entertainmentgeelong.com

  The Heavies are back

The 53rd annual Geelong Highland Gathering takes place this month at a new venue - with the return of a couple of heavyweight old favourites. The new venue is Fyansford Common, less than 1 km from its former Queens Park home, but a circuitous trip for drivers. The returning heavyweights are the Heavy Games - including tossing the caber - plus a display from the 42nd Royal Highland Regiment of 1815 (pictured) who have special police permission to fire their 19th-century muskets in a tribute salute. There will be 20+ pipe bands competing on the day, too, along with Highland dancing, cattle, dogs and more.. The Gathering is Sunday March 21, the new venue is accessed from the Hamilton Highway and entry is still $12 or $30 for a family ticket - available at the gate.

  Shirley & Colin at NCF

Shirley Power & Colin Mockett will be appearing again at the 2010 National Celtic Festival in Portarlington. They're among the Festival's first-wave of performers booked to bring the magic of Celtic culture midwinter to the Bellarine Peninsula. The duo will bring their blend of fine music and laughter to the Festival, joining a choice selection of performers headlined by Eric Bogle and Irish supergroup Beoga. And early-bird discount tickets to the Festival are on sale now.
Check the Comprehensive Diary for booking details 

Vive la France Festival

The Alliance Francaise de Geelong hosts a French Film Festival in May. Based at Waurn Ponds' Reading Cinema, the Society will screen five modern French films, all comedies and all with English subtitles, over a single weekend. The films include the sexy romantic-comedy with a twist La Fille de Monaco (The Girl From Monaco) directed by Anne Fontaine, who directed the award-winning arthouse hit Coco Avant Chanel, and the French 2009 smash-hit comedy Laughing Out Loud.
All the French Film Festival's films are listed on our Comprehensive Diary
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Palais pilgrims to romance

Geelong's National Wool Museum is hosting an exhibition that's proving highly popular with the region's baby-boomers. There's a steady stream of 60-ish boomers making a 'pilgrimage trek' into their romantic past to see Palais - Romance of the Dance - a newly-opened exhibition on the Museum's top floor that displays photographs and memorabilia of the Geelong Palais during its heyday - from 1920s to 80s. This was when the Moorabool St venue was the prestigious Saturday-night dance venue where most of Geelong's young people met in glorious non-alcoholic dressed-to-the-nines dancing splendour. The exhibition contain costumes, tickets, posters, memories and many never-before seen items from the Slack family, long-term managers of the venue.
Geelong's Palais is today a sad shadow of that time. It's a bingo venue. But its memories are on display until May.
Check our Around The Galleries page for details
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  Concert Decade raced off

For the first time in nine years, there will be no 2010 Geelong Concert Of The Decade. The CoD is a big annual event featuring the cream of our region's entertainers in the City's best venue. It traditionally opens Geelong's month-long Seniors Festival on the first weekend of October. But this year it has been swamped by the World Cycling Championships. The cycling event will take over the streets of Geelong on the same weekend. As the concert can't be shifted in time - it's the Festival's official opener - and the race will take over the Geelong waterfront- home of the Costa Hall - as well as intermittently closing key access roads around the city for the entire weekend, the concert's organisers faced not only the Costa Hall being inaccessible, but restricted movement of artists and audience through the city if they chose to move the event to a different time and/or venue. Rather than cause even more disruptions - and frustrations to delayed audience members - it was decided the simplest course was to call off the 2010 Concert.
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  ..but the Grumpies Rock On

TICKETS ARE NOW ON SALE FOR Drop Of A Hat Productions' first show for 2010 - and it's a happy treat for fans. Titled The Grumpy Old Men's Travelling Rock & Roll Laughter Show, it has Geelong's three Grumpy Old Men, Bryan Eaton, Robert Trott and Colin Mockett joining with ace guitarist Geoff Sinnbeck and glamour bassist Sandy Brady to add a bright new dimension to their grumpy format. As well as the trio's opinions, sketches, poems and skits they'll be introducing a choice selection of favourite songs from the golden period of rock music 1950s to 70s. Songs include Fleetwood Mac's Never Going Back Again, Status Quo's Rocking All Over The World and a new lifestyle-advice song for Seniors on how to complain titled Do The Slow Commotion. As well as happy music, the Grumpies promise plenty of laughter as they de-construct life in the 21st century. The Grumpy Old Men's Travelling Rock & Roll Laughter Show is in the Potato Shed April 20 with all tickets $13.50 including refreshments. And the box office is open now. Book at CoGG outlets or phone 5251 1998.
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Ee Oop, it's a Lanky double

