Catspaw (rock Opera)
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Catspaw (rock Opera)
''Catspaw'' is a 1974 rock musical by Australian playwright Dorothy Hewett, with music by Terence Clarke, Piers Partridge and Roy Ritchie. It was Hewett's fifth full-length play and her first rock musical. It was written for the Festival of Perth before Hewett departed permanently for Sydney in early 1974. It is an expressionist or 'epic' play with an episodic plot loosely based on a quest. It is the first of her plays that deals with the conservation of Australia, both as landscape and cultural heritage, where 'imagination' is a universal cultural force opposed to the destruction of commercial interests. The Prologue and Epilogue are set in a car wreckers yard, where Cat has sought refuge with his girlfriend Rabbit and her young daughter Kitten. They set off on his motorbike on a hippie expedition to the desert to find out the 'fantastic possibilities" of life. In Act I the bike breaks down in Opal, an isolated gem town. Cat is bitten by the opal bug, but leaves town when he s ...
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Dorothy Hewett
Dorothy Coade Hewett (21 May 1923 – 25 August 2002) was an Australian playwright, poet and author, and a romantic feminist icon. In writing and in her life, Hewett was an experimenter. As her circumstances and beliefs changed, she progressed through different literary styles: Modernist poetry, modernism, socialist realism, Expressionism (theatre), expressionism and ''List of avant-garde artists, avant garde''. She was a member of the Australian Communist Party in the 1950s and 1960s, which informed her work during that period. In her lifetime she had 22 plays performed, and she published nine collections of poetry, three novels and many other prose works. There have been four anthologies of her poetry. She received many awards and has been frequently included in Australian literature syllabuses at schools and universities. She was regularly interviewed by the media in her later years, and was often embroiled in controversy, even after her death. Early life and education Do ...
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Terence Clarke (composer)
Terence Osborne Clarke ( AM) (born 1935) is a retired Australian theatrical director and composer who also worked as an actor, pianist, musical director, teacher and dramaturg. On Australian Day 2007 he was installed as a Member of the Order of Australia for service to the performing arts as a director, actor, writer, composer and educator. Early life Clarke was born in 1935 in Sydney and educated at Shore and the University of Sydney (resident St. Paul's College), graduating BA with first-class honours in Music. While a student he appeared as Robert in the Sydney University Players' rendition of Peter Ustinov's play ''The Indifferent Shepherd'' in August 1953. A reviewer for ''The Sydney Morning Herald'' observed, " ehad little to say but said it nicely". One of his fellow students at university was Charles Colman. After graduation Clarke taught at All Saints' College, Bathurst (where he had attended primary school) and at Cranbrook School, Sydney, where he became head of ma ...
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Perth Festival
Perth Festival, named Perth International Arts Festival (PIAF) between 2000 and 2017, and sometimes referred to as the Festival of Perth, is Australia's longest-running cultural festival, held annually in Western Australia. The program features contemporary and classical music, dance, theatre, performance, literature and ideas, visual arts, large-scale public works. The main events of the festival take place every year from February to March and the film program now known as Lotterywest Films runs from November to April, as part of the Perth Festival. Perth Festival takes place and various indoor and outdoor venues across Perth. The festival is run by UWA in partnership with the state government and the Perth City Council. From 2004, the Festival carried Lotterywest branding, and Lotterywest was acknowledged as the Festival's "principal partner". The artistic director for 2020 to 2023 is Iain Grandage. History The festival was created in 1953 by the University of Western Aus ...
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Expressionism (theatre)
Expressionism was a movement in drama and theatre that principally developed in Germany in the early decades of the 20th century. It was then popularized in the United States, Spain, China, the U.K., and all around the world. Similar to the broader movement of Expressionism in the arts, Expressionist theatre utilized theatrical elements and scenery with exaggeration and distortion to deliver strong feelings and ideas to audiences. History The early Expressionist theatrical and dramatic movement in Germany had Dionysian, Hellenistic philosophy, Hellenistic, and Nietzsche philosophy influences. It was impacted by the likes of German poet August Stramm and Swedish playwright August Strindberg. ''Murderer, the Hope of Women'' by Oskar Kokoschka, written in 1907 and first performed in Vienna in 1909, was the first fully expressionist drama. Expressionism was then explored and evolved in Germany by a multitude of playwrights, the most famous of which being Georg Kaiser, whose first succ ...
