Witness Performance | Alison Croggon | Activity https://witnessperformance.com/members/alison-croggon-3/activity/ Activity feed for Alison Croggon. Tue, 09 Jan 2024 00:24:08 +1100 https://buddypress.org/?v= en-AU 30 hourly 2 076209523d815f45378d970a7a33f1e2 Alison Croggon wrote a new post https://witnessperformance.com/?p=7854 Wed, 16 Dec 2020 22:55:28 +1100 The Picture of Dorian Gray is spectacular, yet somehow never succumbs to the seductions of spectacle, says Alison Croggon

It’s commonly said that western society is in an age of narcissism, an age in which t […]

]]> 86424f40b5573a05928a3b88024adb6b Alison Croggon wrote a new post https://witnessperformance.com/?p=7469 Sun, 02 Aug 2020 23:15:51 +1000 In the third Witness essay for BLEED 2020, Alison Croggon explores the ongoing evolution of virtual worlds

Speaking is a profoundly visceral act. It begins deep in the body: a short breath in is followed by a […]

]]> b613a72439bdee8c4d5448b64ddf7aa8 Alison Croggon wrote a new post https://witnessperformance.com/?p=7270 Sat, 20 Jun 2020 04:04:21 +1000 ‘It’s almost like theatre’: Alison Croggon reviews Malthouse Theatre’s The Lockdown Monologues and Uninvited Guests’ Love Letters Straight from the Heart

I have all sorts of contradictory feels about theatre o […]

]]> ed8faf102bd5fd6c8f4892775bd3dcb0 Alison Croggon wrote a new post https://witnessperformance.com/?p=7020 Thu, 23 Apr 2020 04:41:23 +1000 Alison Croggon thinks it’s time we faced up to the fact that everything is going according to plan

Over the past month, a lot of people have been asking me about what I think about arts funding and COVID-19. […]

]]> bc081a173f386bd5d63e658a6e53c0d3 Alison Croggon wrote a new post https://witnessperformance.com/?p=6346 Mon, 27 Jan 2020 01:50:34 +1100 ‘I couldn’t imagine why anyone would take this absurd set-up as anything but the occasion for some kind of vicious Orton-esque farce’: Alison Croggon on the MTC’s Home I’m Darling 
This is the Tale of Two Acts. (I […]

]]> 8c67f5f7409d4b06130a6b44c54ba96d Alison Croggon wrote a new post https://witnessperformance.com/?p=6299 Mon, 25 Nov 2019 01:49:15 +1100 Kate Hunter’s Earshot – remounted last week for the Due West Arts Festival – is a darkly pleasurable delight, says Alison Croggon
Last week I went to the Due West Arts Festival at the Footscray Community Arts […]

]]> 6bc31344f892b42c74d24bfd36169cb6 Alison Croggon wrote a new post https://witnessperformance.com/?p=6278 Wed, 20 Nov 2019 03:30:53 +1100 The Rabble’s triptych Unwoman is a scorching examination of how the reproductive body is controlled and policed.  And, says Alison Croggon, it’s extraordinary theatre
 

Disclosure: Alison Croggon c […]

]]> 7134b65c4774996d040011621a732028 Alison Croggon wrote a new post https://witnessperformance.com/?p=6164 Tue, 15 Oct 2019 03:20:33 +1100 ‘It makes sense to take a theatrically experimental approach to this work; what baffled me was the falsity that hollows out its artifice.’ Alison Croggon on The Nico Project
We all have moments when a show […]

]]> 13d6eb3825aece54a5a4081d468a72dc Alison Croggon wrote a new post https://witnessperformance.com/?p=6139 Tue, 08 Oct 2019 01:27:05 +1100 ‘It’s a different beast altogether than Who’s Afraid of the Working Class, and not only because all the writers are older’: Alison Croggon on Anthem
Anthem is one of the most heralded of this year’s Melbo […]

]]> 698a834694e8838f70e52d2383b9dad8 Alison Croggon wrote a new post https://witnessperformance.com/?p=6121 Sat, 05 Oct 2019 02:50:39 +1000 Alison Croggon on Branch Nebula’s High Performance Packing Tape and Yang Liping’s Rite of Spring in the opening week of the Melbourne Festival
At first blush, the dance program at this year’s Melbourne I […]

