Welcome back.
This time we are back. We have to be back. We got though. We're still a bit wobbly, but we're still here.
I've asked some of the What Melbourne Loved favourite and long-running contributors to tell us what they've been up to and what they've been enjoying in the last couple of years.
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Penelope Bartlau
Artistic Director: Barking Spider Visual Theatre
Bohemian who will create art out of air if she has to
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| Penelope Bartlau. Photo by Jason Lehane |
What theatre/art/creative experience did you love the most 2021 (or 2020)?
I had a fantastic time with the Melbourne Fringe. A work that stood out was Strange Kit’s HOLESP@CE. It was an Alice-in-Wonderland never-ending slide into the internet. The work was deliciously riddled with virtual non-sequiturs, uncanny and clever silly notions and surprises, and laugh-out-loud moments. I had a fantastic time with this work, by myself, in lockdown.
What surprised you about finding new ways to make art in locked-down worlds?
I reinvented my animistic artistic tendencies, which are normally reserved for puppetry, to create geo-located sound works: The Object Monologues. This is a project whereby public landmarks reveal their innermost thoughts – loves, losses, passions and idiosyncrasies. The project is housed in an app, Echoes, free for anyone and everyone to download, and unrestricted by location. I undertook public engagement in the development of the work via social media – which really worked.
Also, I took the opportunity to create a work with my offspring, artist Klari Agar. We cooked up a plan and Postcards from the North was born. This also had a high degree of public engagement via social media. For both projects, I used social media as a method for public co-creation during lockdown. Postcards from the North was delivered online and as a short-print run of 6 printed postcards. The printed version was mailed to people as a pack, and. from feedback, the postcards found their way to Europe, America and Japan! (They travelled way more than we all did…)
What did you do to stay connected to your arts community?
Ummmmm…. (Insert cricket sound here)
What are you looking forward to in 2022?
Like everyone, all the projects have bounced into next year – so it’s chaotic until mid-May. Hopefully, fingers and everything crossed, we (Jason Lehane and me) are going to Ireland to take up our Cill
Rialaig arts residency, which was cancelled this year. We have bought the plane tickets and are hoping like fuck we can go….
What are we doing there? A project called Feathers and Earth, which is a 3-year investigation into the geographic features and bird life of three diverse sites. The sites are connected by an abundance of significant birdlife and unique geographic terrain. Cundare North (regional Victoria) 2021, South West Ireland, and at Chateau d'Orquevaux in north-eastern France in 2023. Concerned with degradation of our natural world, this project explores cycles of decay, destruction and rebirth (birds) while looking at what lasts beyond the annihilation of climate-change (earth).
SM: Respecting the true nature of 2020-21, I begin with someone whose art I haven't seen since 2019. This has been first time I haven't seen one of Penelope's works in years. I'm downloading The Object Monologues as I write. We sat next to each other at a show early in the year, so at least we've seen each other!
Robert Reid
Playwright, director, critic, broadcaster
Media ain't dead; he's making it in his living room
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| Rob Reid |
What theatre/art/creative experience did you love the most 2021 (or 2020)?
Obviously a LOT of the theatre I watched this year was online. For me, the best thing to have come out of these pandemic years has been the widespread uptake of digital platforms for theatre. Getting to see work from around the country and not just waiting and hoping it might tour to Melbourne has been amazing. I really really really hope that continues in the new world. I loved Rovers by Katherine Lyall-Watson with Barbara Lowing and Roxanne McDonald presented online by Riverside Theatres and filmed live in Queensland at Redland Performing Arts Centre. Terrific story telling, two terrific actors and a great connection with the audience.
I also totally loved That One Time I Joined the Illuminati by Lou Wall at Melbourne Fringe, because I'm a lapsed conspiracy nerd and I missed it at MICF.
As for things i saw in an actual theatre, I was completely absorbed in Jayde Kirchert's Mara Korper at Theatre Works presented by Citizen Theatre. (I can't believe that was MAY this year.) And, special mention has got to go to Malthouse's Because the Night. Not that I loved it... I liked a lot of it even though it had its flaws, but seeing an immersive theatre work on that sheer scale was pretty amazing.
What did you do to stay connected to your arts community?
Staying connected to the Arts Community during all this of course hasn't been easy, but starting Television is Furniture and being able to interview artists about their work, review that work and also just talk about Australian Theatre, feels like it was a good way do stay in touch with everybody.
What are you looking forward to in 2022?
It's weird to think about what I'm looking forward to for 2022. I'm finding I'm pretty gunshy about getting invested in coming shows. I know Dan said there'll never be another lockdown, but I don't know... There's plenty of variants and unvaccinated populations out there for them to mutate in. Also, now this is a tool governments have in their kit to respond to disasters with, what's to say the next pandemic, or the next poison-ash filled summer skies, or the next whatever isn't going to lead to more show cancellations and theatres sitting dark. That said, I CAN'T WAIT for Virginia Gay's Cyrano.
SM: Rob pretends to be a true cynic, but he's really one of the most persistent and positive people in our community. The arts world isn't a fair place. When I first saw one of Rob's plays back in 2001, I thought that by 2022, I'd be sick of seeing a new Rob Reid every year on our main stages. This year Witness Performance, the bench-mark criticism site he created with Alison Croggon, went to the archives. So Rob created his own YouTube channel and made Television is Furniture. Already there are more interviews, reviews and content there than on or in most sites or publication. Remember that no one pays indie media, so please keep supporting it with clicks and reads and love.
