What Melbourne Loved in 2019, part 6

Katie, Yvonne and Daniel are today's guests.

Every year, people tell me how they are angry at themselves for doing this in their head and not going any further. Remember that all it has to be in one moment (and everyone has their dodgy grammar edited). All you have to do is fill in this form.

Katie Sfetkidis
Artist, lighting designer

Katie Sfetkidis. Photo by Marcel Feillafe

 
Favourite moments in 2019.
2019 has been amazing , even though I was away for a large chunk of the year, I have still see some amazing work!

Raina Peterson and Govind Pillai's Third Nature. One of the most sensual and erotic shows I have ever seen. Just exquisite.

The Rabble's Unwoman. I love this company and I love this show. Visually striking and super political. I found this show incredibly complex and overwhelming. I have such great admiration for these company of incredible women and hope to be able to see this show again.

Sound art at The Substation. This programming at The Substation has been really wonderful this year, highlights wwereas seeing William Basinksi and Merzbow. I also really enjoyed the quirky cabinet of curiosities that was the Violin Generator.

Those who Rock by Joseph O’Farrell (JOF). What a rush! There was something so amazing about seeing hundreds of guitar players from around Melbourne take over the stage at Hammer Hall. Ultimate highlight was the finale; nothing can beat seeing over 300 guitar amps onstage whilst the audience sang along.

Looking forward to in 2020.
I am looking forward to seeing some exciting collaborations for Asia TOPA including post’s Oedipus Schmoedipus and Adena Jacobs's The Seen and Unseen.

Next Wave festival: I just love the theme for this year's festiva' – A Government of Artists and can’t wait to how the artists responds to it.

Also on my list is: K-Box by Ra Champan, Go to Hell with Paul Capsis and iOTA, Torch the Place by Ben Eltham and La Boite’s adaptation of St Joan of The Stockyards directed by Sanja Simic.

For my own work, I can’t wait to work with my best friend and collaborator Stephen Nicolazzo on Orlando and Loaded. Both these works are ultimate favourite texts of mine and it is such a treat to get to reimagine them for the stage.

SM: Katie has been out of Melbourne for most of the year, including with The Director, which was one of my absolute favourite shows from last year. But she was back for Aphids and Mish Grigor's recent Exit Strategies at Arts House. I loved this show for many reasons, including how Katie's lighting defined the distinct spaces on the stage – that corridor of light –, created mood and let us move in time. What we feel when we watch shows is so often created by elements of the design, and so often it's not noticed because it sneaks into our brains unconsciously.

Yvonne Virsik
Director, producer; Artistic Director MUST (Monash Uni Student Theatre)

Yvonne Virsik

Favourite moments in 2019.
Moments, with lots of realisations, in no particular order:

In Slaughterhouse Five, adapted from Vonnegut by Fleur Kilpatrick: when an actor drew a light switch on a blackboard, pressed it and turned all the stage lights off (MUST and Theatre Works).

Realising when watching MTC's Golden Shield that it was a new Australian work of epic scale by a young woman of colour (Anchuli Felicia King), and on The Sumner stage, and one of the best things I felt I had seen all year.

In Gender Euphoria (remounted at MIAF), during Nikki Viveca's monologue: realising that I didn't think I'd ever seen a personal story integrated so beautifully into a cabaret work.

Sharing the pure sheer, generous joy of performance from Jue and Poh in Equation at Signal at Melbourne Fringe.

UnHOWsed (Theatre Works, Tashmadada and Voices of the South Side): realising something on another level about homelessness, particularly during the extended shower sequence.

Those images in Colossus (Stephanie Lake, MIAF /Arts Centre Melbourne remount).

The joyous (seemingly spontaneous) concert in the alley after the final performance of Calamity Jane at Comedy Theatre.

Realising I was experiencing a pure, challenging discomfort in Malthouse's Underground Railroad Game.

Realising just what a brilliant job my table's 'personal banker' was doing, and how reliant we were upon them in the interactive game/performance experience of MUST's Do Not Collect $200 (created by Harley Hefford and team, based on a previous iteration).

Climbers at MUST:written by Elly D'Arcy and co directed by her and Natalie Speechley:  seeing one of the most compelling new texts I've read come to life.

When in the Q & A after A_tistic's Helping Hands at La Mama: man said the show had completely transformed his understanding of his son's neurodiversity and how he would endeavour to communicate with him from now on.

The train scene with the distressed mother and child in Anthem (MIAF): incredibly powerful and disconcerting.

Just some (more) of the shows I loved, in no particular order:

The Bloomshed's Paradise Lost at The Butterfly Club: hilarious, gloriously pointy and brilliantly realised.

Wake in Fright at Malthouse: Pure, electric theatre;the power of text, actor and director powerfully collaborating to crystallize their story.

Cock directed by Beng Oh at fortyfivedownstairs: the power of text, actors and director  collaborating to crystallize their story.

Love and Shit by Dee and Cornelius at fortyfivedownstairs: as above.

Sweet Phoebe directed by Mark Wilson at Red Stitch: as above.

Oil by Ella Hickson, directed by Ella Caldwell at Red Stitch: as above.

I'm a Phoenix, Bitch by Bryony Kimmings at  Arts Centre Melbourne in Melbourne Fringe: devastating story and performance.

Patrick Collins, Mime Consultant: a great, fun, smart, slick show from Patrick and his director, Justin Gardam.

Love + at Melbourne Fringe: a layered, beautifully told story about AI and human interaction

A View from the Bridge at MTC: See MTC, you don't have to have all the bells and whistles, just powerful choices.