]]> c52e9e95773d337ca7e16a65877ed41a Alison Croggon wrote a new post https://witnessperformance.com/?p=5986 Tue, 30 Jul 2019 02:32:54 +1000 Emina Ashman’s debut play Make Me A Houri is a compelling and often hilarious picture of female desire in patriarchal society, says Alison Croggon
We call it the “male gaze”: the patriarchal eye that defines eve […]

]]> f0fcef8d81ea8e91324320217c651f1e Alison Croggon wrote a new post https://witnessperformance.com/?p=5898 Tue, 23 Jul 2019 00:21:52 +1000 ‘This production is certainly well-intentioned, but it’s let down by its larger architecture’: Alison Croggon on Bell Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing
The last time I saw Much Ado About Nothing was a Bell Sh […]

]]> 1d17aeb8e6b2b859ddb2caf8331e10d5 Alison Croggon wrote a new post https://witnessperformance.com/?p=5885 Tue, 16 Jul 2019 04:31:06 +1000 ‘We don’t often see this kind of Artaudian excess on our stages: it’s one of the signs of how conservative our theatre culture has become’: Alison Croggon on Mitch Jones’ Autocannibal
The Hanged Man – drawn fro […]

]]> e4e666a058adbdd58b4e53b61b9fe814 Alison Croggon wrote a new post https://witnessperformance.com/?p=5867 Thu, 11 Jul 2019 00:54:04 +1000 Modern Māori Quartet: Two Worlds is a delightful and profoundly moving opening to Big World, Up Close, says Alison Croggon
As the ice sheets of Antarctica melt over us, sending rains and winds northwards to […]

]]> 382efd1404b67dc7bcafd8fb68dd320b Alison Croggon wrote a new post https://witnessperformance.com/?p=5777 Wed, 29 May 2019 03:11:00 +1000 Simon Stephens’ Heisenberg is faux theatre for a poverty-stricken time, says Alison Croggon
The Fairfax Theatre at Arts Centre Melbourne is a famously difficult space. Originally designed by John Truscott to be a […]

]]> 73349175ef49aeec9027225af6addfcd Alison Croggon wrote a new post https://witnessperformance.com/?p=5716 Tue, 14 May 2019 01:49:05 +1000 Alison Croggon on the anguished eroticism of Daddy, Joel Bray’s latest work on the cultural theft of colonialism
Watching Joel Bray’s Daddy – if watching is the correct word for the intimate, under-the-skin exp […]

]]> ebd1fb1338ed691730a74804256f74ba Alison Croggon wrote a new post https://witnessperformance.com/?p=5702 Sat, 11 May 2019 00:50:20 +1000 ‘The wit of the performances, both physical and verbal, is riveting’: Alison Croggon on The Temple at Malthouse Theatre
Back in 2008, the Malthouse Theatre brought Marius von Mayenburg over from Germany to d […]

]]> 1354e57c9f729bd403ef97ef806cd8aa Alison Croggon wrote a new post https://witnessperformance.com/?p=5666 Mon, 06 May 2019 23:30:47 +1000 ‘A galvanising moment’: a conference last month on contemporary opera saw the frustrations of women creators boil over. Alison Croggon reports
Perception matters. It is not simply that we have to show that what […]

]]> e6e342667f3b524ff2eadf4c7996aae0 Alison Croggon wrote a new post https://witnessperformance.com/?p=5648 Fri, 19 Apr 2019 01:31:37 +1000 The exhilarating Victorian College of the Arts production of Fucking A was a rare chance to see one of the US’s most significant playwrights, says Alison Croggon
Suzan-Lori Parks is an egregious absence on […]

]]> d0d9272ee2c1b7b5b518e0fdf357479a Alison Croggon wrote a new post https://witnessperformance.com/?p=5499 Fri, 22 Mar 2019 04:48:23 +1100 Exploring the similarities and differences between percussion and dance: Alison Croggon on Recital
Recital, a collaboration between dancer Richard Cilli and percussionist Claire Edwardes, is a work that looks at […]

