LIFE AND TIMES OF....

19 July 2026 Many of you would have heard the story of my ballet class experience. As a 5 or 6 year old, I was taken to class and within a couple of weeks, the teacher rang Betty. “Mrs Tonks", she said, "please remove your child from my class. Save yourself money because she’s never going to able to move.” And of course the teacher was right. I’ve never had any flexibility or fluidity. The only time I ever received detention in high school was because I refused to perform gymnastics. I knew I couldn’t leap over the horse or do a somersault let alone a handstand. It is somewhat ironic given that history that I’ve been on the Board of two dance companies (WA Ballet and Australian Dance Theatre) and been the CEO (albeit in an interim role) of two dance companies (Chunky Move and ADT).   It was therefore with some sense of envy that I went to see Penguin presented by Momentum Dance. It’s independent company of mature-age dancers, unsupported by government, but clearly loved b...

16 July 2026 Steel Magnolias is one of those plays/films that I probably wasn’t interested in back in the late 1980s. A collection of southern belles gossiping in a hairdressing salon in a small country town. Too much pink and hairspray for my taste at the time. But as a resident of Perth now, I’m taking every opportunity to see whatever shows come to town and the cast of Steel Magnolias appealed: the wonderful Lisa McCune plus other actors that have peopled our stage for years such as Tracy Mann and Belinda Giblin. So on a wet night, we headed into His Majesty’s Theatre for what turned out to be a delightful night of entertainment. It’s a story about community and family, about illness and death, about care and friendship. And as I watched, I thought of the stories from Afghanistan where beauty salons were, until 2023, one of the few places where women could met. But alas, the Taliban have closed them too.   Each character is richly painted: the daughter with diabetes, the o...

20 July 2026 I’ve just broken one of my own rules and commented publicly and critically  – albeit to  a very small audience via my work blog – on an article about Australian Arts Leadership written by two delightful women I know. For those who are particularly interested in this topic, you can check out their academic paper and my response here: https://www.anntonks.com.au/category/anns-blog/ In summary, they think Australian arts leaders are bad because the people who appoint them rely on out-of-date leadership theory or what they call “zombie leadership”. While I agree that there are old fashioned approaches to what a leader looks like, that there are a few arts leaders who aren’t brilliant, and that Arts Boards are better at appointing Managing Directors than Artistic Directors, I believe that these academics haven’t structured an appropriate research plan to test their theory and don’t understand what actually goes on within arts recruitment and selection processes. ...

14 July 2026 An article about profit and loss for Australia’ state theatre companies in ArtsHub took me racing back to my first couple of months with the company: https://www.artshub.com.au/news/industry-news/profits-or-losses-for-state-theatre-companies-key-trends-revealed-2866148/   In 2025, Melbourne Theatre Company had the worst result of any of the companies with a loss of $3.5 million. This is 8% of their turnover of $28 million. The company had been tracking well with modest surpluses for the previous couple of years compared, for example, to Sydney Theatre Company’s losses but the 2025 result was an outlier with the next worst company being Bell Shakespeare with a loss of just under $1 million. Without having any insight into MTC’s particular issues, the more general ones that companies face at the moment include increasing costs of production, failure of audiences to return post-Covid, ageing audience that isn’t been replaced due to decreasing arts education, and e...

14 July 2026 Driving home from a walk around the Swan River foreshore, Susan and I caught the end of a talk about the state of our education system and what it means for our democracy. We had no idea who the speaker was but we kept nodding and agreeing with every point. It turned out to be the 2026 Hugh Stretton Oration by Dr Susan Close who is the CEO of the McKinnon Institute for Political Leadership at Monash University, having been Deputy Premier of South Australia: https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/bigideas/is-education-policy-damaging-our-democracy-dr-susan-close/106838974 Some of the points she made are worth repeating:   “The neo-liberal view we have allowed to take root here has laid the ground for the anger we experience now.” “Education is formative….brings out the potential of every young person to equip them for their future   Failure here is formative for a life time. Further it is formative at the first experience of public policy through which Austr...

12 July 2026 As you know, part of the reason I share a house with Susan is because of the pleasure she takes in cooking. And as you know, I take no pleasure in the kitchen at all. My pleasure comes in encouraging her to create feasts for friends and our recently travels have served (pun intended) as inspiration. This month it was a Moroccan lunch, presented on some of the colourful tagines and platters we shipped home. Plus we needed an excuse to wear the kaftans we’d bought in Marrakesh.Who knows when we will ever wear them again but in a country where men and women look graceful in these flowing gowns, we couldn't resist. The last time I owned a kaftan was to wear to the final year school dance in 1971! Our guests were greeted with mint tea poured from a silver pot we bought back with us. The menu was based on many of the sensations we'd enjoyed in Morocco from the simplicity of dried fruits and nuts to the complexity of vegetable and lamb fruit tagines. We’re lucky to ha...

