Read more about the article Wentworth Season 8 is coming in June: “Things will change”

Wentworth Season 8 is coming in June: “Things will change”

Wentworth Season 8 is coming to Foxtel in June 2020 and we got 2 new promo photos of Pamela Rabe as Joan Ferguson plus the following short teaser video:

Some secrets don’t stay buried…

Hold up! Wentworth’s eighth season will be with us in June. And a new cast photo reveals a very Freak-y development!

Stop the (steam) press! We now know when Wentworth’s eighth season is due to hit FOX SHOWCASE.

You’d better spend the next few months familiarising yourself with all the teal trauma we’ve seen over seven seasons, as the new instalment has been confirmed to arrive in June.

By then, we might have just about recovered from the incredibly tense siege that was the culmination of last year’s seventh season, which many fans and critics have dubbed the best ever of this Logie-winning drama.

Pamela Rabe as Joan Ferguson in Wentworth Season 8 - Coming June 2020

Robbie Magasiva, whose character Will Jackson had the misfortune of being acting governor while the siege occurred, says it’s certainly going to be a prickly time for Will – especially considering the siege was brought about by the inmate he’d been romantically involved with: namely Marie Winter (Susie Porter). And that’s only the beginning! “I think things in the broader picture of Wentworth Prison will change,” he tells us.

And if the siege itself wasn’t tense enough, fans won’t forget that final shot before the credits rolled – seeing Joan ‘The Freak’ Ferguson (Pamela Rabe) standing by the side of the road. Considering we’d thought she’d been buried alive, it was one almighty mic-drop!

With Rabe appearing in the cast shot for the new season, everyone (inmates, prison staff and viewers included) will surely need to watch their backs. Magasiva will only tease us with this: “Everything’s hunky-dory until The Freak comes back.”

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Continue ReadingWentworth Season 8 is coming in June: “Things will change”
Read more about the article Photograph 51 interview with Pamela Rabe and Nadine Garner

Photograph 51 interview with Pamela Rabe and Nadine Garner

The woman who was cheated of DNA glory goes deeper for Pamela Rabe

It can be mesmerising to see the beauty of what is known, rather unimaginatively, as Photo 51. The photo – resembling a monochrome, mandala-like artwork – was crucial to the discovery of the structure of DNA. It is also a pivot around which Anna Ziegler’s 2008 play Photograph 51 revolves.

At one point the central character, English scientist Dr Rosalind Franklin, stands with the photo in front of her face, staring into its mysteries and potential revelations. Well might we all: as Pamela Rabe notes, this photo is about the secret of life – and the play, which Rabe is directing for the Melbourne Theatre Company, explores that secret at both the scientific and more personal, philosophical level.

The photo, taken in 1952 as part of Franklin’s investigations, is an X-ray “diffraction image” of crystallised DNA. It was vital evidence to identify the structure of DNA – but, in what remains a controversy, Photo 51 was shown without Franklin’s knowledge to another scientist.
The 1962 Nobel prize for medicine went to James Watson, Francis Crick and Rosalind Franklin’s colleague, Maurice Wilkins – the man who had shared the photo. The three men – and the play tells us a lot about men of those days – used the image to develop their prize-winning chemical model of DNA while Franklin, with quiet, professional dedication, had unknowingly persevered with her own meticulous work on the problem.

Pamela Rabe and Nadine Garner during a break in rehearsals. Photo: Eddie JimPamela Rabe and Nadine Garner during a break in rehearsals. Photo: Eddie Jim

Franklin died of ovarian cancer in 1958 when she was 37 – five years after Crick, Watson and Wilkins published their findings in Nature, and four years before they received the Nobel. In the play, these men and two others convene with Franklin to discuss “her place in history”. In one unbroken, energetic act, the play slips between locations and scenes; our imaginations conjure the worlds evoked by the words, especially Franklin’s. (more…)

Continue ReadingPhotograph 51 interview with Pamela Rabe and Nadine Garner