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Deborah Mailman sat in rusty red sand on Arrernte country in central Australia, and she felt her character’s deep grief. She was filming a scene in Warwick Thornton’s 1930s frontier western Wolfram, playing Pansy, an Indigenous woman whose children have been stolen from her.
As her bundled baby cries, Pansy silently cuts her hair off with a knife – “a grieving ritual”, Mailman says – even though her missing children might still be alive.
Mailman is the mother of two boys herself, Henry, 19, and Oliver, 16. Portraying Pansy’s anguish, she says, “requires no acting”.
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Suzy Izzard is a woman for all seasons – and all roles, it seems. This month, the British actor and comedian – still happy to be known as Eddie in a professional context – is touring Australia in The Remix, reimagining highlights from her 35 years in comedy. Then in June, she returns with her unique take on Hamlet, adapted by her brother Mark, in which she plays all 26 characters in Shakespeare’s great tale of grief, revenge and vulnerability.
“We did a Q and A after a very early show in New York and one person said, ‘I see Ophelia as a twin soul of Hamlet.’ We liked and ran with that,” says Izzard via video conference.
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Growing up in Sydney, Eric Avery – a violinist, composer, vocalist and dancer of the Ngiyampaa, Yuin, Bundjalung and Gumbaynggirr people of New South Wales – began playing a toy violin at age 12. His mother bought it for him after he was captivated by Wes Craven’s film Music of the Heart, starring Meryl Streep as American violinist Roberta Guaspari, who fought for music education in public schools.
He soon learned to play Beethoven’s Ode to Joy on the toy instrument, so his parents purchased an adult violin and then sent him to lessons a year later.
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