Australian artist Eddie Perfect’s play, “The Beast” was presented by Melbourne Theatre Company in association with Melbourne Festival and Melbourne International Comedy Festival in late 2013. It premiered at the Southbank Theatre (home of Melbourne Theatre Company) and ran from October 3 through to November 9 of 2013. This dark satire is a modern day rant on the middle class, and the dreadful things people do in order to be seen to be good, as opposed to actually doing good. It’s the story of a close group of couples that vow to take on a more sustainable lifestyle in the country after experiencing a close shave with death. When they are forced to kill a free-range calf that they purchased for “nose to tail eating”, tensions boil over as they come face to face with alarming truths.
While many believe “Perfect” to be a stage name, Eddie’s birth name is in fact, Edmund Thomas Perfect and from a young age has gained a reputation as being “rather terrific, if not perfect”. Melbourne born Eddie is a multi-disciplined artist who is a practicing comedian, musician, composer, musical director, actor and theatre maker. After graduating from WAAPA in Perth, he has gone on to act in numerous running television series such as Kath and Kim, Stingers, Blue Heelers and Offspring, as well as performing in theatre productions with companies such as MTC and Belvoir. He is possibly most well known for his production of Shane Warne: The Musical, which picked up the 2009 Green Room Award for Best New Australian Musical and Best New Australian Work. The Beast is his most recent production.
Inspiration for the show came about when Perfect, his wife Lucy and daughter Kitty, relocated to regional Victoria for two years in 2010. He had just ...
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I chose to research The Beast, because it’s one of the few shows I have seen that has made me feel uncomfortable and question the ethics and morality behind the story of a performance. So much of the arts industry pushes us to take responsibility and be more conscious of being environmentally friendly and stand up for animal (and human) rights, so it was such a shock to sit down to a performance that did almost the opposite. Initially I found it extremely difficult to stomach as a joke. Once I began researching the motivations and reasonings behind this performance, I realise that I could very well be the kind of person that this play is placing in the spotlight – hence those feelings of offense! Now being able to understand more clearly the mindset from which Eddie comes from, I am able to easily respect, understand and enjoy the hilarity the story portrays.
One in five veterans from Afghanistan and Iraqi wars have been diagnosed with posttraumatic stress disorder. Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a mental health condition triggered by a terrifying event and mostly effects military veterans. The book Lone Survivor, written by Marcus Luttrell, is an eye witness account of the 2005 operation Red Wing that tells the harrowing story of SEAL Team 10. Throughout the book, Marcus hears voices in his head of his fallen teammates. Even today, Marcus wakes up in the middle of the night because of the terrible nightmares, which are symptoms of PTSD. There are a lot of ways to combat PTSD so our troops do not have to endure this hardship. Some of the ways to combat the disorder is to understand PTSD, detect it early, having family support and preventing it.
Drifters by Bruce Dawe This poem is about a family that’s always on the move, with no place to settle down for long, hence the poem was titled ‘Drifters’ to describe this family. ‘Drifters’ looks at the members of this family response to frequently change and how it has affected them. This poem is told in third person narration in a conversational tone. This gives the feeling as if someone who knows this family is telling the responder the situation of this family.
Italian novelist, Dino Buzzati, in his story, “Seven Floors,” describes the struggles a man, Giovanni Corte, has with his slight illness in a sanatorium. According to the story, the seven floors of the sanatorium are separated based on the “gravity of their state;” the seventh floor is for the extremely mild cases while the first floor is for the cases the doctors can’t fix. There are various concepts and theories, we have been learning about in class, found within the story.
