Review: I'm Not a Mime

Melbourne International Comedy Festival
I'm Not a Mime
Patrick Collins
12 April 2021
The Butterfly Club
to 18 April 
www.comedyfestival.com.au

Patrick Collins

My review is in Time Out.

Review: On the Origin of Faeces

Melbourne International Comedy Festival 

On the Origin of Faeces 

Alanta Colley 

30 March 2021 

The Butterfly Club 

to 4 April 

www.comedyfestival.com.au

Alanta Colley

My review is in Time Out.  

MICF: Lily Fish

MELBOURNE INDEPENDENT CELEBRATORY FEMINIST
Lily Fish
Jofus and the Plank
13–19 April
The Butterfly Club
comedyfestival.com.au

Lily Fish

I still work in theatre because I was taken to theatre when I was a child. There are some amazing shows just for children in this festival. This show is at The Butterfly Club; thinking that there will be. child who's first experience of a theatre is The Butterfly Club is too perfect.

If you could see anyone (possible or impossible) in your audience, who would it be?
Her Royal Highness Magda Szubanski. I would literally stop the show to squeal with delight.

What is one of your favourite comedy festival memories?
My dad taking me to see The Four Noels as a child. It completely blew my mind that you could be so so seriously silly.

Who is one of your favourite Melbourne Indie Celebratory Feminists?
Kimberley Twiner. She's an absolute powerhouse! She's Artistic Director of PO PO MO CO and The Melbourne Physical Theatre School, and she's directed a bunch of award winning all femme clown shows including The Travelling Sisters, Maggot and Jofus and the Plank. And she's a damn funny performer in her own right.

What three shows are you not going miss this comedy festival?
Physical and Political We Too Us Too Me Too Too Too (includes Ell from The Travelling Sisters and Kimberley from PO PO MO CO)
The Travelling Sisters Thy Thus Twas
Ange Lavoipierre Zealot 

What else could MICF stand for?
Melbourne International Clown Festival – hahaha, well it's not quite true yet. But maybe one day.

What I Loved in 2019: The best of Melbourne theatre. And thank you

This year I saw a lot of new work and emerging artists, which is how I started writing about theatre. Many of those artists and companies from the early days are now on our main stages, where indie criticism isn't as welcome and masthead criticsm is reduced to an adjective. I do both.

Seeing new work and watching companies and artists develop is one of the most satisfying parts of being a theatre writer. When you see something remarkable in a tiny room, you come back and see them again and again. Watching other people discover that same remarkable is amazing.

If you have to choose between seeing one big show or 20 small ones, see the small ones. You'll feel better.

There's such a demand for indie critics and writers because, no matter how tough it gets, our indie performers, companies and venues keep making work.

Independent and emerging performers, if you want people to see your work and write about it, find the voices or publications that you like and read or listen to or follow. There will be someone who totally gets your work and will be the voice that describes your art in ways that makes other people want to see you.

If you don't know who those reviewers they are yet, read, listen to and follow indie voices!

If you want to write about or talk about theatre, just start doing it. Don't rely on it being a paid job and don't despair if you're not read by thousands. Keep going; it'll happen. Keep seeing work. And when you find those shows and artists that you totally understand, your work becomes part of the community.

(And, keep an eye out because I will be running more writing workshops and publicity workshops next year.)

If you're on those big stages and see work on those stages and wonder why all you ever see is star ratings, ask why and speak up.


Sometimes Melbourne celebrates nearly 14 years of writing about theatre in Melbourne.

I don't know what's going to happen next year, but it's time for Sometimes Melbourne to have a break. It's a difficult decision but I don't have the resources or support to keep it going. I'll still write for other publications, teach and see as many shows as possible.

Thank you to every artists and show I've seen. You're all amazing. Thank you for the messages and conversations. Thank you for your work. You make a difference.


And here are my favourite shows and artists of 2019. I'd see every one of them again.

