“Dear Prudence.” IT was just two words, but as the free-lovin’ 60s drew to a close and The Beatles wound up, they were a powerful message about the changing of the guard, of a unique Aussie talent bursting onto the scene. When Doug Parkinson first belted out the opening of The Beatles’ classic call to…

THEY’VE toured with AC/DC and been nominated for an ARIA, but Kingswood lead guitarist Alex Laska still lives with his mother. “Dude, I live at home with my mum,” he says. “I’ve dedicated all my money into this band and experiencing success, it’s really tough.  “I don’t have a second job at the moment, but…

BRON BATEMAN’S graphic and emotionally raw poems belie her gentle manner and warm smile. I expected the Northbridge author to be loud and aggressive, but I was sitting across from a polite 56-year-old blonde in a lacy red top. It’s a birthday gift from her wife of 16 years, she says. As the interview unfolds,…

BLOOD, silk and heart muscle have gone into Bricolage, a confronting installation by Nathan Thompson, Guy Ben-Ary and Sebastian Diecke. Part of the Perth Festival, it’s on at the Fremantle Art Centre, but don’t expect buckets of gore. “Blood cells have been reverse engineered back to stem cells,” Thompson, says. They have been used to…

WHEN five-year-old Ellie Malonzo was given a pink ukulele she tucked it under her chin, grabbed a chopstick and played it like a violin. Her guitar-playing father thought it was just a cute trick, but the Mt Pleasant youngster persevered with the chopstick. A year later her parents realised they had a budding Paganini on…

FREMANTLE’S Tom Fisher and the Layabouts are set to release their long awaited EP Spend a Little Time. The alt-country rocker’s first single from the EP, Old Man of the Blues, won song of the year in the Blues and Roots category at last year’s WA Music Awards. “It’s a nice start – an angry,…

QUEERNESS and feminism loom large in a Fringe reboot of rom-com classic You’ve Got Mail. The show takes the traditional values of the original movie and replaces them with 45 minutes of post-modern comedy and female self-empowerment. The show’s co-creators Sarah Hadley and Ang Collins highlight the misogyny and patriarchal tendencies in the 1998 film,…

STORMWATER and Lonely Mars are separate plays exploring gender equality and oppression, diversity, cultural tolerance, and the continued existence of the human race. Written and produced by Fremantle locals Bello Benischauer and Elisabeth Eitelberger, they focus on worldwide issues like climate change and escalating international violence. “Calling attention to the many areas in which ignorance…

MAGICIANS Sam Hume and Justin Williams ignore the WC Fields’ maxim “Never work with animals or children”. Their Greatest Magic Show is a family affair where kids are plucked out of the audience and join in, giving the performance an unpredictable edge. “Kids are naturally open…you never know what they are going to do…which keeps…

TALKBACK is a dark and intense play about a fraudulent psychic who discovers she might not be such a fraud after all. Part of the Blue Room’s Summer Nights and Fringe World, it’s playwright Hannah Cockroft’s debut play. The Yokine local was hooked on script writing whilst completing an English and cultural studies degree at…