Unwoman by The Rabble at The Substation: Those images! And incredible text and performances in act two.

Sublimal Massage by Marcus McKenzie at Melbourne Fringe: a super-sharp provocational unpackign of us and out attitudes to art and pop culture; surreal yet highly accessible.

The Drill by Womens Circus, AD Penelope Bartlau: A stunning, surprising, shared community experience; very special to get the tour of the spaces we didn't see during our particular journey.

Grand Finale by Hofesh Shechter at MIAF:  REQUIRES CAPITALS TO INDICATE ITS PURE THEATRICAL POWER!

Looking forward to in 2020.
You've heard enough from me - all of it!

SM: Yvonne's direction of Dishinbition by Christopher Bryant at MUST. Her direction lets the writer's voice be so clear and she finds ways for her actors (who are often relatively inexperienced) to bring the parts of themselves to the characters that complete the characters.


Daniel Clarke
Executive Producer, Programming at Queensland Performing Arts Centre; on leave from his role as Creative Producer, Theatre and Contemporary Performance at Arts Centre Melbourne

Daniel Clarke

Wake in Fright by Declan Greene and Zahra Newman at Malthouse was an extraordinary work; completely thrilling and so exciting. I literally had jaw-dropping moments throughout the whole piece and I left the theatre shaking. Incredible.

I was completely bowled over by Counting and Cracking by Belvoir at Adelaide Festival. I was moved to tears many times, but also to joy that this story was being told and grateful to Belvoir for investing the resources and care to make it. For me, this was one of the most relevant, contemporary Australian plays in years. A hugely ambitious work; a unique, inspiring, cultural collaboration; a great work that matters now. A work that can speak to so many people; a significant contribution to our culture.

Other highlights include Harry Clayton Wright’s Sex Education, Are we not drawn onward to a new era by Ontroerend Goed and Seasick by Alana Mitchel at Edinburgh Fringe; Noni Hazlehurst and Yael Stone in The Beauty Queen of Leenane at STC;  Battersea Arts Centre’s Frankenstein: How to Make a Monster; Things I know to be True by Andrew Bovell  at Belvoir Street; and Ainsley Melham’s performance in Kiss of the Spider Woman at MTC – what a star!

Oh and how could I not mention Harry Potter and The Cursed Child and Come from Away: both brilliant.

Looking forward to in 2020
Louise Bezzina’s first Brisbane Festival.
Michelle Law’s Miss Peony at Belvoir in Sydney.
Stephen Nicolazzo’s Loaded at Malthouse.
Sisters Grimm’s musical of The Sovereign Wife at Hayes Theatre Company in Sydney..


SM: To say that Dan's had a humongous year is still an understatement. Without him we wouldn't have had Gender Euphoria or Anthem or I'm a Phoenix, Bitch. He finds ways to bring the the best indendepdent artists and theatre to main stages and creates spaces where new work can be developed, never taking "it can't be done" for an answer.

Melbourne Fringe: The good news stories

MELBOURNE FRINGE
12–29 September 2019
melbournefringe.com.au





So Melbourne Fringe is over and we have a couple nights off before Melbourne Festival begins. I saw a lot of shows – I think 31, but it's a blurr – and missed that many again that I wanted to see.

So many people don't see, go to or cover Fringe because of the big curated Festival – and they miss out on so much. Melbourne Fringe is the event where we see the beginnings of works that go on to change how we make theatre. It's where we see stuff that will never be seen again. It's where you will see an artist who connects with you and you and know that you are going to see everything they do. It's where arts community and audiences are developed and built, and where no one gives a toss what the sponsors think.

These are some of the many good news stories this Fringe.

Danny Delahunty and his team creating a new Fringe Hub at Trades Hall. So many more venues. A place full of history that reminds us every moment that the word "union" means working together.

Indie media stepping up again. There was the ARTery podcast - EVERY DAY, thanks to Jason Cavanagh and host extraordinaire May Jasper. Myron My at My Melbourne Arts saw 61 shows! And wrote about them. The only way to get the context, depth and importance of this event is to see a lot.

Awards. Yep, sometimes awards they are guff, but a lot of Fringe prizes are support to get to other festivals, and the "best" ones are decided by panels of industry people who also see so many shows throughout the festival. It's one to be genuinely chuffed about.

Ones that made me smile.

Andi Snelling's Happy-Go-Wrong is off to the Adelaide fringe.  (I talked about this on ARTery podcast.)

Andi Snelling.  Happy-Go-Wrong

Bron Batten's Waterloo is off to North Melbourne and to Edinburgh. I can't wait to see what this show becomes. This means that I somehow have to get to Edinburgh next year. As an arts writer, if I saved everything I earned as an arts writer in a year, I couldn't even get a flight. And that's more than others get.

Oh No, Satan Stole My Pineal Gland directed by Jean Tong and Louisa Wall won Best Ensemble. They were.

Claire Rankine won a producing award for Polygamy, Polygayu, which she also directed  and it was developed and performed by Alice Tovey, Charity Werk, Margot Tanjutco and Hayley Tantau.

Alice Tovey, Margot Tanjutco, Charity Werk, Polygamy, Polygayou. Photo by Ling Duong

Bryony Kimmings won Best Theatre for I'm a Phoenix, Bitch (ARTery podcast). She's still one of my favourite artists and even if I wasn't 100% sure about this work, its impact is astonishing. I've spoken to people who say their lives have changed since they saw it. Produced by Daniel Clarke and Arts Centre Melbourne.

Selina Jenkins's BOOBS won Best Cabaret. It's one of the best shows I've seen this year (ARTery podcast).

