Concrete Playground

performing Ruby Moon

Wednesday, 25th November - Saturday, 12th December
@ Newtown Theatre

Why have fairy tales become so 'happy' in the last hundred years? The Grimm boys loved to throw in buckets of blood, sex, trauma and sadism amongst their princesses and dwarves, but as soon as Disney appeared on the scene it was all cut out and replaced with high saccharine...

music The Snowdroppers album launch

Saturday, 8th August - 1PM
@ Oxford Art Factory

Oh friends, there is a storm brewing down in Sydney and its thunder-clapping clouds paint the sky in shades of blue. That’s dark blue, like the southern gothic tones growled by Johnny Wishbone, lead singer of Sydney act The Snowdroppers.Born on a stage reeking of burlesque bodices, this rag-tag band...

play Play Late @ Sydney Design

Saturday, 8th August - 11AM
@ Powerhouse Museum

Humans have an epic crush on playing. It’s in our nature - the pulsing spark that loves nothing more than to discharge itself into the nearest object, creating pure genius from the mundane. An invitation to play should never be turned down.On August 7, the Powerhouse Museum will smack down...

film Red Cliff special screening

Wednesday, 17th February - 6PM
@ Dendy Opera Quays

For those versed in Chinese lore, the Battle of Red Cliff is a famous clash, forming a major part of the medieval text Romance of the Three Kingdoms, itself based on events from the 3rd century AD. Now, this decisive battle is the subject of the most expensive Chinese-language film...

performing Saturn's Return

Thursday, 30th July - Sunday, 30th August
@ Sydney Theatre Company

Saturn's Return, by Tommy Murphy, is a charming elegy for the three decades of our extended youth.Caught on the cusp of thirty, Zara (Leeanna Walsman) attempts to control her life and the people orbiting it with a thoroughly disarming honesty. Murphy’s writing is at its best in Zara’s voice, capturing...

art free Activate

Wednesday, 15th July - 4AM
@ Breenspace

We dump our rubbish in the bin and then it’s whisked away to a happy ending. But what if it suddenly all came back to haunt us?Activate 2750 has Melbourne-based artist Ash Keating, in association with the MCA, SITA Environmental Solutions and Penrith City Council, using a short film and...

performing Dealing With Claire

Saturday, 25th July - Saturday, 15th August
@ SBW Stables Theatre

The first thing the lizard brain wants is shelter and food. Though our mental chassis have been polished up, we can’t hide the fact that there’s a primitive engine powering our motives. It’s the most basic tool in any storyteller’s box, and British playwright Martin Crimp has put it to...

film Kino Short Film Nights

Tuesday, 11th August - 11AM
@ Fraser Studios

Kino Sydney is a monthly short film night with a unique concept: all the films screened are made specifically for the night and they are not competing against one another. The result is a free forum for ideas, where filmmakers collaborate with one another to produce short works that defy...

film Anvil! The story of Anvil

Friday, 11th September - 11AM
@ Various cinemas

There’s an unwritten law in the world of heavy metal: if your lead guitarist uses a dildo to play his flying V, then you are bound for success.Sadly, unwritten laws have a habit of being forgotten and this is precisely the fate of Canadian band, Anvil. Now, twenty five years...

film Possible Worlds: Canadian Film Festival

Friday, 21st August - 12PM
@ Various cinemas

The following use of food metaphors are brought to you by my empty stomach and the smell of bacon permeating my house. Enjoy…For those seeking a more eclectic taste of Canadian film fare, the 4th Canadian Film Festival will certainly serve up a bain-marie of delights.Start by road-tripping with Joshua...

performing Morphia Series + Sunstruck

Wednesday, 12th August - 11AM
@ Performance Space

It is wonderful being able to watch two artists collaborate over a period of years and through various projects, developing both as individuals and equally creating their own shared practice. Helen Herbertson and Ben Cobham’s creative partnership is a perfect example, and they are bringing two of their new works...

performing RUN – a performance engine

Friday, 21st August - 1PM
@ Performance Space

CarriageWorks' brick nooks and cast iron crannies ooze with flavour, and the building’s trainyard surroundings make you feel like you’ve taken shelter in a decaying industrial landscape.In 2007, De Quincey Co wove themselves into this landscape for their entrancing work, The Stirring. Certainly they have woken some force within the...

performing This Kind of Ruckus

Friday, 4th September - 1PM
@ Performance Space

A night at the theatre does not necessarily end after the third curtain call, and nor should it in some cases. Version 1.0 is a Sydney-based company that recognises the potential power in theatre as a tool of community awareness and transformation. Furthermore, they understand that to properly affect you...

art free The Hosts

Friday, 14th August - 4AM
@ Performance Space

Host Robot: Good sir, would you like a beverage?Member of Public: Why, yes, yes I would, that would be lovely. What doyou have on offer?HR: We have freshly squeezed lemon juice, baked cordial and grey coffee.MoP: Oh, well, is it possible to have my coffee black?HR: I’m sorry Dave, I’m...

performing The Tent

Thursday, 16th July - 11AM
@ Campbelltown Arts Centre

For many people living in the inner city, a night out in Campbelltownis the start of a hardcore camping trip. If you’re one of thosedreamers, here is your chance to celebrate your amazing powers ofjudgement. Twice a night, The Tent invites twenty people into a scrapmetal and canvas world to...

art film free music performing play 2009 Verge Arts Festival

Saturday, 29th August - 12PM
@ University of Sydney

Fringes are easy to identify, mainly because by definition a fringe forms the outer edge of a discernable whole (or, in other cases, it’s the bit of hair just above your eyes). Verges are a lot more exciting in comparison, because they promise that something greater is on its way,...

music performing Eva Yerbabuena

Friday, 28th August - 1PM
@ Concert Hall, Sydney Opera House

Flamenco is one of those art forms that plays tricks on your mind. Many people think of Spain as a pan-flamenco nation, for one, and so are confounded when unable to find the flamboyant rhythms and flourishes of the dance in the north. Born in the fiery southern region of...

music The Barons of Tang - Border Control Tour

Saturday, 22nd August - 1PM
@ The Red Rattler

C'mere little one, come join Papa in this little dark corner and let him play some smokey tunes for you. You like it, don't you, darling, there's a base note of romance here – that's right – but surely an innocent face like yours shouldn't smile at the hint of...

