“All theatre needs is a couple of great actors and a script that has something to say.” Robert Reid sees My Sister Feather at La Mama and discovers a masterfully crafted production
Tilly blows a feather in the […]

Early Sunday morning, an old friend from high school who’s now in news PM’d me to say “have you seen the news?”

Seemed spammy. Not a lot of specific detail. I ignored it. I remember the last time any one tex […]

Robert Reid sees After Dark’s cabaret/circus show Society and owns up to his inner curmudgeon.
After Dark Theatre have been making circus in Melbourne since 2007 and boast over a hundred circus performers, […]

Witness Histories Episode 3: Part 1. One of the subtle and long-lasting processes of colonisation is the importation and imposition of the cultural forms and narratives of the coloniser onto the colony. Here […]

In Next Wave’s Canine Choreography, Robert Reid discovers that untrained dogs are just…untrained dogs
How is it possible to make a show so very full of dogs so very hard to watch?

A carpet of fake grass and a […]

Robert Reid reviews Right Now at Red Stitch and tries to identify his discomfort with the play
Note: Review contains spoilers

There’s something disturbing about Right Now which is more than the creepiness ba […]

Robert Reid finds himself suspended in time in Jean Tong’s new Melbourne Theatre Company play, Hungry Ghosts
Jean Tong’s Hungry Ghosts hangs in the air like the cloud that drifts through its own set, like the […]

Government arts funding is on the way out, says Robert Reid. And if arts companies are to survive, they have to invite audiences in
 
… if we don’t start talking about this really bloody soon, we’ll miss the bu […]

Robert Reid reviews Chunky Move’s new work Common Ground

The duet in the age of Avengers: Infinity War. I doubt the Marvel Cinematic Universe has been a major reference point for the creation of Common Ground b […]

Robert Reid on Jodee Mundy’s Personal, a charming bilingual performance for the Deaf and the hearing 

The stage is strewn with large boxes, scattered in shadows, that look as if they’re made of cardboard. The […]

Robert Reid attends the first act of an extraordinary immersive performance of Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya in a country farm house.

It’s a perfect day for Chekhov in rural Victoria. Grey and forbidding, with sudden […]

Robert Reid reviews Kill Climate Deniers at the Festival of Live Art

David Finnigan seems the most unlikely candidate for a provocateur. He’s intelligent, polite, slightly awkward. But this unassuming guy has a […]

Festival of Live Art: Shell Game

I’m aware of my appointment all morning. As I go about my day – meetings, research, emailing – there’s a shadow cast over my activities. Not so much a shadow, really: a shape […]

The Keir Choreographic Award: Robert Reid reviews Yoni, Stop-Go and Public Action

Two bodies are in the space. Two women. The space is dark, and their movement together flows in and out of making circles and […]

At the launch of Witness at La Mama Theatre last weekend, co-founder and editor Robert Reid made a speech. He called it a rant. But really it’s a kind of poem.
I worry.
I worry we’re going around in ci […]

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. 

Part 2: The ancient a […]

Part 2: Modernism? Post-dramatic theatre? What makes Europeans think that these are new ideas? Choreographer and creative director of the Yirramboi First Nations Festival Jacob Boehme talks to Robert Reid about […]