Review: In a Heartbeat

In a Heartbeat
Barking Spider Visual Theatre and La Mama
originally commissioned by Monash Centre for Theatre and Performance
5 September
La Mama Courthouse
to 9 September
lamama.com.au

In a Heartbeat. Barking Spider

Barking Spider Visual Theatre make theatre experiences from memories and stories, and it's impossible to leave a show without finding forgotten memories of your own.

They start with collected personal stories. For In a Heartbeat, the stories were from people living in the dementia unit of a residential aged care facility. Their stories about love and relationships were collected by students from the Monash Centre for Theatre and Performance, who originally developed the piece at university and performed it for the residents of the facility.

Some of the storytellers found the stories familiar, but didn't remember telling them. One story teller was 104-years-old and died before the first performance; his words are some of the last spoken in the show.

It was such a heart-overflowing delight that it had to be seen again.

Knocking on the wooden door at the La Mama Courthouse, you're met by young performers in a 1950's memory of pastels, floral and pearls. Taking us to tables set for tea with bright table cloths and warm tea pots, each host tells stories. It's like a chamber orchestra of voices as each tell the same verbatim stories to each table – which are being played to them through earpieces and are recordings of the original storytellers.

In a Heartbeat is memories of tea cups and homemade biscuits, of silver tea spoons and glass sugar bowls, of gingham and crochet, of being young and being loved, of being old and being loved, of dancing, and of being a particle of love in space.

Now, I wonder if I have the ingredients in my kitchen to make my grandmother's rockcakes.

Review: One suitcase: four stories

One suitcase: four stories
Barking Spider
14 May 2015
Northcote Town Hall
to 17 May
northcotetownhall.com.au

Linda Catalano. Photo by Sarah Walker

Linda Catalano's family live in and around Northcote and share family meals that are still based on the recipes many of them brought in their hearts from Italy. They brought them at a time when only way to come to the other side of the world was on a three-month sea journey and at time when Australia encouraged and welcomed the arrival of boats of people who wanted to start a new life.

In One suitcase: four stories, Linda welcomes everyone at the back door of the Northcote Town Hall in her red apron and tells stories of her beloved Nonno and Nonna, who were were only apart when her grandfather came to Australia to earn enough money to bring his wife and baby (Linda's mother) to Melbourne, and the stories of her aunts, her zias, who at different times arrived at Port Melbourne with a small suitcase and the hope of love.

Their stories are grand and romantic, full of hand-written letters, disappointment, unexpected happiness and the secret of a perfect sugo, or sauce. Linda's still working on perfecting her own sugo and romantic story.

Linda's audience are now family and friends who sit around shared tables, where the antipasto is waiting and the stories begin.

As part of the Darebin Homemade Food and Wine Festival, our first lesson is that passata is not the sauce, it's just the tomatoes that are locally grown, minced by hand and boiled in bottles in backyards.

Barking Spider let us find the stories and the love in the mundane and familiar, and the family kitchen is like home, even if you didn't grow up in an Italian family in Melbourne's north. It's full of black and white framed wedding photos and treasures and standards that have been in Linda's families' kitchens from the the 1950s to now. And her family are such a part of her kitchen that they become the likes of a block of mozarella, a wilting cucumber, a pastry crimper and an espresso maker.

Naturally, each table helps to make fresh pasta – by hand; no pasta makers or Thermomixes – like Nonna used in every lasagne she made, with no bechamel sauce, the pasta layered so there are no gaps and an egg drizzled in a zig-zag pattern.

And, naturally, it could never be as good as the real thing, so trays of lasagne have already been made for us. There was even made a vegetarian version that I'm going to try myself; just don't tell the zias that I used passata from the shop and dried lasagne sheets.

As the night finishes with ricotta cannoli – they are from the south of Italy where the northern custard variation is never seen – we celebrate a suburb, a city and a country that still welcomes and shares custard, ricotta and every filling, and remember that the stories that really matter are the ones that are so close to us that we sometimes forget that they made us who we are.

Review: Psychopomp & Seething

Psychopomp & Seething
Barking Spider Visual Theatre, MUST
18 February 2015
La Mama Courthouse
to 1 March 2015
lamama.com.au

Kate Brennan. Seething. Photo by Sarah Walker

Psychopomp & Seething begins by taking the audience on a ride in the La Mama Courthouse. It's not a hold on and scream ride, but you do move and it ends in pure darkness.