Outstanding artists 2019

WRITING

Zoey Dawson for Australian Realness at Malthouse

Emily Goddard, Chanella Marci. "Australian Realness" Photo by Pia Johnson

Bridget Mackey for Love/Chamberlain at Theatre Works

Rebekah Hill, Dana Miltins. "Love Chamberlain"

Special mention

Wil Greenway for Either Side of Everything at MICF

Will Greenway

DESIGN

Costume 
Gabriela Tylesova for Muriel's Wedding: The Musical, Global Creatures in association with Sydney Theatre Company

"Muriel's Wedding"

Set/lighting
Kate Davies/Emma Valente for Unwoman, The Rabble at The Substation

"Unwoman" by The Rabble. Photo by Pier Carthew

Lighting
Clare Springett for Oil at Red Stitch.

"Oil". Photo by John Lloyd Fillingham

PERFORMANCE

The cast of Anthem, Arts Centre Melbourne at MIAF

Maude Davey, Reef Ireland, Ruci Kaisila, Thuso Lekwape, Amanda Ma, Maria Mercedes, Tony Nikolakopoulos, Eryn Jean Norvill, Sahil Saluja, Osamah Sami, Eva Seymour, Carly Sheppard,  Jenny M Thomas, Dan Witton 

"Anthem" Photo by Pia Johnson

The cast of Unwoman, The Rabble at The Substation
Part I: Annalise Matthews, Toni Main, Robyn McMicking, Anna Nottle and Mattie Young
Part II: Dana Miltins and Mary Helen Sassman
Part II: Yumi Umiumare
Testimonials ead by Mila Jennings


Special mentions

Helena Dix as Norma in Norma, Melbourne Opera

Nick Simpson-Deeks as George in Sunday in the Park with George, Watch This

Christie Whelan Brown as Tania in Muriel's Wedding: The Musical, Global Creatures in association with Sydney Theatre Company

Helena Dix. "Norma"

Nick Simspson-Deeks, Vidya Makan. "Sunday in the Park with George"

Keep an eye on

Luisa Scrofani in My Brilliant Career, the Sir Zelman Cowen School of Music, the Centre for Theatre and Performance and Monash Academy of Performing Arts in association with the Jeanne Pratt Musical Theatre Artists in Residence Program.

Luisa Scrofany. "My Brilliant Career"

DIRECTION

Declan Green for Wake in Fright, Malthouse

"Wake in Fright". Photo by Pia Johnson

Everything they do rocks 2019

Everyone at The Butterfly Club for supporting, promoting and presenting independent cabaret, comedy, music and theatre more than anyone else in town.

Everyone includes:
All staff who program, promote and organise.
All the front of house.
All the bar staff.
Anyone I missed.
And everyone involved with Enter Closer, Crowded and the other managed venues during festivals.

The Butterfly Club. Photo by Stano Murin

The Butterfly Club celebrated its 20th birthday this year. After moving from South Melbourne, it's now tucked away in a three-level wonderland in Carson Place in the middle of the city (boxed by Swanston, Elizabeth, Collins and Bourke streets).

Every night there are between two and eight different shows that include regular nights, independent shows and venue-produced shows. They support indie artists from the application process to front of house staff and help with promotion and media.

Artists who perform there talk about being welcomed into a family.

Audiences love the place. From the changing menu of cocktails to hanging around and analysing at the minimalist decor*, it's a joy to be there.

(And one day, there will be some funding to deal with the access issues of a very old building with lots of stairs.)

*not minimalist. My favourites are the art deco cat lamp, the Ginger and Fred series of photos, and the framed and stuffed kitten tea towel.


and


Lessons with Luis

Lessons With Luis

I genuinely don't understand how Luis and his family aren't international superstars.

When I see a Lessons with Luis show, I forget about being a reviewer because I am so happy to be there. The work is so complete that the line between character and performer doesn't exist and they tell a truth about families and grief that is so real that I don't want to be confronted with the idea that it's a performance.

And Luis likes cats. 

This year I saw Stickin' Together at MICF and went to Yadna's 47th Birthday.