In another of the Geelong entertainment scene's uncanny coincidences, Lancashire is central to two quite different musical shows mid June. The first features writings and musings from ex-Lancastrian Dennis Mitchell, who, with talented friends presents a show titled This That and T'other. The following day Drop Of A Hat Productions opens its brand new show that profiles Lancashire's favourite songstress Gracie Fields in a musical titled 'Back to the 30s with Gracie, Albert & The Lion'.
This That and T'Other features Dennis & Elaine Mitchell, Colleen O’Toole, Jocelyn Mackay and Marylin Nash with snippits including:
Half Price  - a comic monologue with a touch of sadness
Better Off Not Knowing - the funny side of an encounter with prostate cancer
A Child’s War in Lancashire – a true account of W.W.2 through the eyes of a young boy.
Gertrude – a play inspired by Heather Dempsey’s story about Theatre of the Winged Unicorn’s old yellow ute.
Faelda – not all witches are wicked. They really lived on Pendle Hill in Lancashire. This is the story of one of them.
Adam – the First Man’s account of what happened in the Garden of Eden - and Eve – the First Woman’s response
The Garden Shed – a Lancashire love story..
Plus a miscellany of original comic rhymes and songs.
Back To The Thirties was researched and written by Colin Mockett. It features Shirley Power as the voice of Gracie and tells her poignant story interlaced with that of Marriott Edgar, who wrote the Albert & The Lion series of monalogues for Stanley Holloway.

Dates, booking details are on the Comprehensive Diary
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Geelong's artworks online

Geelong Gallery has put its entire collection of well over 5,000 works of art on a database available through the Gallery's website. The works are available via a number of different search categories including artists' names, the title or date of a work, its medium or credit line. Over 2,000 search results are accompanied by images. The Geelong Gallery is a trailblazer in this regard - very few Australian public galleries have made their entire collection of works of art electronically accessible.The initiative was made possible through a grant from the Gordon Darling Foundation. To view the database, access the Gallery's website through geelonggallery.org.au/

Hi Ho Lorraine

Geelong silversmith and jewellery artist Lorraine Archibald - that's one of her necklaces pictured above left - is a busy worker. She has samples of her work currently on display at the Geelong Gallery in an exhibition titled Geelong Silversmiths -Then and Now. She hosts a talk at the Gallery on Wednesday about the exhibition - and she's holding an open day at her inner-city studio next Sunday.
Check the comprehensive diary for details.

Geelong's Nine Seasons

Geelong had the benefit of eight separate season launches within a four-week period at the beginning of the year. The companies involved ranged from Geelong Rep, GPAC and Melbourne Symphony Orchestra to Geelong's Classic Cinema. Then in March, the Potato Shed held its own launch, making NINE for the year. To see how entertainmentgeelong.com reported them all, click here.
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..and our Virtual Oscars

Geelong theatre's top awards - alright, Geelong theatre's ONLY award recognising excellence in acting, directing and stagecraft are organised and bestowed by this website. The inaugural Geelong Virtual Oscars were presented in December 2009. To see the winners, and how we reported the event, click here.

Entertainment's regular 

This website lists all of Geelong's music, drama and theatre entertainment on our Comprehensive Diary  page. But our city also enjoys a wide range of meetings, groups, sessions and musical events that don't appear on our diary (or in the local media) because they are regular club events.  So alongside our diary entries, keep in mind that: the Geelong Folk Music Club holds its weekly (free) music session Thursday evenings from 7.30pm in the back room at the Carlton Hotel, Mercer St, admin@geelongfolkmusicclub.com for more. Then, each Sunday evening there's another free live folk music session at Irish Murphy's pub from around 4.30pm. Geelong's Historical Society meets monthly on the first Wednesday of each month (details from Peter 5278 4010) and our Philosophers Café meets to put the world to rights on the fourth Wednesday of each month in the back room of The Barking Dog Hotel in Pakington St.   If you have an event that should be listed here, tell us on the 'contact us' button on the left.

Information included anywhere on this website is free. Just press the 'Contact Us' button on left.
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We're commercially courted

This website has been informed that it could cover costs - indeed, make a profit - if it were to sign for pop-ups and commercials on its pages.
This will not happen in the tenure of the current editor.

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