9 July 2026 Without doing any research, I thought that taking a 14 year old to see Supergirl would be a “good thing” during the school holidays. She thought it was 7/10 whereas I was closer to 3/10. All that potential of A feisty female hero gone to waste. Milly Alcock, a young Australian actor, did the best she could but Craig Gillespie, an Australian director, didn’t serve her well. Or was the problem the script writer or the editor because neither of those aspects of the film were good either. The show starts with a hungover 23 year old Kara (aka Supergirl) on a week long pub crawl through the universe. Along the way she meets lots of aliens (who all look as if they've come off a Star Wars set), even more baddies (mostly blokes covered in metal studs) and they all spend most of the time in really badly shot CGI fight scenes (that look like offcuts from Mad Max films). On the surface, her tasks are to save a young girl from becoming a revenge murderer and find an antidote...

8 July 2026 The lights currently shining in Kings Park almost outshine the stars and the city itself. I missed Lightscape last year because it opened just after I’d broken my foot/knee so I wasn’t able to walk kilometres through the Park to see all the different installations. I wasn’t going to miss out this year. As I walked through all the different wonders, I was reflecting on Pauline Hanson’s world. We were surround by the young and the old, some in pushchairs, some in wheelchairs, couple and families, and with heritage from every continent on earth. Here was the multicultural Australia that frightens her so much.  Ironically, we were having a “monocultural” experience in as much as we were all walking through Kings Park together. But what can be "mono' about looking at artistry created by school kids and lighting designers, artists from Europe and the education team at the Park? Each of the clever installations brought a smile to may face from jumping fish to light ca...

6 July 2026 I’ve just finished ready Rory Carroll’s impressive story of the end of the life of Sir Roger Casement – Irish hero to some, British traitor to others.  In brief, Casement had an extraordinary career exposing the ghastly treatment of rubber workers   in the Congo and Peru but then turned his hand to supporting the campaign for Irish Independence. During World War I he attempted to enlist German support for an uprising as well as recruiting Irish POWs from German prison camps and didn’t do particularly well on either front. On returning to Ireland to try and stop any uprising because of the lack of German help, he was captured just days before the Easter Rebellion, taken to London, tried for treason and hung. What made his case particularly interesting was the fact that he was gay, kept very detailed diaries about his sexual activities, and this was used to discredit him. Of course, since the moment the diaries came into public view there has been debate about ...

  30 June 2026 Susan and I have just seen the National Theatre production John Millington Synge’s Playboy of the Western World. It’s an Irish classic but I’m trying to work out why. Because it was written in Hiberno-English (the Irsih version of English, influenced by Gaelic)? Because it focuses of the life (the often drunken life) of Irish peasants? Because it satirizes the idea of a hero – in this case, a young man who is celebrated for killing his father? The response to its first showing in Dublin in 1907 was riots by Irish nationalists and republicans who saw it as an insult to Ireland. The Guardian reviewer of the National Theatre version summarised it as “the hollow elevation of a pretender by a (desperate?) community in dire need of a hero” and says that this could still be true in our populist times. But somehow, this production doesn’t quite know the value of the story it’s telling. Each of the main actors, including Nicola Couglan and Sionhan McSweeney (both from De...

30 June 2026  I’ve just finished reading Ghada Karmi’s autobiographical story about her life as a Palestinian, In Search of Fatima. At the age of 9 in 1948 she and her family were forced out of Palestine during the Nakba. It’s an intimate and powerful novel with the story of the creation of Israel told from the side of those who lost their homes and their land. She grew up in England with a father awarded an MBE for his work on the BBC Arab service and his creation of Arab/English dictionaries and a mother who for 40 years, refused to learn English because of the role they had played in the loss of her home. Ghada describes her immersion in English culture, her friendship with Jewish kids growing up in Golders Green, her marriage to an Englishman and how it all started to fray as a result of the 6 Day War when most of Britain was on the side of “plucky little Israel” fighting off the “dirty” Arabs. She also talks about finally going back to Israel (only allowed as a tourist of cou...