In Daniel Wallace’s novel, Big Fish: A Novel of Mythic Proportions and Tim Burton’s film, Big Fish, the relationship between the dying protagonist, Edward Bloom and his estranged son, William Bloom, is centrally to the story in both the novel and film. Like many fathers in today's society, Edward Bloom wishes to leave his son with something to remember him by after he is dead. It is for this reason the many adventures of Edward Bloom are deeply interwoven into the core of all the various stories Edward tells to mystify his son with as a child. Despite the many issues father and son have in their tense relationship as adults, Daniel Wallace and Tim Burton’s adaptation of Wallace’s novel focalizes on the strained relationship between Edward Bloom and William Bloom. In both Wallace’s novel and Burton’s film, they effectively portray how the relationship between Edward Bloom and William Bloom is filled with bitter resentment and indifference towards each other. Only with William’s attempt to finally reconcile with his dying father and navigating through his father fantastical fables does those established feelings of apathy and dislike begin to wane. With Burton’s craftily brilliant reconstruction of Wallace’s story does the stories of Edward Bloom and his son blossom onto screen.
Nestled under the ‘hawkish’ wing of Johnny Friendly, the beginning of the film sees Terry Malloy a daft “bum,” too preoccupied by “standing with the right people, just to have a bit of change jingling in his pocket” to deeply contemplate morality. Tainted by a distressing antiquity, Terry Malloy has habituated to a ‘dog-eat-dog’ world of Darwinian ‘survival of the fittest,’ where “taking it out on their skulls” is the appropriate method of resolution. “Its eve...
Raw by Scott Monk Brett holds a rebellious attitude and has certain negativity towards authority; this is expressed in his attitude towards the police at the start of the novel and the use of the dialogue "pigs". They capture Brett after a bungled robbery and he is taken from Sydney to a juvenile detention centre in Mungindi run by Sam and Mary Fraser. Brett Dalton is the individual we see the institution have major effects on, it changes his life, attitudes and morals.
The graphic novel, Pedro and Me by Judd Winick, is a tribute to his friend Pedro Zamora, as well as his own story of personal growth. It is an inspiring story that shows the true meaning of friendship and love. It also displays information about HIV/AIDS and how to truly protect oneself against it. Pedro was a young, gay, HIV-positive Cuban American who spent his time educating people about the disease. They both appeared on MTV’s The Real World: San Francisco and chance put Judd and Pedro in the same bedroom, where they became good friends. The book chronicles their friendship. Pedro Zamora changed lives as he taught millions of viewers about being gay, living with AIDS, and how to overcome it. “The format is enticing, with images that are effusive and alive on the page…[while] teaching some urgent lessons.” (Kirkus Reviews). Judd Winick’s Pedro and Me, conveys information about being gay, living with HIV/AIDS, and how to prevent it, more effectively than other narrative forms through strong visuals, compelling language, and historical accuracy.
Wolf Brother by Michelle Paver Six thousand years ago in Northern Europe, a teenager named Torak woke up with his shoulder throbbing in pain. His father lies next to him, bleeding from an open wound. The two have been attacked by an enormous demon bear, which is bound to come back at any moment. As he bleeds out, Torak’s father can only bear to say a few more words. He says that the demon bear will only grow stronger with each kill it makes, and he also tells Torak that he has to go to the Mountain of the World Spirit in order to defeat the bear.
The fundamental characteristic of magical realism is its duality, which enables the reader to experience both the character’s past and the present. In the novel, Monkey Beach, Eden Robinson uses this literary device to address the the trauma and mistreatment of the Haisla community in Canada by unveiling the intimate memories of the protagonist, Lisamarie, and the resulting consequences of this oppression. Monkey Beach illustrates how abuse in the past leads to another form of self-medication in the future - a neverending, vicious cycle for the members of the Haisla community. Many characters in Monkey Beach are scarred from childhood sexual abuse and family neglect, and resort to drug and alcohol abuse as a coping mechanism. These appalling memories are an account of the impact of colonization on the Haisla territory which continues to haunt the Aboriginal community throughout generations.
