Oct. 22, 23, 24 2006
Oh, and this is the sense of humor they have in Australia.
And who would eat at a place called:
So anyway, I figured the actor's didn't want me always coming to the shows, so I tried to see some other pieces.
One was an installation across town. The whole cast and I went to a warehouse, that was filled with piles of rice. All different sizes of piles, each with a little title. Now that may seem like one of those artsy-fartsy, art-for-arts-sake things, but it was actually a very political peice.
Each grain of rice represents a person, and each pile is a group, like "All the people who have died of AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa," or "People who take public transit each day in Melbourne."
The big one in the middle is "All the people in China." As if you couldn't guess.
And since each pile is an exact count, they are all relative to each other - so it is much easier to relate the number of civilians who've died in the Iraq War to the number killed in terrorist attacks, or the total population of Australia. It is a brilliant way to give you perspective.
In case you can't read it, the larger pile says "People who will be born in the world today", and the smaller one say "people who will die in the world today."
And in the middle of this one, you may not see, are three little grains - Ali, foreman, and the referee.
The whole thing is really quite brilliant.