Flowers on Netflix is the exquisitely dark ‘comedy drama’ about ‘home, family, and mental illness’ written and directed by Will Sharpe. He also plays one of the pivotal characters – Shun, who comes from Japan to live in the bizarre world of the very British and quite mad Flowers family. And I have this distinct delusion that Sharpe wrote this series just for me.
All our stories belong to all Australians. All our stories should have equal value. That’s why these three plays by South Asian diaspora playwrights Sonal Moore, Kevin Bathman and Roanna Gonsalves are so precious, and resonated with me.
Author Roger Pulvers is a polymath with a formidable list of achievements that after perusing, usually require a lie down with a cold cloth on my forehead. He is the kind of person we might refer to as ‘atama ga agaranai’, a person whose achievements are so humbling that you are compelled to bow down to them.
The most encouraging aspect of the conference was that diversity was a reality and a given, not an ideal or a promise. I was among Asian Australians of many colours and ages sharing ideas about the meaning of diaspora, hybridity, diversity and faith, transnationalism, mobilities, gender, art.
