Findcate

IT COULD be called the Cate manoeuvre. Just as the Sydney Theatre Company added theglamour factor with the appointment of Cate Blanchett asa co-artistic director, the Sydney Dance Company has brought its own star on board.

Bussell’s presence on the board will be a publicity magnet and a fresh opportunity to find new corporate sponsors. VIP guests at next Tuesday’s premiere at CarriageWorks will include Bussell and her banker husband, Angus Forbes, who live in Vaucluse with their two young daughters. After two decades as Britain’s best known ballet dancer, Bussell, 39, retired from the Royal Ballet last year and moved to Sydney in January. It is understood she is writing a children’s book.

The dance world has been waiting to see whether Bussell would join in the life of the Australian performing arts. Some will be surprised she has been snapped up by the Sydney Dance Company rather than the national company, The Australian Ballet.

In a statement yesterday Bussell said she was best known for her classical ballet roles, but “I have also had the pleasure of roles being created on me in many new works commissioned by the Royal Ballet. I understand the importance of creating new dance both for dancers and audiences. It is this that excites me about Sydney Dance Company, and it’s why I have decided to join their board.”

At the Sydney Dance Company Bussell will be involved in selecting an artistic director, after the departure last year of Graeme Murphy. His successor, Tanja Liedtke, had not yet taken up the job when she was killed in a road accident in August.

The company’s executive director, Noel Staunton, said a shortlist for the position was expected to be finalised by the end of next month. He made the initial approach to Bussell, although the formal invitation came from the company’s chairman, Julian Knights, a managing partner of Ironbridge Capital. Mr Knights and the Sydney Dance Company director Tony Bancroft, a partner in the law firm Mallesons Stephen Jaques, have helped fund 360°.

Bookings for the three-week season are at 35 per cent of box office capacity, “the standard before an opening night”, MrStaunton said. “When the reviews come out we see a lift, except with Meryl we didn’t get a lift”, he said, referring to Meryl Tankard, who choreographed the company’s first season this year. The company began the year with “zero deficit. The responsibility is on our shoulders.”

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The 38-year-old actress and her husband, playwright Andrew Upton - who are both artistic co-directors of the Sydney Theatre Company - want to make the business the first green building on Sydney Harbour.

She said: “We would have greened the internal offices anyway, but then Andrew said, ‘This place is perfect to put solar panels in and take it off the grid completely.’

“If theatre is not engaged in its time and place, and connecting itself to the immediate and current concerns of society, then it very quickly becomes irrelevant.”

Australian-born Blanchett, who has been a green activist since her schooldays, also lives in an eco-friendly home.

She added to Britain’s Marie Claire magazine: “I can’t believe how uncommon greening practices for the home are. We’ve had solar panels installed, but they’re still seen as a left field idea. We’ve also got rain water tanks and we’re using a natural air-flow to cool the house.”

English musician KT Tunstall also owns her own eco-home, while actress Daryl Hannah lives in a solar powered house and drives a car fuelled by recycled cooking oil.

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Oscar-winning actress Cate Blanchett has given birth to her third child, Find Cate Mandigo and surprised fellow antipodeans by announcing she will be back at work in six days time.

The Australian star of Elizabeth delivered a 3.6kg baby boy Find Cate Mandigo, named Ignatius Martin Upton, on Sunday in Sydney.

Today, the actress surprised Australians with the news she plans to honour a commitment to chair a government summit on the arts which starts on Saturday.

Congratulating the 38-year-old actress today, Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd announced Blanchett had asked for a co-chair but would still travel from Sydney to Canberra to participate in the summit this weekend.

“I want to extend my best wishes to Ms Blanchett and her family and thank her for her contribution to the Australia 2020 Summit thus far.

“Ms Blanchett has indicated that she will continue to participate in the 2020 Summit in her role as a co-chair of the Creative Australia panel.”

Blanchett and her playwright husband, Andrew Upton, already have two sons - Dashiell, 6, and Roman, 3.

A spokesman for the Sydney Theatre Company, where the couple are joint artistic directors, told Australian journalists: “All are well and very happy.”

Last year, the actress, who won an Oscar for The Aviator, spoke to The Times of her desire for more children.

“I feel completely and utterly expanded by being a mother. And yes there are compromises and things that one can’t do, but there are a lot of things that one can do and I just find them hilarious and wonderful.

“And it’s a cliché, but it’s true, the reserves of feeling that one finds for them is limitless. You think, ‘I have one, how could I find any more love for a second one?’ Find Cate Mandigo and you do.”

