News

The meditation of darkened theatres

Committing time and focus to a performance may tap the benefits of meditation, mindfulness and rest.

8 Oct 2013 12:00

Sarah Ward

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Performing Arts

This hushed ritual, lasting mere seconds prior to each session or show, marks the commencement of one of the last experiences of total immersion remaining in our technology-savvy, multiscreen-saturated society. For the sixty minutes or longer that follows, audiences are asked to pledge their complete attention to the piece of filmed or performed art played out before them. Their eyes must only search the contents of their direct vicinity; their ears may only hear the sounds filtering through their surrounds; their senses must submit to the immediacy of the now and the near.

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Sarah Ward

About the Author

Sarah Ward is a freelance film critic, arts and culture writer, and film festival organiser. She is the Australia-based critic for Screen International, a film reviewer and writer for ArtsHub, the weekend editor and a senior writer for Concrete Playground, a writer for the Goethe-Institut Australien’s Kino in Oz, and a contributor to SBS, SBS Movies and Flicks Australia. Her work has been published by the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Junkee, FilmInk, Birth.Movies.Death, Lumina, Senses of Cinema, Broadsheet, Televised Revolution, Metro Magazine, Screen Education and the World Film Locations book series. She is also the editor of Trespass Magazine, a film and TV critic for ABC radio Brisbane, Gold Coast and Sunshine Coast, and has worked with the Brisbane International Film Festival, Queensland Film Festival, Sydney Underground Film Festival and Melbourne International Film Festival. Follow her on Twitter: @swardplay