Outstanding productions 2019

MUSICAL

Come From Away, multiple producers

"Come From Away". Photo by Jeff Busby

Special mention

Polygamy, Polygayou, produced by Clare Rankine at Melbourne Fringe

"Polygamy, Polygayou". Photo by Ling Duong

COMMERCIAL

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, parts one and two, multiple producers


COMEDY

Cassie Workman, Giantess at MICF

Cassie Workma

Special mentions
Patrick Collins Mime Consultant at MICF

Joshua Ladgrove pumps your bilge at MICF and Melbourne Fringe

Completely Improvised Potter, Soothplayers at MICF and Melbourne Fringe

Frobert and Ladgrove

"Patrick Collins Mime Consultant"

"Completely Improvised Potter". Photo by Mark Gambi

CABARET

BOOBS by Selina Jenkins at Melbourne Fringe

Special mention

Garbage Monster by Alice Tovey, Hot Mess Productions and The Butterfly Club at MICF

Selina Jenkins

 

Alice Tovey

DANCE

Collossus, Stephanie Lake Company, Arts Centre Melbourne at MIAF

"Collossus"

OPERA

Norma, Melbourne Opera

Best of the best 2019

The Butch Monologues, Theatre Works and Stage Mom at Midsumma

cast of "The Butch Monologues"

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, parts one and two, multiple producers

"Harry Potter and the Cursed Child"

Keep, Daniel Kitson at MICF

Daniel Kitson

Barbara and the Camp Dogs, Malthouse presents a Belvoir production

Elaine Crombie, Ursula Yovich. "Barbara and the Camp Dogs". Photo by Pia Johnson

Waterloo by Bron Batten at Melbourne Fringe

Bron Batten. "Waterloo". Photo by Theresa Harrison

My favourite show of 2019

The Living Room by Amrita Dhaliwal and Gemma Soldati at Melbourne Fringe

Amrita Dhalial and Gemma Soldati. "The Living Room"

 Which is coming back for comedy festival!

Past favourites.
2018

2017
2016

2015

2014

2013

2012

2011 

2010 

2009 

2008 

2007

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.

Review: The Living Room

MELBOURNE FRINGE
The Living Room
Amrita Dhaliwal and Gemma Soldati
17 September 2019
The Butterfly Club, upstairs
To 22 September
melbournefringe.com.au

Amrita Dhaliwal and Gemma Soldati. "The Living Room"

My review in in Time Out.

(I loved it.)

Interview: Bron Batten background for Waterloo

MELBOURNE FRINGE
Waterloo
Bron Batten
Brunswick Mechanics Institute - Theatre
to 25 September
melbournefringe.com.au

Bron Batten

This isn't a review of Bron Batten's Melbourne Fringe show Waterloo. One is coming. Update: it's here.

It's an interview I did with her in March about her show Onstage Dating. She talks about her "next show" in this interview. Waterloo is the next show.

It was originally published on ArtsHub.  (Give it a read there as well.)

Bron Batten. "Onstage Dating". Photo by Theresa Harrison

I find a hidden Melbourne bar with Google Maps. It’s empty in the mid-afternoon, but there are booths for snuggling, small tables for hand holding and a balcony with flattering natural light. “Are you meeting someone?” the bartender asks as I’m looking at my phone messages. “Yes”. I hope he thinks I'm on a nothing-better-to-do-this-afternoon Tinder date.

I’m not. I’m meeting performance artist Bron Batten, who buys me a beer anyway.

Her show Onstage Dating is playing at The Butterfly Club during the Melbourne International Comedy Festival. We meet at a bar where she’s gone on dates. It’s a great choice. Above the main city street, it’s easy to forget the tourists and takeaway food below – especially as the trams ding-ding and the pale green plane trees give shade and, for once, hold tight to their balls of hay fever fluff.

“Let’s talk about dating,” I start.

She sighs, “What do you want to know?” I know that sigh. It’s the sigh of a 30-something who’s been on a lot of dates.

Batten’s been on 85 onstage dates at festivals and theatres in Australia, New Zealand and the UK. She developed this show when she was granted the Australia Council Cite Des Arts Internationale residency in Paris in 2015. “All that bread, wine and cheese – I had such a terrible time,” she says.

She also went on “about 60” in-real-life dates in Paris; all internet procured. I ask if it was just research. “It was always two birds, one stone,” she says. “I’d never really dated before. I’d always just met people through friends or at the end of the night at the pub.”

