Whose Business is this?

One of the latest news in the Hong Kong media in the last few days is the “covered up” marriage and divorce of two well known artists. The guy is the second generation of a token music family and the girl is from the super Hong Kong girl group Twins. It has been rumoured for quite a while that they were going out but when someone leaked the information that they were actually married for 4 years and currently in the middle of a divorce, the Hong Kong media completely exploded. Eventually under the pressure of the media and with all the different “versions” of the story, they called a press conference and explained themselves. This is the second time that the Hong Kong media condemned artists for not telling them their marital status and being dishonest to them. Last year it was another super star Andy Lau who got stung by them – at the funeral of his father-in-law.

As a communication graduate who was taught to be a responsible journalist, I can never understand this fuss. I have accepted the fact that nowadays a lot of so called journalists are really not journalists. They are story writers who just write whatever in fashion for them without actually accepting their liability for what they wrote. Journalism is all about selling copies and getting rating today instead of providing a factual and neutral view for readers or audience to judge. I have accepted that. But calling artists liars because they didn’t disclose certain private information to you and then gang up against them, condemning them days after days and weeks after weeks? I am totally baffled by these “journalist” behaviours nowadays.

Certainly they are in a very public business. Entertainment business earns big money from the public. But that doesn’t mean that they have to surrender every single piece of information about them to everyone. A lot of times people said that “you do this business, you accept the consequence”. That is total crap to me as for my understanding; you are responsible to your employers not the general public. If the general public wants to put you on a pedestal, it should not be certain artist’s responsibility to live up to their expectations – especially about their private lives. They can be condemned of being liars if they front an anti-drug campaign but they are junkies themselves. But why is it that whether someone is married or not anyone else’s business?

For me, the most annoying part of this saga is that neither one of them had ever talked about their relationship in the public but then now being crucified for “not talking”. In a recent interview, the girl from Twins even said that she just didn’t talk about things. Whether it’s true or not she knows or if other people know then that’s fine. She doesn’t want to say yes or no to things to feed unnecessary media frenzies. Similarly, the guy had never admitted or denied anything about their “rumoured relationship” in the past 6 years. So calling them liars and condemning them of dishonesty is really beyond my comprehension. Further, if that traitor in their social circle didn’t leak the information to the press, nobody would have even known that ever happened. So why does it matter when it isn’t something that matters to begin with? Is it because the media itself is angry with them because their marriage managed to sneak under their radar for that long? So is this their way of getting back to them and “teach them a lesson”?

The most amusing part of this saga is that they condemn the artists about dishonesty but at the same time composed new stories about things as if suddenly they were sleeping under their bed in the last 4 years. Now I really want to know who the bigger liar here is – the artists who wanted to keep their marriage to themselves or people who wrote untrue stories to sell copies. This kind of blatant and shameless double standard really put me off the Hong Kong media in the recent years. If there is a stone to cast and someone cast the first stone, it is still fine. But in this case, there is no stone to cast at all, but they built a boulder to roll over and knock down others – that’s not on!

I am saying this not because I like those two artists. And to be honest, I am never a fan to either of them. But I just couldn’t believe that the Hong Kong media has gone to that low in their practices while at the same time waving the moral flag in the air calling foul. It is not surprising that a lot of established Hong Kong artists like Maggie Cheung and Faye Wong nowadays prefer to live overseas or away from Hong Kong and just go back to work if they feel like to. Just that magnitude of media intrusion and “judgment” is enough a reason for them to stay away as much as possible.

I know the current frenzy will die away as soon as the Hong Kong media found new targets and move on. But I just really feel for this couple that they even couldn’t grieve their marriage breakdown privately and being pressured to become “responsible” to something that is nobody else but their own business.

Sex, Lies and a Father Figure?

It seems that these days we are facing scandals after scandals of prominent people in the media. First we have the undying saga of “the tiger living in the woods”, then we have “a cheating husband of a Hollywood darling and Oscar winner”, and now it is the “husband of a prominent acting agent and a lovable father figure in Australia”.

Now if all these people ever want to live a life as just another human being, they successfully did it – as they could have committed a sin as every other human being could commit on Earth. For Mr Wood and Mr James, they were involved with adults – not that their adulterous actions are correct or justifiable, but at least they are consenting adults. How messy they got, adults are dealing with adults. What distressed me most is the allegation of two powerful personalities – one leading actor and one major producer – trying to execute and cover up evil deeds against children worked on set. I don’t want to jump into conclusion that Robert Hughes is guilty as there is yet a trial on that. But I really dislike people taking advantage on helpless people and exercise their power to a magnitude that it helped to “conspire” and “perpetuate” such evil acts.