My favourite story is the two clowns from LA, Amritha Kaur Gemma Soldati, who came to Melbourne and knew no one and won Best Comedy. I saw The Living Room because someone from The Butterfly Club told me about it. (Those networks of people really do work.) It only ran for a week and us who saw it now have some pretty good bragging rights. If you missed it – well, I told you it was good.

Frobert and Joshua Ladgrove. Pic nicked off Facebook.

My nearly-favourite story isn't a prize (but this show won the Golden Gibbo at MICF). Joshua Ladgrove Presents Melbourne’s Only Bilge Pump Sales Seminar sold out – in the good way, the every seat filled way. Add an extra star to my comedy festival review. Three years ago, he did a Fringe show with an audience of nine: we will always be the Portenza Nine.

There many other artists and shows that I could mention – and hopefully did on Twitter – , but a lot of them are going to get lots of words in the future. And I many never have known about them if I hadn't seen them in this festival.

Guest response: A Pacifist's Guide to the War on Cancer

 A Pacifist's Guide to the War on Cancer
Complicite and Malthouse Theatre
8 March 2018
Merlyn Theatre
to 18 March 2018
malthousetheatre.com.au

A Pacifist's Guide to the War on Cancer. Photo by Mark Douet

Guest writer: Andi Snelling

SM: I cried in Bryony Kimmings's  A Pacifist's Guide to the War on Cancer; felt-tears-fall-onto-my-arm cry. It's a gut-kick emotional show that has led to having some amazing personal conversations about how we create art about illness and how we respond to work about illness.

Kimmings is from the UK and is well-known, and well-loved, by Melbourne audiences having brought us Credible Likeable Superstar Role Model, Sex Idiot and Fake it 'til you make it.

It's possibly impossible not to have a personal connection to the ideas, frustration and raw emotion of the work. I started writing about my personal stories about cancer and it became very long. I'm not unique; the audience connection to the work is strong and immediate.

With a sequin-bedazzled cast, it begins as Kimmings's story about being commissioned to make art – a musical, naturally – about other peoples' illnesses. She finds a gendered mess of language, misinformation and naff fiction – that also makes me cry – and people who are so sick of being sick, and all the expectations that come along with being sick.

When Lara Veitch, who's not an actor, comes into the narratives and onto the stage, it becomes more personal and less hypothetical. And when Kimmings son gets sick, the distance between creator and topic no longer exists.

Here are Maxim's and Tim's reviews, but I want to share response by Andi Snelling. She wrote at 3.17 am.  Here's the link to her MyCause page.



AS: 3.17am has me playing that familiar Lyme game: WTF is that sensation and where is it coming from? Crawling, vibrating, squeezing sensations warming my heart area and machine gun rounds firing off in my right ear in a fireworks display of tinnitus which can be both heard and felt. My throat is dry and ticklish with the acidic taste of reflux because I broke my consume-nothing-after-8 pm rule because my granny o'clock dinner routine got interrupted by a 5 pm theatre show  A Pacifist's Guide to the War on Cancer.

The show is pacing up my mind's corridor, tearing up the carpet and ceiling of my bedroom as the blur of my sickness-dreams comes into sudden sharp focus. The show was an ambitious rabbit hole dive which I loved on paper; a (rightly so) trendy, edgy, feminist artist facing cancer bravely from within whilst fuck you-ing patriarchal power as starkly as the white medical gown we will all wear one day. But it didn't work for me on a creative level somehow. And I wonder if that even matters because it did work for me on the level which it set out to be: a guide. Even when – especially when – it reveals there is no guide.

I was moved but didn't sob as I had expected to. This does not mean anything, other than I clearly had expectations which have little use in art. I felt my own thought struggles around my illness reflected – the pressure for positivity, the brave face bullshit, the cycling of mortality fears and total "normalcy", the "it's-easier-to-pretend-it's-okay" facade, the anger at isolation, the futility of reaching out to disappearing friends, the devastation when your relationship sledgehammers your heart in its hour of need. All of that. And more. I don't even have cancer, but I do have an illness as dangerous as cancer, yet without the voice that cancer has.

And so, the show hovers with me as 4 am approaches, just as art should. A helicopter churns the sky outside and at first, I have to double-check it's really there and not inside me because it can be with Lyme. My heart, like so many nights of late, pounds away, thudding parts of my body with its palpitations, giving me the fear of death and reminding me that I am alive. In the black of the night. Just like the black of the stage.

What Melbourne Loved in 2017, part 8

Today we have three awesome indie theatre makers whose work I haven't seen this year.

Bron Batten
Theatre-maker, Producer and Performer
bronbatten.com

Bron Batten in Onstage Dating. Photo by John Leonard

Favourite moments in 2017
I haven't seen much this year because I've been touring so much (#humblebrag) but I did manage to catch a few great pieces that really touched and stayed with me.

I too wish to jump on the Nanette bandwagon and state what a remarkable piece of performance it is. Hannah Gadsby's restrained yet furious and impassioned plea for tolerance and acceptance is inspiring both in its sophistication and emotion as well as its hilarity. Nanette is a perfect example of how truly simple, artful and devastating stand-up can be when undertaken by a master performer, and I have no doubt her 'retirement' will be hampered by that fact that this work will tour for years.

I forgot to mention this last year, but as it toured again this year, I'll include Nat Randall's The Second Woman. This work is completely brilliant, compelling, funny, emotional and addictive and I'm so so glad it has more well-deserved presentations lined up for 2018.