art free play Live Futures 2020 Festival

Sunday, 16th August - 3AM
@ College of Fine Arts

Watching educational film series such as Back to the Future and Bill and Ted taught me a valuable lesson about the future - it's shiny, flashy and full of danger.Now the boffins at the Live Futures 2020 festival are trying to spread the rumour that the future is actually a...

performing Once and for all we're gonna tell you who we are so shut up and listen

Sunday, 16th August - Saturday, 29th August
@ Wharf 2, Wharf Theatre

It starts as a riot, the roar of young voices working themselves up into a frenzy of swearing, singing and stamping. They're demanding many things of you already: yes, that's right, teenagers are messy and loud, and they're going to ruin your night with a piece of angsty theatre, so...

film Further We Search

Thursday, 20th August - 12PM
@ Chauvel Cinema

A friend of mine believes that you should always lose yourself in an unknown city; when you wander around you take in so many details, see all of those hidden locations that would otherwise be lost behind your tourist guidebook. It's a lovely idea, but when that sun starts to...

performing Untrained

Thursday, 3rd September - Saturday, 5th September
@ The Studio

Forget ballet, hip-hop, contemporary and swing – there are only two real types of dancing: professional and amateur. Think back to all of those times in the club, pub or, on occasion, the work place when someone whips out their best, idiot savant moves. Whether or not it's stylistically good...

film Three Blind Mice

Saturday, 12th September - 1PM
@ Chauvel Cinema

I find it hard to sleep the night before a big trip. Knowing that I have to wake up at 5am never helps the sheep-counting, but even so, I'm full of too much excitement to relax. Imagine then, the state I'd be in were tomorrow's trip the beginning of a...

performing The Oracle

Friday, 18th September - 1PM
@ The Playhouse

On Delphi, long ago, the Oracle sucked the vapours of secret herbs and split the wall of time so as to forewarn mortals of what the Gods decreed. Since those Hellenic days, the seer has remained as the ultimate purveyor of mystic reference. Always of its era, the Oracle takes...

performing Under Ice

Saturday, 22nd August - Saturday, 12th September
@ SBW Stables Theatre

Playwrights make a dangerous choice when they build a play around a single metaphor, because if the image isn't a perfect fit an audience will hear the script being forced into shape. Having a man frozen in ice, his whole life caught in suspension, is certainly a fascinating image but...

performing New German Writing and Australian Theatre Forum

Friday, 28th August - 10AM
@ SBW Stables Theatre

Why is it that so many new German plays are being performed in Australia? Obviously, it's because we share a border with Deutschland and speak a dialect of its language - oh wait, that's Austria. Tut mir leid.So, having eliminated the easy answer, that still leaves the jolly, lederhosed elephant...

film Sydney Underground Film Festival

Friday, 11th September - 11AM
@ The Factory Theatre

All the best things in the world are associated with the underground: Velvet, Dostoyevsky's Notes, truffles, London commuters and David Bowie's man fanny (as glorified in Labyrinth).Sadly, Sydney seemed without its own troglodyte cultural scene, what with our pretty harbour and Opera House sucking all the attention to the World...

music Stillifes and Synergy

Sunday, 27th September - 1PM
@ Old Newington Chapel

The heartbeat is the blueprint for the oldest musical instrument - the drum - and since its discovery percussion has returned the favour; new beats and rhythms contort our bodies into dancing blurs, and even now in the jaded generations there's still a strong cord linking us back to our...

art film free music performing play Marrickville Cultural Festival

Wednesday, 2nd September - 3AM
@ Various venues

Picture this - Greece, rattling along the dusty, unsealed roads of a sleepy village in the north of Zakynthos. My driver is a fisherman who can barely speak English, and yet we manage to start a conversation. He's very excited to learn that I'm from Sydney:"Oh, you must know Mary...

free CarriageWorks Kitchen Garden Project

Sunday, 27th September - 6AM
@ CarriageWorks

Gaia, the spirit of the Earth, has long rewarded her chosen children with gifts of green and brown. Of course, there are the lucky five in every generation who are granted rings of elemental power (...heart? What?) and Captain Planet as their pal, but for the rest of us there...

performing The Day Before the Day Before Tomorrow

Thursday, 24th September - 11AM
@ Trackdown

Back in the days of dripping and blackout, when good times were rationed and families huddled together in the same bed, it was a very special treat to sit by the wireless and catch up on the latest soap-dramas and mystery thrillers. Sadly, when television reared its visible face, the...

performing Bustown

Wednesday, 23rd September - Sunday, 4th October
@ ATYP Studios

There's a reckoning on its way, according to some, and its future is told in the passing of broken seasons under acid-smoked skies. When the monkey faeces finally hits the industrial fans, you had better hope that you paid enough attention to the Survivalists when you had the chance.Welcome to...

performing Missing the Bus to David Jones

Thursday, 22nd October - Saturday, 24th October
@ Performance Space at CarriageWorks

Nursing homes can be haunted places, filled with cobwebbed memories and inhabitants perched between worlds here and gone. They are also places of joy, of old tales retold and new friends made in the closing autumn years. Multidisciplined company, Theatre Kantanka, have spent the past year interviewing nursing home residents...

art free music performing play Where to from here?