Everyone in the acting business knows that this is a tough business. Every time we got a job, we want to do our best to keep it (well maybe not all but most of us). So when a 6 year old who is on the set earning bread and butter for her family was experiencing such horrible thing, what could she do? According to the information she eventually sought help and advice from an elder cast member who was eventually told to shut up or “risk not working in the country anymore”. Now what interested me was why did that producer do that? Is it also just to keep the show running so he could earn a lot more out of it? If that’s so and if it was proved that the allegations are correct, the media industry should unite against this producer and throw him out of business too as he is equally guilty.

Another thing that kept me thinking was that if according to all the actors who came out to talk about this that Hughes’ behaviour is well known throughout the industry, why didn’t his wife know and take actions? As one of the most prominent agents of the country, surely there would be wind blowing pass her letting her know about this. So how could that kind of behaviour continued for so many years behind her back? I am not saying she had a part or she allowed this to happen, but then if she really didn’t know about all these, people surely had kept her in the dark very well. I could only feel sorry for her.

At this point it is really difficult for us to make judgement as there is no real judgement unless the case is officially filed and a trial is officially carried out. However, in due time hopefully the truth will come out as I do think that with such allegations, Hughes does have the responsibility to let the society know the truth because as I said, this is not private fun between two consenting adults behind his wife’s back but the exercise of power one a helpless kid in a wrongful manner. How many more people will come out and make further allegations is still unknown but I think not only for us but for just for human conscience, actions have to be taken. And should the truth prove Hughes is guilty, as I said earlier, the producer in question should be hung too.

As for all of us, as my friend said in his blog, if you are in the acting business or media industry and experienced harassment of such magnitude, do not hesitate to report it to the union: http://www.alliance.org.au/ as the more we tolerate such behaviour, the messier and more unprofessional the business becomes. Hopefully, bit by bit we can clear out the cancer cells in the industry and people who deserve to work will get work and not a bunch of conspiring evil wankers.

How Sweet is Short+Sweet?

Been having a blast attending different shows at this year’s Short+Sweet. For those who don’t know what Short+Sweet is, it is the world’s largest short play festival. All plays are strictly limited to 10 minutes and it is also a competition among participants to see who put on the best play of the year. Short+Sweet has been around for 9 years and is going from strength to strength. Maybe one day it will become like Tropfest, something that attracts more and more international attention (at the time of writing, Short+Sweet is already starting up in Singapore, Malaysia and New Zealand).

I’ve never been in any Short+Sweet production but in the last two years got involved as one of the adjudicators. Still remember how flattered I was when I got the invitation. Many people asked me how come I got to be an adjudicator when I’ve never been involved in any production. Well not to blow my own horn, I do have a formal qualification in Theatre and am a fully trained dramaturg (though not many theatre companies can afford to employ us). But this is not about me it’s about all the people who bleed and sweated to put the festival together. Alex Broun has been at the helm as an artistic director the last few years and with him and Mark Clearly, the scale of Short+Sweet was just ever expanding.

Going to Short+Sweet is like going to a restaurant that provides only set menus according to the ingredients available on the day. So you are really in for some surprises from time to time. One week it could be really short and sweet, while some others they could be “Short+Missed”. Productions that managed to squeeze into the main program will usually be staged for a week. Audience will vote for their favourite play of the night and the judges will rank the plays according to (for me) writing, staging, direction and performance. Productions that got into the Wild Card sessions are more like in a sudden death judgement situation – one performance to determine whether they can enter the second round and thus from the second round to the Final Gala.

I had a great time judging on Short+Sweet. It is good to see so many people writing and putting themselves out there. However with the massive number of productions squeezed into around 8 weeks, you bound to have disappointments from time to time. For me disappointments can come in several ways:

Writing:

Mediocre and generic writing is one of the deadly sins in Short+Sweet. Sometimes you felt you have seen it all and the dialogues are as tasteless as filtered water. At times you will get plays that swore their heads off throughout the whole 10 minutes, and even after that you still don’t know why they needed to swear. I know this is Australia but do Australians just swear that much for the sake of swearing? I remember this year there was a production that uses the “c” word repeatedly. I am not against swearing or the “c” word specifically but then my company and I were looking at each other wondering what were they doing?