And it gets darker.

Seething, the first piece, opens with an older woman (Vanessa O'Neil) with long blond-grey hair in a sound booth with a red-velvet curtained wall. She's reading a poem that's easy to listen to as music rather than words. When a younger dancer (Kate Brennan), with a recently shaven head, comes into the empty space between the booth and audience, her presence feels slightly intrusive until it's clear that she's dancing to the words being spoken.

These are words about bodies and love and how we blame our bodies for being imperfect and not deserving of love. It's somehow comforting and confronting as the two woman are compared to but rely on each other.

The words are by Penelope Bartlau. Using the musical nature of words and poetry, it's writing that's meant to be heard rather than read, and the kind that you to listen to with far more than your ears. She says that the works come from a mix of dreams, her own experiences and the experiences of her friends. This blend of dream and reality makes for a familiar unease because even when we wake up, we hold the too-real emotional experience of our dreams, and that emotion is never too far from a wide-awake truth.

This becomes more evident in Psychopomp.

Aislinn Murray. Psychopomp. Photo by Sarah Walker

This piece was developed by Barking Spider at Monash University Student Theatre (MUST) last year. Directed and designed by Jason Lehane, who is also the MUST Technical Manager, the cast and crew are/were MUST members.

Recently, The Age published an opinion piece that associated student theatre with "young things running around with their underpants on their heads". I doubt that writer sees student theatre made in Melbourne. This is the second work in this year's La Mama program that was developed through MUST. Although often raw, the new theatre by students in this city (Deakin and Melbourne as much as Monash) is exciting and dangerous and is created with an understanding that theatre and storytelling are so much more than well-written words on a stage.

The stage in Psychopomp is a two by two square box. The first signs of life from the four boxes are noises that become the voices of four people, or animals.

Designer, and director, Jason Lehane has created a world that's distant but impossible not to be drawn into. While Seething uses the emptiness of the space, Psychopomp is confined and impossible to escape from. By boxing in the boxes and the audience, there's no where else to look and it's easy to imagine that this four are a few among endless unseen boxes.

Each box contains a teller who's compelled to tell their story. Captured in their own worlds, the intricate design (costume and set) and exquisite lighting hint at the contained secrets. There's a warm nest, a lush garden and two darker more-empty spaces that become vivid as imaginations fill in the un-lit horror.

Unaware of each other or the watching eyes, each tell a story about a death. And while they are beautiful to hear, they are mildly traumatic to feel.

Actors James Cerche, Nicola Grear, Aislinn Murray and Lindsay Templeton are the four storytellers. Each bring a remarkable emotional understanding to their stories. With writing that isn't a simple narrative and direction that ensure the wholeness of the picture, they bring all of themselves to their story while working together like a musical quartet to let their stories overlap with sound and meaning.

Psychopomp & Seething is a work that stays with you long after you've left. Being unsure where you are in a well-known space can be unnerving, and, as it's devised to be listened to as sound as much as words, it's easy to simply experience being there. But the truth of what was told will catch up with you because it's made to be seen and felt as much as heard.

There are limited seats for each performance and no room to expand, so book for this one. And, when the timing is right, also book for The Unspoken Word is Joe around the corner at the La Mama theatre.

This was on Aussietheatre.com.au.

What Melbourne loved in 2013, part 11

Daniel Clarke, Penelope Bartlau and Matt Kelly: Melbourne really had some wonderful people.

Daniel Clarke
CEO and Creative Producer, Theatre Works

Photo by Eugyeene Teh

DAN: The audience response to the opening night performance of Psycho Beach Party (Little Ones Theatre, Theatre Works, Midsumma). I remember thinking it felt like we were somewhere between a rock concert and a football game. I think people were screaming and clapping before the first line was spoken. Amazing. A brilliant way to start the year.

Threepenny Opera (Berliner Ensemble, Perth Festival). I didn't have a ticket. No tickets available. Then Stephen Nicolazzo was offered a ticket at the last minute and gave it to me. One of those shows where you go, "Yes it all makes sense. Without a doubt this is why I love theatre".

Story of O (The Rabble, NEON). I remember saying "fuck me" as I walked into the Lawler. I could not believe what I was walking into. The transformation of that space. I felt exhilarated throughout the whole show. Kind of like how I felt when I saw my first La Fura Del Baus show in the 1996 Adelaide Festival.  I just want this show to tour – everywhere.  I'd be a very proud Australian to have this work touring the international stages.