Saturday, 26th September - 11AM
@ Fraser Studios

Bicycles are the wonder ingredient that make any activity rate higher on the Fun Scale. Need to buy milk? Ride down to the shops! Need to visit your grandma? Ride to her place! Need to break up with your partner? Ride away fast!Where to from here? is a four-hour celebration...

performing The Only Child

Friday, 18th September - Sunday, 11th October
@ Belvoir St Theatre Downstairs

It is usual not to smile when seeing a family torn apart by the death of a child. There are too many reasons to cry or become angry. And yet, even amidst the most shocking of revelations, The Only Child has the power to also draw sympathetic, mirthful laughter from its...

free music Sooners/Gideon Bensen/A Casual End Mile

Friday, 25th September - 1PM
@ Oxford Arts Factory

In a universe with an immutable timeline it is still possible to travel into the past, but doing so results in the creation of a new, alternate timeline, occupying a separate reality. So, when Sooners took their instruments and hopped back into the 1940s, they spawned a new world of...

art travel performing play World's Funniest Island

Sunday, 18th October - 4AM
@ Cockatoo Island

Saying that your island is the funniest in the world is a big gamble. For one, you're competing against places with funny names, such as Intercourse Island. Then there's the quantative issue of islands that have a higher population of comedians, such as Great Britain.Luckily, the World's Funniest Island isn't...

performing Billy Twinkle: Requiem for a Golden Boy

Friday, 2nd October - Sunday, 11th October
@ Sydney Opera House

Marionettes awaken powerful emotions in people. Many pale-faced adults will mumble about childhood fears, of puppets grinning soulessly at the prospect of dragging screaming kids under the bed. But there's more to life than bed-wetting terror, and Canadian puppetmaster, Ronnie Burkett, uses his craft to bring both heartache and joy...

performing Brand Spanking New

Thursday, 1st October - Saturday, 10th October
@ New Theatre

Take a moment to think about the phrase "brand spanking new". Right away we're in advertising land with a familiar catchphrase, but if you look at the individual words you find something a bit kinkier underneath. Branding and spanking tend to be the practice of elaborately dressed figures in underground...

performing MirrorMirror

Saturday, 3rd October - Saturday, 10th October
@ Riverside Theatre

During a visit to his ancestral home in Ireland, David Clarkson was awestruck by a land that he'd often visited in his dreams. He began to think of a world with many overlaid, where the ghosts of our ancestors are with us now and we dwell in their dreams in...

art free music East Village Jazz Festival

Sunday, 18th October - 6AM
@ Paddington Reservoir Gardens

I was first introduced to jazz by Keiko Nobumoto's arse-whipping galactic epic, Cowboy Bebop, and now I feel like a frantic space privateer whenever I hear some mercurial melodies. Imagine my excitement then, when I think about the Paddington Reservoir Gardens filled with jiving notes. Already I can see myself...

art free music performing play Doppelganger Festival

Monday, 19th October - 6AM
@ Oxford Arts Factory

There was a time when cameras didn't exist and so, when someone saw their double reflected back at them, that could only mean one thing – a demonic doppelganger had spawned in the world. But the double's got a different meaning in the multimediaverse, and legion are the numbers of...

art free music performing play Imagine Festival

Saturday, 10th October - 1PM
@ Cleveland St Theatre

Imagine that you have a box filled with many toys, some new, some old, and each one has the ability to come to life when shook up by a hyperactive child. Next, imagine that this chest of thrills has fallen into the thespian clutches of the Actors College of Theatre...

performing The Taming of the Shrew

Thursday, 22nd October - Saturday, 21st November
@ Playhouse

Mounting a production of Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew is a brave move. Central to the plot is the eponymous shrew, Kate, and the process through which she is trained into submission by her chauvinistic husband, Petruchio. Surrounding this are the citizens of Padua, whose mercantile concerns weigh human...

performing The Curiosities

Friday, 30th October - Saturday, 7th November
@ CarriageWorks

We are curious and complex beings. For thousands of years, artists have drawn deep from the baroque well of intangible human nature, but equally fascinating are the patterns and quirks of our physical forms. No wonder great things evolve when art and medicine combine.Sue Healey's work, The Curiosities, is a...

performing Strange Attractor

Thursday, 29th October - Saturday, 21st November
@ SBW Stables Theatre

Think about the desert.It is everything that we are not. Immense. Dry. Unyielding. On a geological timescale, the fate of our planet has been caught up in a tug-of-war between the deserts and the oceans since the lava first cooled.Yet, for the corporate world the desert is the source of...

art free Snow Storm on a Summer's Day

Saturday, 14th November - 12PM
@ Museum of Contemporary Art

If you've been wanting to take a hot, young museum out for a few sneaky bevvies, now's your chance. This weekend sees the MCA celebrating its 18th birthday and, rather than choke on a yardstick of fermented portraits, the now-legal gallery will transform its front lawn into a winter wonderland....

performing Julius Caesar

Thursday, 29th October - Saturday, 14th November
@ ATYP Studios, The Wharf

Back in 1978, Jim Jones took his followers, the Peoples Temple, from the USA down to Guyana in a bid to start a new community, based on social ideals and free from what he perceived to be the tyranny of the capitalist system. This act resulted in the death of...

performing Pennies from Kevin

Wednesday, 4th November - Saturday, 12th December
@ Sydney Theatre

A year is an excruciatingly long time in politics, especially following the mountain of crises, scandals and impasses that have produced 2009's headlines. Now in its tenth year, the Wharf Revue jams all 365 of these days into a musical vice and squeezes them down into a rich, highly-concentrated sauce...

performing Happy Days

Wednesday, 4th November - Sunday, 13th December
@ Belvoir Theatre Upstairs

Michael Kantor, Artistic Director of Melbourne's Malthouse Theatre, has a thing or two to say about the power of positive thinking. Alongside his production of Happy Days, he has also directed and toured a reworking of Voltaire's Candide, now titled Optimism, which will make an appearance during the Sydney Festival...

art free performing Big Show Closing Party

Saturday, 19th December - 3PM
@ Locksmith Gallery

Were I your mother I'd have only one piece of advice: do not enter the world of stand-up comedy. It is a scientifically-proven fact that the audience wants the comic to fail, because most humans are both sadistic and terrified of their own shortcomings. But what if the comic also...

art free music play Even Books #11

Friday, 27th November - 7PM
@ Bill&George

Love is as definable as a car parked in a clearway at peak hour. Scottish-based author Dan Rhodes knew this, and so bravely gave 101 stories about very different loves to the world in his 2000 book, Anthropology: 101 true love stories. Now, almost ten years later, Even Books is...

performing A Midsummer Night's Dream

Friday, 27th November - 8PM
@ Belvoir Downstairs

The sweaty drum of summer is beating out the last days of spring, bringing with it an exciting line-up of live music and theatrical events. Ushering in the silly season is B Sharp's reimagining of A Midsummer Night's Dream, the Shakespeare that is a perennial summer favourite amongst al fresco...

