It is plain by now that Lucy Slattery is the finest thirty-five-year-old Australian actress now working (Blanchett is forty-two and Wasikowska twenty-two but neither better than she) and the doubtless good work she does at The Smelly Cheese in her day job is, or seems to me, a kind of national tragedy.
In Shakespeare In Italy she gives us a range of emotion unavailable in any other role and bewitches us with her infinite variety (seductive, stormy, coquettish, calculating, murderous, true-hearted, treacherous, fanatical, deceitful, delectable, wounded, soft, romantic, wifely, revengeful), her howls and whispers and tempestuous, groping carnality.
But … like many talented women so placed, and aged, she is considering, lately, giving up acting. Ten years in Melbourne after a stuffed-up Taming Of The Shrew, a role that else would have made her, drove her after slim pickings home to Adelaide, where she has fifteen more performances as Julia Ascombe — which she calls ‘by far the best Shakespearean woman, ever’ – and then a tour to Sydney with it, a reading or two, and then (perhaps) oblivion.
She, I think, and others, many others, of comparable early promise add up to not so much a national tragedy as a cultural crisis. Two hundred good young actors come out of NIDA, WAPA, the VCA and the lesser acting academies every year and a hundred and ninety three end up in hotel management or waitressing or teaching. One great actor I know, Danny Mitchell, Warren’s son, assists infirm old men into showers and toilets and stands outside the door awaiting their eructations and dreams of playing Prospero.
And it’s a pity.
The solution to all this is plain: an acting school and four performing spaces in each of our fifty bigger country cities — Albury, Mt Isa, Broken Hill, Alice Springs, Port Pirie, Broome, Albany, and so on — and a contract obligating graduates to stay there for three years and tour shows round the district, and films made like ours of the better productions and sold world wide.
It is ridiculous that NIDA graduates after their final student performances fly directly to LA to audition there when we have, as Lucy shows, and Jordan Fraser-Trumble, our young Shakespeare, Oscar-worthy talent we should keep onshore.
Pray God she is still acting this time next year. I so beseech her, humbly now in prose, and will in a sonnet later.
And so it goes,
Name:
Propitiously perhaps, the Slatterys can trace back their lineage to county Kerry and in particular Dingle.
Most people who pursue hobbies for personal enjoyment and artistic expression have day jobs. So what if your favourite luvvies have to actually work to support their existence? Surely that makes any of their achievements more noble.
Arts and Sports (and any other hobbies) funding by taxpayers should be ZERO.
Great artists and musicians will wield their talent regardless of government handout. Anyone expecting a handout is a bludger.
If they can’t muster an audience big enough to sustain their hobby… tough titties.
In what way does Gina Rinehart ‘work’ and, say, John Bell not ‘work’?
She makes in an hour what he makes in a year. She makes it out of what we, the taxpayers, own outright and merely rent to her.
In what way is what she does ‘work’? And in what way is that ‘work’ worth one hundred and twenty thousand dollars an hour?
Please answer this.
You have not answered and are banned — again — for life.
So sorry Bob… I was playing drums, in my band at a wedding for money. Without taxpayer assistance too.
You have a severe problem with envy… Waaah Gina Rinehart inherited money. Your kids will inherit your 3 million dollar pile, while people are homeless.. thats how the cards fall. Forget about David Williamson being more successful than you, the envy is strangling you and probably boring the tits off everyone around you.
Cate Blanchette seems to cope that my wife is more beautiful than she. But then Cate bought her own south pacific island to console herself. Pity the poor traditional owners eh. Oh well she’ll be wiped out when the ocean level rises.
Yeah. Envy is also aspiration and moves all sicieties and all men ti better themselve. To say you are envious is to say you are human. To say I should not envy Rhiinehart is ti say the two million dollars an hour she gets is deserved.
And to say that means you are banned, as a moron, for life.
No appeals.
You are a piece of grovelling filth, and I discard you.