The casting of The Sovereign Wife (Sisters Grimm, NEON). I'd love us all to look through the same lens as Sisters Grimm.  The world I'd like to to live in.

This year I went to Edinburgh as a delegate with the British Council Showcase.  I saw over 35 shows in one week. It was intense; my body experienced so many different emotions daily. It was real but un-real at the same time.  It was like I was inducing the most extreme feelings every few hours. It was a gift and I saw, took part in, and experienced some of the most inspiring work for me of 2013.

I also became very passionate about showcasing our homegrown work on the international stages,  because there is a lot of extraordinary work being made by artists I love that deserves to be seen in an international context.

Edinburgh Fringe favourites: Adrienne Truscott's Asking For It, The Worst of Scottee (Scottee Inc), Credible Likeable Superstar Role Model (Bryony Kimmings), Brand New Ancients (Kate Tempest), Black T Shirt Collection (Inua Ellams) and You Once Said Yes (Look Left Look Right).

I'm pretty hopeful you are gong to be able to see  most of the above works for yourselves over the next couple of years in Australia.  So please keep an eye out for them.

And the first preview of M+M (Daniel Schlusser Ensemble, Theatre Works, Melbourne Festival). I think I will remember this night forever.  My words won't do it justice.  Thank you.

What Dan's looking forward to in 2014 at issimomag.com.

SM: Over the last three years that Dan has led the Theatre Works team, it's become a welcoming hub of creativity that's presenting and producing theatre the likes of which no one else is presenting. The year started with a Midsumma program that defined the festival (Psycho Beach Party, Here Lies Henry and The Dead Ones) and to even think that M+M or Room of Regret might not have existed at the Melbourne Festival without Theatre Works ...

And he found time to direct Palace of the End, which was one of my favourite opening nights of the year. And Gaybies, where he found the love in each verbatim story told and created a bigger story on the stage that welcomed everyone.

Penelope Bartlau

Artistic Director, Barking SpideVisual Vheatre

Photo by Sarah Walker

PENELOPE: I have to say, it's when Leah Scholes (Barking Spider's Artistic Associate) persuaded me to see Slava's Snow Show in the middle of this year. I was assuming, it being such a big and well-worn show, that it wasn't really going to be that inspiring; daggy, in fact. But, it was so wonderful.

The audience's engagement and response to this show blew me away. It ignites wonder and playfulness on a grand scale; it was completely inspirational.

That show has clarified what it is Leah and I love about theatre, and has given us an aesthetic vocabulary which is now an underwriting starting-point for our thinking and our creation.

SM: Penelope and Barking Spider tell intimate, delicate and insanely gorgeous stories. They're not made for the masses; they're made for the lucky few who are at the right place at the magic time.

The Lucian Swift Chronicles: A tale of magic in Melbourne was one of them. It was at the Magic Festival and told a story that was such a part of this city, but belongs to everyone. Just beautiful.

See what Penelope's looking forward to in 2014 at issimomag.com.

Matt Kelly
list maker

r + M = Listies

MATT: "Things i enjoyed this year." By Matt Kelly (aged 34).

Far and away the best theatre I saw this year, and close to the best I've EVER seen was The Sisters Grimm's The Sovereign Wife. I wish I could write articulately about how much I enjoyed it, but I still can't.  I'm sure someone else has already done it much better than me and used loads of fancy words.

The rest I'll do as a list (the order doesn't matter, so I've randomly selected numbers).

5. Zoe Combs Marr's Dave at Comedy Festival
12. Last Tuesday Society's Don's Party
4. Isabell Rachael's Edge at Melbourne Fringe
666. The Last Temptation of Randy at Melbourne Fringe
69. Dan Savage at The Festival of Dangerous Ideas
9. Bello the Clown at The Royal Melbourne Show
1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,2,3,4,5,6,7. Einstein on the Beach
4. Dr Professor Neil Portenza at Melbourne Fringe.

SM: If Matt tells me that something is funny and that I should see it, I believe him.

My moment for the year was taking a 5-year-old to her first Listies (Matt and Richard Higgins) show, Earworms at the Melbourne Festival. Snot came out of one of us and the other one sat and watched very seriously. I was a bit scared that I'd scarred her for life – or that she'd never fart again in case a mosquito came out – but she was just taking it all in and repeated all the jokes to me on the tram ride home.