I saw Powerballad by New Zealand performers and theatre makers Julia Croft and Nisha Madhan in Edinburgh and the show then toured to Melbourne Fringe. I made a brief cameo in the work over several nights in Scotland (#humblebrag), which allowed me to see how Julia sensitively crafted her excellent performance in response to the audience. A surreal and at times absurd response to the dominant structures of language, Powerballad also managed to be funny, self-aware and include karaoke – which are all wins in my book.

Angels in America at fortyfivedownstairs was a compelling and artful staging of a classic text and I managed to watch all six hours without getting bored  – much to the disbelief of its director Gary Abrahams. And a recent addition to this list was Romeo is Not The Only Fruit as part of Poppy Seed Festival. I really, really loved this show and it totally deserves to become Australia's answer to Alison Bechdel's Fun Home.

Looking forward to in 2018
As for next year, I'm looking forward to Ich Nibber Dibber from post and Bryony Kimmings's A Pacifists Guide to the War on Cancer, both on at The Malthouse. Kimmings's Credible Likeable Superstar Role Model is perhaps one of my favourite shows ever, so I'm really excited to see this new work.

SM: Goodness, I haven't seen Bron perform this year! But, to be fair, she was Onstage Dating all over the place (and that's still one of my favourite shows ever). I do remember sitting with her at a Comedy Festival show and laughing very loudly and wondering if I'd laughed that loudly at one of her shows and feeling the need to explain that sometimes I don't laugh loudly because I'm listening.


Emilie Collyer
Playwright, writer  
betweenthecracks.net

Emilie Collyer. Photo by Ross Daniels

Favourite moments in 2017
I first want to acknowledge that the theatre made this year in Naarm/Melbourne was made on the lands of the Kulin Nation. This always was and always will be Aboriginal land. Sovereignty was never ceded and it’s time for a treaty.

I loved a lot and a lot has already been loved. I kind of love/hate lists because #inclusion/exclusion issues. But I love this series because it provides a multitude of voices and reminds us we are all capable of more than one kind of loving and of the kind of great big beautiful polyamorous adventure that is theatre in Melbourne. So these are things that have lingered with me well into the morning-after glow this year. Strap in. I have a lot to say.

All the new writing because, well, that’s my jam so I DO mean all of it. Standouts were Rashma N Kalsie’s Melbourne Talem, Natesha Somasundaram’s Jeremy and Lucas Buy a Fucking House, Amelia Newman’s Younger and Smaller and Alexithymia (Citizen Theatre and A_Tistic, by Tom Middleditch). There were all worlds I loved being in and can’t wait for more from these writers.

The students I worked with at Melbourne and Deakin unis who are making thoughtful, considered, powerful, often feminist, queer and radical work. I was particularly impressed by the ensemble work at Deakin and being in a room as these young theatre makers grappled with the art form and had such respectful debates about the work and really collaborated deep and hard. The bomb.

Huge shout out to Little Ones Theatre. Three massive shows this year and every one of them brought something remarkable to audiences from the shiny beauty of The Happy Prince to the hilarious and stylish-to-die-for The Moors and the epicly-ambitious Merciless Gods. Dark and delicious, The Moors, I reckon, was my favourite play of the year.

All at ArtsHouse: Excerpts from the Past by KwaZulu-Natal artist Sethembile Msezane took my breath away with its clarity and power. The panel Art and Action: Displacing Whiteness in the Arts hosted by Tania Cañas started conversations we need more of, putting voices front and centre who need bigger and louder public platforms. As did Tribunal (PYT, Fairfield).

Emily Tomlins’s arms (Niche).

Nisha Joseph’s G-MA’s erotic food preparation instructions (Romeo Is Not The Only Fruit).

Dan Clarke’s Kiln Program at Arts Centre Melbourne that gave space to such a range of makers, writers and imaginers. In particular Black Girl Magic (Melbourne) featuring Kween  and, curated by Sista Zai. I was sitting next to a young Muslim woman watching this fabulous show and she asked if I had been to the Arts Centre very often. I said yes and she said it was her first time. And she looked supremely happy and confident to be there. That event had made it her space. As it should be.

So huge props to all the wonderful people smashing down barriers of who owns cultural spaces. This includes Kate Hood’s company Raspberry Ripple and the first of their play reading series (Love Child by Joanna Murray-Smith) with casts that include both actors with disabilities and those without present Australian plays.

In a year where I needed to fill my own well I did some wonderful workshops. With Jane Bodie (Kiln), Candy Bowers (Kiln), The Rabble (MTC), Inua Ellamns (Arts Centre). The generosity of these makers in sharing their knowledge and their approaches to craft was phenomenal.

And the work that held me in the most unique theatrical space of the year was Fraught Outfit’s Book of Exodus Part 2. That incredible poetic, dream-like place. It also reminded me of the privilege of seeing a company work over several years around a theatrical and visual theme. This piece seemed to me like such a clear crystallisation of what Fraught Outfit has been exploring in their Innocence Trilogy and that design by Eugyeene Teh. Good lord!

Looking forward to in 2018
Well a lot of the indie seasons haven’t been announced yet and I know that’s where my juiciest anticipated works will be and I know some awesome things are coming from stellar people like Petra Kalive, Rachel Perks, Bridget Balodis and Mary Anne Butler.

I’m also looking forward to seeing a Melbourne season of The Drover’s Wife; if not in 2018, then the not too distant future.

Of the mainstage seasons, most excited about Jean Tong’s Hungry Ghosts, Patricia Cornelius’s The House of Bernarda Alba, Michele Lee’s Going Down and Nakkiah Lui’s Blackie Blackie Brown: The Traditional Owner of Death.