Staging and Directions:

This year I have seen a lot of productions using an extremely boring approach in terms of staging and directions. This is not limited to Short+Sweet but also to some amateur theatre productions. The most commonly seen approach is to just have people walking across the stage again and again for the sake of using the stage space. However, because they are walking to and fro that much, you just got distracted because you couldn’t figure out why they were doing so. Staging doesn’t necessarily means you have to use all the space available – use it only if it enriches your story telling. I remember in one of the productions this year, the two ladies were just using a small stage front area next to a double deck trolley most of the time and it worked extremely well. The other well-staged production involved placing the actors symmetrically on the stage. They only move out of their space when they needed to interact or when it was required to move the story forward. That was a pleasure to watch. However, there were quite a number of productions where they just have actors running around on the stage “doing their stuff” and after 10 minutes you felt more exhausted than they did.

Performance:

One of the common issues I found in Short+Sweet performances is the actors’ voice. Being a voice student for over 3 years now made me really pay attention to what came out of actors’ mouths. I remember in one of the productions, there were four actors. Two of them were spectacular but the other two were just awful whenever they opened their mouth. The words came out were mostly inaudible and one of them spoke so quickly that you just felt like popcorns were coming out of her mouth. There was another production where there were non-English speaking actors delivering lines in English. However, they were so heavily accented that it was quite difficult to understand what they were saying. Being someone from a non-English speaking background I know how difficult it is, but then when it comes to performing life, this is really something that need to be addressed – seriously. There were other productions that even when I was sitting on the second or fourth row, I couldn’t hear a word from the actors. Now I am not saying they need to yell cause I hate people just yelling for no reason and I’d seen too much of them on Australian stage and screen already. But clear articulation and projection are essential for all stage performers and I don’t think that is something a stage actor can get away with. To cite a good performance this year is the girl who was in the play about ranting. Her projection and articulations were clear but she managed to put so many dimensions and layers into the ranting that it was just enjoyable.

The Short+Sweet Final Gala will be held on 12 and 13 March this year and unfortunately I won’t be able to attend. But I am sure the program will be a wonderful and entertaining. It sounds like I am very critical when it comes to judging but I do think as a member of the local theatre and acting scene, I do need to be critical about our work so we can make improve each time. I enjoyed most of the program this year and there were certainly some really good stuff among them. So if you have missed Short+Sweet this year, remember to mark your calendar for next year’s festival. After all what is better than a night of aspiring theatre?

Spring Awakening

Spring Awakening is based on a play written in 1891 about the transition of adolescence to adulthood. The exploration of life goals, love, sexuality and all other things that the grown up world refused to discuss with their kids apart from issuing orders after orders. It has a strong sense of breaking through the cocoon of adolescence and thus the use of rock music throughout the whole production completely reflected this dying urge of the main cast. The opening song laid the foundation of the whole story in a mellow, desperate but sweet song. As the story progressed, you just got hooked to how such an ill trained bunch of kids reacted to all the catastrophes of adulthood they experienced.

The Sydney Theatre Company (STC) production commands a huge young cast together will well trained actors. The result is a refreshing production that is probably not to everyone’s taste. On the Saturday night that I attended, I was surrounded by a huge token STC patron group – Anglo middle to upper class baby boomers (as you can tell from their high end fashion and lack of command with their bunch of newly purchased iPhones and Blackberries). After the first act and the intermission, some of them disappeared. The remaining ones were talking about they had no idea what’s happening and wondered what’s with the rock music and hysteric performance of the cast. Of course the only reason the ones left were still there because “they paid for the ticket, might as well sit through it”.

If you judge by their reactions, you would probably think that it is a bad production. In fact it is not. What amused me was that their reactions were exactly the way the adult characters in the musical behaved throughout the whole story – they couldn’t understand and couldn’t be bothered to try to understand. “We have kids so we deal with them in a way we understand ourselves”. I am not saying the adults were portrayed as bad guys, they were just good guys with bad reactions to the events in the story. They couldn’t help it because that’s what they knew best and they had to stick with them to make things work for them.

The story has its setting in a small community with two groups of teenagers – one from an all boys school and the other from all girls school – trying to grow up and find out what it is about life and their position in the world. Heading these two groups were our three leads – Melchior (Andrew Hazzard), Moritz (Akos Armont) and Wendla (Clare Brown). As they experienced their own torment of growing up, they also confronted the mis-happenings and issues of their friends. The cast gave an electrifying performance as the growing teenagers, with most of them playing to their ages. The energy level was high and they performed professionally with some of the more daring and challenging scenes on stage. The singing and dancing looked quite demanding especially when the stage has quite limited space for them to manoeuvre around and it was slanting downward at an angle on the stage front. The numbers were well sung most of the time although at times you do hear broken notes – not that they were not reached, just not crisp enough. But all the ensemble numbers were so well done that they made you want to move along with them. Overall the cast gave a very good performance that kept your rhythm pumping.

