Editorial 1 May 2018

Happy May Day — International Workers’ Day! And welcome to our 2018 series of occasional reviews and, soon, copious surprising highlights from and reflections on 24 years of RealTime publishing, culminating later in the year in a number of open forums. We and our writers will be assaying what happened in the arts in Australia over the last quarter of a century, registering huge shifts in ideas, forms and engagement with audiences, science and new technological tools. To be able to look back in a society so preoccupied with the present is an all too rare opportunity to gauge in a considered way just what comprises ‘now’ and what might come next. We hope our reflections will encourage your own and that you’ll share them with us. Soon we’ll be posting searchable PDFs of the first 40 editions of RealTime, 1994-2000, on our website, providing an opportunity to browse a period of remarkable cultural ferment. In the meantime, in the first of our occasional reviews we applaud Sydney Theatre Company’s The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, Sydney Chamber Opera’s The Howling Girls and Readymade Works’ Happy Hour. Keith & Virginia

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Image credit: Colin Moody, Hugo Weaving, The Resistable Rise of Arturo Ui, Sydney Theatre Company, photo © Daniel Boud