A  RECENT funding boost has allowed PICA to take over the box office risk from performers, freeing them up to push their experimental works to greater limits. “We are no longer a venue for hire; we provide space, staff and marketing,” brags PICA director Amy Barrett-Lennard. The extra funding comes from WA’s arts and culture department…

RAIN didn’t deter people packing the floor and dancing to the hypnotic beat of Soukoss Internationale at last year’s Light Up Leederville festival. And at this year’s sold-out Camp Doogs festival down south, punters were knee deep in the mud but still dancing up a storm: “It was insane,” band member Quentin Thony says. Soukoss…

A YOUNG boy, shaggy hair falling into his eyes, looks outward; his expression suggesting he’s seen too much in his short years. Or perhaps he’s just unhappy at not being allowed to play computer games. It’s up to the viewer, says artist Cherry Hood. The Archibald prize winner says reaction to her work varies depending on…

WHEN WA Academy of Performing Arts jazz graduate Anna-Kat sang for her American singing teacher the reaction almost ended her career. “She said ‘you have a lot of work to do’,” says Anna-Kat (her full name is Anna-Katarina Hicks). “Then I sang her one of my original songs and she said ‘girl you gotta gift,…

A  NEW study into Perth’s music scene has found it pumps a whopping $1 billion into WA’s economy. The study was commissioned by music industry peak organisation WAM, and released on the eve of it’s big awards night, which was dominated by a re-emerging Fremantle music scene. WAM head honcho Mike Harris says they wanted to…

WHEN WA playwright Hellie Turner switched on the TV in her Sydney hotel room, she knew she’d found the subject for her new play. The story of 12-year-old Xan Fraser, gang raped and left for dead, was being told in harrowing detail during a 7.30 report on the ABC. Equally horrifying was young victim’s treatment…

MOLIERE wouldn’t recognise the language of the Ozified version of his biting comedy on power, hypocrisy and gullibility –  but no doubt he’d approve. In Aussie playwright Justin Fleming’s adaptation of Tartuffe things are “suss”, there’s plenty of “piss taking” and “shut your crack”, and a couple of “you’re giving me the shits”. In a…

PERTH VOICE cartoonist Jason Chatfield’s on a fun-filled and partly disastrous tour of US’s corn syrup-soaked mid-west, and he’s cartooning every bump in the road along the way. The Perth-born comic moved to New York a couple years back and when he’s not scribbling toons for our letters page, or Ginger Meggs, Chatters pursues a…