The resulting show premiered at the 2016 Festival of Live Art in Melbourne. Batten’s known for work that finds a delightfully awkward and super-smart balance between reality and performance art. She was a founder of The Last Tuesday Society – a much-missed monthly subversive bo-ho performance-comedy-cum-cabaret night – where I remember her singing “Red Headed Woman” naked after Julia Gillard was ousted as prime minister and choreographing a jazz ballet nativity play. She began to get more attention with a show called Sweet Child of Mine, which she performed with her father. It started by asking her country-town parents (she’s one of six siblings) if they really understood why she danced a chicken abortion in an empty swimming pool at university.

In Onstage Dating, her co-performer is a date chosen from the audience. She describes it as “a romantic comedy with weird performance art bits.”

Bron Batten and date. "Onstage Dating". Photo by Theresa Harrison

I saw her first date/show and it’s that and more. It’s every hope and fear you have while dating with the bonus of connecting with other people who make that same dating sigh. Or laugh. Or eye roll. And there’s a sexy bee suit and an apple.

She explains that “it’s not just about online dating. It’s about the vulnerability of meeting someone for the first time. Or the vulnerability to say, I want romance or sex or partnership or companionship … I wanted to capture the expectations and stress of meeting a stranger for a date.”

It’s also about becoming invested in the date. Even knowing that their romance is almost certain not to happen, audiences want the date to go well. We want a happy ending. At least I do.

Batten rolls her eyes when I tell her that I still want to watch a stranger fall for her on stage.

She then tells me she’s been on two second dates following shows.

Neither resulted in a third date.

I can understand if she’s getting cynical about it all until I ask what struck her the most about going on those 60 IRL dates. She says, “hopefulness”.

Theatrically the show captures the hope and vulnerability of showing up and not knowing what to expect. “I don't know what they're going to be like. Are they going to be nice to me? Are they going to be a dick? Are they going to be sweet? What's going to happen? So that feeling that happens in real life is still in the show and the audience recognises that.”

She also has a story about meeting someone on those IRL dates but “that’s the next show”.

Bron Batten and date. "Onstage Dating". Photo by Theresa Harrison

On stage, she’s dated straight, queer, single and partnered men and women, but she thinks that it’s become more about how men behave with women than about the vulnerability of dating.

Her audiences are often mostly women and “there’s a sense of recognition when we share the bad behaviour.” But “it’s not a show that accuses men. It gives them space to be better. It’s just really disappointing when they fuck that up.”

She tells the story of one who fucked up.

“He was very tall, a Disney-prince-type dude with a blue linen shirt, beige pants and boat shoes with no socks – you know that guy. Really tall. Not terribly smart. He came with a whole bunch of friends and I was sort of playing to the friends. I realised that he wasn't very clever, and he sort of clocked that I was making a bit of fun of him. When we were playing Twister [spoiler, her dates play Twister with her], my eyes were at crotch level and he hit me in the face with his cock – on stage. Like a little thrust. Like a little kind of reminder about ‘Hey I’m in charge; know your place’. Like it was it was deliberate smacking me in the face with his dick and I had to make a decision at that point about what to do as a performer and also as a woman.

“Do I call him out? Do I risk turning the audience?

“I am so shocked as well, but I didn't know what to do. So, I let it go. Let’s just get to the end of the show.

“And then, when I took him to the couch and got him to take his shoes off, underneath his oh-so-casual boat shoes he was wearing tiiiiiiiiiiiiiiny little sockets.”

She says the audience snorted with laughter as much as I did at this revelation.

“I was like ‘What are those Michael?’ And I was like ‘I’ve got you, I’ve fucking got you’.

“I did a couple of minutes on his socks. ‘I’m going to tell stories about you.’ The audience were pissing themselves and then he turned. He got really angry and I thought of that Margaret Atwood quote that women are afraid men will kill them and men are afraid women will laugh at them.

“I ridiculed him publicly and that was the worst thing that I could ever do. To my kind of shame, I spent the rest of the show trying to get him back on board because performatively, you know …”

There have been others who behave badly. Like the one in country NSW who acted like he “didn't want to be anywhere near me and the audience were laughing at that, saying ‘ha ha ha’ isn’t that funny when he acts rudely towards this woman”.

“By the end of that tour, I was like: all the guy has to do to win the show is to be a basic human being. Just be basically humanly decent. To not be a dick. You know the joke about a male feminist who walks into a bar because it was set so low. All you have to do is to be a nice human being and it’s amazing how many times the participant fails.