performing Hugh Hughes in...360

Friday, 22nd January - Saturday, 30th January
@ Seymour Centre

Welshman Hugh Hughes' life took an odd turn back in 1982 when his home town, Anglesey, detached itself from the Britain and drifted out into the Atlantic Ocean. Sadly, no-one took much notice because of the Falklands War, so once the homestead was firmly reattached Hughes developed a performance that...

performing Oedipus Loves You

Thursday, 21st January - Monday, 25th January
@ Seymour Centre

What's the worst thing you could do on your 21st? Get the wrong friend to give the wrong speech? Vomit back into the yard glass and then continue drinking? Pick a theme that doesn't contain the elements of both wit and style? Hah, these are all the playful antics of...

performing Six Characters in Search of an Author

Wednesday, 20th January - Sunday, 31st January
@ Seymour Centre

When Luigi Pirandello's Sei personaggi in cerca d'autore premiered in Rome in 1921, the play introduced the idea that fictional characters could exist beyond their creator, lost out in the world as orphans craving attention. But if there's anything that reality television has taught us, it's that many real people...

music performing Oedipus Rex & Symphony of Psalms

Thursday, 28th January - Saturday, 30th January
@ Concert Hall, Sydney Opera House

This year there's a great opportunity to compare the low with the high brow at the Sydney Festival. While Dublin's Pan Pan thrusts the mother-loving king into the 21st century, acclaimed US director Peter Sellars will team with Portugeuse conductor Joana Carneiro to present Igor Stravinsky's tragic opera, Oedipus Rex....

performing Hamlet

Friday, 8th January - Saturday, 16th January
@ Sydney Theatre

To be or not to be? This is a question that every theatre company should ask of themselves whenever attempting to stage a classic text, for no quicker are old words rendered obsolete than through boring, unimaginative parroting. Brave is the company, Berlin's world-famous Schaubühne in this case, that takes...

music Screamfest

Thursday, 31st December - Friday, 1st January
@ Enmore Theatre

Metal festivals have for decades skirted around the edges of Australia's abundant shores, teasing fans with European promises of demons, angels, witches and vikings. Now, as the year turns to 2010, the familiar melodies of Auld Lang Syme will finally be drowned out by growling poets and guitar shredders at...

performing Public Bunnies; (Op. in c# minor)

Wednesday, 25th November - Saturday, 12th December
@ PACT Theatre

The world of Public Bunnies begins and ends in a grim, black room furnished with old pianos and suspended garments. In this place outside of time, given form by the throaty dirge of unseen monks, twenty young performers collapse one after the other and are stripped down to their black underwear....

music performing Ruhe

Monday, 25th January - Friday, 29th January
@ The Great Hall, University of Sydney

In German it means "silence", and in Ruhe we find the intersection between many types of quiet. It is the opposite of the note, a pause in the musical score important enough to have its own notational symbol, and then it is the appreciative reverence of those listening to a...

performing Sydney Comedy Festival

Monday, 19th April - Sunday, 9th May
@ Various

If laughter is the best medicine, why are doctors and pharmacists still allowed to practise their quackery? Surely I can limp my broken leg into David O'Doherty's show and, with the final pants-saturating guffaw, dance about in the aisle like a Southern revivalist on ice? The day that Des Bishop...

film Remembering Charles Chauvel

Saturday, 19th December - 6PM - Sunday, 20th December - 6PM
@ Chauvel Cinema

Memory is a priceless commodity in Australian arts and media. Too often each generation loses access to our rich history of writers, painters, performers and filmmakers and gets caught up in reinventing the wheel. It is exciting to see, then, a retrospective of an Australian film director whose work was...

performing Friends in Danger

Wednesday, 16th December - 8PM - Saturday, 19th December - 8PM
@ Newtown Theatre

New media and cloud computing have opened up a broad scope for creative collaborations. While the geeks at Google are busy Waving at one another, there are producers out there rejigging existing social technologies to combine powers just as effectively. Twitter is a very successful example, having given birth to...

performing Six Impossible Things Before Dinner

Tuesday, 12th January - Sunday, 17th January
@ The Studio, Sydney Opera House

Now, I know what you're thinking: mind readers are full of shit.British mind-reader Phillip Escoffey does not want you to believe that he's a psychic, in fact he's a cynic. Obsessed with the human mind and its eagerness to be swayed, Escoffey has developed a beguiling act that questions the...

free music Leonard Bernstein's Candide

Saturday, 30th January - 8PM
@ The Domain

Optimism, that endangered species of the heart, is getting a double going over during this Sydney Festival. Though Tom Wright's modern adaptation will happily pick your pocket, American composer Leonard Bernstein's opera is far more humble in its demands for nothing. Rather like the drunken uncle on the ad hoc...

music St Jerome's Laneway Festival 2010

Sunday, 31st January - 12PM
@ Sydney College of the Arts

Like some exploding parasite egg stash, the St Jerome Laneway Festival has outgrown its original venues and is busy spraying its seed into new hosts. Circular Quay just doesn't cut it anymore for the Sydney crowds, so now the SCA will be incubating a brilliant line-up amongst its sandstone, artists...

film Flickerfest 2010

Friday, 8th January - Sunday, 17th January
@ Bondi Pavilion

Short films come in two flavours: the quick, one-two punch of a comic gag and the perfectly concentrated, pithy concept piece. A festival with only one type will stagnate pretty quickly, but one with both in balance can make for a worthy way to spend your time.Bondi's Flickerfest is such...

music performing The Fabulous Frances Faye in Australia

Tuesday, 5th January - Friday, 12th February
@ Belvoir Downstairs

Throughout the Sydney Festival period, Belvoir Downstairs will play host to a mixed bag of comical stories and performances. Just like the man in the lolly shop, this program has something for everyone and, for the musically inclined, your sweetie of choice happens to be The Fabulous Frances Faye in...

performing Double Exposure

Saturday, 9th January - Wednesday, 10th February
@ Belvoir Downstairs

Flacco is an angry alien, a spitting, frothing creature that is only barely contained within the human form of author, performer and illustrator, Paul Livingston. In contrast, Marty Murphy is a polite, soft-spoken illustrator and film-maker who also happens to be occupied by over twenty-five crackpot characters purloined from the...

