Videos

“The wedding dress was a character in its own right”. This month Sayraphim Lothian brought along her iPhone and asked some our of Witness Live Nighters to record their thoughts on Melancholiafor posterity.

The beginning of theatre as we know it now. In Video Histories: Episode 5.1: Witness historian Robert Reid looks at the beginning of the era of subsidised theatre.

Video: Robert Reid talks to Claudia Funder from the Australian Performing Arts Collection about their astounding collection.

Before the era of government subsidies, Australian colonial theatre was dominated by a production behemoth, JC Williamson Theatres, or “The Firm”. Robert Reid lays it all down.

Witness Histories, Episode 3 Part 1: Robert Reid tracks Australian theatre through the 19th century, through the often disreputable careers of the early actor-managers.

Witness Histories, Episode 3 Part 2: Robert Reid tracks Australian theatre through the 19th century, through the often disreputable careers of the early actor-managers.

There were plays! There were riots! There were offended clerics and government shutdowns! Robert Reid traces the fascinating, troubled and largely forgotten history of convict theatre after the First Fleet arrived in 1788, and ponders why so much of it seems so familiar.

Witness Histories Part 1: Choreographer and creative director of the Yirramboi First Nations Festival Jacob Boehme talks to Robert Reid about 80,000 years of Indigenous performance history in Australia. 

Witness Histories Part 2: Jacob Boehme talks to Robert Reid about 80,000 years of Indigenous performance history in Australia. Modernism? Post-dramatic theatre? What makes Europeans think that these are new ideas?

Theatre’s never really had the best of reputations: it’s been commonly associated with thieves and prostitutes, disease and rebellion. It’s one of the reasons we like it. Robert Reid asks why we care.