The contrast was written by Royal Tyler. Royall Tyler (1757–1826) “was born in Boston, studied law at Harvard, and then served in the army before writing The Contrast” ( n.d. Web. 20 Oct. 2013). He was American jurist and playwright who wrote The Contrast in 1787. The setting of the play is in “New York and its upper-class society”. It is an American play inspired by Richard Sheridan’s “The School for Scandal”, he was so inspired by this show that he wrote his own play “The contrast in three weeks”. Both of these stories use differences as its main tool to satirize. These two stories are completed in five acts. What the play does for modern readers is that it keeps entreating us, and gives us an idea about the life in seventeenth century when this play was written. The Contrast is the first comedy written by an American citizen that was performed in public by a company of professional actors. This frolic is truly a difference of the variety which exists from people to people, from the players to the lovers, and the imitators to the genuine. The play has a lot of contrasts representing a bigger concern on the past and traditional background of Europe and America. There is also another contrast in this play which is the contrast between the characterization of male and female characters in the story. The female casts of the story, in contrast to the male casts, are described as subjects of oppression. The gender-based difference shows alignment to the male casts suggesting alignment to the masculine discourse of socio-cultural economy.
Ocean’s Eleven is a story about a plan by Daniel Ocean, a convicted thief, to get revenge on Terry Benedict, a casino owner who has stolen his wife Tess away from him and to get his wife back. In this story, Danny gets his revenge and gets his wife back by robbing three casinos and bargaining with Terry to win back Tess. This film is a remake of an earlier Ocean’s Eleven starring Frank Sinatra and many members of the “Rat Pack”, a group of singers, comedians and entertainers who often played together in Las Vegas in the 1950s and 1960s.
Rae Yang’s Memoir “Spider Eaters” is a poignant personal story of a girl growing up amidst the political upheaval during the establishment of People’s Republic of China under Mao Zedong’s Communist leadership. Yang describes the fascinating journey of her life from her early years as the daughter of Chinese diplomats in Switzerland to a student in an elite middle school then a fanatic Red-guard and eventually a laborer in a pig farm. Her experiences through the revolution serve as an eye-opener and lead to her eventual disillusionment of the Communist revolution in China. There are many factors that contributed to her growing discontent with communism such as the anti-rightist movement which was an effort to rule out any criticism against the government, corruption and violence of the party leaders who abused their power and continued to exploit the peasants, the false claim of proletariat dictatorship used merely to eradicate bourgeoisie and further the interests of party members.
The Play "Sure Thing" from David Ives examines the endless variations of boy meets girl and the ensuing pick up lines. The central theme throughout the play displays a few varieties of a possible conversation that end with a ringing bell that symbolizes a fresh start and a second chance to make a good impression.
In today’s society many different forms of art constantly surround us. The music blaring through your headphones, the advertisements we come across, and even the buildings peering high above the New York skyline can all be considered art. One of the most popular mediums of art in the present time is filmmaking. Film uses moving photographs to narrate a story, express emotions and convey ideas. The unique aspect of the art of film is that it allows the viewer to become its subject or characters and experience their situations as they are occurring. Gus Van Sant uses this characteristic to his advantage in the 2003 film “Elephant”. Elephant tries to capture the actual and unseen events of the tragic Columbine Massacre in attempts to make sense of a senseless act, while at the same time being true to its senselessness.
Animals can be a man's best friend; however, they can also be ones worst enemy after passing certain boundaries. Peter Singer who wrote Animal Liberation gave valid points in my opinion because animals do have a right to live and we should give them their space. Humans take everything for granted and never seem to learn until it too late. Today slaughterhouses are abusing animals in disturbing ways which has to change. I will agree with Singers concepts on animals because they have a right to live a peaceful life like humans; they have a life ahead of them once they are born. Singer argues that animals should have their interests considered throughout their lives. Singer wants to eliminate speciesism from our thoughts which is, a human discriminatory belief that all other animals are not as good as them therefore they do not have rights and we could do what we want to them. We should not be the only types of "animals" in this earth who has a set of rights we should abide.