SM: I'm looking forward to some new stage work by Emilie next yea, but I've really enjoyed reading some of her other published work this year, including this piece in The Lifted Brow.


Kerith Manderson-Glavin 
Performance maker
unofficialkerithfanclub.com

Kerith Manderson-Galvin

Favourite moments in 2017

You're Not Alone. It surprised me and I surprised myself; I went in ready to be horrified and prepared to walk out. Instead, I saw it twice. Both times I found it hard to leave the Malthouse afterwards. I wanted to stay there and think and talk and think more. I loved it for so many reasons but I loved that it really felt like it needed an audience – which is the point of performance, right? It was alive. 

Oh my god, I loved it so much I wish I could see it again. I emailed Malthouse thanking them – I just remembered that, hahaha what a weird thing to do. Wow. I just loved it. I love it. Wow.

Patti Smith. I sense my experience of Patti Smith was similar to the experience of *the big show everyone keeps talking about*. The first note she sang the whole of Hamer Hall gasped and held their breath. I am certain we all experienced the same journey that night and that's a remarkable power. Religious. I held my friend's hand and we cried at the same time and laughed at the time and at the end we were exhausted and had to go home and then for a bit I couldn't listen to Patti Smith because it made me feel too many feelings.

Also. Nick Cave, 10 000 Gestures (in Paris – la dee ddaaaa), Bacchae – Prelude to a Purge (in Berlin – oh Berlin you were my favourite performance of 2017). And every night I got to perform with my brother in The Eternity Of The World and I felt so completely safe for every chaotic second

Looking forward to in 2018

I really like Nicola Gunn's headshot on the MTC website. It appears they have cropped the image for Working with Children and then made it black and white and used it as a headshot. She looks very beautiful. Wait, maybe they are different photos? In the headshot, she has on a black scivvy. (I really think she has an exquisite brain and talent.)

I'd like to go see The Wooster Group show in Sydney Festival (The Town Hall Affair) because it feels like something I should like to see. Maybe I will.

SM: Did I really not see anything of Kerith's this year? So, I'm going with that she might seriously like cats more than I do.

part 7
part 6
part 5
part 4
part 3
part 2
part 1
2016
2014
2013
2012

MICF: Fake It 'Til You Make It

Fake it 'Til You Make It
Bryony Kimmings and Tim Grayburn & Theatre Works
19 March 2015
Theatre Works
5 April
theatreworks.org.au

Tim Grayburn & Bryony Kimmings

While, I'm writing about Hannah Gadsby's mis-diagnosis of depression, it's impossible not to talk about Tim Grayburn's diagnosis of clinical depression and the astonishing Fake It 'Til You Make It that finishes at Theatre Works on Sunday.

It's been difficult to get a seat for this one because the consistent raves about its Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth seasons have been consistent raves.

So I'm not writing a review of the production. Please read all the others, starting with Jane Howard's in The Guardian.

Melbourne's indie arts scene fell in love with Kimmings last year when she brought us Credible Likeable Superstar Role Model (my favourite show of 2014) and Sex Idiot (my favourite audience participation of any show).

In her performance art, she shares her life and experiences to make connections with people who have had similar experiences. You don't see one of her shows and leave thinking about Bryony, you leave thinking about yourself. This is what makes her work so powerful.

She made Fake It 'Til You Make It with her partner Tim Grayburn. He's wasn't a performance artist or any type of performer but quit his job in marketing to make this show with Bryony, which premiered at the Perth Fringe earlier this year.

It's about their falling in soppy get-a-room love, her finding out about his illness, what they did next, and how they continue to deal with being in love and everything that goes with it.

I didn't write about the show because I didn't know where to start. I knew/know too many people with diagnosed and undiagnosed depression who suicided or have thought of suiciding.

I also know people who found the help they needed and have helped others.

I've also seen a lot of work about depression. Why this one should be compulsory is because it makes the connection between this illness – this common and treatable illness – and how it makes the person think about death.

Like a symptom of the common cold is a cough, a symptom of clinical depression is thoughts of death. It's what this illness does to brains and, like a cough, it can be treated.

I have a friend who when he was really sick, made sure that his partner had the keys to the box where his medication was locked away. This person loved their life and knew that their illness made them think about death. He found a way to create time when those thoughts came; time that made acting on those thoughts very difficult and enough time to deal with the symptoms.

If Fake It 'Til You Make It can make even one person make the connection between depression and thoughts of death, between illness and symptom, maybe they will also get the time they need.

It finishes on Sunday and there are still tickets available, especially for Saturday.

What Melbourne loved in 2014, part 7

Richard Watts, Cassanda Fumi and Tobias Manderson-Galvin share their favourite shows today.

Richard Watts
arts journalist

Richard: At the start of 2014, I made a vow to myself to cease constantly and consistently burning the candle at both ends. Consequently I’ve only seen 112 live performances across various genres this year (so far – there’s another few to try and squeeze in before Christmas!) but I’ve also avoided the debilitating, lingering lurgies that had regularly laid me up for weeks at a time the last few years running.

Consequently, despite missing out on some apparently excellent productions as a result of pulling things back a notch (e.g. The Rabble’s Frankenstein and Grounded at Red Stitch), I still managed to see some mad, magnificent and moving productions in 2014. Here are the highlights of the year that was:

From Adelaide, Gravity and Other Myths staged the single best circus production I’ve seen all year at Northcote Town Hall, as part of the City of Darebin’s Speakeasy program. A Simple Space wasn’t just exhilarating, intimate and a bravura demonstration of fine-tuned human physicality, it was also a glorious display of circus as art, and an evolution of that form that was the perfect counterbalance to the corporate Euro-pudding blandness of juggernauts like Cirque du Soleil.