And now I'm singing the *%#$!!!! banana song again.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

Part 7

Part 8

Part 9

Part 10
Part 12
Part 13

Part 14

Part 15

Part 16

Part 17

2012 part 1, with links to the rest

What Melbourne loved in 2013, part 10

Today, it's a Choir Girl reunion with writer and performer Sarah Collins, director Celeste Cody and head choir girl Chrissie Robinson. This year, they went to Adelaide, added new shows at the comedy festival and were invited to the Darwin Arts Festival where Choir Girl was followed by Jack Charles Versus the Crown. Best double feature I can imagine.

Celeste Cody

director

CELESTE: This year I headed to the top end to be part of the Darwin Arts Festival (Choir Girl). Beyond being an incredible experience in itself, we were also lucky enough to share the stage with the amazing Uncle Jack. His show Jack Charles Versus the Crown was one of my favourite ever theatre experiences. 

The show was slick, engaging, enlightening, hilarious and heart-wrenching. Jack, Rachel and the team have created a brilliant show and I am excited to hear how it goes in the UK.

I also had a ball at Psycho Beach Party and The Sovereign Wife. Both shows said a lot in devious ways.

I'm heading to Sydney  to catch Summertime in the Garden of Eden at Griffin. I'm sure that it will deserve a place on my list. I loved it in the shed, so I'm sure I'll love it on the Griffin stage.

SM: Celeste hasn't directed anything new this year, but seeing Choir Girl move from the Melbourne Fringe to the Adelaide Fringe to having to add shows at the comedy festival and be invited to an arts festival was exciting. As was seeing full houses at Short and Sweet Theatre, which Celeste directed.

Sarah Collins
writer, performer

SARAH: I was lucky enough to see Punch Drunk's Sleep No More in NYC. To even start to describe it would be doing it a severe dishonour, as when someone described it to me I was all. "Yeah yeah, ex-nightclub in Chelsea converted into a fake hotel for a site specific re-telling of Macbeth ... been done a million times before ... yawn."

Nearly a year later, I still can't really fathom what I saw and experienced or how it was pulled off.

Having said that I didn't really connect with it or find my world had been turned upside down by it, but I don't think that was the point.

When my husband and I found each other at the end of the night, it was like we'd been to two different plays. "Wasn't the ball in the banquet hall amazing?!" "There was a ball?" and "I loved when the phone started ringing at the hotel reception and that weird lady wouldn't let the doorman answer the phone" "What weird lady? Hang on, there was a hotel reception?!" It was then that I realised how epic and detailed the show was. If I could go back again ten times it still would not be enough – a completely different experience every time.

Locally, I was really impressed with the musical Flower Children: The Mamas and Papas Story (Magnormos). I went on about it to everyone I knew and I still find myself thinking about it, hoping it goes further.

As someone with family members who have written a musical (my relatives Albert Arlen and Nancy Brown wrote the 1960's Australian musical The Sentimental Bloke), part of my family's aural history is how hard it is to get one written – let alone up. I can only imagine the time, money and tears that went into making the show a reality. I thought Peter Fitzpatrick did such a terrific job.  It was inspiring to see someone complete a project of this scale after an already incredible lifetime in the industry.

I also saw the amazing Indonesian pop group White Shoes at the Couples Company at the Darwin Festival. I didn't know who they were at the time though! I was wandering around the gardens and there was this amazing music coming from the small stage near the food tents with a front woman who totally blew me away. It was like watching performers from another time – totally incredible!

The rest of the audience were eating dinner, chatting and sometimes looking at the band.  I couldn't form sentences, I was so mesmerised by their lead singer, she was doing so little but it was so powerful, she was amazing; a total masterclass in performance!

Her presence was more theatrical than some theatre I've seen. I assumed they were a local Darwin band and I thought, "Damn! I really hope the rest of Australia gets to see these guys sometime!". They finished their set and sat down on the grass beside me to eat dinner and I wanted to tell them they were amazing but got shy.

Right after I got back to Melbourne I saw them written up in a magazine and it turned out they were in Darwin because they are touring around the world. Total forehead smacking moment. Anyway, I think everyone should watch this clip to see their amazing lead singer Miss Sari perform! Oh the subtlety!



