Editorial 14 June 2017

Let’s get historical, an antidote to the hysterical politics of the moment. It’s been inspiring and reassuring to ponder the grim beauty of Patrick White’s The Ham Funeral (1948) and to immerse oneself in Stephen Jones’ alchemical video of the great new music collective Machine for Making Sense in performance in 1994 (image above). Jon Rose’s entertaining account of the career and contributions to contemporary music-making of sound collagist Rik Rue conjures a culturally dense Sydney of the 80s and 90s. The 80s are prominent again in a review of Meredith Rogers’ book on the influential Geelong-based Mill Community Theatre. And Aboriginal playwright Nakkiah Lui takes on the old white bourgeois comedy of manners with verve in Black is the New White. Meanwhile, in the second of our reports on the nurturing of new work in Adelaide, Vitalstatistix invests substantially in the future. Keith & Virginia

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Editorial image:  Machine for Making Sense, Silence Is… (1994), Stephen Jones