27 June 2026 My relationship with critics is ambivalent. I have been a critic. I have written to newspaper editors asking them to remove critics. I have turned to critics to make decisions about whether to see a film or a show or read a book. But I’ve never had to bear the personal consequence of being the recipient of a review….unless you count grades for essays. Reviewing on Radio, 1980s I know actors who don’t read reviews. I know actors who hang on every word of a reviewer. When I was a reviewer, it was for theatre on a community radio station. My approach was to be accurate but witty, truthful but not unkind. If a show was really terrible, I didn’t review it. That way, I wasn’t drawing attention to it. It was in the days when a review, particularly in a major daily newspaper had a serious impact on audience numbers. Now, the world has changed. Everyone has an opinion and everyone can express it on line. This can mean that one bad review doesn’t ruin a show but it also means that t...

23 June 2026 As I sit typing, I look out from my study at a very bland fence. There are some plants along our eastern border but I can’t see them when I’m sitting at my desk. Susan and I have discussed the idea of having a mural of some sort painted on the fence but we’re yet to decide on an artist let along to check the feasibility of the idea. That made a publication from the Melville City Council particularly useful. It covers all the murals in Applecross so on a fine morning, we headed off to explore them. Some are simply words or patterns. Some are favourite birds such as swans and pelicans and black cockatoos (Applecross is a suburb on the Swan River). Some are faces in various layers of realism. Some are landscapes. And some didn’t even make it into the brochure. Two were buy Olive Cheng who made the beautiful carved and painted wooden vase that we bought last year. Most are by artists we’ve never heard of. But each contributes in an important way to the streetscape of the a...

23 June 2026  I think I’m now up to date with all of Louise Penny’s Three Pines detective novels. In case you haven’t come across Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, whatever you do don’t watch either of the television series based on Penny’s novels. They are equally terrible. But by all means, read the books. However, you might be better off starting 20 years ago because the character development and the village in which Gamache lives are worth the effort of starting at the beginning. Her most recent book is called The Black Wolf and it is a direct follow up to The Grey Wolf. What makes this one so fascinating is that it was finished in 2024 and it’s focus is on a possible war between the USA and Canada. Yes, that’s right. Penny wrote it before Trump decided that he wanted Canada as the 51 st state. And what's the war going to be about? Water resources. And that's what's happening now with regular news articles about towns running out of water. Of course it’s fascinati...

23 June 2026  How curious that the Flemish have made an Agatha Christie style murder mystery set in an English estate (although the building itself is in Ireland) with Hercule Poirot’s character divided between three investigators – a long lean handsome Magritte, an odd looking bowler hat wearing Chief Inspector and a short, shivery, culotte wearing   Sergeant. And who are the guests on this luxurious estate? Various surrealist artists including Dali and his partner Gala and Lee Miller accompanied by Man Ray.  It’s a fascinating piece of television with enough twists to keep one entertained until the end. Nancy Cunard, Peggy Guggenheim and Picasso make guest appearances so it’s full of character and colour. It also made me turn to find about more about Magritte. As well as creating memorable art, he was also a forger in the initial years after World War 2. So this series is entertaining in itself as well as a reminder about some of the fascinating artists of the ear...

  19 June 2026 Stop. I know what you’re thinking with a title like "liquid joy". But no. This is not a post about yet another cocktail or bottle of wine. It’s about a great loss reversed. I can’t remember when I came across my first   Pylones   store. I think it was in Paris, sometime in the 2000s. As you can see from their website and in their words “For over 40 years, Pylones has been reinventing everyday objects with a design full of good humour!” : https://www.pylones.com/en/ Given the colourfulness of their products, you won’t be surprised to find out that I fell in love – in particular with their rings. Made out of blown glass and filled with water or tiny fragments of colour, my collection attracts attention whenever I wear them as the coloured water gently sloshes around.  I’ve always declared that they are brilliant travel jewellery. If they were to be misplaced or lost on one’s journey, the world won’t end because they affordable to replace and regar...

18 June 2026 There aren’t many television programmes or films about theatre companies and I just wish there was one less: the ABC’s Bad Company. The six part “comedy” started when I was away so I’ve only just had the opportunity to catch it on ABC i-View. And my response – not a single laugh during the entire season. Before you start to say that I’m too sensitive because I worked for a theatre company for so long, not true. I adore the Canadian TV series Slings and Arrows which is about a subscription theatre company like Melbourne Theatre Company. I used snippets of as salutary and hysterical lessons when teaching Arts Management. I can’t find it on any Australian streaming services but you can find the first season on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJ3s8aK8BXE Back to Bad Company. What makes it so bad? A commentator on The Conversation has got to the heart of some of the problems: https://theconversation.com/the-abcs-new-workplace-comedy-about-a-theatre-bad-company-si...