Helen Musa

Arts Editor at CityNews.com.au

Featured in: Favicon

citynews.com.au Favicon

blueprint.ng

Articles

Old friends and new get the folk festival off to a good start

6 days ago | citynews.com.au | Helen Musa

Arts editor HELEN MUSA reports from the opening performance of the National Folk Festival, which is off to a great start. The 59th National Folk Festival kicked off at EPIC on Thursday night in fine style. First up in the enormous Budawang Theatre, performed to an enthusiastic crowd impatient for action, was a warm-up group of Morris dancers – the first in the Budawang, we were told – strutting their stuff on the floor.
Thom Roberts shows how a vibrant imagination becomes a reality

6 days ago | citynews.com.au | Helen Musa

Art / The Immersive World of Thom Roberts. At the National Portrait Gallery, until July 20. Reviewed by ROB KENNEDY. Is the latest National Portrait Gallery’s exhibition a coup for the gallery or the idiosyncratic artist Thom Roberts? Featuring more than 100 pieces spanning his short and ongoing career, Australian artist Thom Roberts’ first solo exhibition shows how his vibrant imagination becomes a reality.
New painting festival is out there... in the fresh air

1 week ago | citynews.com.au | Helen Musa

In HELEN MUSA’s weekly wrap of all things arts and entertainment around Canberra, she reveals news of a new autumn painting festival. A new autumn event, the Capital Plein Air Outdoor Painting Festival, co-founded by Natasha Ruschka, Chan Dissanayake and Rosanna Burston, will see 100+ artists from every state converge on the National Arboretum for a pre-festival en plein air (outdoor) paint-out April 21–24 before the festival weekend April 25–27.
Sweet Amy's been dreaming of playing Charity

1 week ago | citynews.com.au | Helen Musa

Sweet Charity, coming soon to The Q, is one of those tricky things, a “thoughtful” musical. Inspired by Federico Fellini’s black-and-white film, Nights of Cabiria, it revolves around the optimistically naïve Charity Hope Valentine, a dancer-for-hire at a Times Square dance hall. After a series of disastrous personal encounters, in most productions, a sign goes up at the end saying: “And so she lived… hopefully… ever after”.
Botanic gardens host one of the world’s most famous plays

1 week ago | citynews.com.au | Helen Musa

Fresh as a daisy even though it was written around 440-2 BC, one of the world’s most famous plays is being staged outdoors at the Australian National Botanic Gardens over Easter, following a run-in period of schools’ shows. Sophocles’s Antigone can be seen in the Burbidge Amphitheatre, presented by the Canberra group, Greek Theatre Now, the brainchild of Michael J Smith, who also gets to play the blind seer, Teiresias.
Forgotten script rises from a bottom draw to radio play

1 week ago | citynews.com.au | Helen Musa

A 40-minute radio play dramatising the courtship of Charles and Effie Bean at Tuggeranong Homestead in 1920 will be broadcast on ArtSoundFM on Anzac Day. Wanterwrite, Wanterlove: Love & Loss at Tuggeranong is the work of Canberra author and historian, Peter Stanley, who says he first wrote the play while researching his 2005 book Quinn’s Post after reading Joan Butler’s memoir, now in the Mitchell Library, of her visits to Tuggeranong in 1920.
War Memorial play choice takes some local flak

1 week ago | citynews.com.au | Helen Musa

Intelligence of a hitherto unannounced new theatre at the Australian War Memorial and the production chosen to launch it in July (here) has stirred up a storm in Canberra’s theatre scene. The strange secrecy of the decision, described by Australian War Memorial Director Matt Anderson as “a deliberate choice”, has called up questions from local theatre practitioners as to how much consultation the memorial undertook and why there was no perceived tender process or call for expressions of interest.
Films from propaganda queen to a dancing penguin

1 week ago | citynews.com.au | Helen Musa

The German Film Festival has a reputation of coming up with thought-provoking movies that can set you on edge. This year is no exception, writes arts editor HELEN MUSA. Documentaries can set you on edge better than anything else, with their fascinating assurance that what you’re looking at is based in reality, for surely, the camera does not lie.
Doctor's comedy to tickle funny bones

1 week ago | citynews.com.au | Helen Musa

HELEN MUSA survey’s the local arts scene for her latest Arts in the City column. Doctor-turned comedian Adam Kay’s debut novel was named British Book of the Year in 2017 and has since been adapted into a multi-BAFTA-winning comedy-drama series for the BBC and a stage show, This is Going to Hurt: Secret Diaries of a Junior Doctor, to be seen at the Canberra Theatre, April 25.
Audience delights at choir's change of program

1 week ago | citynews.com.au | Helen Musa

Music / Invictus: A Passion, The Llewellyn Choir. At Wesley Uniting Church, April 13. Reviewed by HELEN MUSA. The sense of relief in the audience that the Llewellyn Choir was doing something other than traditional Palm Sunday fare was palpable as people packed into both downstairs and upstairs of Wesley Uniting Church for a performance of English composer Howard Goodall’s Invictus.