Event and Ticketing Details
Dates & Times
Wednesday 17 October
5:45 PM - 6:45 PM
Step into a time capsule and go back 20 years … Paul Keating is prime minister of Australia. The Twin Towers dominate New York’s skyline and September 11 is the date of a Chilean coup. Pauline Hanson is an anonymous redhead who works in a fish and chip shop and ‘multicultural’ is a relatively new buzzword. ‘Boat people’ sail yachts on Sydney Harbour.
Phil Kafcaloudes takes a panel of artists and decision-makers back to the Australia they knew then, and compares it to the one we know today. He’ll talk to comedian Aamer Rahman, playwright Hannie Rayson and Marylou Jelbart, artistic director of fortyfivedownstairs.
How has Australia changed over the Howard and Rudd years, and how much of that change was led by politicians? Has our art altered? Have we grown as a nation – or have we always been the same in our attitude to the world?
They’ll also look at the way multiculturalism has developed and changed in the past two decades – including our engagement with indigenous art, and with Islam.
Co-presented by the Melbourne Festival and the Wheeler Centre.
Featuring
Aamer Rahman
Aamer Rahman is an Australian comedian whose work covers politics, race relations, and the War on Terror. He has performed sold-out shows at some of the world's largest festivals including the Melbourne International Comedy Festival and Edinburgh Fringe.
Rahman's work has been covered by media outlets such as The Huffington Post, NBC, Slate, Colorlines, Afropunk, AlterNet, VICE and Essence Magazine.
He has supported legendary standups such as Dave Chappelle, and performed alongside critically acclaimed Hip-Hop artists Brother Ali and Lowkey. In 2014 he was named one of the Guardian newspaper's top 10 live comedy shows of the year.
He has appeared in conversation with public intellectuals and activists such as Dr Cornel West and Professor Angela Davis.
Phil Kafcaloudes
Phil Kafcaloudes is a writer, journalist and broadcaster who hosts an international breakfast show on the ABC’s Radio Australia network. He has been a radio and TV journalist, and has worked for the ABC in South Africa, Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Papua New Guinea, and across the Pacific.
In 2002 he undertook a Churchill fellowship across Europe, studying how journalists are trained to deal with trauma and grief. His first book, The ABC All Media Guide to Court Reporting (ABC Books) is now a standard text in many media courses.
His latest book is a novel, Someone Else’s War, based on the true story of his grandmother, a spy in Greece in World War Two (SEW Books 2011) He has written for Limelight magazine, blogs for The Drum and is correspondent for Radio New Zealand’s flagship Morning Report. Phil regularly appears on the News Breakfast on ABC News 24.
Hannie Rayson
Hannie Rayson is a playwright and screenwriter best known for Hotel Sorrento.
Hannie Rayson has established a reputation for topical, complex dramas written with wit and insight. A graduate of Melbourne University and the Victorian College of the Arts, she has an Honorary Doctorate of Letters from La Trobe University.
Her plays have been extensively performed around Australia and internationally. They include Mary, Room to Move, Hotel Sorrento, Falling From Grace, Scenes from a Separation (co-written with Andrew Bovell), Competitive Tenderness, Life After George, Inheritance, Two Brothers, The Glass Soldier and The Swimming Club. She has been awarded two Australian Writers’ Guild Awards, four Helpmann Awards, two NSW Premier’s Literary Awards and a Victorian Premier’s Literary Award as well as the Age Performing Arts Award and The Sidney Myer Performing Arts Award.
For television she has written Sloth (ABC, Seven Deadly Sins) and co-written two episodes of SeaChange. A feature film of Hotel Sorrento, produced in 1995, was nominated for ten Australian Film Institute Awards. In 1999 she received the Magazine Publishers' Society of Australia’s Columnist of the Year Award for her regular contributions to HQ magazine.
Hannie made playwriting history when Life After George was the first play to be nominated for the Miles Franklin Award. In 2006 and 2009 she was nominated for the Melbourne Prize for Literature, a prize for a Victoria-based writer whose body of published or produced work has made an outstanding contribution to Australian literature and to cultural and intellectual life.
She has recently completed a commission for the Manhattan Theatre Club in New York. Her new play is called Extinction.
Mary Lou Jelbart
Mary Lou Jelbart is a former program-maker, theatre and arts reviewer for ABC Radio National. She is the founder and artistic director of fortyfivedownstairs, a not-for-profit gallery and theatre in Melbourne’s CBD, which presents the work of independent visual artists, theatre companies and musicians.
Mary Lou was a member of the former St Kilda Council for nine years, and is the founder of the St Kilda Festival and St Kilda Film Festival.
She has been a board member of Artbank, Craft Victoria, and Theatre Works. She has been actively involved in conservation issues, and was a member of the National Trust Council, and a board member of Heritage Victoria.