art free Platinum Prospects Prosperity Power Lunch

Thursday, 21st January - Sunday, 7th February
@ MOP Gallery

The twentieth century was a time for joyous speculation, when many minds envisaged future utopias of married technology and cultures. Back then, our future was filled with flying cars, friendly aliens, food pills and zero gravity sexbots. And everyone wore silver foil, because it was awesome. Sadly, successive decades of...

film music Maangamizi - The Ancient One

Thursday, 28th January - 7PM
@ Red Rattler

I've spoken to more than just a few people recently who came out of Avatar, clutching their 3D glasses to their chest and speaking in sighs about how many goosebumps the film gave them. Given that the script appears to have been written for a Year 6 Speech Night play,...

performing Dark, Not Too Dark

Wednesday, 17th February - Saturday, 20th February
@ Performance Space at CarriageWorks

Memory is the ghost of the senses. When the light of that summer day has long vanished, its traces hide amongst the folds of your brain, stirring the chemicals to action. And the tragedy is that memories never actually fade - they transform, grow stagnant, horrific or cruelly idyllic. Nothing...

performing It's a Jungle Out There

Wednesday, 10th February - Saturday, 13th February
@ Performance Space at CarriageWorks

Martin del Amo's performances are like secret gifts, curious pieces placed out of the way that thrill with their mix of play and thoughtfulness. Originally from Germany, del Amo's choreography has been informed from an eclectic itinerary of dance forms - German modern dance, Japanese Butoh and Australian-style Bodyweather -...

performing The Fabulous Punch and Judy Show

Wednesday, 10th February - Saturday, 6th March
@ Old Fitzroy Theatre

Some days life is pretty shit. You've lost your job, your partner smells like another person's genitalia and your children/pets would rather eat your leg than show you some love. There's also bills to pay, medical problems to sort out/ignore and the whole world is, apparently, drowning or drying up,...

free music Simon Carter @ Oxford Art Factory

Thursday, 28th January - Thursday, 18th February
@ Oxford Art Factory

Somewhere in his genealogy, Simon Carter must share a substantial puddle of DNA with both Mark Oliver Everett and Jarvis Cocker. It may be as inane as their choice of spectacle frame and the shifting length of their facial carpet or, just maybe, there is a deeper connection to be...

art film performing play Semi-Permanent 2010

Friday, 19th March - Saturday, 20th March
@ Sydney Convention Centre

An atheist and a (insert deity-worshipping faithful here) walk into the Sydney Convention and Exhibition Centre. They each take their seat, peer into their bag of convention goodies, and then look at the program of speakers for the days ahead. At this point the atheist leans in to her partner...

free performing The Wentworth Talks

Monday, 8th February - 7PM
@ Wharf 1, Wharf Theatre

The Sydney Theatre Company are leading the way towards a sustainable future with their Greening the Wharf scheme. This massive project incorporates water, energy and structural strategies for limiting the Wharf and STC's environmental impact - a wise choice, given the company's vulnerability to rising water levels.Starting in February, the...

art free music performing play Reclaiming the Lanes

Saturday, 13th February - 2PM
@ The Hub

One of the beautiful things about living in the inner city is that you really don't need a car. Fundamental amenities are within a foot's pace and any other goodies - friends, parties and shows - tend to be within the grasp of public transport.So why are there so many...

music performing Shifting Sand

Thursday, 11th March - Saturday, 13th March
@ CarriageWorks

A trip to one of Sydney's beaches can be akin to a pilgrimage. For many those sandy strips are symbolic of all things Australian - whatever that really means - and almost everyone reading this can share a memory of getting the golden grain chafe in their special place. But...

music The Bitch Done Left Me

Sunday, 14th February - 7PM
@ The Vanguard

Rumour has it that Valentine was an alcoholic soldier who spent his nights whoring around in bars, wooing a stream of women over the course of his life that would put an aqueduct to shame. However, by the light of day old Valentine needed to be looking his finest in...

performing Words They Make With Their Mouths

Tuesday, 27th April - Saturday, 1st May
@ ATYP Studios, The Wharf

It's closing time at the pub and a party mix of bright young things carouse on to their next destination. In the time-travelling tradition of Proust, these sixteen Gen Ys will each tell their story to the audience over the scant 100 metres it takes to reach the next street...

performing Spring Awakening

Tuesday, 9th February - Sunday, 28th February
@ Sydney Theatre

I am yet to grasp the unending desire for converting plays/films/books/discographies into musicals. Though there are a few pieces of musical theatre that really excite me, I've sadly found that many are the theatrical equivalent of a mother bird eating and then regurgitating worms into the mouths of her squawking...

performing Orestes 2.0

Wednesday, 17th February - Saturday, 13th March
@ Griffin Theatre

You awaken in a candy pink room, on a soiled bed where a corner of the mattress has burned open into a charred gash. Here you are febrile and filthy with curdled dreams. Mad soldiers share your sweat-soaked sheets, their pallid flesh spoiled by unhealing wounds and they wear little...

music performing Hot Lunch

Thursday, 4th March - Saturday, 6th March
@ The Vanguard

Take one look at Tasia and you're her kitten forever. This Sydney burlesque star has shimmied her way through numerous eras — as one third of the Belladonnas de Lux and in her own international solo career — wowing audiences through the nostalgic exotica of the cheeky tease. When Tasia...

art performing William Yang's My Generation

Tuesday, 23rd February - Saturday, 6th March
@ CarriageWorks

Living room slide shows have become an endangered species since the advent of social photo dumps like Facebook. For me, the act of sitting in a small room, eating some snacks and watching a friend fiddle with their post-travel carousel of anecdotes is so far removed from my current reality...

performing Someone Who'll Watch Over Me

Saturday, 13th March - Sunday, 28th March
@ PACT Theatre

Three men of different, but easily identified, nationalities walk into a bar and in the space of one sentence demonstrate a well-established stereotype of their culture. Go on, laugh. But, after the punchline, those three men leave the bar, walk their separate ways and are kidnapped by unknowns. When they...

