STAGE NOISE WITH DIANA SIMMONDS
To continue bringing you the very best theatre news and reviews, StageNoise.com has teamed up with Diana Simmonds, Sydney’s best known and most respected arts commentator and critic. Commencing next Wednesday, the new StageNoise will offer up to the minute news and reviews, opinions, and increased video and audio content. The site will also broaden its coverage to include classical music and visual arts.
Shock finding: Helen Coonan has second sight!
By Diana Simmonds
In the course of her Andrew Olle media lecture this month, Federal Communications and Arts Minister Helen Coonan said that traditional journalism is in for a big shake-up with the rise of the Internet and broadband. It was a remarkably prescient statement.
It’s impossible to guess how she knew that Stagenoise.com is joining forces with Diana Simmonds, Sydney’s best known and most respected arts commentator and critic. It is, however, the biggest shake-up in arts and entertainment journalism since Krakatoa: East of Java. But perhaps that’s why Senator Coonan is minister and we’re engaged in our really excellent arts adventure.
What this means is that we - Diana Simmonds, Damian and Tim Madden - are not beholden to media owners whose politics and friendships we may not share; nor to shareholders whose interest is fatter profits rather than quality content; nor - because we’re not governed by the constraints of limited numbers of physical paper pages - will our content have to be sacrificed for the last minute double page spread ad!
On the contrary, our advertisers and sponsors will enjoy an environment in which readers are not irritated by curtailed or non-existent editorial material. Rather they’re more likely to feel well disposed towards them for supporting and being part of this site which is dedicated to the performing arts and artists of Australia and Australians (and others). People who want to be better informed and better served about the things that really matter: the arts and artists who feed our imaginations and tell our stories and who try to make sense of the insane times we live in.
This is especially the case when so much that is worthless and harmful is held up - particularly to young people, but also to the vulnerable of all ages - as the apex of achievement and ambition: celebrity, violence, greed, intolerance, ignorance and the toxic “isms” - racism, sexism, ageism, nationalism. All these things serve to make Australia and Australians less than is possible and less than we aspire to.
David Berthold, outgoing artistic director of Griffin Theatre Company, wrote in his farewell to the Stables: “Now is the time to be brave, to be just, and to exchange our messages. It is the time to gather together and share in stories that articulate something of our dreams and our nightmares, our most secret fears and our most fervent hopes; for an hour or two to think and feel together, and then to go out into our lives knowing just that little bit more, and feeling just that little bit less alone.”
To exchange our messages and stories is what we aim to do. The freedom of the net means greater flexibility and quicker responses to ideas and possibilities so that we will be able to deliver across the spectrum of the arts - from practitioners to consumers to the presently merely curious.
Without fear or favour, Diana Simmonds and Stagenoise.com aim to take up David Berthold’s inspiration and also, whether she likes it or not, to prove Minister Coonan right when she said she believes: “the Internet could end up being the best reporting medium ever invented,” and that she believes: “it will only enhance democracy.”
