Thank you! Corrected.

Hi Tom – the design certainly dominated the whole production! It’s interesting to compare the film – it’s on Netflix if you’re interested – which does give an idea of relationship between them (as well as the environment around them) that is missing here. I doubt I’d love this play even in the best circumstances, but it should be a lot more li…[Read more]

Hi Matt, thank you – delighted to be in the company you place us! Yes, it’s very depressing that these artificial divisions condition our media, to the impoverishment of all discourses. Perhaps in these other corners we can stage a counter-conversation… I hope so. Warmly, Alison

It’s already prepared, as part of the “school” fiction.

*Sound of editor quietly screaming* The byline is now corrected

Thanks Samsara – I haven’t seen it, but you’re not the only person who’s said this about Carissa’s review…

I do too! I’d see it again tomorrow

Always happy to be of service 🙂

Thanks, Larry!

Samsara, I suggest the main message here is to listen to what Olivia and other Blind and VI people have to say. You have instead focused on taking offence at Olivia’s descriptions of her own experiences and turned this into a singularly profitless airing of grievances. Olivia’s comments are measured and also fair (she said she is grateful for the…[Read more]

Samsara, I suggest that you take up your beef with Will in another forum. You are totally sidelining Olivia’s important points in order to centre your own hurt feelings. I will say, however, that painting Description Victoria as a neoliberal commercial enterprise is absurd.

Hmm. This is obviously a sore point Samsara, but I really don’t understand why audio describers would stop volunteering because some Blind people said the service could be improved or another organisation said it needed to be more professional? Forgive me, but to an outsider it sounds very like men calling themselves feminist “allies” but pulling…[Read more]

Posting from Olivia Muscat:
Hi Samsara. I’m so glad you agree with what I have to say. My characterisation, as you put it, of the Vision Australia AD service, comes solely from my own personal experience of being a client for almost a decade. I appreciate the service, and what it does on the whole, and would never criticise unless I had good…[Read more]

Samsara, maybe Blind arts consumers are the people to speak to these questions? And of course disability access is political. It’s hard to see how it wouldn’t be, tbh.

Hi Samsara, thanks for your comment. I’m sure that Olivia, as a frequent user of this service, can speak to her own experiences. But speaking over dialogue was certainly something she noted in her review of The Architect at the MTC. I am not sure what your problem is with Description Victoria, but certainly this event sounds like a necessary o…[Read more]

Hi Jenny, I’m delighted to hear that you enjoyed the review. I agree, it’s terrific. I’m totally puzzled, however, why you object to Carissa Lee being called the First Nations Emerging Critic (we call her that, because that’s what she is, as you can see here). The FNEC is a mentoring program we launched when we launched Witness in March this year.…[Read more]

Hi David, there are many kinds of courage. I’ve physically feared for my life and I’ve also pushed past fear to write things. They’re different things but also not so different. FWIW McKellan’s Lear was not at all what I’d call a courageous performance.

Hi David, obviously actors aren’t facing firing squads or running into burning houses to rescue babies. But I think courage is a quality that totally pertains to works of art, and it’s a quality I admire. Just as writers can be brave in what they choose to confront, reveal and explore, so can actors. It’s nothing to do with stage fright: it’s…[Read more]

Hi David, by “courageous” performance I mean the ability of the actors to express painful and complex states of being with a physical and emotional truthfulness: ie, as I say in the review, they “plunge into the emotional depths summoned by the text”. Which to my mind requires courage. I think it’s the right word, and that the context, which…[Read more]

Hi Drag. I published your initial comment, after some thought and despite our commenting guidelines, which you might like to check out under the “About” tab. “SJW feminist is not a reasonable person FYI” is precisely the kind of idea that we’re very over at this publication.

The article very clearly said that Norvill considered Rush as a friend…[Read more]