PERTH singer/songwriter Shameem is not afraid to tackle social issues in her music. Her recent single I Love You, But, is about gambling and the havoc it can wreak on lives. Now she’s set to take to the stage at the Ellington Jazz Club for another good cause, Jazz Against Parkinson’s, raising funds to fight…

WHAT’S the worst film you’ve ever seen? I can almost guarantee it’s nowhere near as bad as The Room, Tommy Wiseau’s self-funded disasterpiece, starring his friend and acolyte Greg Sestero. Often described as the Citizen Kane of bad movies, The Room got a critical drubbing when it was released in 2003 and more laughs than…

No one makes anything in this country anymore” is a common refrain heard across Australia. But as as the service industry continues to subsume our economy, Erin Taylor and Kate Wilks, co-owners of clothes store Ilka, are bucking the trend. They produce their clothes as locally as they can, with many pieces made by hand…

A PERTH husband and wife team have spent $3 million building the first purpose-built comedy venue in the city. The Comedy Lounge is on Murray Street and due to open on November 23. John and Jane McAllister searched for an existing venue for a comedy club in Perth, but couldn’t find anything suitable. So they decided…

TWELVE million people were displaced and more than a million died when the Brits pulled-out of India in 1947 and it was split into Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan. Seventy years on, Partition remains at the heart of ongoing tensions between the two countries. Dead birds The PICA exhibition I Don’t Want to be There…

YOUNG love, social isolation, bullying and gallons of blood collide in gothic splendour in Let the Right One In. The play, at WA’s State Theatre, is proof that the public are as bloodthirsty as ever for vampire fiction. Let the Right One In is Black Swan artistic director Clare Watson’s first production since taking over…

FORMER WA premier Carmen Lawrence will be guest speaker at the Perth screening of the award-winning documentary Chasing Coral on November 2. The screening is part of the campaign opposing the proposed Carmichael coal mine, to be operated by multinational Adani, on the north Queensland coast. There are fears The Great Barrier Reef could be…

PULITZER PRIZE-winning play I Am My Own Wife examines the life of Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, a German transvestite who navigated through the Third Reich and Iron Curtain in a pair of high heels. Not long after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, US playwright Doug Wright held a series of interviews with von Mahlsdorf, by…

THREE diverse Australian artists will showcase their distinctive styles at Turner Galleries this month. Lucas Grogan’s Skies includes works using YInMnBlue, a vibrant shade of blue accidentally discovered in 2009 by Oregon University professor Mas Subramanian. Grogan, Turner Gallery’s final artist in residence for 2017, is renowned for his blue and white works, spanning a…

AN international arts festival for kids will return to Perth this weekend with an amazing line-up of shows and events. Awesome, now in its 21st year, includes loads of interactive performances, like Touch and Go, which promises to be choreographed fun (and probably mayhem) for two to three year old’s. “It’s big energy…We absolutely love…