Also at Northcote Town Hall, Elbow Room’s Prehistoric lit up my synapses and set my heart racing like no other show in 2014. Infused with a punk sensibility, it was vibrant and alive, it was also a knowing, insightful and carefully crafted work that managed to be simultaneously nostalgic and utterly of the moment; everything that indie theatre should be, and more.

Bryony Kimmings’s Credible Likeable Superstar Role Model at Theatre Works was not only a continued demonstration of producer Dan Clarke’s astute eye for programming the brightest and best, but also a marvellous, insightful, deeply moving and empowering exploration of life in our modern world. Without doubt the most affecting production I saw this year.

Finally, my single best show of the year: Toneelgroep Amsterdam’s Roman Tragedies at Adelaide Festival. Six hours of Shakespeare in Dutch, with English surtitles. Going into this show I was full of dread. Coming out of it, I was envious of those audience members who would be experiencing it in the following days, and would have killed a Liberal Party politician to see it again. Exquisite acting, a thunderous and dramatic live score, inspired direction by Ivo van Hove, and intelligent and nuanced use of multimedia and social media – as well as giving the audience the opportunity to not only move around the auditorium at regular intervals but to actually take to the stage – made this one of the most memorable productions I have any seen anywhere in my 47 years. Fuck it was good. If it ever comes to Melbourne – or anywhere else in Australia for that matter – DO NOT MISS IT.

Honourable mentions: The Worst of Scottee at Theatre Works; Bryony Kimmings’s Sex Idiot at Melbourne International Comedy Festival; Trygve Wakenshaw’s Kraken at Melbourne International Comedy Festival; Ray Chong Nee’s performances in The Motion of Light in Water and Jumpers for Goalposts; Caroline Lee and Maude Davey in MKA’s The Trouble with Harry, and Lachlan Philpott’s beautiful, poetic script; Carousel Des Moutons at Melbourne Festival; Big hArt’s Hipbone Sticking Out at Melbourne Festival; and Sisters Grimm’s Calpurnia Descending at the Malthouse.

SM: Richard’s been hosting Smart Arts on RRR for ten years: that’s a lot of pretty amazing moments. I can’t imagine Melbourne’s theatre and arts scene without Smart Arts. Richard always asks great questions and from his choice of music to his guests, he’s one of the greatest advocates and supporters of independent theatre, music, artists and creators in Melbourne. Buy him a drink when you see him.

Cassandra Fumi
arts editor, theatre maker

Photo by Sarah Walker

Cass: When I think of 2014 it's green! Green Screen was the standout work for me. I loved the delicateness and vulnerability of this piece. It was a Nicola Gunn show unlike other Nicola Gunn shows, but then oh so much a Nicola Gunn show (does that make sense?).

I also loved Bron Batten’s Use Your Illusion that was part of Field Theory. I thought it was a clever, engaging piece. My presence as an audience member was really needed, not only to be hypnotised but also to go on a journey with Batten. Oh yeah, I totes bought into the hypnosis thang.

I also adored Calpurnia Descending; the dancing rat made me laugh. Ugly laugh. Like Dawson’s ugly cry. This work made me think, whilst having a great, entertaining time at the theatre. I also went to Katy Perry a few nights later and – yes, yes! – Katy also had a rat on stage. The gift that keeps giving.

SM: I so nearly had a Live Art moment with Cass at the Melbourne Fringe, but it turned into a very individual live art moment because I missed her by seconds. (Bloody burger that took forever that I ate  as I ran to be on time – and it wasn’t even nice.)


Tobias Manderson-Galvin
maverick

Tobi: My best top 5:

5) Perth's Fringe World. That was a really great fringe festival. It may be the best in the world right now. Supportive core staff, varied curated and non-curated spaces, selection of hub areas, a real cool artist bar, great audiences, beautiful design. I can't give this festival a better rap. It is the best. Fuck you Adelaide and Melbourne, do we need to call an ambulance – and any other Australian fringe you don’t really exist, get over it.

4) Luke Devine's The Land Than Time Forgot (Melbourne Fringe, Hares & Hyenas). Luke in nothing but a black tee, white 'away' shorts, and holding a hot pink notebook, tells the story of growing up in Tasmania. This better happen again. If you missed it. Whooo boy. You missed it.

3) Inventing a festival with MKA massive and primarily Mr John Kachoyan. Calling it HYPRTXT. It having almost nothing to do with the internet. Doing a show in it that also didn’t really have anything to do with the internet. My new pal John Kachoyan reading in the show on the final night. JK also doing a reading of his solo show. Just everyone involved in all of that. Like Jenn Taylor. Like people from the Gong. A playwright from Finland. All of you/them!

2) Kerith Manderson-Galvin's commissioned work for Union House Theatre Don’t Bring LuLu. I went more than once. I gather that for a while there people thought Kerith was a pseudonym I'd made up, but she's actually my sister. I think for a while there, people thought she was my sister but she's also herself and that's a thing too. But she is my sister too, so obvs i'll deck you if you don't like her shows. And this was a great show. Really a show more than a play. There has not been another script like it. Not here not anywhere. If you haven’t read it, you should find a way. It better have another life. Meanwhile i guess you could just see Being Dead (Don Quixote), her next show in Midsumma in January.

1) Big thanks to Stephen Armstrong and the Arts Centre who were part of hosting IETM/Asian Satelite Meeting and Lab in Melbourne.