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The Chapel Perilous
''The Chapel Perilous'', Dorothy Hewett's third full-length play, was written in 1970. The play is Expressionist in style, where the theatrical spectacle dominates the plot. It introduces Sally Banner, a picaresque heroine moving without success through a search for love and freedom, while oppressed by authority figures and disappointed by unsatisfactory lovers. She is, in brief succession, a defiant schoolgirl, a promiscuous wartime student, a Communist, a suburban de facto, and a well-known poet. It is recognised as Hewett's best play. Characters The eleven principal characters are played by five actors. They are * Sally Banner: - A poet, aged 16 to 61, rebellious and self-absorbed * Michael: - Her lover, aged 17 to 40s. Rough, demanding and cruel * Authority Figure I:- "The Headmistress": an Englishwoman with intellect and dignity - “The Mother”: ages from middle-age to senility. Neurotic and overbearing * Authority Figure II:- “The Canon”: ageing, weak and hypocr ...
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University Of New England (Australia)
The University of New England (UNE) is a public university in Australia with approximately 22,500 higher education students. Its original and main campus is located in the city of Armidale in northern central New South Wales. UNE was the first Australian university established outside a state capital city. Each year, the university offers students more than $5 million in scholarships, prizes, and bursaries and more than $18 million for staff and students involved in research. In the 2019 Student Experience Survey, UNE recorded the sixth-highest student satisfaction rating out of all Australian universities, and the highest student satisfaction rating out of all public universities in New South Wales, with an overall satisfaction rating of 83.2. The university ranks lower in research-based rankings of Australian universities. History Establishment The University of New England was preceded by the New England University College, founded in 1938 as part of the University of Sy ...
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The West Australian
''The West Australian'' is the only locally edited daily newspaper published in Perth, Western Australia. It is owned by Seven West Media (SWM), as is the state's other major newspaper, ''The Sunday Times''. It is the second-oldest continuously produced newspaper in Australia, having been published since 1833. It tends to have conservative leanings, and has mostly supported the Liberal–National Party Coalition. It has Australia's largest share of market penetration (84% of WA) of any newspaper in the country. Content ''The West Australian'' publishes international, national and local news. , newsgathering was integrated with the TV news and current-affairs operations of ''Seven News'', Perth, which moved its news staff to the paper's Osborne Park premises. SWM also publish two websites from Osborne Park including thewest.com.au and PerthNow. The daily newspaper includes lift-outs including Play Magazine, The Guide, West Weekend, and Body and Soul. Thewest.com.au is the on ...
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Plays By Dorothy Hewett
Play most commonly refers to: * Play (activity), an activity done for enjoyment * Play (theatre), a work of drama Play may refer also to: Computers and technology * Google Play, a digital content service * Play Framework, a Java framework * Play Mobile, a Polish internet provider * Xperia Play, an Android phone * Rakuten.co.uk (formerly Play.com), an online retailer * Backlash (engineering), or ''play'', non-reversible part of movement * Petroleum play, oil fields with same geological circumstances * Play symbol, in media control devices Film * ''Play'' (2005 film), Chilean film directed by Alicia Scherson * ''Play'', a 2009 short film directed by David Kaplan * ''Play'' (2011 film), a Swedish film directed by Ruben Östlund * ''Rush'' (2012 film), an Indian film earlier titled ''Play'' and also known as ''Raftaar 24 x 7'' * ''The Play'' (film), a 2013 Bengali film Literature and publications * ''Play'' (play), written by Samuel Beckett * ''Play'' (''The New York Times'' ...
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1974 Plays
Major events in 1974 include the aftermath of the 1973 oil crisis and the resignation of President of the United States, United States President Richard Nixon following the Watergate scandal. In the Middle East, the aftermath of the 1973 Yom Kippur War determined politics; following List of Prime Ministers of Israel, Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir's resignation in response to high Israeli casualties, she was succeeded by Yitzhak Rabin. In Europe, the Turkish invasion of Cyprus, invasion and occupation of northern Cyprus by Turkey, Turkish troops initiated the Cyprus dispute, the Carnation Revolution took place in Portugal, and Chancellor of Germany, Chancellor of West Germany Willy Brandt resigned following an Guillaume affair, espionage scandal surrounding his secretary Günter Guillaume. In sports, the year was primarily dominated by the 1974 FIFA World Cup, FIFA World Cup in West Germany, in which the Germany national football team, German national team won the championshi ...
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