What Sarah's looking forward to in 2014 at issimomag.com.

SM: My favourite moment was Through Their Eyes, the show that Sarah developed with Barking Spider Visual Theatre for the newly-renovated Hawthorn Arts Centre (town hall). She interviewed long-term Boroondara residents and let them tell their stories in their own voices. Sometimes writing is listening. With Penelope Bartlau's delicately simple puppetry, it was moving and heartfelt and a work that would have meant so much to the people who told their stories.

And the pina colada cake. I will dream about that cake and it's non-organic glitter.

Chrissie Robinson
performer

Photo by Oli Sansom

CHRISSIE: I had the fortune of sharing a very crowded dressing room with Tommy Bradson during 2012, and since then have become pretty enamoured of his work. During MICF this year, I attended Sweet Sixteen, or, The Birthday Party Massacre at Northcote Town Hall, and was, again, blown away by Bradson’s work.

In this vitally grotesque, riotous and still profoundly bittersweet parade of caricatures, Bradson’s part-poetry, part-drag, part-song and thorough hooley-dooley eclipsed any Sweet Sixteen I ever attended.

SM: I've loved Chrissie (and the whole choir) every time I saw Choir Girl, but my moment is this photo.

I discovered that what really makes me smile is a child holding a lizard. Chrissie tells me that the lizard is still alive; we are all waiting for the re-creation photo.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

Part 7

Part 8

Part 9
Part 11
Part 12
Part 13

Part 14

Part 15

Part 16

Part 17

2012 part 1, with links to the rest

Magic Festival reviews

In 2008, The Australian Institute of Magic founded The Melbourne Magic Festival. There are 40 shows at this year's festival, at the Northcote Town Hall, and many are sold out.

Who doesn't love magic and I've never seen this town hall so crowded with happy punters.

During the day, there are plenty of school-holiday shows and at night there are family shows and ones just for adults.

The full program is at melbournemagicfestival.com.

(And yes, some serious wand waving needs to be done to make the website easier to use.)


Beat the Cheat
Nicholas J Johnson and Ben McKenzie
11 July
Northcote Town Hall
to 13 July



Giant dice, a community chest full of secrets and a board game big enough to walk on! Cool.

BUT to win, you have to beat Nicholas J Johnson, Australia's honest conman, magician and self-confessed dirty rotten cheat. It's not as impossible as it seems, especially as host Ben Mackenzie (who can quote the Dungeon and Dragons rule books) might be on your side.

The audience is split into two (I was on the Not Red team) and individuals play for the team (I would have volunteered if Scrabble, Mastermind or Mousetrap had come up). There are dozens of games that are chosen by the air toss of giant dice and Nick knows the rules for every one – and how to bend them.

With magic, games and nerdiness, Beat the Cheat is more fun than Star Wars Angry Birds or a Hungry Hungry Hippos marathon. And it reminds us that games are so much better when you play with real people instead of a screen. Who wants to come around and play Monopoly?

PS. The Not Red team lost by one point because a Red team member realised that it would be ridiculous to not cheat.


In Dreams
Tim Ellis
11 July
Northcote Town Hall
to 13 July

Magic shows are often put in their own category that brings up images of RSL clubs, kids parties and men in capes with awkward young women in sequins. A trip to the Melbourne Magic Festival will banish such regressive and dull thoughts (or at least restricted them to RSL clubs), because this festival is full of magicians and artists who are letting the hat rabbits run free and taking illusion to far more interesting places.

Tim Ellis is the Artistic Director of the Melbourne Magic Festival, he's won prestigious magic awards and is presenting two of his own shows at the festival.

If you're s a grown up who's stopped believing in magic, his 9 pm show, In Dreams, could change your mind.

In Dreams is about unrequited love and never giving up. Ellis is silent and bare foot as he tells a simple and heartwarming story about being in love and losing that love. He uses the same tricks that are seen in most shows, but adds original twists and their place in the story is more important than the illusion.

The result is a personal and moving story of heartbreak and hope told though flawless magic and the kind of love that defies illusion.

Make your parents disappear

Luke Hocking and Alex da la Rambelje

9 July 2013

Northcote Town Hall

to 12 July

It's tough to argue with a 5-year-old, but I have no reason to disagree with my theatre companion, Ella, who thought the best bit of Make your parents disappear was when they "went outside for no reason", but generally thought it was "really good".