Set design wise, it comprises of a huge mobile wooden and metal structure with lots of ladders. So as you would expect, there were a lot of climbing – and I mean a lot – and some of them were done in the dark. Even certain stage exits were above the stage level so actors did have to climb to exit stage. I am sure the stage design passed the OH&S check but you sometimes do sweat for the actors when they did have to climb the ladders quickly to exit from the scene. Lighting was used very smartly to help the structure to reflect different areas or scenarios in the community. They also helped to command some of the more confronting moments in the story.

The score is mainly rock music with a lot of ear catching tunes for the younger generation. So do not expect the more operatic style of singing and songs as exhibited in Phantom of the Opera. As mentioned before, the style of song did match with the theme of the musical perfectly and in fact it will be awkward to replace it with another style. There were some demanding moments, such as one of Moritz arias and considering that most songs were done together with a lot of electrical shot like and vigorous dance moves, they were a lot more demanding than they looked. The live band on stage behind the main stage area delivered a very moving score throughout the whole performance and it was great to see them on stage at the curtain call as without them the story wouldn’t be told in the way it was meant to be.

In all “Spring Awakening” is really a good night out and the production value was very high. STC has to be commended for putting on something different and more in touch with modern theatre and stage instead of sticking to the old school programmes that people had seen for x-trillion times.

iPad: Stud or Dud?

Without a doubt the latest media frenzy is the unveiling of the Apple iPad. Apple had already proved that they can turn ideas into great products with mass appeal. With the first revamp and resurgent of the Mac series computer to MacBook, iPod and eventually iPhone, Apple has gone from strength to strength. But could iPad break into a new market or create a new market? Let us take a closer look at the device.

There is no doubt that iPad is sleeky designed product to fit the bill of image conscious consumers. It looks like an upsize iPad but with the high portability offered by its distant cousin the MacBook Air in terms of its feather weight. The light weight means mobility without testing your body’s endurance, as compared to a lot of other netbooks and notebooks. The glossy touch surface and 9.7 inch screen offers a great visual touch interface that helped made iPhone a household name. Every aspect of its design seems to be flawless.

Software-wise, iPad can run all applications from the Apple Apps store as long as they are designed for iPhone. So now you can play iPhone games on a bigger screen and hopefully with more clarity with the polygons displayed on screen. It adopts the same accelerator and gameplay mechanism like iPhone, so you will be at home with it. The new introduction though is the iBook function. It is very obvious that Apple is keen to compete in the eBook market, which is growing quite steadily in recent years. Amazon’s Kindle is the current market leader with other companies like Sony also providing similar devices. The major difference of iBook from Kindle is that it provides a more beautiful screen on a simulation interface i.e. you flip the virtual pages (finished with a virtual page turning tone). 5 major publishers are already on board and Apple is keen to become the market leader as Steve Jobs said, “we are riding on the shoulders of Amazon’s success”. However, as enticing as it looks, iBook store is only available to the States at this point, so it will be less of a credible function to early adopters in other regions. iPad also supports the latest version of iWork from Apple. iWork is basically Apple’s struggling answer to MS Office. So it seems obvious that Apple is betting on iPad to popularise its own office applications. iWork itself is a nice bundle of software but for people who are actually using MS Office on Mac there seems to be little reason to shift over as there are still a number of compatibility issues of file formats between the two. Another major drawback is that despite you can browse the Internet with iPad, it doesn’t support Adobe Flash. That’s something really beyond comprehension as why would Apple not support something that is regarded as standard in the field? Boil down to this then it seems that iPad is just a bigger version of iPod Touch without a lot of new stuff to offer.

On the hardware side of things, iPad really didn’t offer much. It didn’t have a camera as iPhone does, it lacks USB ports that you can transfer files over (unless iPad can automatically synchronise with your Mac wirelessly), it doesn’t have a DVD drive so you can only watch things from your iTune collection (if you have one). I heard that you can dock the device on a separate keyboard instead of using the touch onscreen keyboard, but then to do that Apple will charge you separately. All these in fact will limit the appeal of the device as file transfer and synchronisation is no longer user friendly. Just imagine that you find something interesting, you have to use the iPhone (if you have one) to take the picture and then transfer it over to the iPad wirelessly in order to look at it on a big screen. Would majority of consumers do that? Previous Apple devices thrived on their easy to use interfaces. But now with such a clumsy set up, could iPad still appeal to their customers?