“That’s when I started to realise that this was about more than dating. It was about men’s behaviour in public on dates, in private taking up space … weather they’re ok being in my space or weather they try and claim it back aggressively or by trying to neg me or by trying to make jokes at my expense or at the show’s expense because they’re uncomfortable.

“For a lot of men that’s a very unfamiliar feeling to be in the space and to not know what’s going on, to not feel in charge of it and to not feel entitled to be the centre of it.”

Maybe I don’t want any of these men to fall in love with her. My fantasy of the wonderful story now as flat as the dregs of my beer.

I ask what she does do in real life when it happens?

“Umm … I don't know.

“I’d like to say like to say that I always call them on it, but I don’t. But I think as I get older I’m getting better at it. Calling out shit behaviour is really hard. It’s the hardest.”

I ask why she thinks we still put up with bad behaviour. I’m older than she is and I still put up with it.

We’ve “got this patriarchal structure that tells us that we're wrong all the time and that we're hysterical or we get what we deserve. The ultimate goal in life is to find a partner, right, so you have to suffer whatever. There is a myriad of answers: societal, structural, personal.

“Because it is hard to value yourself.”

We know why we sigh. So, I ask how many men “win” at the show.

“Between 85 and 90 percent.” A much better hit rate than I expected.

“I want them to win. The show’s not about humiliating, it’s the opposite; I always want to make the guy the hero.” She explains how the audience usually clock very early if “the guy’s a jerk” and they mostly don’t let him get away with it.

“I had a guy in Edinburgh who was a big masculine kind of ‘hey’ type dude. Very basic.” He had 80 people boo him for trying to humiliate her. “He was really shocked … so, I was like ‘Give him a go’ and I said to him, ‘See, in the biz, this is what we call turning the crowd.’ … and he spent the rest of the show trying to make up the ground that he’d lost.”

So even the dud dates can come around.

Bron Batten and date. "Onstage Dating". Photo by Theresa Harrison

As we keep talking about dating and the show, she has more positive than negative stories.
Like the “bloke-y tech” who told her that he’d been thinking about the show and how he and his friends talk about and interact with women.

And the guy who talked very lovingly about his mum on stage without knowing that a friend was recording it. And his mum saw it.

And her receiving “this incredible letter” from a date who said, “I didn’t intend to talk about that on stage, but you made me feel so safe and it’s really shifted something in me and I feel like I’ve let it go so thank you for giving me that opportunity”.

And one of Batten’s friend’s telling her that the show inspired her to date again.

And Batten telling me how she can have an opinion of someone and how quickly it changes. “It only takes 40 minutes for them to open up and say things and be silly and construct this kind of fantasy with me.”

I ask if she’s still dating in real life. She laughs with the sigh this time. “That connection is so rare, and people keep looking for it.”

Which is one reason why Onstage Dating is still popular and touring. We keep looking. The two of us share meeting stories we’ve seen. She has a friend who fell in love with the first person they chatted to online, and one who saw someone in the crowd from the stage. I’d recently been to a wedding of a friend who met his husband on a train on a holiday. It happens. Wonderful stories happen.

I still want it to happen for me. And for Bron. I want to tell the story about seeing two strangers falling in love on stage in a performance art show about dating. Or hear about a couple who went on their first date to this show or went by themselves and started talking to the stranger they sat next to.

“Maybe this time, Anne-Marie. Maybe this time,” says Batten as she gets up to leave.

And we should have left together so that the bartender had a good story to tell about the mid-afternoon Tinder date he watched.

Review: Matriarch

YIRRAMBOI
Matriarch
Jinda Productions
7 May 2019
The Butterfly Club
to 11 May
yirramboi.net.au

Sandy Greenwood

Sandy Greenwood wrote her honours thesis about the intergenerational trauma of the Stolen Generations. She understood it, but it didn't help her own trauma.

Greenwood tells her story in Matriarch. It's a story that is inseparable from those of her mother, grandmother (Nan) and great grandmother on her father's side (Gran).

She's a Gumbaynggirr woman from Bowraville on the mid-north-coast of NSW. It's a town that had an Aboriginal Christian mission, where Greenwood was brought up in the 1980s. It's also a town that once had a white pub and black pub, segregated its cinema, was a stop on the 1965 Freedom Ride and is remembered for the unsolved murder of two Aboriginal children in the 1990s.