Now you are getting into serious territory for debate. One would hate to think of a great actor (potential or real) condemned to be a waiter or taxi driver rather than entertain us in some way and enrich theatre. However, for every street band or sidewalk singer in New Orleans there are some who will rise to be future superstars, for every NIDA reject there will be an Anthony LaPaglia from amongst their number. Every now and then a Van Gogh will rise from disfavour etc.
Personally I wouldn’t mind seeing some subsidies continue, especially at a lower level. What is wrong with the old type of troupe once known as The Strolling Players which used to tour NSW schools with Shakespearean snippets or other things of that type. Having lived in Broken Hill for some years I can attest that country cities and towns are eager and welcoming to all forms of theatre, so am not against getting it out there in principle……
And it can be closer to revenue neutral when you take some of the vast subsidies away from the arts of the elites, opera and ballet. Oh yes, high culture, but with those ticket prices it is far more the tax-DODGERS getting the benefit than the usual taxPAYER.
For a Bob Ellis “Wooden Players” troupe why not have a small theatre rental subsidy so they can put on their works and take the risk of public acceptance (as Bob seems to be doing)? Even public purchase of theatre space (small, New Theatre-type if necessary) and let them go for it, risjk their money for their art and take their chances. If is was parallel with taxi driving sobeit. Hell knows there are plenty of wasted government office and other public sector rentals which are going to waste empty, why not “waste” that same money and have some small theatre spaces?
But more money to ensure that everyone who says s/he is “an actor” gets on the government teat, No.
This is well argued. When Annie and I owned the Stables we rented it out at 250 dollars a week. A comparable space now costs a thousand dollars a night. We were thus ‘subsidising’ good theatre with a low rent, and any government or municipal council could do this.
To say however that actors should not be subsidised is ridiculous. Army officers are subsidised, because it is believed they protect us from armed invasion — by Antarctica or New Zealand — an idiotic premise. Actors attract tourists to a town or a region, and thus do us more good than the army, who have prevented no invasion for seventy years.
Why should not therefore an actor get, through life, what an army sergeant major gets plus food and lodging?
What is your argument against it?
Brilliant! Actors could defend our borders. Or, this useless ALP Government might like to being to “act” like they run the country for our benefit… and do the same.
Sorry, tired + ipad… They could start to “act” like a government and defend our borders.
Your comparison with the army is wrong, that’s all. ‘Soldiers’ do a job protecting the nation and its borders. That is what they are paid to do and they do it. Costa Rica thought it could do away with an army and when the Nicaragua Contra campaign started they walked all over Costa Rica. Want to get walked over? Stop paying ‘soldiers’. It is not decided on a whim or a ‘feel good for unemployed (unemployable?) actors’. When an Anthony LaPaglia can take his rejection by the actors establishment and find an award-winning and financially lucrative career, that is open to ALL actors and there is no need for taxpayer subsidy.
You want to be a lawyer? Blogger? Both worthy in their own right and give a lot to any nation and its people, but neither of them get paid without actually being qualified to take a job which somebody else has created for them. If it was thought that lawyers needed jobs created for them when there is also an oversupply of people who technically qualify, why on earth should taxpayers create jobs which don’t otherwise exist?
Some actors are capable of uplifting society I think, but when taxpayers lay out their money why shouldn’t they have the right to decide who is worthy of their money? If actors are of good enough quality they will find work/commissions, as will painters etc.
I should have added ‘journalists’ or ‘dramatists’. Now someone who wrote Death of a Salesman or The Lower Depths should get very upset that just anybody should get taxpayer funding because s/he says “I want to write plays”….
I would like to see the opposite, Bananaman. How about 100 million dollars annually allocated to 2 000 artists (a liberal definition) allowing them $50 000 to create and enrich this nation’s cultural and psychic welfare.