]]> f77ab2695735c05c4b11079a25b05354 Alison Croggon wrote a new post https://witnessperformance.com/?p=5437 Tue, 19 Mar 2019 00:58:25 +1100 ‘A profoundly elegant collaboration’: Alison Croggon on Kristina Chan’s meditation on climate change, A Faint Existence
Climate change is the doom of our time, bringing with it the real threat of the extinction […]

]]> 43a834e645ecebdb4d32038b59c80230 Alison Croggon wrote a new post https://witnessperformance.com/?p=5419 Mon, 18 Mar 2019 01:33:07 +1100 ‘We all vanish, but the traces of our passing – ephemeral, glittering – remain in our wake’: Alison Croggon on Stephanie Lake’s Skeleton Tree
Last year, Stephanie Lake’s Colossus was the hit of the Fringe Festi […]

]]> 16772e2bd13cf0e767c94a58109114ed Alison Croggon wrote a new post https://witnessperformance.com/?p=5397 Fri, 15 Mar 2019 23:43:00 +1100 ‘This most recent work from Marrugeku cements its place as one of Australia’s most exciting dance companies’: Alison Croggon on Le Dernier Appel/The Last Cry
It begins with isolation, with six dancers standing o […]

]]> cac64c1ad550c8253a7d2464724c4931 Alison Croggon wrote a new post https://witnessperformance.com/?p=5328 Thu, 14 Mar 2019 03:45:25 +1100 Alison Croggon on watching two extraordinary bodies in Narelle Benjamin and Paul White’s Cella
Duets always have an undertow of eroticism. Sometimes the choreography consciously works against this current, […]

]]> 894937e50f90bd17a333dff2ae0fce18 Alison Croggon wrote a new post https://witnessperformance.com/?p=5294 Mon, 11 Mar 2019 02:43:14 +1100 ‘Every Australian should know what the government’s bureaucratic language both conceals and reveals. We should know it intimately, in our skin, in our dreams.’ Alison Croggon on Verbatim Theatre Group’s M […]

]]> 47302072c4dc17e7cbc0ae617ab699f3 Alison Croggon wrote a new post https://witnessperformance.com/?p=5280 Sat, 09 Mar 2019 00:16:58 +1100 Funny, painfully honest and unclassifiable: Alison Croggon reviews Brian Lipson and Gideon Obarzanek’s Two Jews walk into a Theatre
Some years ago now, the actor and director Brian Lipson embarked on a quixotic […]

]]> 0ae8148d9f0fbe2d22de5b204d7953ab Alison Croggon wrote a new post https://witnessperformance.com/?p=5266 Fri, 08 Mar 2019 01:46:28 +1100 ‘It feels like the same old exploitations, enacted now in the name of art’: Alison Croggon on Milo Rau’s La Reprise
Content warning: racist and homophobic violence

Swiss director Milo Rau has been called […]

]]> ac203c32779b7eb393edddb17cef4b78 Alison Croggon wrote a new post https://witnessperformance.com/?p=5214 Mon, 04 Mar 2019 21:54:43 +1100 ‘You want to be a critic who thinks with all of her body’: Alison Croggon on the process of reviewing, extracted from her new collection of criticism, Remembered Presences
First, you mustn’t think.

You a […]

]]> a505f819a397b23dfe70b85700af4d93 Alison Croggon wrote a new post https://witnessperformance.com/?p=5196 Fri, 01 Mar 2019 01:13:11 +1100 ‘As a post-apocalyptic imagining of a US “bombed back to the Stone Age” by its own energy industry, it expresses the dread that pierced the brittle armour of western invulnerability when the proxy wars final […]

]]> 05c861dfb0d0a156002842a585cca9b7 Alison Croggon wrote a new post https://witnessperformance.com/?p=5185 Tue, 26 Feb 2019 02:39:59 +1100 Five Short Blasts is a rich invitation into the complex world of Fremantle’s Swan River, says Alison Croggon
It’s safe to say that I’ve never before woken for a show at 4am. Perhaps the highest praise I can bes […]