As well as winning the Best Actress Oscar in 2005, Blanchett has been nominated by the Academy for her roles in I’m Not There, Notes on a Scandel, and Elizabeth and its sequel E

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HIGH above the city, in a hotel suite that looks down on
Melbourne’s rooftops, Danielle Catanzariti sits in a plush chair
too large for her tiny frame. Just turned 16, the young actor has
placed her hands primly on her knees, as if called to the
principal’s office. If the archetypal teenage star projects a
veiled knowingness beyond their years, then Catanzariti is the
opposite: an excited child on the cusp of adulthood.
“I’m not a method actor. I enjoy life. My friends at school are
always saying they wish I would be quiet,” she says, tamping down
her exuberant energy with careful enunciations. “If you take your
job too seriously, you’ll never have fun with it. I become the
character and then disconnect and become myself again.”
In her first film, the adolescent-oriented Hey Hey It’s
Esther Blueburger, Catanzariti has the title role. Her co-stars
include the Academy Award-nominated Toni Collette and Keisha
Castle-Hughes, the latter something of a veteran at the age of 18.
But it is Catanzariti who is in nearly every scene, as an oddball
Jewish girl who secretly stops going to private school and attends
the local public instead in a bid for friendship and
popularity.
“I could relate with her being out there and unusual. At school
I dress differently to everyone else,” she says. “I know people
who’ve had the same experiences as Esther, so I could bring that to
the character.”
The debut feature from writer-director Cathy Randall moves,
often unexpectedly, in tone and intent. Coming-of-age angst is
supplanted by humour; the suggestion of sexual experimentation
segues into a song-and-dance number. The task of holding it
together rests with Catanzariti, although she perpetually doubted
her credentials. “I would keep asking Cathy, ‘Am I doing OK?’ I’m
not a very confident person when I’m being myself, which is another
reason why I love acting so much. It’s easier to be another person.
It’s when they call ‘cut’ that I feel vulnerable,” she says.
Six years ago Catanzariti joined the Murray Bridge Players and
Singers, the amateur theatre company in her home town 80 kilometres
outside Adelaide. Her best roles were Molly in Annie and a
fairy in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Little
more than six months ago she was cast by neophyte director Cate
Blanchett in the Sydney Theatre Company production
Blackbird. She appears at the end to make audiences wonder
if the sins of the play’s middle-aged male protagonist are being
visited upon a new generation. Her parents read David Harrower’s
pungent text and let Catanzariti decide if she wanted to audition.
She thought it would be a challenge and accepted.
Catanzariti tells the story well, as she does other anecdotes;
about growing out her eyebrows to play Esther and her difficulties
with break-dancing. But she’s more awkwardly endearing than
professionally charming and is sometimes unexpectedly honest.
“Acting isn’t my passion. When I think of passion, it’s a fire, but
they burn out. This isn’t a passion for me. It’s just me,” she
says. “Acting is already a part of me %26#151; it makes me who I
am.”
Hey Hey It’s Esther Blueburger is now
screening.

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HIGH above the city, in a hotel suite that looks down on
Melbourne’s rooftops, Danielle Catanzariti sits in a plush chair
too large for her tiny frame. Just turned 16, the young actor has
placed her hands primly on her knees, as if called to the
principal’s office. If the archetypal teenage star projects a
veiled knowingness beyond their years, then Catanzariti is the
opposite: an excited child on the cusp of adulthood.
“I’m not a method actor. I enjoy life. My friends at school are
always saying they wish I would be quiet,” she says, tamping down
her exuberant energy with careful enunciations. “If you take your
job too seriously, you’ll never have fun with it. I become the
character and then disconnect and become myself again.”
In her first film, the adolescent-oriented Hey Hey It’s
Esther Blueburger, Catanzariti has the title role. Her co-stars
include the Academy Award-nominated Toni Collette and Keisha
Castle-Hughes, the latter something of a veteran at the age of 18.
But it is Catanzariti who is in nearly every scene, as an oddball
Jewish girl who secretly stops going to private school and attends
the local public instead in a bid for friendship and
popularity.
“I could relate with her being out there and unusual. At school
I dress differently to everyone else,” she says. “I know people
who’ve had the same experiences as Esther, so I could bring that to
the character.”
The debut feature from writer-director Cathy Randall moves,
often unexpectedly, in tone and intent. Coming-of-age angst is
supplanted by humour; the suggestion of sexual experimentation
segues into a song-and-dance number. The task of holding it
together rests with Catanzariti, although she perpetually doubted
her credentials. “I would keep asking Cathy, ‘Am I doing OK?’ I’m
not a very confident person when I’m being myself, which is another
reason why I love acting so much. It’s easier to be another person.
It’s when they call ‘cut’ that I feel vulnerable,” she says.
Six years ago Catanzariti joined the Murray Bridge Players and
Singers, the amateur theatre company in her home town 80 kilometres
outside Adelaide. Her best roles were Molly in Annie and a
fairy in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Little
more than six months ago she was cast by neophyte director Cate
Blanchett in the Sydney Theatre Company production
Blackbird. She appears at the end to make audiences wonder
if the sins of the play’s middle-aged male protagonist are being
visited upon a new generation. Her parents read David Harrower’s
pungent text and let Catanzariti decide if she wanted to audition.
She thought it would be a challenge and accepted.
Catanzariti tells the story well, as she does other anecdotes;
about growing out her eyebrows to play Esther and her difficulties
with break-dancing. But she’s more awkwardly endearing than
professionally charming and is sometimes unexpectedly honest.
“Acting isn’t my passion. When I think of passion, it’s a fire, but
they burn out. This isn’t a passion for me. It’s just me,” she
says. “Acting is already a part of me %26#151; it makes me who I
am.”
Hey Hey It’s Esther Blueburger is now
screening.