But Greenwood's matriarchal story doesn't begin or end with the past and the ongoing disrespect and trauma facing the Indigenous people who live there. Her story is one of family and love. It's one of teenagers going on dates, of getting your mum and gran to help heal a bird's broken wing, of bath time for 14 children, of kids growing up and playing in the bush. It's about knowing that mums and nans are always there even if you don't know why they behave in the ways that they do. And it's one about learning that there's love and healing in clan and country even if you've got your dad's skin-colour gene.

Greenwood knew at a young age that having white skin gave her an unearned advantage. Matriarch is her story about understanding the women who created her and a way for those women to talk to us today and let their story become ours.

I've never been to Bowraville, but seeing their stories in an alternative cabaret venue in the middle of the city I live in makes it a story that belongs to everyone who sees it. It's so far from my story, but it's a story about women and family and the history of the country I was born in.

Greenwood tells her story and her mum's story and channels those of her grandmother and great mother. Stories are how we begin to understand experiences that aren't our own. Matriarch is a story about healing trauma.

Greenwood's Nan had 14 children. When her husband left her, she left the city and went back to her country where Gran (who was also a traditional midwife) helped her look after the children. They were all loved, fed, clothed and went to school. They were all taken away.

MICF: I Have A Face – Jude Perl

MICF
I Have A Face
Jude Perl 
The Butterfly Club
14 April 2019
The Butterfly Club
to 21 April
comedyfestival.com.au

Jude Perl

Jude Perl's I Have a Face won the 2018 Best Cabaret at the Melbourne Fringe and has been winning Green Room awards since 2016. This was the first time I've finally been able to see her do a full show.

It wasn't a show that wanted a review this festival, but of all the musical comedy I've seen recently hers are the songs I've been singing to myself all week.

I loved it. Her work is personal and vulnerable and questions so many of the ridiculous expectations about femininity and sexuality that face women every day. I'm saving the review up for her next show.

MICF: Garbage Monster – Alice Tovey

MICF
Garbage Monster
Alice Tovey 
Hot Mess Productions and The Butterfly Club
18 April 2019
The Butterfly Club
to 21 April
comedyfestival.com.au

Alice Tovey

One day, singer and feminist super hero Alice Tovey and her music director feminist super hero Ned Dixon will have to move to huge theatres. But this weekend they are still in the kitsch heaven of The Butterfly Club where you can see the stage and have a cocktail.

Garbage Monster is about what we don't put in the bin, what we keep next to the bin, what we recycle and what we leave festering at the bottom because we don't use plastic bin bags to get the slimy gross stuff out of our lives.

Alice begins her bin dive with an outfit made from bright-orange plastic temporary safety-fencing, but this is far from a safe show.

First to be dropped are some of those celebrities – mostly men, but this is a genuinely equal show – whose repulsive behaviour and ideas have ruined some of our favourite films and tv shows*. IN THE BIN they go.

Then she makes room for the people who think they know her and somehow think that their opinion of her matters. They may STFU and get IN THE BIN as Alice sings about the "lies" women tell and how, maybe, performers really do perform on stage.

But that's just the beginning. It's easy to dump people we don't know. It's harder to squish down the rubbish and make room for people we know, even if they treat us like they found us in a bin. We all know someone who has stayed in a damaging relationship. Alice has. I have. And we're certainly not the only ones. Getting them in the bin is the first step. Then comes the work or keeping them in there and making sure that bin goes out on bin night.

And that's before we rubbish ourselves. We may claim to be totally ok with our bodies but still spend far too much of our time trying to change things that will never change and wearing a '"shame bra" that's too far too tight. It really feels great to stop apologising for everything, wear comfy underwear and know that there's room in the bin for anything that belongs there.

Alice has a voice that should echo in the souls of anyone who rubbish others. And Garbage Monster's mix of theme, personal story and zeitgeist anger is the perfect mix to make the kind of compost that's guaranteed to turn shit into stuff that makes everything thrive.

*And theatre. The famous actor isn't alone in the bin.

