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Message from the Chair

Tony MacGregor

RealTime has its origins in discussions around a dining table in inner city Sydney in the early 1990s. These were long conversations (often well lubricated with a bottle of red) about the need for the performance community to develop a forum where work could be properly documented, connections made, lineages understood and the achievements of artists acknowledged through supportive and informed criticism.

There were a lot of people involved in those early conversations, many of whom remain close to the magazine, as writers and supporters. But RealTime is above all the realisation of the vision of two extraordinary people, the owners of that dining table. Twenty years ago Virginia Baxter and Keith Gallasch were acknowledged by their peers as intellectual and creative leaders in the world of contemporary performance. Twenty years down the track RealTime is a well oiled machine, and it’s hard to imagine the intellectual and physical energy, the courage and the commitment it took for two artists best known as writers and performers of ambiguously autobiographical ‘real’ stories to reinvent themselves as publishers and editors, responsible not just for filling the magazine with words and pictures, but also for selling ads and chivvying late running writers, and the myriad tasks that go to getting out a regular magazine on a shoestring budget with a small team. Twenty years down the track Keith and Virginia—along with Gail Priest, also an artist and editor who joined the core RT team in 1998—remain at the helm, seemingly indefatigable.

To Keith, Virginia and Gail, the contemporary performance (theatre, dance, live art, music theatre, physical theatre) and media arts communities in Australia owe an enormous debt.

On behalf of the Board of Open City, I want to acknowledge the generosity, commitment, imagination and hard work of these three wonderful individuals without whom…. Thank you.

Tony MacGregor, Chair

Open City Inc, Publisher of RealTime, Board of Management: Tony MacGregor, John Davis, Julie Robb, Philippa McGuiness and Urszula Dawkins

RealTime issue #121 June-July 2014 pg. 6

© Tony MacGregor; for permission to reproduce apply to realtime@realtimearts.net

9 June 2014