So good that she convinced her mum that she needed their magic book so she could learn some tricks at home and impressed me all afternoon by pulling a plastic pink ring out of my ear.

Magic rocks! Luke and Alex are best-known for their adult shows as two thirds of A Modern Deception, but once they were in grade 5 and grade 3 at magic school and didn't want to go to bed when their mum told them to. They know some tricks, but need something spectacular to keep them out of bed. Luckily the audience suggest that they could make their parents disappear!

As the kids (3–10) sit on the ground and the groan ups sit on chairs, Alex and Luke need help from the audience to do their tricks – and they tend to attract an extremely talented audience – without forgetting that those up the back need to be entertained and are usually determined to see how a trick is done. With these two, they might start believing that it really is magic.

Make your parents disappear is super fun and magictacular. I'd go so far to disagree with Ella and say that it's "really, really good".

The Lucian Swift Chronicles: A tale of magic in Melbourne
Barking Spider Visual Theatre
6 July 2013
Northcote Town Hall
to 6 July

The Flinders Street Station lost and found room used to be in the clock tower. Here collected bags, boxes, brollies and cases that were lost by travellers coming to and leaving Melbourne. Some were united with their owners and some were left to collect dust, unable to tell their story because their person was missing.

A young woman looks through the lost and found treaures. We don't know if she's looking for something she lost, but she finds an old case that belonged to Lucian Swift, the Gentleman Trickster. Trying on his tails and top hat, she discovers his secrets and releases some of his stories that were lost and hidden for so many years.

With alchemy akin to ice cream and sprinkles, magician Jo Clyne worked with director Penelope Bartlau and members of Barking Spider to create this captivating show that combines magic with story and sends love back though Melbourne's history.

It's festival run was short, but let's hope that we see it again – and how amazing would it be to see it performed in Flinders Street Station.

PS. Until seeing this show, it hadn't occurred to me just how many magicians are men and was told how difficult it is to buy magic props for women. Hmmm.  To help fix this balance, I've already taken a 5-year-old girl to see a show and she's promised to show me a trick the next time I see her.

Lucien photos by Sarah Walker

FRINGE review: X

MELBOURNE FRINGE 2011

X

Terrible Comfort and Barking Spider Visual Theatre

27 September 2011

Lithuanian Club, Son of Loft

to 8 October

When a narrator has a swirly red skirt that I covet and fur the exact purple that I've been trying to dye my hair, I know I'm in safe hands.

Puppet-friendly companies Terrible Comfort and Barking Spider lashed themselves to the same mast to ride out the not-so-perfect storm of developing a new show. X marks the spot and names this gorgeous (I mean terrifying) new romp.

Robert Reid's story is even more fun than his recent MTC show, especially because this one's full of pirate stereotypes that have been forced to walk the plank for being outdated and dull, and been replaced with a rollicking adventure that's simply the best pirate-seazombie-steampunk-robot-monster-ghost story ever.

The design is as lush as a posh opera's and the monsters (created by Sayraphim Lothian) are so gorgeous you'll want to take them home to cuddle.  I mean, Lily and Mike (and their companions Penelope Bartlau and David Rosenblatt) are brave and tough monsters who aren't at all cute and will haunt my nightmares.

And Danny Diesendorf and Hanna Camilleri will probably never want to be cast as anything other than pirates from now on.

X makes the tiny Son of Loft room feel bigger than a galleon, so it HAS to move on to bigger theatres, but don't miss the fun of being so close that the temptation to reach out and pat tummies is almost irresistible.

Take your kids and your friend's kids and your friends.  This is theatre for children that lets children be smart and lets grown ups be kids.

MELBOURNE FRINGE HINTS 8: Puppets and Letters

Apparently the cool puppet-based shows just use letters as titles.  And now there are only 24 titles left.

X

Terrible Comfort

Promising zombie pirates, steampunk robots, monsters of the deep and an epic skeleton army sword battle, X is already far more interesting than many Fringe shows. And there are fluffy critters and its about a pirate battling with rum. 

Presented by experimental puppet company Terrible Comfort, the artistic collaboration of MTC playwright Robert Reid and visual artist Sayraphim Lothian, and Barking Spider Theatre X features more SM favourites like Penelope Bartlau and Hayley Butcher, so it's gotta be cool. 