]]> bd58a9153d45bf889a67c891b721fa15 Alison Croggon wrote a new post https://witnessperformance.com/?p=5172 Sat, 23 Feb 2019 00:54:42 +1100 ‘For the space of an hour, a magical space, it was a reminder of possibility’: Alison Croggon on The British Paraorchestra’s The Nature of Why
Listening is something that happens with your whole body, your whole […]

]]> 5d8533e941f59456c72140c6d6aead6c Alison Croggon wrote a new post https://witnessperformance.com/?p=5165 Fri, 22 Feb 2019 02:32:46 +1100 The Last Great Hunt’s first main stage show demonstrates that they deserve to be there. Alison Croggon on Lé Nør
Lé Nør (The Rain) makes me feel sorry I haven’t seen any of The Last Great Hunt’s previous shows. […]

]]> e3586cb16bfad69911c99b5cb146db6d Alison Croggon wrote a new post https://witnessperformance.com/?p=5151 Thu, 21 Feb 2019 03:33:32 +1100 ‘The whole production looks like an attack on heteronormative patriarchy, dressed up as a surreal and charming fairytale’: Alison Croggon on Barrie Kosky and 1927’s The Magic Flute
The Magic Flute. What do we do […]

]]> dae910109172617a7001689e3df25114 Alison Croggon wrote a new post https://witnessperformance.com/?p=5139 Wed, 20 Feb 2019 06:50:44 +1100 A stale retelling: Alison Croggon on Lost & Found’s Perth Festival opera, Ned Kelly
There’s something going on in the zeitgeist. Why these recent recountings of the Ned Kelly story? There was a new musical in Sy […]

]]> 1a4d1c3e5f5a49af3e9e3f0b7fbc2e8e Alison Croggon wrote a new post https://witnessperformance.com/?p=5129 Tue, 19 Feb 2019 07:14:14 +1100 ‘Kwongkan squanders its moments of power by reaching for a simplistic idea of protest’: Alison Croggon on a Perth Festival dance work that attempts to take on the enormity of climate change
I don’t know a single […]

]]> fe88eb22e95efc79fa213c8efdfec378 Alison Croggon wrote a new post https://witnessperformance.com/?p=5115 Tue, 12 Feb 2019 00:47:11 +1100 ‘There’s a very British heartlessness lurking in the centre of this play that the over-produced staging inadvertently exposes’: Alison Croggon on The Lady in the Van
The tedium that bored into my soul as I w […]

]]> ddfdf724d567254e6e0f304e6ff724fa Alison Croggon wrote a new post https://witnessperformance.com/?p=5083 Tue, 05 Feb 2019 20:48:37 +1100 As Next Wave opens its callout for artist submissions to the 2020 festival, Alison Croggon speaks to festival director Roslyn Helper about power, art and hope
AC: Back in 1821, Shelley said that poets are “the u […]

]]> b487f18a6c8c96df1f0119535ac04c68 Alison Croggon wrote a new post https://witnessperformance.com/?p=5065 Sun, 03 Feb 2019 23:09:59 +1100 ‘A deeply interesting investigation of how the historical perversity of slavery deforms human relationships up to the present day’: Alison Croggon reviews Underground Railway Game at the Malthouse
(Here be […]

]]> a34341ddde54e66f163c3677dffd1ddb Alison Croggon wrote a new post https://witnessperformance.com/?p=5039 Wed, 30 Jan 2019 23:04:11 +1100 Funny, angry, anarchic and moving: Alison Croggon reviews Old Stock: A Refugee Love Story
For reasons mostly to do with poetry, I’ve spent a fair bit of my reading life immersed in religious texts of all ki […]

]]> af124c5cc316fd036fd06cda17a64856 Alison Croggon wrote a new post https://witnessperformance.com/?p=5025 Fri, 25 Jan 2019 22:29:16 +1100 ‘Being part of that audience was electrifying’: Alison Croggon on Mama Alto and Maude Davey’s Gender Euphoria
“Trans” is, like a lot of the English language, stolen from Latin. A handy prefix, it means “ac […]

