AustLit

'The Bougainville Photoplay Project:

'A slideshow with fireside chat:
1. An eminent Australian orthopedic surgeon makes a series of trips to Bougainville (Papua New Guinea) during the 1960s, just as the era of Australia's colonial mandate is drawing to a close. The doctor is presented with dozens of crippled children and lepers; his operations allow many of these people to walk for the first time.
2. The giant Panguna copper mine is established against the wishes of Bougainville's traditional landowners. Environmental destruction is caused by the mine, and the struggle for Bougainville to become independent of PNG leads to a brutal civil war during which roughly one in ten of the island's inhabitants die.
3. An Australian academic begins fieldwork study of reconciliation ceremonies on Bougainville in the current period of post-war reconstruction. He carries with him a book of photographs.

'Three narrative threads are delicately interwoven in an intimate, moving, and constantly surprising monologue performance from acclaimed performance group version 1.0. Combining field notes, oral history, slides, Super-8 film, video installation and the display of various artifacts, "The Bougainville Photoplay Project" grapples with the ethical, epistemological and practical dilemmas of making art and conducting research in post-colonial, post-conflict settings, particularly when the artist/researcher is a citizen of the former colonial power. This is politics and performance at its most personal.'

Source: version 1.0 website, http://www.versiononepointzero.com/
Sighted: 09/11/2010

'Thomas is nine and he's started writing a book. His father says all important books are about God. Even so, Thomas writes down all the interesting things he sees that other people seem to ignore: tropical fish in the canal, a deluge of frogs, the Son of God popping in for a chat ...

'He also writes down his greatest determination: When I grow up, I'm going to be happy.

'Featuring Jesus, the angels, the Bottombiter, the startling Mrs Van Amersfoort and a beautiful girl with a leather leg, this is a totally magical story about a child learning to act when faced with fear and wrong. Acclaimed children's author Guus Kuijer's magnificently humble story grabs your heart, challenges your mind, and makes you laugh, no matter how old you are.' (From the publisher's website.)

'CHO CHO SAN was powerfully moving. The tragedy of a delicate, naive girl caught between two cultures, hopelessly trapped, hopefully yearning and with all hope destroyed, was told through resonant music and lyrics. Singer/actors and life-sized puppets manipulated by visible puppeteers played dual roles. Cho Cho San herself was represented by an actor, and by her alter ego puppet, Butterfly; Goro, the Japanese marriage broker, by an actor and a grotesque puppet of himself; Pinkerton, Kate and Sharpless, Westerners and the Chorus were actors, and the child of two cultures was a white-faced, innocently featureless baby puppet, smothered to death at the hands of its despairing mother in this new version of the story.'

Source: Handspan Theatre (http://handspantheatre.com.au/info/Cho+Cho+San).