performing The Suicide

Thursday, 18th March - Sunday, 11th April
@ Belvoir Downstairs

Gareth Davies is a lunatic who should be unleashed on theatre audiences as often as possible. His is a mad genius that is often sealed in lead-lined supporting roles, adding the glow of the honestly absurd to tragedies and comedies alike. Now, in The Suicide, Davies detonates the full force...

performing New Creations: Bonachela and Linder

Tuesday, 23rd March - Saturday, 10th April
@ Sydney Theatre

Audiences attending this, the first of Sydney Dance Company's 'New Creations', will find a double-bill that draws on very different parts of the human being. Adam Linder, Australian-born and German-based choreographer, has tripped into the well of collective unconscious and brought back a series of visions that explore the fractured...

performing Toy Symphony

Wednesday, 7th April - Saturday, 10th April
@ Riverside Theatre

While children all across the Western world are developing adult anxieties and sex drives, it is becoming more the case that grown-ups are turning to their inner kid. Office suits are being given crayons and play-doh and asked to recreate Gumby rather than focus on KPIs and maybe, at least...

film Sounds on Screen: Nosferatu with Darth Vegas

Saturday, 5th June - 10PM
@ Playhouse, Sydney Opera House

A vampire should be staked through the heart, decapitated, cooked on a skewer and then served up with garlic bulbs. At least that's the way it was done in the old country. But since infiltrating Hollywood, those bloodsuckers have us salivating for their brooding, glitter-covered cheekbones and six-packs. F.W. Murnau,...

free performing play Etiquette

Monday, 19th April - Sunday, 2nd May
@ Campbelltown Arts Centre

What do you do if you're going on that first date and your brain can't suggest anything better than "get drunk, go dancing, do it horizontal"? While some experts would recommend eating candles for dinner (or something along those lines), the creative geniuses of Rotozaza have a bit of amazing...

performing Hole in the Wall

Wednesday, 26th May - Saturday, 29th May
@ Performance Space at CarriageWorks

After food and water, shelter is a vital necessity for the most basic standard of life. But where would life be if we all lived in functional, concrete cubes? Shelter is not a home; rather, it is the idiosyncrasies of colour, style, location and personalities that gives a roof and...

music performing Laurie Anderson: Transitory Life

Tuesday, 1st June - Wednesday, 2nd June
@ Sydney Opera House

Laurie Anderson's vibrant career has seen her successfully transform the troubadour from that of a medieval minstrel into a captivating, artistic mastery. Weaving stories and unearthly music, Anderson is able to transplant powerful emotions into the hearts of her audience, without falling into the trap of sentimentalism.Driven by her peculiar...

performing Circa

Tuesday, 8th June - Sunday, 13th June
@ Sydney Opera House

When I was younger, circuses were a terrifying experience. They were loud, dusty tent hells filled with shitting, roaring animals and clowns who grinned while they attempted to assault you with balloons. At some point between then and now, trends and public opinion have changed, causing circuses to clean up...

performing Glow

Saturday, 5th June - Friday, 11th June
@ Sydney Opera House

Had the team behind Glow lived during the middle ages, they'd have been burnt at the stake for extreme witchcraft. There's no way that such a visually-engaging, magical show can be anything but the result of a pact with the devil.Glow is the story of a "loser": an ordinary man...

free performing Driven to New Pastures

Thursday, 6th May - Saturday, 8th May
@ St James Anglican Church Hall

Every seven years, it is said, all of the cells of our body are replaced by brand new, potentially carcinogenic copies. This is growth, maturation, repetition. Someone of a philosophical bent could argue that this means we are constantly unbecoming ourselves, or that indeed there never was a solid self...

film music ReelDance International Dance on Screen Festival

Thursday, 13th May - Sunday, 16th May
@ CarriageWorks

Why does dance enthrall so many people? We throw shapes in clubs, on television, in our living room, off the top of buildings, on stages and even in the streets. Many cultures treat dance as a religious engagement; the moving form becomes Other, opening a doorway to an extended universe...

performing Mortal Engine

Wednesday, 5th May - Saturday, 15th May
@ Sydney Theatre

One of my favourite TED talks is by Susan Blackmore, in which she discussed the concept of memes (self-replicating cultural entities) and her prediction of a new type of entity called the 'teme' — replicating technology (think iPods and mobile phones). It left a lasting impression on me — that...

performing The Folding Wife

Wednesday, 19th May - Saturday, 22nd May
@ CarriageWorks

Hybrid art is an exciting byproduct of our shrinking planet. As cultures detach from their geographic origins, they slip like quicksilver between one another to produce fascinating happenings. In The Folding Wife, the merging of different practices — poetry, physical theatre and shadow play — are as much content as...

art performing play NightTime Statewide: Everyday Hero

Sunday, 6th June - 7PM
@ Performance Space

Jessica Watson's return to Australia has firmly aerated the compost that is the Australian obsession with heroism and "Aussie battlers". As pub lunches and five o'clock wines turn into fisticuffs over whether she's worthy of the title, it does raise the question of why we need heroes and what it...

art film free music play think Graphic

Saturday, 7th August - Sunday, 8th August
@ Sydney Opera House

Somewhere on the timeline of illustration history, the humble comic spread from the sweaty palms of pre-teens and into mainstream and indie media. Now, this inaugural celebration of comic books and related cultural media will show Sydney just how much we need those 'funnies'. Filmmaker Kevin Smith and the poster boy for sophisticated comics, Neil Gaiman, head an impressive two-day schedule of talks, demonstrations, readings and screenings that will leave our city quaking from an ink-and-image overload. The program comprises both free and ticketed events, including the world premiere of [i] Akira [/i] with a new live score by Regurgitator.

music performing Sutra

Thursday, 16th September - Sunday, 19th September
@ Concert Hall, Sydney Opera House

Why do mountain monks make popular dancers? Following a life-long interest, Flemish/Moroccan choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui travelled to the famous Shaolin Temple and sought his own answers.

performing Faker

Tuesday, 21st September - Sunday, 26th September
@ Sydney Opera House

Given the subjectivity of art, it is hard to gauge whether or not you're at the top of your game. Sure, you could get all fiscal about it, rating your success against box office and gallery sales, or by keeping stock of the amount of free wines mooched at your...