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CATE Blanchett wants the winner of next month’s federal election to free Australia from its “embarrassing” relationship with the US.

The Oscar winning actress says Australia is too closely tied to the US and has made a mistake by isolating itself from its Asian neighbours.

%26ldquo;Whoever gets in will have to deal with this climate of paranoia,%26rdquo; she told London’s Guardian newspaper.

%26ldquo;We’re so in America’s back pocket it’s embarrassing.

%26ldquo;We have to claim our individualism, but also reconnect to the world in a better way.

%26ldquo;We’ve really isolated ourselves from Asia.

%26ldquo;I think that’s politically and culturally very foolish.

%26ldquo;The problem with Australia is that it’s uranium- and coal-rich, so whoever gets in needs to be really responsible.%26rdquo;

Blanchett was in London this week for the premiere of her latest film, Elizabeth: The Gold Age.

She and playwright husband Andrew Upton are due to take over as artistic directors at the Sydney Theatre Company in January.

Blanchett said she hoped her new theatre role would last beyond the three-year contract she and Upton signed.

%26ldquo;You can’t really achieve anything in three years,%26rdquo; she said.

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LET there be dark!
Suddenly, at the appointed hour, Sydney’s glittering skyline was
in silhouette and soft focus. The famous harbour, usually flashing
with light and life, dissolved into ink, and, at vantage points
around the foreshore, cheers went up from those who had gathered to
watch a fireworks display in reverse.
From the CBD to the suburbs and beyond to the bush, people
celebrated Earth Hour by candle and torch light - at parties in
homes, on beaches, at a kids’ hospital slumber party, and, for one
Dural couple, at a wedding. In Canberra, lights were switched off
at Parliament House, the War Memorial, Government House and many
other national institutions and government agencies. State
capitals, too, went over to the dark side, as did regional cities
including the Gold Coast and Newcastle.
At Sydney Theatre Company’s Walsh Bay headquarters, new
co-artistic directors and Earth Hour ambassadors Cate Blanchett and
husband Andrew Upton were joined by guests at a candle-lit party
celebrating Earth Hour and the opening night of the new play The
Year Of Magical Thinking, starring Robyn Nevin.
The opening performance had been moved forward so as not to
clash with Earth Hour.
Blanchett sees climate change as a “real and present danger”,
and Earth Hour as a “grand gesture” as important as the
ratification of Kyoto and the apology to the stolen
generations.
“A lot of great ideas are coming out of this country and city
and it’s fantastic that an idea as potent as Earth Hour came out of
Sydney,” she said.
In a paddock on their property near Forbes, in western NSW,
farmers Wendy and Kim Muffet enjoyed an outdoor dinner party for
16, lit by the moon and a chandelier of candles hanging from a
pole.
“We take climate change very seriously,” Wendy said. “We’re
right at the pointy end of it as farmers and we see it as a great
threat, both to our business and to humankind. As farmers, we can
sequester carbon and become part of the solution rather than part
of the problem.”
Source: The Sun-Herald