]]> 665dbdea8b9ce956d41ade364ebcb160 Alison Croggon wrote a new post https://witnessperformance.com/?p=5018 Thu, 24 Jan 2019 23:19:54 +1100 How far can comedy go? Carissa Lee ponders Truly Madly Britney’s take on fan culture at Melbourne’s Midsumma festival
[Spoilers within]

Stan culture is a recent internet-fuelled trend that, like many things o […]

]]> 6fa62abbacbbfb7766ecbd85db7f98db Alison Croggon wrote a new post https://witnessperformance.com/?p=4620 Fri, 23 Nov 2018 02:54:24 +1100 Alison Croggon on Ridiculusmus’s extraordinary final show, the maddening and deeply moving Die! Die! Die! Old People Die!
Warning: spoilers within. Short version: a maddening, merciless and moving performance by […]

]]> bd7079aec1243e869bf033f64f1272bd Alison Croggon wrote a new post https://witnessperformance.com/?p=4598 Tue, 20 Nov 2018 23:10:06 +1100 An oratorio of private pain: Alison Croggon reviews Lab Kelpie’s brilliant production of Mary Anne Butler’s Broken
You can see why Mary Anne Butler’s play Broken won, not only the Drama Prize in the Victorian P […]

]]> 292b7494ccef01c3cf825108c5a2d0e2 Alison Croggon wrote a new post https://witnessperformance.com/?p=4586 Mon, 19 Nov 2018 02:35:00 +1100 ‘None of this history is simple, just as nothing about gender is simple’: Alison Croggon on Rachel Perks’ and Bridget Balodis’ queer witches in Moral Panic
Rachel Perks’ play Moral Panic, directed with a deft an […]

]]> be8dad368bc211567ffd483ce1a994b0 Alison Croggon wrote a new post https://witnessperformance.com/?p=4567 Mon, 12 Nov 2018 23:59:41 +1100 Alison Croggon reviews emerging choreographers Lauren Langlois and Joel Bray in Chunky Move’s Next Move 11
Next Move has been part of the Chunky Move annual repertoire since 2008, when then artistic director G […]

]]> f550c8abb17061f0bcff52853862c217 Alison Croggon wrote a new post https://witnessperformance.com/?p=4505 Thu, 08 Nov 2018 01:34:03 +1100 ‘The trial has prompted a deep anger within the theatre community. Its reverberations will echo for a long time’: Alison Croggon looks at the Geoffrey Rush defamation trial and its inevitable connections to […]

]]> c6e79a69203cdaf42f773fd0ef73f9a0 Alison Croggon wrote a new post https://witnessperformance.com/?p=4454 Sat, 20 Oct 2018 00:13:37 +1100 ‘Sheer joyousness and delight’: Alison Croggon on the austere brilliance of William Forsythe’s A Quiet Evening of Dance
You could approach William Forsythe’s A Quiet Evening of Dance as a lesson. This e […]

]]> 216992daffb41a70663a1a0cabb98299 Alison Croggon wrote a new post https://witnessperformance.com/?p=4440 Wed, 17 Oct 2018 22:58:06 +1100 ‘I know I felt purely happy’: Alison Croggon on the participatory dance One Infinity at the Malthouse
This review discusses elements of One Infinity that are particularly delightful if they are a surprise. If […]

]]> 9275bf4ab84f49784469a7b54ee6bc88 Alison Croggon wrote a new post https://witnessperformance.com/?p=4395 Fri, 12 Oct 2018 02:10:17 +1100 The music of Mark Morris’ Layla and Majnun is unmissable, says Alison Croggon. But she’s not so sure about the dance
Every culture has a story of star-crossed lovers. In the European tradition alone, we have Rom […]

]]> 7f6f7ba2a5acd3112a406cc4095bafdf Alison Croggon wrote a new post https://witnessperformance.com/?p=4384 Thu, 11 Oct 2018 01:27:39 +1100 ‘Trauma, its aftershocks, its fragmentation, its strange, loud silence.’ Alison Croggon on Rawcus’ Song for a Weary Throat
We live in traumatic times. Not only is almost every aspect of our world approaching […]

]]>