U

Peepshow Inc at Signal

Peepshow Inc have created some of the most gorgeous puppet theatre I've seen. 

U is an opportunity for 13 to 18-year olds to create and work with Peepshow in a series of workshops and interactive performances at the City of Melbourne's Signal space.

Workshop and performance info is here. If you don't book, you'll miss out.

Fringe Hints 1: Brand New

Fringe Hints 2: Shows for Nerds

Fringe Hints 3: Families are the Best Material

Fringe Hints 4: But I'm Poor

Fringe Hints 5: Cartwheel to the Circus

Fringe Hints 6: Musicals

Fringe Hints 7: Well Made Plays

Fringe Hints 9: Music and Film

Fringe Hints 10: Church or Laundromat

Review: Short Pants No Holes

Short Pants No Holes
Barking Spider Visual Theatre
28 September 2010
La Mama Theatre
to 1 October 2010

barkingspidertheatre.com.au

Having recently bought 10 kg of juicing carrots at the farmers' market, the Short Pants No Holes set looks a bit like my kitchen – without the unwashed dishes and the cat food bowls.

Barking Spider Visual Theatre make unforgettable worlds and stories from objects and puppets. Short Pants No Holes lets its young audience create stories that are improvised by Penelope Bartlau and Rachel Edwards. 

There's no putting up you hand and hoping that you're right in this show. It's about yelling out ideas and knowing that they're awesome just because you thought of them. And don't worry if you're not the loudest kid around; you'll still be seen.

By giving ideas, names or places and offering objects to make the stories, the audience (even the grown ups, who are allowed to join in if they behave) create and own the stories they see. There's a lot of skilled improvisation happening on the stage, but the audience are the creative sparks – and not just the kid who wanted all of this afternoon's tales to end with a fire... 

With and without fire, today's stories were brilliant. There was one that began with a tiny sticky pig who lived in bubble and ended with a family barbecue, and one about a family of Phlegmish cardies and a giant lint monster. You don't get that kind of mind-blowing originality at the MTC.

There's also a too-gorgeous "The Three Little Pigs" told with object puppets (tomatoes, carrots and a masher) and everyone gets to name, meet and chat with their own carrot puppet. I left mine for another show because if Clarence had came home with me, he would have been squished to bits in the juicer.

Short Pants No Holes is on at 2 pm until Friday. It's a wonderful introduction to theatre for younger ones and will have them making sure you always have carrots in the vege crisper.

This review appeared on AussieTheatre.com.

Review: Dispatch

Dispatch
Barking Spider Visual Theatre
7 February 2010
fortyfive downstairs

'To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub.' Freud, Jung and countless others have tried, but that old playwright still said it best. Storytellers feed on dreams.

Shakespeare knew Hamlet welcomed and feared the state where our unconscious makes us feel what we most fear or most desire, while our logical consciousness tries to break through and make us feel safe. Dreams may be gone when we wake, but their pure emotion stays with us long after we’ve tried to make sense of them and the memory had faded.

Dream sequences abound in our published and filmed stories, but they rarely feel right; there’s too much logic and they make far too much sense. For all our analysis and dream interpretation, the horror and comfort of our dreams fails to fall into the step by step progression of our waking lives.

But storytellers still love dreams. The world of Barking Spider’s Dispatch is heightened and secret, hidden and intimate. It seems to make sense, even if logic and sense insist that it shouldn’t. A blue silk sea drowns and protects, a cradle of bones sooths, the suitcases of the lost reveal hope, a child near death creates a new world to resists the influence of her gods, her protectors, her demons and her puppeteers.

The meeting of puppet and controller/creator is fraught with clashes of logic, but in the Dispatch dreamscape, it makes complete sense and the meeting of tiny Sorrel and the giant Mama Brigitte and Gheda is both heartbreaking and beautiful, as they gently offer comfort and peace, as well as the secrets and pain of death.

Penelope Bartlau openly used her own dreams and the memories of her near death experiences as a child to create Dispatch. Her work continues to create delicate, intricate worlds where puppets reach our hearts and remind us what the great psychoanalysers, dream interpreters and bards keep trying to tell us – that we may all be connected by a world within our being that is forever out of our control.

Sleep tight.

This review appeared on AussieTheatre.com.

The Keeper

The Keeper
La Mama

9 May 2009, season
La Mama Theatre

Never doubt the power of simple, evocative story telling. Like the best bedtime story or campfire yarn, The Keeper gently lulls us into a beautiful, mysterious world and never leaves out the scary or the sad bits.

