Elissa Blake

Contributor at The Guardian Australia

I'm taking a break from this platform.

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Articles

Read the April 2025 issue of Limelight

1 month ago | limelight-arts.com.au | Clive Paget |Jansson J. Antmann |Maddy Briggs |Elissa Blake

The April 2025 issue of Limelight is now available online, with hard copies on their way to those with a print subscription. The PDF version can be found further down this page. We examine why Ravel’s music is so widely loved 150 years after his birth.
The April 2025 issue of Limelight is now available

1 month ago | limelight-arts.com.au | Clive Paget |Jansson J. Antmann |Maddy Briggs |Elissa Blake

Limelight subscribers have full access to news, features and reviews by our expert writers, in print and online. Subscriptions start from $4 per month, but you can save up to 50% when you choose an annual print and digital subscription. In addition to the hard copy magazines, you receive free digital access to our past issues and exclusive online content. Purchase a Limelight subscription and you could win an Australian Festival of Chamber Music holiday package for two.
Eddie Perfect: ‘I think my true natural state is utter laziness’

2 months ago | theguardian.com | Elissa Blake

Black bag of clean clothes slung over his shoulder, Eddie Perfect is fresh from the laundromat when we meet in a Bondi Beach bookstore-cafe. He’s temporarily separated from his own front loader in Melbourne. The shop is a jumble of books, crammed and dark, with two wooden tables for cafe customers and armchairs for readers. We are in a section with a prominent display of heavy hitters – Kurt Vonnegut, Stephen King and Patrick White. “Read any White?” he asks. I tell him I read The Vivisector at uni.
50% of Australians want to read more – but don’t. So what is stopping us?

Feb 11, 2025 | msn.com | Elissa Blake

Microsoft Cares About Your PrivacyMicrosoft and our third-party vendors use cookies to store and access information such as unique IDs to deliver, maintain and improve our services and ads. If you agree, MSN and Microsoft Bing will personalise the content and ads that you see. You can select ‘I Accept’ to consent to these uses or click on ‘Manage preferences’ to review your options and exercise your right to object to Legitimate Interest where used.
50% of Australians want to read more – but don’t. So what is stopping us?

Feb 11, 2025 | msn.com | Elissa Blake

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50% of Australians want to read more - but don’t. So what is stopping us?

Feb 11, 2025 | theguardian.com | Elissa Blake

When Rosann Filiponne pops her headphones in to listen to an audiobook while she walks along the beach near her home in Mornington, she hopes she won’t get distracted. “I try listening to the story but I’m distracted by all the dogs, I have to stop and pat them all!”The 63-year-old retired primary school teacher was an avid reader growing up and wants to read more now, but struggles to concentrate. A bad neck means she now also struggles to keep her head down in a book for very long.
Penn & Teller review – icons of stage magic celebrate 50 years in canny new Australian show

Jan 14, 2025 | msn.com | Elissa Blake

Microsoft Cares About Your PrivacyMicrosoft and our third-party vendors use cookies to store and access information such as unique IDs to deliver, maintain and improve our services and ads. If you agree, MSN and Microsoft Bing will personalise the content and ads that you see. You can select ‘I Accept’ to consent to these uses or click on ‘Manage preferences’ to review your options and exercise your right to object to Legitimate Interest where used.
Penn & Teller review - icons of stage magic celebrate 50 years in canny new Australian show

Jan 14, 2025 | theguardian.com | Elissa Blake

The uncomfortable bedfellows of religion and physics feature heavily in the latest show from Penn & Teller, the mavericks of stage magic, now celebrating 50 year of working together. Penn (hefty, loquacious and now 69) and Teller (gnomic, silent and 76) made their stage debut in 1975 in a Renaissance Fair in Shakopee, Minnesota as the Asparagus Valley Cultural Society. Such were the times.
These three actors played Hamlet. Now they’re playing actors in Hamlet rehab

Jan 13, 2025 | msn.com | Elissa Blake

Microsoft Cares About Your PrivacyMicrosoft and our third-party vendors use cookies to store and access information such as unique IDs to deliver, maintain and improve our services and ads. If you agree, MSN and Microsoft Bing will personalise the content and ads that you see. You can select ‘I Accept’ to consent to these uses or click on ‘Manage preferences’ to review your options and exercise your right to object to Legitimate Interest where used.
These three actors played Hamlet. Now they’re playing actors in Hamlet rehab

Jan 13, 2025 | theguardian.com | Elissa Blake

A few minutes into this interview, I realise I am barking up the wrong tree. I had the idea that Hamlet Camp, a new work premiering at Carriageworks in Sydney written by and starring three notable Australian ex-Hamlets – Brendan Cowell, Ewen Leslie and Toby Schmitz – was going to be one of those chummy, anecdote-based affairs. Three good pals, sitting on stools, jawing about playing the Dane. Proper luvvy actor stuff. But 10 minutes into our chat, Cowell pipes up: “It’s a play.