On the day the Bill Henson story broke (May 25, 2008), another art-controversy story made the front page of Melbourne’s broadsheet, The Age. Van Rudd, nephew of Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, had his work, “Special Forces (After Banksy)” banned from a Melbourne City Council exhibition for which, after invitation, it had been specifically prepared. The CEO of the City of Melbourne, Kathy Alexander, told The Age that Rudd’s painting was rejected for two reasons. “One, [it] was decided that it probably didn’t fit with the broader objective of the …

Hoa Pham interviews Vietnamese-Australian actress, HaiHa Le.

Two poems – Francais, and Louis De Carne’s Diary, by Adam Aitken.

A poem by Christopher Kelen.

Simone Lazaroo has written three novels, The World Waiting to be Made (TWWTBM), The Australian Fiance and The Travel Writer. She was interviewed by Paul Giffard-Foret in early 2007 and 2008 for his masters thesis. We have published a brief extract of these interviews here.

Dominic Golding’s autobiographical play “Shrimp” toured regional Victoria in 2007 as part of the VCE Drama Studies list. Most of the responses he said were good, especially from the students from minority backgrounds. However there was an incident when Dom had to confront a student’s verbal racism during the performance, and some of the teachers were stunned- having not read the briefing about what the play was about. We have published two excerpts of “Shrimp” to see what the fuss was about.

Welcome to issue 5, Drama. Firstly congratulations to Phillip Tang and Shalini Akhil whose pieces published in Peril were picked up the “Growing Up Asian in Australia” anthology edited by Alice Pung. Alice’s interview in the last issue has also been picked up by the Education Department in Western Australia for study notes. In this issue we are privileged to have interviews with the actress HaiHa Le, the artist Van Rudd and the author Simone Lazaroo. We also have excerpts from Dominic Golding’s play “Shrimp” and poetry …