Function wise, Jobs said it is better than notebooks and netbooks. However, iPad actually has a lot less function than those devices as you cannot install software onto the iPad as you do with your netbooks and notebooks. That makes it a lot less versatile in terms of functionality. Maybe Apple didn’t want to create something that competes with its MacBook series, but then Job’s statement will be just comparing apples with oranges, which is quite misleading for the audience. If iPad is just an upsized iPod Touch with an eBook reader, its fate really depends on whether eBook is going to take off for Apple. For people who already have a Kindle and an iPhone, the appeal of iPad quickly diminishes unless they just want everything Apple. However, even so, the incompatibility of both eBook formats mean that people will need to spend a fortune of re-establishing their eBook collection on iPad, provided the iBook store actually holds those titles. Further, I am really sceptical about whether consumers who already have an iPhone would want to carry an additional device around with similar if not less functionality.

At this point iPad hasn’t really shown that it is a real winner yet. With all the issues that Apple may need to address eventually, iPad’s uptake could still be just restricted to hardcore Apple fans. It could become an alternative to netbooks or notebooks only if it can sync with Apple’s MacBooks, making it a must have on-the-go partner for both work and leisure. But even that it will mean consumers will have to be locked in to Apple products and no more. So it comes back to the question of apart from Apple fanboys, where is the market? The current fanfare and fireworks for iPad in the media are really merely fanfare and fireworks. The main issue here is: would iPad be a sustainable product after the initial thunder? Or it will just quietly go back to the back seat like MacBook Air?

Australian Ads - are they really value adding?

Was walking along the main street earlier today. A bus stopped by at the lights. I looked over. On the side of the bus it wrote: “It can take 400 tons of food in one day. That’s a busload of kids!” The ad was then signed off by The Australian Wild Life Park in the city.

Now no offence, but when did kids became food equivalent for Jurassic leftovers and also, when did people start thinking that “Let’s attract kids to come and see it because it can eat busloads of them!” I find it absurd that an ad that is supposed to attract kids to go to the Wild Life Park actually uses wordings against the same target group. Or maybe the current generation of kids has now evolved into a state that they find things that will potentially cost their lives a lot more intriguing and just telling them what they are?

Been talking about how badly designed a lot of Australian ads are for many years and we still haven’t seen any improvements in the ads that ambush us everyday asking for our attention. I liked the program “The Gruen Transfer” on ABC, but then the focus of that program is more about the fun side of advertising. What I am more interested is “Why the hell would the creators think that certain certain ads will actually sell the products?”

One of the most commonly used themes in Australian ads is SEX. I have to put that word on caps lock because those ads scream sex in such a loud way that you sometimes forgot what they were trying to sell. I mean from ads about that particular “Nasal Delivery Technology” to NSW Government’s no-speeding public announcement, sex is everything and everywhere. The funny thing about that no-speeding public announcement was that they focus on guys who speed, so “Nobody thinks big of you”, of course referring to their sacred temple of genitalia. Now may I remind our constantly shuffling NSW Government that not only guys speed. If they have actually done their homework, they would know that there are quite a proportion of female drivers who speed. I do know a girl who lost her license in the first year after she got it just because of speeding alone. I don’t know whether females think that a big vagina is a good thing or not, but if they actually prefer a smaller and more delicate genitalia, then maybe this is an encouragement for female drivers to speed so they can keep down there “small” and tight – as that’s the way the man eater Samantha Jones preferred.

Also, if you are lucky to be home between 4.30pm and 6.30pm in Australia, I will recommend you to turn down the volume of your TV or surround sound system. This is the time when all the yelling ads are shown. I lost my memories of these ads completely until I live in Sydney. I was stunned by the frequency of these “COME BUY BUY BUY WE ARE 30% CHEAPER THAN HELL!” on the Australian TV. Yeah certainly when Sydney is less densely populated and the suburb is quieter, this will work or maybe these ads did sound like music in the air. But in modern Sydney where more people are packed up like sardines in apartment blocks, certainly we can give this format of advertising a miss right? What good to the world will these yelling do? They completely turn me off going to those shops and at the same time adds to the carbon footprint of my TV because it has to use more electricity to deliver these thunderous messages.