Also a special mention of something bad/good so far: my podcast with Kerith has only had two episodes because a bunch of data got deleted and then I was without internet for weeks/also without a credit card for a month and a half and lost my account. So anyway.... Jolly Good Radio returns sometime when I'm rich and the gods smile upon us.

SM: Every moment with Tobias is a moment, but my favourite was watching his mum watch him in his Thank You Thank You Love (HYPRTXT).

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What Melbourne loved in 2014, part 3

Today it's Scott Gooding, Daniel Lammin and Jana Perkovic. Jana talks about some moments when she understood and remembered that making art is making an experience between people. She reminds us: "individual hearts and bodies are the material of which theatre is made".

Scott Gooding
actor

Scott: For me this year, there have been so many highlights it's tough to draw it down to one.

The Elia Kazan: A Theatre Investigation at the Sandpit in St Kilda. These play-readings, directed by Peta Hanrahan, were a great insight into an artist and director. I was lucky enough to be there for all three and it was a fantastic opportunity to look further into the mindset of a director, simply by the choice of scripts he worked with. Was also amazing to see such a wealth of Melbourne acting talent throughout the course of the three days.

But also want to shout out to I Heart McEnroe (Theatre Works) and Slut (VCA directors).

SM: Scott was Lot in The City They Burned. It's another one of those "if you were in it, it has to be my favourite moment of yours". Scott's performance made me feel uncomfortable – in a good way, well, not a good way, but it was wonderful to feel that uncomfortable.


Daniel Lammin
director, writer

Daniel: If I have to boil it down to one piece of theatre, my No. 1 for 2014 is Red Stitch’s production of Grounded by George Brandt.

We spend so much time getting caught up in the allure of the loud and the flashy that an 80-minute solo monologue comes as a bit of a shock. In many ways, Grounded was theatre at its simplest, its most fundamental – human drama presented by human voices in the most human way possible. Everything about this extraordinary production was in perfect balance, from Elizabeth Drake’s immersive sound design to the staggering set and lighting by Matthew Adey to the ambition and the unforgiving text.

For an emerging director, watching the mechanisms of Kirsten von Bibra’s direction was the most inspiring work I’ve seen this year; I was delivered an education in clear, powerful direction that I won’t forget in a hurry. And then there was Kate Cole, whose performance cannot be praised enough. As I held back tears at the end of the show, it wasn’t just because of the sheer emotional force of the production, but from the force of her performance, the power of seeing a great actor at the height of their power.

There were many other shows I could have picked (the overwhelming Walking Into The Bigness, the joyous The Witches, the inspiring Complexity of Belonging) but when I look back on the theatre I’ve seen this past year, the first show that leaps to my mind like an oncoming storm is Grounded.

SM: Daniel’s direction of Masterclass: always expect to be surprised. When he told me he was directing a show about Maria Callas with a supporting cast of not-actor young opera singers, I nodded and made a “ah” sound that meant, “but you do shows about violence and young men”. The performances he got out of his performers (including Maria Mercedes) were so beautiful. He let them find their own truths and ensured that each truth connected to the audiences – who were one their feet every night.

Jana Perkovic
blogger, reviewer, academic, podcaster

Photo by  Éva Reisch-Vida

Jana: My favourite theatre moments in 2014 were not actually plays, but happened in the classroom, at VCA, where I taught a seminar on theatre theory. I think it's very hard not to fall in love with people when you see them put on the table everything they have – everything they have – in order to make art.

I think all practising theatre critics should have that experience, just to understand the incredibly delicate web of emotion and thought that we pronounce opinions on. It has really changed the way I see theatre: I like to think that I was always aware that theatre was primarily a situation between people, not a play of signs and symbols, but I am now so much more acutely aware that theatre is made by individual people with a unique heart and physique – that their individual hearts and bodies are the material of which theatre is made.

I prepared for my classes the way one would rehearse an interactive performance – I was always trying to orchestrate an interaction in an invisible way, so that nobody felt led, but everyone ended up where I wanted them to be. It was exhilarating and exhausting and exhilarating again because I worked my arse off and I felt that it worked out well; that I had managed to get the effect I wanted, and yet again there were students who got something unexpected out of this seminar. And it made me really feel on my skin how hard it is to carry an audience with you.

In any case, there was the moment when we explored race and gender and Australia by really dissecting The Sovereign Wife and I suddenly felt moral indignation building up, not in the room, but inside people. And I wanted Declan Greene (its director and co-writer) in the room to hear his audience get it, to have that pleasure.

And there was the time when a group of students devised a very confronting, very difficult piece that upset the whole class, and we spent entire weeks afterwards untangling that upset as safely and gently as possible, and during this entire time I was in awe of that recklessness that makes one really risk it, really risk it on stage, when they do not yet have the tools to calibrate their performance and the response they want – but this is the only way to learn, and I wanted to make space for them to feel safe to experiment.

And the time when they came back from Bryony Kimmings's Credible Likable Superstar Role Model and one of my students said, "It was the first time that a piece of theatre gave me a feeling of agency, left me feeling that there was something I could do, as a man, to make things better".

And there was the time when I asked them to talk about their work and each other's work in depth, and one of them told me, during a cigarette break, "My group is next. I am so scared". But he went in anyway, and they talked like champs.

What is the difference between having to undergo a feedback session of your work or perform in a theatre show? Both are rehearsed, but fundamentally unpredictable events. As I watched them talk about what they tried to do, and honestly assess whether they thought they had achieved it or not, and how it could have been done better, and I thought, here is the definition of courage, participating in this activity without closing yourself off. And at the end yet another one of them said, "I am so proud of everyone in here. We are all talking so intelligently" – and it was true, they were. And she later looked at me in the eye and said very plainly, very simply, "I don't want to make dumb art. I want to make smart art".