Chrissie Shaw and Penelope Bartlau developed a tale about the desolate life endured by families on Australian lighthouse islands. This life is viscerally created with a bath of white sea-salt rocks, found objects, undecorated Matryoshka (Russian nesting) dolls and Connie.

As the trusted narrator, Shaw tells us Connie’s story, with tales of loss, hope, danger, despair and acceptance. Shaw is the only person on the stage, who never asks or expects us to watch her perform; but helps us to travel to the islands and discover their secrets for ourselves. The skill of amazing narration is to be forgotten, and it’s Shaw’s strength and consistency that let us care about a non-descript wooden doll.

Director Bartlau creates depth and impact through the simplicity of the objects and puppets. The Keeper is never about re-creating a storm or death, but about giving us the essence of each experience, so that we can create the emotion for ourselves. The striking poignancy of a handful of red rocks is enough to create a silence that is only worn away by the wave-like sound of the moving salt rocks.

This is theatre that respects its audience and trusts in the power and originality of the watchers’ imaginations.

This review originally appeared on AussieTheatre.com.

Short and Sweet 08 Week 2 Indepedendent Theatre Ensembles

Short and Sweet 2008 Week 2 Indepedendent Theatre Ensembles
10 December 2008
The Arts Centre, Fairfax Theatre

After a week of stewed tea and too much supermarket White Christmas, Short and Sweet Week Two is like a fresh espresso and a homemade chocolate ganache tart.
 
There’s a rumour floating around that the Independent Theatre section of Short and Sweet is going to be removed. NO! This week’s selection sent the program flying back up to inspiring, dizzying heights.
 
This selection of short plays was not about writers proving their vocab, but about using theatre to tell us wonderful tales. They filled the whole space with movement, dance, music, sound and design to tell their dramatic, intriguing and unique stories. Words are one of the greatest things ever invented, but theatre is not just about words.
 
After the Tower
The Town Bikes are always super-fab, and it would seem that they’ve found the ideal director in Maude Davey. From their arse-talking entry to the collapsing of the Rapunzel’s long hair, the Brothers Grimm would be thrilled to see such a delightfully-dark telling of this story.
 
Grimm
The brothers G may well be dancing an after-life jig, because Company 13 were also inspired by a fairy tale - the one about Snow White and her mum. With pig noses, an accordion and song, this was a most original telling and interpretation.
 
Bodybag
The afterlife is always a very popular Short and Sweet theme. Itch Productions explored the celebrity death, with Marilyn Monroe visiting a nearly-famous actor who is “dying to be an icon”. Does he choose a posthumous Oscar or a sad career?
 
Last Drinks
Telia Neville (interior theatre) continues her fascinating exploration of the everyday. Without words or sound, five characters repeat what looks like a meeting at a bar. As the audience find their own meaning in the repetition, words and sound are added to give us a better picture - but all we hear are their thoughts. Telling it from a different perspective makes the most mundane situation an irresistible tale.
 
Morbid Porn
Sexy and just a little bit morbid, Skite Vikingr tell a story of love, lust, desire and rejection that fluidly links performer and puppet.
 
6 Hours Later
Hilarious, engaging, beautiful - watching Born in a Taxi is as wonderful as watching a litter of excited kittens explore a new room.
 
Tinsel Town
Split Second’s murder, mystery and horror story started funny and got funnier. From the Shelley’s chatting after dinner to Dracula floating on skates - and all with live sound FX. Why use a digital file when you can have a bloke breaking plates and blowing bubbles in a glass.
 
Tea for Two
Dislocate’s story is black, funny and brilliant. From stillness to did-they-really-just-do-that acrobatics, this is the kind of theatre you can’t look away from.
 
Finding Your Place
The Hounds kept us laughing (so that’s how a dishwasher moves), but the telling wasn’t clear. Now I’ve read the program, I see that it’s about Alzheimer’s – which I didn’t get when I watching it. I thought it was about writers who love the safety of their own fiction.
 
Match
Penelope Bartlau’s Barking Spider Visual Theatre wonderfully and literally construct a malleable universe. The two characters try to sort out their own relationship, while creating a small and messy parallel world from lumps of clay. This is great stuff.

This review originally appeard on AussieTheatre.com.