Various Characters Review
Šime Knežević’s 2025 play Various Characters approaches with care and confusion the condition of Australian multiculturalism. A coming-of-age tale of multiple teenagers living in socially turbulent mid-2000s Sydney, the play never fully realises its focal point, nor answers the many questions it raises before the curtains close.
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“Cell widths shift and distort. The glyphs become increasingly abstract, teetering on the edge of recognition and chaos. This builds on the principle of CAPTCHA. While a bot struggles to decipher distorted letters, we — adept at interpreting characters across diverse fonts and handwriting styles — can navigate and decode them within irregular and unfamiliar contexts.”
IN THE ENTRAILS OF THE PRETTY MACHINE
“So I’m there, walking around with L0V3 D0ll and she’s wearing these awfully tight shoes and she tells me it’s so she can always remember her bondage or whatever. Some sexbot thing, I thought. They must know she wants to be a model.”
Angels Don't Fly
“I want to look as beautiful as my casket.
I want to live forever and be afraid of everything.
Life is so good and it’s only going to get worse.
And in dreams, I don’t have to tuck my wings inside my dress.
There are angels sitting next to you in the train,
Yet to earn their halo, yet to enter heaven.”
The Sound of Sydney: AN ORAL HISTORY OF FBI’S CD LIBRARY
“August 29, 2003. Since 1995, fbi (Free Broadcast Inc) Radio 94.5FM has been broadcast on special occasions, in unlikely places. From an empty shop next to the Clock Hotel in Surry Hills, on milk crates in a caravan in Bondi Beach, or above a suckling pig restaurant on George Street.”
In our Thousands in our Millions
“The fight for Palestine is a fight that everyone must be involved in — the fight against war and imperialism is a fight for a better world for all of us.”
Kick on Girl
“The play symbol bulges stupidly before the sub-saharan beauty of your jungle. Is heaven nothing but a blank slate? THE END. Play again? What’s wrong? Why are you crying? Here is a gift, do not dwell. Here, a new environment. Let me lead you to a new life. You can always begin again.”
Momento Mori
“Drawing skeletons on things that should not have skeletons on them has been a mainstay of mine for more than five years now”
17191 CA-46 Suite A, Lost Hills, CA 93249, United States
“This intensity that morphed into a sense of overwhelm so consuming I felt that nothing could be funnelled into a singular actuality. I let that feeling — whatever it was, consume me.”
Notes on Improvisation
“The improviser, that loafing, cocky, impulsive thing, who shamelessly indulges in one of the purest modes of creative play — of total absorption in the present. How magical! How disgusting.”
Will I Ever Get To Dance at a Venue Without 300 Homophobic Dudes? — PULP’s Sam Alfred Experience
Maybe we’re just living in a different time. After the concert, I reviewed Alfred’s Boiler Room X AVA set, noticing that the majority of the audience at that event were also white dudes with the same low taper fade haircuts and sunglasses. They bobbed their heads ambivalently and attempted to film the majority of the set, unable to just be in the moment. As events like Boiler Room have become increasingly popular, I sometimes wonder — are people coming to these things to have a boogie and support artists? Or are they going to find the validation that they seek?
Micra Musings
“I had bared my heart and my feelings were seemingly reciprocated, sharing five years of itemised service invoices, lamenting night shifts, even travelling to the south side of the Bridge for me.”
Towards a Blak Australia Policy: A Manifesto for Decolonial Socialism
“For Australia to become truly free, it must cease to exist in its current form. A Blak socialist future envisions a society where land and people are no longer commodities but kin, where power flows from the wisdom of Elders and the collective strength of communities.”
