Arts in the city: List confirms Adam’s appeal

THE Stage UK’s “Stage 100” annual theatre power list is out. Right up the top, along with luminaries such as actor/director Kevin Spacey and “Downton Abbey” director Edward Hall, is Canberra’s very own Adam Spreadbury-Maher, artistic director at the King’s Head and Hope Theatres in Islington. He was included, they say, because he is insisting that visiting companies pay all their actors at least the national minimum wage.

SPREADBURY-Maher is home at the moment directing “A Tale of Two Cities” for The Q – Queanbeyan Performing Arts Centre, opening on February 5. Bookings to 6285 6290.

Bea Brickhill
BEA Brickhill has left her role as ACT director at Creative Partnerships Australia (formerly the Australian Business Arts Foundation) after 4½ years to become relationships manager at the Australian Academy of Science. “I will watch with interest the continual growth and development of arts and culture in the ACT,” she says. No news yet of a replacement.

CONGRATULATIONS to founding director of the Wesley Music Centre, Garth Mansfield, pictured, on achieving retirement in December. Since its opening in September 2002, the centre has hosted around 1100 events, not least the popular free Wednesday Lunchtime Live series. It’s only a sort of retirement. Mansfield will continue as a leader of Bach Courses for U3A at the centre and as a member of the Board of the Wesley Music Foundation.
Garth Mansfield

SALUT! Baroque is staging a concert called “Bach vs Bach” at Albert Hall, from 7.30pm, on Friday, January 31. The two rival Bachs are JS Bach and his son, CPE Bach. This year Salut! commemorates the 300th year of CPE’s birth. Tickets at the door or to baroque.com.au

FORMER owner of Electric Shadows cinemas, Andrew Pike, will receive funding through the $80,000 2014 ACT Screen Arts Fund to make a documentary on his family heritage and Canberra filmmaker Daniel Sanguineti will be mentored on his first feature film, “Me and My Mates vs the Zombie Apocalypse”. Sanguineti produced “Theatre of the Dead” last year, but says this next show will be more in the comic style of “Shaun of the Dead”.