Adding to these are some of those “What the” ads. Ads that even after they are finished, you still don’t really know what they are trying to sell. Or the revelation came in a way that they prompt you to go back to the universities to obtain a PhD and still couldn’t understand the relationship between the ads and the products. One of the classic ones I remember was and ad about a young couple making out in a wheat field (yes SSSSEEEEEEXXXXX!) and during the process the girl took a jar of honey and put the honey on the guy, first bit by bit and then more and more and eventually pouring the whole jar on him. At the end of the ad, it said something like “no taste is enough” with an ending scene of Honey Soy Chicken chips. I remember when I first saw the ad in the cinema, I turned around to my friend and said “What the?” and then around me were people laughing and saying “That’s such a stupid ad!” Yes! We are all surrounded by these ads day in day out. Sometimes watching these ads are so exhausting that you just want to turn the TV off or leave the cinema until the real feature is on.

The other much talked about ad was the Commonwealth Bank ones. Now I never like that bank but then I won’t mind them putting some decent ads on to entice people like me who left them because of their bad services. Anyway, there was a series of ads that at the beginning they put on a mock up big budget “Raiders of the Lost Ark” kind of main feature (there are several versions of that too) and at the end, it cut to the boardroom showing an advertising company trying to sell the idea to the Bank for a campaign. One of the Board Members said, “Why don’t we just tell them?” Now as “ingenious” as it looks, my reaction was exactly: “why don’t you actually tell me what services you are selling instead of an empty ad like that?” Yeah we sure remember the ad, but did it add kudos point to the Bank? No.

It seems like I have lots of complaints about Australian ads. To be fair, not all ads are bad. I quite like the skim yogurt ad about taking in calories because of careless eating and you don’t have a choice of where it goes. The actors surely did a great job because every time I saw that ad, it still puts a smile on my face.

However, is the once in a blue moon kind of good ad enough to salvage this raging sea of bad advertising? Sure there are some really creative and talented people out there, so what were they doing that eventually flooded the market with corpses of bad advertising? Even worse is that some recycled ads from overseas that were made (and I saw) years ago are still better than a lot of new ads we have now on TV and in cinemas. Maybe the advertising bosses think that it doesn’t matter but how are they going to explain themselves when a campaign failed flat? Or maybe it is just a way to keep the Australian economy less rely on consumer market thus helping Australia to cruise through the Global Financial Crisis with less scratches.

From Samson and Dililah, Mao's Last Dancer to whatever?

If you have watched last night's AFI Awards, you'll noticed the variety of nominations we had this year.

Samson and Delilah and Mao's Last Dancer lead the charge at the Awards ceremony last night and swept the floor. Baz Lurhman was hailing the variety of Australian TV and film industry and so as Peter Andrikidis mentioning the final representation of multicultural Australia in East West 101 (which won the best TV drama series beating Underbelly and Packed to the Rafters).

Now I don't want to be a sceptic but I do sincerely wish that this is not a single year representation but an on going one. The issue here is, would Mao's Last Dancer be made if it was not a multi-million copy best seller already? For those who had seen the movie will no doubt that Bruce Beresford did a great job for the book. As for Samson and Delilah, it was hailed first in an overseas festival and then rides its champion wave back to Australia. Another classic case of "it is successful overseas, so lets give it a go" mentality.

What would be interesting is that in the coming years, how multi-cultural Australia will truly be represented in the Australian TV and film industry. Are Indigenous actors still playing indigenous roles? Are Chinese actors still kitchen hands and restaurant owners (or hookers in the girls' case)? Are Japanese actors still tourists? Are Middle Eastern actors still terrorists and gangsters? In my opinion, only when we see that these groups and other groups of actors managed to break through this casting glass ball that have been binding us for years that we can say the Australian TV and film industry truly embraces multi-cultural or modern Australia.

How can we change this? By the collective force of all writers, producers, directors and actors. Short+Sweet is coming shortly and hopefully it will sweetly represent actors of all ethnicity beyond their ethnic constraints in terms of roles on stage. Also Tropfest is around the corner too. Have you thought of using the best actors without considering their skin colour?

East West 101 will be returning next year. It will be very interesting to see how it is going to further represent cultural diversities. Remember: cultural diversity is more than just putting actors of different cultural background on screen - what they do on screen matters more than just have them showing up repeating the same roles in the last 200 years.

It seems to be a good year for non-Anglo / ethnic actors in Australia, but how sustainable it will be is yet to be seen. This is an issue that needs to be dealt with for years but throughout these years, they are just discussions. Hopefully with more non-Anglo industry practitioners pushing this forward, Australian TV and Film industry can finally embrace what modern Australia is.