Taking Liberty has opened at the Playhouse Theatre in Perth to considerable acclaim. Theatre Australia's review is here.

The Exploding Breakfast is now at La Mama in Melbourne. The season runs from August 28 to September 14. Click here for details.

Another review of The Exploding Breakfast from the Toronto press - this time, The Varsity.

"Sometimes you haphazardly stumble upon an unexpected gem. At 11:30 p.m. on a Wednesday night, Perth, Australia's Ingle Knight seemed surprised to see a very small gathering at the Factory Studio. Nevertheless, his lively storytelling of a true-life stint at a playwright's unit in Johannesburg was part Tom Robbins, part Samuel Beckett, as Knight expertly portrayed a cast of characters so vivacious and intriguing you never wanted him to stop." CL

The original is here.

Exploding Breakfast has opened in Toronto to an extremely satisfying level of acclaim. Given that the 1st performance was relatively mediocre (the writer was very disappointed with the actor) the 4 star review from The Eye Weekly was indicative of how good the show is when performed at top gear.

Toronto is a highly civilised city; warm, friendly and refreshingly tolerant of "difference". I'm struck by the broad range and variety of personal styles adopted by the populace. One feels that anyone would be accepted. Australia, with its reactive suspicion of behaviour that seems "strange" ("Ugh, what are yer??!!") could learn a thing or two from Canada's relaxed attitude to the unusual.

And they seem to like the show, too - box office is looking pretty healthy.

1) To go or not to go to the Olympics?
Answer: Of course not. Surely, only the venal, the ignorant or the cowardly could possibly believe that sending our brave multi-million dollar contingent of would-be champions to give the Chinese hegemony the credibility it craves could possibly be anything other than craven self-interest.

The question raises the image of that magnificent monstrous embodiment of the global techno economic capital media machine, V.P. Cheney, on his attention being drawn to the deaths of thousands of his nation's mother's sons, grunting, "So?" (For the closest anyone has ever come to catching the pictorial essence of Cheney and his little dancing chimp, check out Steve Bell's masterpieces over at The Guardian. ) So, of course they shouldn't go to China.

Will they go? Of course they'll go. I only hope there are others who watch with dudgeon as high as mine. It's not a pleasant view but the air is so pure and sweet up here.

2) To blog or not to blog?
Answer: Of course not. If you're still reading this perhaps you should ask yourself whether you haven't got something better to do. I'm sure I must have. Actually, just in case you didn't notice on your way here, what I am doing is The Exploding Breakfast at the Toronto fringe in July at the Factory Studio Theatre. And then at La Mama in Melbourne at the beginning of September.

Don't hesitate to come and have a chat after the show. And have a conversation. Try to convince me that this gadgetry is any more than a fraction as interesting and engaging as the living, breathing, fleshly, embodiment of the mimetic illusion of dramatised life that you can sometimes find at the theatre. Unless of course you don't like the show in which case I'd rather you leave quietly and keep it to yourself.

And for those of you in Perth (WA) in September, check out Taking Liberty.

"... virtual reality is not so much a navigation through the cyberspace of the networks. It is the amplification of the optical density of the appearances of the real world."

Paul Virilio.

Imagine Nov. 2014, when Prime Minister Rudd will be campaigning for his third election. He will have fulfilled the potential we now recognise in him. I wonder which of the Labor PMs we'll associate him with? Keating the crusty, Hawke the oh so magnificent, Whitlam the great, Chifley the engine driver or St. John Curtin?

I'm about to go on a world tour and I'm totally skint.

Would that were my only problem.

There is a theory that we have a cognitive bias to see ourselves more favourably than others see us. If only that were the case in my case. To have the confidence of Ed Booth who, when he was old and ugly, on arriving in Europe for a tour of Romeo and Juliet (having just escaped America's retribution for being the brother of the assassin of the President) he famously said "when I play Romeo, I am the handsomest man in Europe".

Still, I have been reckless enough to book myself into the Toronto fringe with a one-man show. That hardly took courage because I never imagined they'd actually pick me. However they did so this week I begin a kind of rehearsal.

Took the final draft of Taking Liberty into the PTC office to claim the last little bit of my commission fee only to be met with some debate as to whether it was in fact the final draft. Who's to say? The AD of the commissioning organisation, or the bloody writer? Came away empty-handed.