And it made me believe that we will have some very good theatre made in Melbourne in the coming years.

Ah, and there was the time I went to see Credible Likable Superstar Role Model and at the end literally the entire audience was weeping, including myself, including my date, who was beside herself. Her nose was running and she kept saying "I'm sorry, I'm sorry..." and breaking into tears again. We then lay on grass in St Kilda and talked about Sailor Moon. You know art has worked when afterwards you don't talk about art, you talk about other things entirely.

SM: Jana and I had a private and a public conversation on Facebook about The Sublime. She made me remember how important it is to discuss more than what we love about theatre, and she made me feel supported in discussing what I did.

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2012 Favourites

MICF: Bryony Kimmings

Sex Idiot
Byrony Kimmings and Theatre Works
27 March 2014
Melb Town Hall, Mini Main
to 5 April
comedyfestival.com.au

The delightfully wonderful Bryony Kimmings flys out of Melbourne later today. Boo. Come back soon - please.

Meanwhile, Melbourne was delighted by six performances of her wonderful show Sex Idiot.

When she was 29, Bryony had a sexual health check and found out she had a common STI. Her doctor offered to send anonymous letters to everyone she’d been in sexual contact with warning that they should have a sexual health check, but Bryony decided to contact her past lovers herself – and make a show about it.

The Comedy Festival set a ridiculous tone when they took down her promotional video of “The Fanny Song”.  The song lists words used for vagina and includes cunt. Given it’s hard to find a stand up in the festival who doesn’t abuse someone by calling them that, what can you say when they censor the rare time it’s used in a non-abusive and positive context.

But Sex Idiot is a fearless, hilarious and heart-touching look back at her loves, lovers and others. (And a reminder to use condoms and barrier methods to keep you healthy.) Of course, hearts can’t be as easily protected and the most powerful moments are those when she reflects on those that she knows she hurt along the way.

I was thrilled to give her my pubes.

And here's "The Fanny Song"

I also wrote about this on AussieTheatre.com. 

Review: Credible Likeable Superstar Role Model

FOLA
Credible Likeable Superstar Role Model
Bryony Kimmings and Taylor Hourchen
26 March 2014
Theatre Works
to 6 April
theatreworks.org.au

Credible Likeable Superstar Role Model had me in tears at the beginning and at the end and in the middle. All good tears; it's a work that doesn't just talk about optimism and alternatives, it creates them.

Bryony Kimmings is a performance artist from the UK. She adores her niece and when she started seeing the world through the eyes of 9-year-old Taylor, anger turned her protective switch turned on.

She talks about typing words that a 9-year-old might want to know about into Google and seeing what a child can see on even a secured family-secured and monitored iPad. She talks about the pop stars and a media whose main market is girls who are presented as sexualised and sexual before they are even teenagers. She talks about what these girls say they want to be.

Yep, it's easy to turn that switch on.

So, what Aunty Bryony did was work with Taylor on making two art projects. And, yes, there were lots of family meetings about them.

One was to create a pop star role model who really is a role model and is credible, likeable and a superstar. The result is Catherine Bennett, who is played by Bryony and based on what Taylor wanted and still wants in a credible likeable superstar role model.

Catherine is a palaeontologist and a singer. Bryony and Taylor are going to make her world famous. She already has film clips and a web site and has become friends with Yoko Ono, Amanda Palmer and Neil Gaiman. Taylor wants to get her on the Ellen show, so that millions can see how much songs about friendship and a future with self-painting nails, equality and polar bears rock.

The second project is the show Credible Likeable Superstar Role Model, which is about creating the show Credible Likeable Superstar Role Model. It's performed by Bryony and Taylor, but it's for adults; Taylor's offstage or in sound-blocking headphones for parts.

It opens in a fairy-world landscape where Taylor dances on a lead held by her aunt (she's looking after her niece while she's away from home and the lead is handy). It's about Bryony seeing what Taylor and her friends were exposed to, how this is different from what non-internet and instant communication generations grew up with and what she can do to try and empower her niece, and all girls, to be themselves a world that doesn't seem to even want them to be kids.

With women knights ready to fight or go so far as to wear a naff princess dress, it's made from a love that has stakes so high that winning is the only option. Even if Bryony thinks Catherine is a bit weird, she's what Taylor wants, and it's this love that exposes and shares its vulnerability. A vulnerability that's always Bryony's, because this show and world is a place where Taylor is loved and safe. And my tears were from wanting my very happy and loved niece to always feel this safe and loved.

My niece is six. She lives interstate and I don't see her anywhere near as much as I'd like to, but she's still one of my absolute favourite people ever, and she draws me pictures of cats. I hope that if there's ever a time when she needs someone to be completely on her side, or she needs to feel safe, or needs someone to tell her an uncomfortable truth that she'll trust her Aunty A. And I hope that I can continue to be as cool an aunt as Aunty Bry.

Bryony is also doing a show at the Comedy Festival called Sex Idiot. She thinks Taylor doesn't know, but there's a part of Superstar when Taylor makes Bryony put on the headphones...

Sex Idiot is a fearless, hilarious and heart-touching look back at her loves, lovers and others and it started when she had a sexual health check that revealed a common STI. It's also absolutely brilliant and Byrony Kimmings may as well book her tickets back to Melbourne because we want to see everything that she makes.

This was on AussieTheatre.com