want the play to be modernised or radically re-interpreted.  Denis sums up Albee’s view–‘He considers that once the play is written, the creative act has occurred.’ Denis sees himself as an ‘actor-director’ and has never been big on interpretive directing. He adds about Albee that he has been very generous to younger playwrights where he has converted one of his country homes into a retreat for playwrights and also teaches at one of the New York Unis.  Denis then talks about the history of Winterfall.

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