Development sites in the empty city : from picture book to performance

Picturebooks invite performance every time they are read. What happens to them when they’re adapted for live performance? This ongoing practice led research project (2008-) regenerates and transforms picturebook The Empty City (Hachette/Livre 2007) by David Megarrity and Jonathon Oxlade into a live experience. In this rebuilding, interanimation of text and illustration on the picturebook page suddenly open up into a new and complex structure incorporating composition of music, animation, live action, projected image and performing objects. The presenter is the creator of both the source text and writer/composer of the adaptation, providing a unique vantage point that draws on sources from both within and without the creative process up to and including audience reception. From the foundations up, this paper’s focus is on deep, muddy sites of development in the adaptation process, unearthed treasures, and how perceptions of fear and safety push, sway and stress the building of a new performance work for children in content, form and process.

That Blackfella Bloodsucka Dance!

"That Blackfella Bloodsucka Dance!" A novel in which a part-blood Aboriginal Australian becomes a full-blood vampire (see the above pdf for the first 50 pages FREE!). Synopsis. In this bold and cheeky meditation on religion, middle-aged muscleman, uncertain Catholic and wanna-be academic Sterling de Bortoli is a self-described Octaroon: a one eighth Aboriginal Australian. Neither black nor white this part-blood Blackfella struggles with concepts of identity, moving between the two worlds but not really belonging to either. Thus he pursues a frustrated, anarchic, homeless existence in Canberra and Melbourne, until, through the influence of the Anti-Christ, his Dark Lord Maria, he travels to Islamic Morocco. It's a land completely foreign to his Dreamtime totem, and it's where de Bortoli learns to be a full-blood vampire ... a monster who never says sorry. ISBN: 978-3-8454-4518-2 Available in hard copy and E-book.

Idyll number eleven

This is a short horror story formulated in the research process for the novel "That Blackfella Bloodsucka Dance!"

Cohabitation : placing disability centre stage

The play Cohabitation places disability centre stage by creating a three dimensional protagonist who is also a wheelchair user. The accompanying exegesis examines the challenges associated with creating such a character for theatre, using a practice-led methodology. During the process of writing my case study play, I have investigated the international literature, reflected on my experience as a physician specialising in rehabilitation and collaborated with members of the Australian and international disability communities. I have also reflected on the historical stereotypes associated with disability and integrated the contemporary experience of wheelchair users into my script. By organising a production of the play in Australia and directing a rehearsed reading of the play in New York, I was able to scrutinise my additional goal of casting an actor who was also a wheelchair user. My research illuminates the issues involved in writing and producing a play in which the lead character also has a physical disability, and I would hope, offers insight into the creation of such a character and script.

Bollywood Extras

"Bollywood Extras" has been described as a bit like Vladimir Nabokov's "Lolita" (1955) meets Nathanael West's "Day of the Locust" (1939). Unlike those two classics, this new novel by Dr D. Bruno Starrs is set in 21st Century India's Hindi-language film industry epicenter known as 'Bollywood', Mumbai's answer to America's 'Hollywood'. And there is another major difference: the story (i.e. the narrative interaction between an American Extras Casting Agent, 'Dr Arden Pyle', an under-age wannabe Bollywood starlet, 'Chandy', and the despicable but wealthy Indian man who stalks her, 'Ishmail'), is all staged against a backdrop of rabid religious terrorism. Written with the unique black comedic and literary flair Dr D. Bruno Starrs is renown for, this, his 3rd full-length novel, boldly captures the feel of Mumbai and the small-time players in its big-time film industry, with style, humor and originality. Tom Flood, winner of the Miles Franklin Literary Award and founder of Flood Manuscripts, said this of the novel's second last draft: "What is best about 'Bollywood Extras' will likely be its albatross in the sliced bread world of mainstream publishing. Three strengths that make the work what it is - the length, the style, the intellectual capital - will be three strikes against it when it comes to the money. While I delight in rich language and agile invention, I've given you the reasons the trade ('legit') presses won't take 'Bollywood Extras'. Do I think you should you change it? No. I like it. Why ruin an interesting work for money?" As a professional assessor, Flood did, of course, offer many suggestions and these were duly implemented, although the author steadfastly adhered to the style he had already cemented, thus not changing in anyway what Flood refers to as its three strengths. Dr Starrs knew (having accessed Flood's professional services previously) that a 'Thumbs Up' from the best manuscript assessor in the country meant that Bollywood Extras was ready to be birthed. So, here it is: Dr Starrs has delivered his 3rd baby and 'christened' it "Bollywood Extras"!

New evaluation methodologies for public art programs in cultural instiutions

I put my abstract in for this conference back in March, based on some evaluation work I had been doing in 2010 with my colleague Professor Greg Hearn for the 3C Regional Writing NeoGreography Project. I had been swapping notes with a colleague from the Smithsonian’s Centre for Folklife and Cultural Heritage about their evaluation work, and stuck inside during the rains of January, I decided to apply for a Qld Smithsonian fellowship based on the quandary of evaluation-particular in public histories (oral histories) and digital storytelling. In July I was awarded the fellowship, so I have tweaked my presentation to talk about what we hope to do with this collaboration, to propel the importance placed on evaluation in public arts programs in Qld and beyond.

The Roloffs

Short story published in REX: A Journal of New Writing.

Final call

Travel writing published by Swamp : A Journal of Post-graduate Creative Writing.

Shades of grey

Poem published in Islet

Where the bridge is

Memoir excerpt

Words in the Shape of Darts

This collaborative work of fictocriticism was published in the 2011 edition of REX journal.

A scrap of lace

Poem

Botany

Poem