art music performing play The Bohemian Masquerade Ball

Saturday, 25th September - 7PM
@ Factory Theatre

Beware, child.Beyond the village walls lies the Forest of the Strange. Its weaving paths pass tree roots and the shadows sing queer tunes, the whispers of which will bewitch the ordinary and whisk poor fools away. This is the eternal home of the Bohemian Masquerade Ball.In a society saturated with...

performing Glow

Wednesday, 13th October - Saturday, 16th October
@ Seymour Centre

Merging human performers with a motion-capturing interface that illustrates chaotic patterns projected upon and manipulated by their moving bodies, Chunky Move presents an artistic interpretation of the human/digital interface in a display of techno wizardry.

art free Lies/Lions/Lines

Wednesday, 20th October - Saturday, 30th October
@ The Paper Mill

Paper is the unsung hero of the last two thousand years and it will continue to prevail despite claims of its obsolescence. Looking beyond the scribbles and characters printed on it, there is a tactile dimension to paper that is almost impossible to trump. Remember your joy when you first...

music performing Opera Australia's Great Christmas Caper

Tuesday, 21st December - Friday, 24th December
@ Sydney Opera House

This year Opera Australia is presenting one of the higher quality Christmas memory medleys. Combining operatic virtuosity with cheeky humour and showy chutzpah, this event promises to be meatier than your usual night of carols.

art An Edwardian Summer

Saturday, 11th December - Tuesday, 26th April
@ Museum of Sydney

It is hard to imagine a photographic archive of Sydney that doesn't include gangland murders, but here is proof that Sydney has seen gentler times.

play Table of Solace

Friday, 24th December - 5PM
@ Good God Small Club

For comforting respite from the reality of a table-less Christmas Eve, those without a plan are encouraged to find at least three other individuals and bundle together for a feast of delightful promise.

music The Blackeyed Susans

Friday, 17th December - Saturday, 18th December
@ The Vanguard

A regal whiskey would taste the way this band sounds. Listen to them and you're drawn into the land of the blues ballad, the cabaret croon and the cracked chords of dirty country.

art free Justin O'Brien: The Sacred Music of Colour

Saturday, 18th December - Sunday, 27th February
@ AGNSW

Religious imagery, especially of the Catholic variety, is often bloody and bleak, twisting a broken body around rigid lines of wood and stone. But not so in Justin O'Brien's paintings. His works, predominantly famous for their interpretation of religious motifs, shimmer with a lush palette that you'd expect from an...

performing Love, Loss and What I Wore

Wednesday, 29th December - Saturday, 16th January
@ Sydney Opera House

At the heart of Love, Loss and What I Wore is the idea that objects, such as clothing, hold memories for us. For some people this leads to hoarding in an effort to keep as many facets of our past close at hand, while others need to cleanse their wardrobes...

music performing The Giacomo Variations

Wednesday, 19th January - Saturday, 22nd January
@ Sydney Opera House

John Malkovich's readings of Casanova's debauched life are paired with excerpts from Mozart's famous operas in this lush, playful night of high-art with low brows

performing The Adventures of Alvin Sputnik: Deep Sea Explorer

Tuesday, 18th January - Sunday, 23rd January
@ Seymour Centre

Perth artist Tim Watts has developed a poetic, engaging future world using a small budget and a generous imagination. At under an hour, and for a handful of dollars, this is exceptionally well-valued magic.

performing Invisible Atom

Monday, 24th January - Sunday, 30th January
@ Seymour Centre

Downsizing has negative connotations. It puts one in mind of people in sweat-stained white collars carrying boxes filled with the few bits and pieces they hoped would make their office lives bearable. But for the theatre-maker, it suggests something a lot more interesting: a chance to switch from the grandeur...

music An Evening of Chamber Music with Philip Glass and Wendy Sutter

Tuesday, 18th January - 8PM
@ City Recital Hall

It does not do Philip Glass justice to simply call him accomplished. Since the mid-1960s he has consistently pushed and redeveloped himself, moving from early minimalist experimentation into thoroughly modern renderings of baroque and romantic sounds. This sense of reinvention has seen Glass applauded by both the art music scene...

performing The Red Shoes

Tuesday, 18th January - Sunday, 30th January
@ Seymour Centre

If there's one thing this adaptation of the Hans Christian Andersen classic guarantees, it's a knee-blasting dance track with some sweat-milking flesh thrashing.

music performing East London West Sydney

Tuesday, 25th January - Sunday, 30th January
@ CarriageWorks

Intelligent, sexy and virtuosic, this production mixes British hip-hop sensibilities with local Australian talent and aims to deconstruct stereotypes about "the dodgy parts of town" as well as hip hop itself.

performing Entity

Wednesday, 26th January - Sunday, 30th January
@ Sydney Theatre

Ballet taught us that the human body can be sculpted into an organic machine. And for a while that was enough, especially when it was coupled with garish sets and costumes (yes, yes, Ballet Russes) and men with questionable cheekbones and crotch mesas. But something new came onto the scene,...

music Blonde Redhead with The Verlaines

Saturday, 29th January - 8PM
@ Sydney Opera House

As the Laneway Festival approaches, it scatters in its wake a host of gorgeous sideshows. Some are well-known favourites while others are, if not completely unknown, a shade towards the obscure. Blonde Redhead is an example of the latter, a band most recently heard in Australia in the form of...

film Deckchair Flicks

Tuesday, 25th January - Saturday, 29th January
@ Riverside Theatre

Parramatta Riverside is offering film lovers the opportunity to camp out in their courtyard for this week's series of drama and horror flicks, many of which are Australian-made.

performing Spirit

Saturday, 5th February - 8PM
@ Sydney Theatre

Watching a Bangarra production is to stand in a whirlpool; a point of confluence where past and present blend. Bringing indigenous traditions to a contemporary audience, this production is a stirring portrayal of spirituality.

art William Yang: Old New Borrowed Blue

Wednesday, 2nd February - Saturday, 26th February
@ Stills Gallery

William Yang has splashed long in the waters of Sydney life. His delicate photography has, over the last few decades, coerced memories to remain and contribute to a record of times not often remembered. Last year Yang presented much of his private collection of both images and spoken stories, that...