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• Embrace - Guilt Frame

FELLOW electricians Justin McInerney and Tony Bautista have
never met, and probably never will, but the pair are playing their
part in Earth Hour tonight.
Eighteen hours apart and on opposite sides of the world they
will throw the levers that turn off the lights above their cities’
great bridges, as the event sweeps through 35 nations at eight
o’clock local time tonight.
In San Francisco, Mr Bautista will turn off the lights above the
Bay Bridge, the busiest in the US. It will signal the 60-minute
shutdown across the city, from the Golden Gate Bridge, to City Hall
and at least 70 buildings in San Francisco’s financial district, as
well as other tourism landmarks.
In Sydney, the darkened Harbour Bridge will be joined by the
Opera House, dozens of city skyscrapers and hundreds of thousands
of homes.
Mr McInerney said he was proud to flick the switch that dims the
bridge’s non-essential lights.
Earth Hour will bring millions of people around Australia and
the world together to make a statement about climate change when
they turn out their lights from 8pm to 9pm.
From Brighton Pier in England to England to the Tivoli amusement
park in Copenhagen, politicians, business people, celebrities,
communities, families and individuals have signed up to what is
becoming a world movement. In 10 countries, 26 cities have
registered as official partners.
In Chicago, the Sears Tower will turn off its lights while in
downtown St Louis, the Mayor, Francis Slay, has proposed hosting a
candlelit dinner at J.Bucks restaurant to mark the night.
The Grammy award winner Nelly Furtado will perform at an
unplugged concert in Toronto. Up to 10,000 are expected to
attend.
In Sydney, the Premier, Morris Iemma, will take part in an
official Earth Hour event at Mrs Macquaries Chair, where he will be
joined by the federal Minister for Climate Change, Penny Wong, the
federal Environment Minister, Peter Garrett, the federal Opposition
Leader, Brendan Nelson, and the Lord Mayor of Sydney, Clover
Moore.
At Sydney Theatre Company, the curtain will go up at 6.30pm, an
hour and a half early, for the opening night of The Year Of
Magical Thinking so director Cate Blanchett can deliver on a
commitment to Earth Hour at 8pm.
Around the country, hundreds of businesses and agencies are
joining the event. The Australian Federal Police, for one, will be
switching off its lights, computers and electronic equipment - but
will maintain essential policing.
Earth Hour began in Sydney last year after a brainstrorming
session at World Wide Fund for Nature’s regional headquarters. It
is supported by Fairfax Media, publisher of the Herald.
The WWF hopes the symbolic event will send a signal to next
year’s United Nations meeting in Copenhagen, where it is hoped a
new global climate change agreement to cut greenhouse gas emissions
will be signed.

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EARTH Hour is the campaign to get us to turn off our lights and stop using electricity oat 8pm on March 29 for 60 minutes.

But can it be moved to, say, 3:15 to 4:14 am?

Actress Cate Blanchette has an idea:

One of the most prominent supporters of last year’s initial Earth Hour, the Sydney Theatre Company co-artistic director Cate Blanchett, will do her bit on Saturday, with the performance of The Year Of Magical Thinking moved forward to 6.30pm. The 90-minute show, directed by Blanchett and starring former STC director Robyn Nevin, will be followed by a “candlelight” supper party at the wharf to celebrate the hour of environmental awareness.

The power-free meal will, of course, be of a cold salad eaten off the ground with rain water lapped up from puddles. And the candles? Well, take care:

“There’s no such thing as a perfectly safe candle,” says Jim Shannon of the National Fire Prevention Association. “The most recent statistics we have, for one year: about 190 people killed from candle fires in the United States, and almost 1,500 injured.”

Those statistics also show that, in one year alone, the number of candle fires rose 15 percent, and nearly 5 percent of home fires were started by candles. Compare that to the early ’80s, when only around 1 percent of house fires were caused by candles.

Why the increase? Experts say it’s the jump in the popularity of candles.

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CALL IT star power or celebrity networking, but one thing is
certain: the Sydney Theatre Company is attracting some of the best
film talents in the business.
Liv Ullmann, a film director and actor best known for her
collaborations with Ingmar Bergman, will direct Tennessee
Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire next year with Cate
Blanchett as its heroine, Blanche DuBois.
Ullmann has been in Sydney this week making preparations with
the company’s co-directors, Andrew Upton and Blanchett.
“It is an honour to work with the STC,” Ullmann said.
“[Williams] holds the audience through the revelation of quiet and
ordinary truths and I’m excited by the prospect of discovering
these with %26#133; inspiring artists.”
Although the company’s 2009 program will not be announced until
later this year, A Streetcar Named Desire is sure to be a
selling point. Hugh Jackman has also been tipped to appear in a
classic Australian drama. “Having an artist of Liv Ullmann’s
exacting vision at the helm of STC’s production of one of the
greatest plays of the 20th century will be wonderful,” Blanchett
said.
Bryce Hallett

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