In the 1970s, while the rest of the world was struggling to show LGBTQ+ characters as anything other than jokes or morality tales, one country led the way with fully-fledged gay characters front and centre. Australia’s Number 96 was a sexy soap opera about the lives of people sharing an apartment building, putting sympathetic gay... Continue Reading →
Book Review: Caught in the Act by Shane Jenek aka Courtney Act ★★★★1/2
There’s more to Australian drag superstar Courtney Act than meets the eye, and I’m not talking about the obvious tricks of plucking and tucking. Courtney Act, aka Shane Jenek, has forged a multimedia career based on talent and hard graft. If your only knowledge of Jenek is from RuPaul’s Drag Race then his memoir, Caught... Continue Reading →
Theatre Review: Blithe Spirit (Sydney Opera House, Sydney) ★★★★
It begins with the dramatic opening chords of Celine Dion’s “It’s All Coming Back to Me Now”, a flash of lightning and the vision of an ethereal Courtney Act hovering above the stage. It’s a warning, this isn’t any ordinary version of Noël Coward’s supernatural comedy. Charles Condomine (Matt Day) is a writer in need... Continue Reading →
Exclusive Interview: Australian drag superstar Courtney Act on her Sydney Theatre Company debut “this feels like a whole level jump”
Australia has never been shy of drag. From the legacy of Sydney’s Les Girls and Carlotta, to Barry Humphries' iconic Dame Edna and Stephan Elliott's classic 1994 movie The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, drag has long been part of nation's cultural mix. But things changed when Courtney Act rose to fame in... Continue Reading →
Exclusive Interview: photographer Magnus Hastings on his new book Rainbow Revolution “I wanted to do something that was about the entire community”
Los Angeles-based British photographer, Magnus Hastings, has spent the last spent three years shooting images for his latest book, Rainbow Revolution, in London, LA, New York, and San Francisco. Hastings' elegantly simple concept—each subject was asked to strike a pose in a custom made white box—allowed for a wealth of creativity and individual expression of... Continue Reading →