Fourth Wall Down ...
Mostly actors pretend that no-one is watching them, while ensuring they can be seen and heard. The pretend barrier they call the Fourth Wall.
When an actor giving a naturalistic performance broaches the Fourth Wall it’s a surprise for the audience though the actor knows the effect she is having. When the Fourth Wall is down we as an audience feel we are part of the action.
Anna Volska
You may remember the trio of children’s books published way back in 2011 and 2012?
Ducks Crossing and the Secret Shadow, Ducks Crossing and Thunderbolt Island, Ducks Crossing and the Hungry Dingo.
In each book, Alison, Owen (AKA The Hawk), Lily, and the twins Meg and Chaz were the key characters in mighty adventures that took place on the
Central Coast of New South Wales in the mid 1950s. Did you, erstwhile reader, ever speculate about what became of those children?
(Alison, the oldest, was 12 at the time). Where did their lives take them after their idyllic childhoods? Did they ever come back as
adults to the Central Coast? Yes indeed they did!
Fifty years after the last of their Ducks Crossing adventures, the crew (minus one) return to their old haunts,
curious about what has changed – and what hasn’t – and eager to dig up the Time Capsule they buried as children.
What was in it? And what will they add to it, to summarise the lives they have led in the last half century?
“Narrower the Future, Broader the Past” will be published by Hilliard Hudson and designed by Blue Wren Books.
Stay tuned for a launch date!
Also in preparation is a hard back version of “Pot Pourri”, an anthology of favourite quotations collected over the past 55 years.
Again, stay tuned for launch dates!
Helen Menzies with Actor John Bell launching her latest book, a collection of two novellas,
The HARBOUR MYSTERIES:
The Body in the Bridge. Whose body? How did it get there? And when? Retired teacher Bax, her former student – now policewoman – Lauren, and famous journalist Kate McClymont delve into the underworld of the “other Sydney” of the 1920s and 1930s.
The Pinchgut Paradox. The island in the Harbour with a grisly convict past is the present-day setting for an attempted murder. Who is the target? And why? Bax is back, with Jeremy, another former student, and Charles, a retired barrister, as they confront more red herrings than there are sharks in the waters surrounding Pinchgut.
The Harbour Mysteries is now available at The Book Store in Umina, at Wagstaffe Store and through this website.