Last year I spent some time at 59 Rivoli: http://www.59rivoli.org/main.html
A bunch of artists took over a derelict building abandoned by Crédit Lyonnais and established a vibrant, creative nucleus. It was prime real estate. There were moves to evict them until the Left won the municipal election. Christophe Girard, newly minted deputy of culture, intervened and the City of Paris bought the building, renovated it and gave it back to the artists. Je t’aime.
The art is often crude, street and daring, but what a cultural inheritance.
Lucy Slattery, you will be missed more than you can know from many you will never meet. Know this.
Hi Never Enough, that sounds very interesting, what were you doing there?
Just a wanderer in the fields. I have a deep attraction for the artistic oasis and if it doesn’t exist I will bloody well imagine it into existence.
That space, with a little simmering anarchy, offers possibility and a larger, richer life.
Shakespeare and Co (the Whitman bookstore) in its own way offers the same. Spent a few moments with George just months before he died. He was soft and child like in his wonder.
Bought a flat in Paris ten years back and like to spend a month or two back there as often as I can.
Is that why Turnbull bought an apartment in New York?
As I can’t afford Paris or New York,I have to go to the provinces…
It paid for itself last year, rented out to locals for the last ten.
Now it helps pay for travels. It’s 28sqm, but very special.
NIE,thanks for that, i’m too polite to ask how much you paid for it…
Hubby got terribly excited, and is now busy googling.We have friends near Carcassonne who have a couple country properties to let, we are doing a bit of research at the moment, we want to be ready if TA bullies his way in…
sorry, NEE
“we want to be ready if TA bullies his way in…”
Be careful there might be a nuclear power station nearby or the proposed 75% tax rate for the rich (one percenters?) might reach out and grab you.
200K Helvi. In euro (just minted) it was a little more than 100K. Rental yield is around 8%. I have never rented to tourists only locals. It’s in the 8th in an old, peeling building.
The countryside is beautiful, affordable and forever tempting.
Bob – how does she look naked ? There could be a role in Underbelly, Goldrush – Gangs of Ballarat as an Irish moll. Would it kill you to write a script in that style – something that Australians actually want to watch ? If not, then I’ll take 500 grams of the Brie de Meaux.
I used to write for Number 96. I know nought of Slattery’s nakedness, we have barely shaken hands, what are you TALKING about?
You are banned for life, and if I can find you I will kill you.
Her taste in cheese is exemplary.
Please go away.
Sheesh, all that time spent in Adelaide is clearly affecting your ability to discern irony. Regardless, don’t hate me because I’m right.
You still owe me $10,000. I will go away as soon as you let me know how you’d like to settle.
Settle, you say? How about youshow me your wife naked and I give you a pound of cheese?
This is our last exchange, ever.
Goodbye.
Scoundrel to the last. Thanks for the memories, Captain. A parting gift to cheer you up …
Bob, you owe spleenblatt 10 grand.
It’s the cost of your hubris and hyperbole.
You’re getting off cheaply if you ask me.
spleenblatt, you owe me a gin.
I can’t make 6.30pm.
Let’s make it 7.
Bring your dancing shoes!!
Dancing with spleenblatt, I thought he was a bloke…you must a woman after all…or are going to do a Zorba?
must be a woman
C’mon Helvi, stretch your imagination a little.
We could be a couple of witty, charming, handsome, jocular Men About Town in search of our Hepburn’s, Gardner’s, Fontaine’s, Young’s and Bacall’s.
Or we could be leads from Terrance’s new blockbuster “Lesbian Spank Inferno”.
We are in fact the former.
But jeez it sure would be fun to have a go at the latter!!!
I hope you scored,U66, you don’t want to wear out your dancing shoes for nothing
How about a debt-for-equity swap? Do ya feel lucky – Blatt?
It Is not easy in LA. The unions there are very strong. Broadway theatre avails itself more readily to visitors. One might compare with soccer Bob. We are just too small an audience. Keep up the good work for it is the likes of you and your kind that contribute so magnificently to the enduring quality of our performers via film and theatre