art performing Secret Wars Sydney: Round 1

Thursday, 3rd February - 6PM
@ Oxford Art Factory

This international paint and ink-flicking frenzy is raw art rendered at the speed of beats, and it's back in Sydney for its third installment. This time, the Oxford Art Factory will host returning champion, Houl, who will be headlining a charge of artists, including Jimmy Baxter, Sonny Day (We Buy Your Kids) and Alex Lehours. Secret Wars is a celebration of the quick draw, of artisan craft brought to the level of performance and of the never-ending quest to push oneself to the limit. It's even spawned its own Euro League, putting it on par with soccer by default - and there's nothing more inspiring than being likened to a game of headbutting balls.

performing Some Film Museums I Have Known

Friday, 18th February - Saturday, 12th March
@ Old Fitzroy Theatre

Childhood dreams of tourist traps are the fodder of this Imperial Panda gem: the culmination of three years worth of body fluids, craft liquids and VHS material, with input from some of Sydney's top performance makers.

performing Billy Connolly - The Man

Sunday, 27th February - Tuesday, 8th March
@ Sydney Opera House

Billy Connolly, a man whose name is synonymous with the f-bomb, is returning to Australia after a six-year hiatus. What is he bringing with him, do you think?Chances are Billy doesn't know yet himself. Now entering his fifth decade as a comic performer, Connolly has built his career using his...

music performing The Ziggy Stardust Meets Tiny Tim Songbook or Comparison is Violence

Friday, 25th February - Friday, 4th March
@ Sydney Opera House

Taylor Mac's work is cutting edge performance communication, using outlandish and beautiful methods to wrestle the dangerous myths of modern society to the ground.

performing Before/After

Friday, 4th February - Saturday, 19th February
@ Wharf 2, Wharf Theatre

German art is life turned up to 11. From women wearing horns, to wolfmen, to mothers dragging their children across war-torn Europe, this is a culture that bursts humanity open to the viscera. At the forefront of the modern Deutsch culture merchants is Roland Schimmelpfennig, whose works are both epic...

art free play think In Good Company

Saturday, 29th January - Sunday, 3rd April
@ Object Gallery

Designers striving towards collaboration and reinvention get together to spread the word on how the industry is changing and taking shape.

music Deerhunter

Tuesday, 8th February - 8PM
@ Metro Theatre

Fresh from the success of Halcyon Digest, the band are bringing the exploratory sound of their dark, ambient rock to Sydney as part of the Laneway Festival tour.

film free play Tropfest

Sunday, 20th February - 6PM
@ The Domain

What began as an informal screening for a small gathering of case, crew and friends in a Darlinghurst cafe now attracts an audience of more than 150,000 people in Sydney's Domain.

film free Stuff!: The Drama of It All

Thursday, 24th March - 6PM
@ Riverside Theatre

Seven film-makers from Greater Western Sydney were selected and trained over a year with help from acclaimed screen writer and editor Billy Marshall Stoneking and director and writer Amin Palangi.

performing Connected

Tuesday, 10th May - Saturday, 14th May
@ Sydney Theatre

Catch this living wave-form sculpture in Sydney before it jumps the oceans to South Korea and the USA.

play Wasted

Thursday, 12th May - Saturday, 14th May
@ Ten Buck Alley

A provocative dining experience that invites its guests to not simply consume, but to engage with the food they're eating

art free performing play Tiny Stadiums

Monday, 2nd May - Sunday, 15th May
@ PACT Theatre

The new frontier of public art is found in the dimension of the intimate.

free performing Fathom

Thursday, 19th May - Sunday, 22nd May
@ Performance Space at CarriageWorks

What does it mean when we drive species of fish to extinction if our own genes still carry the memory of scales and gills?

art free Gilbert Garcin: The Man Who is an Image

Friday, 6th May - Saturday, 11th June
@ Australian Centre for Photography

Experience a surreal universe that hides a witty sense of humour.

free TEDxSydney 2011

Saturday, 28th May - 9AM
@ CarriageWorks

For those TED addicts out there, now's the time to get out of the closet and experience the real thing in good company.

free performing Imperial Panda: Erotic Fan Fiction and Ghost Stories

Friday, 20th May - 7PM
@ Pier 2/3 Club Stage

Hear new tales of horror, raunch and hilarity from the Imperial Panda and friends.

film Of Gods and Men

Thursday, 26th May - Thursday, 30th June
@ Various cinemas

A deeply meditative reflection on faith and community amidst a violent world.

art film free NYman with a Movie Camera

Tuesday, 24th May - 9PM
@ CarriageWorks

A great opportunity to see a conversation with the past, this is a modern return to the battle against narrative in film.

performing Spring Dance

Tuesday, 23rd August - Sunday, 4th September
@ Sydney Opera House

Forget the maypole, frolic around the Sydney Opera House for the 2011 Spring Dance season.

film Goa Hippy Tribe Screening and Discussion

Tuesday, 2nd August - 7PM
@ Chauvel Cinema

Hippies, facestalking and true tales of a spiritual beach party.

film The Woman

Friday, 19th August - Sunday, 11th September
@ Chauvel Cinema

Lucky McKee's new gore porn horror exposes a very dysfunctional family's attempt to train their latest 'pet'.

music performing The Cunning Little Vixen

Saturday, 30th July - Saturday, 6th August
@ CarriageWorks

Let this sleek fox into your chamber.

performing Richard III

Thursday, 1st December - Saturday, 10th December
@ Lyric Theatre

While old Dick Trois once spoke of the winter of our discontent, there is no doubt you'll be very satisfied when Kevin Spacey and Sam Mendes hit the Lyric Theatre this summer. It's been 12 years since the pair worked together, playing hide and seek amongst rose petals and suburban teens in American Beauty, and this time Spacey and Mendes are locking lips with the Bard's political thriller, Richard III. The arch-villain of royal machinations must be a delight for Spacey to play, given his talents as a shape-shifting actor. Richard III will be arriving in Sydney on the back of a sold-out London season for a very limited 11 performances. If you can't afford the ticket price, ask a relative. Throw them in the tower if they don't acquiesce.