MICF: Nerds are Sexy – PickUp

MICF
Nerds are Sexy
PickUp
The Butterfly Club
14 April 2019
The Butterfly Club
to 21 April
comedyfestival.com.au

PickUp

Nerds are Sexy. Derr!

What's not hot about someone who enthusiastically shares their passion and is prepared to really know – really know – how to do something really well.

Rock's also sexy.

And the combination of both can be too much!

Alia Vryens and Colin Craig have no shame in being nerds. Nor in being positive and enthusiastic about sexuality and about having sex. Last year, their first full-length show was about their polyamorous relationship and welcomed questions from the audience. They've since toured to festivals and host and curate the semi-regular Funny Music Mondays at The Butterfly Club, where Melbourne's best cabaret artists try out new work or simply let loose and be funny.

There's no wrong way to nerd. If you play games on tables or online with many stranger, love cosplay, can explain D&D or have watched every episode of Dr Who (and read all the books, listed to the audio series and judge your friends based on their opinion of Russell T Davies), you'll be with your tribe – and maybe get the chance to talk about your own glorious obsessions.

They also rock with songs about the likes of pinball, getting dumped by your Dragon Age boyfriend, and why women's armour doesn't cover their boobs.  And if you think it's all about Colin and his guitar, you haven't seen Alia with her ukulele.

But don't worry if you're not a nerd. Come on, who are you kidding? You're reading a nerdy theatre blog. You're one of us.

PickUp are creating a wonderful on-stage relationship as they decide which one of them is really sexier and smarter. I'm looking forward to seeing how their stage story develops and grows, especially as they are beginning to find a loyal audience who are going to obsessively love them a bit too much.

MICF: Poopie Tum Tums – Honor Wolff, Patrick Durnan Silva

MICF
Poopie Tum Tums
Honor Wolff and Patrick Durnan Silva
The Very Good Looking Initiative and The Butterfly Club
13 April 2019
The Butterfly Club
To 21 April
comedyfestival.com.au

Honor Wolff and Patrick Durnan Silva

My review is in Time Out.

MICF: Woman of the Hour – Sophie Joske

MICF
Woman of the Hour
Sophie Joske
The Butterfly Club
3 April 2019
The Butterfly Club
to 11 April
comedyfestival.com.au

Sophie Joske

Last MICF, Sophie Joske was nominated for the Golden Gibbo , with Anna Piper Scott,  for Almost Lesbians. She's back with Woman of the Hour: an original solo work (directed by Anna Lehmann Thomson) where she performers 35 characters.

She describes the show as "the demented love child of Grey Gardens and Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? raised by a queer feminist" – and I can't do better. Her queer feminist exploration of expectations of beauty, conformity and fame begins with a story about stardom.

Cassandra Barbitoll is an ageing star who's never not performing. With her silent-screen make-up, a velvet turban and a floral velvet day jacket, it's easy to imagine the stage as a black-and-white screen with a scratchy soundtrack. But Cassandra wears purple, green and red and never liked ideas that were back and white – even when she went along with them.

When she was Baby Sandy, being a star was easy; she was gorgeous and fitted all the artificial parameters of gorgeous. She became an advertising star and her mum taught her how to avoid gravity and crows feet from birth. Being pretty worked well for her, until puberty struck. But there are still parts for not-so-pretty women. And if you know you're a star, you KNOW you're a star.

Cassanda is every woman working in an industry that has loved her too much, hated her too much and been oblivious to her existence. She's the women who are put on pedestals and loved, or hated, for being something that they are not. And all the people who support them and knock them down along the way.

Woman of the Hour is a fresh and complex look at an ongoing issue. Structured and paced to let the laughs come easily, the genuine questioning of each laugh feels natural, all 35 characters are unforgettable, and I've never seen such an accurate and moving portrayal of facial hair facing imminent death. 

MICF: Ovariacting, A Period Drama – Jamie Boiskin

MICF
Ovariacting: A Period Drama
Jamie Boiskin
The Butterfly Club
3 April 2019
The Butterfly Club
to 7 April
comedyfestival.com.au

Jamie Boiskin

Ever walked into someone's bathroom to see the sink filled with underwear soaking in reddy brown water with a few clots on the surface?

That face you're making. Hold it and look in a mirror. At 23, Jamie Boiskin's had enough of people making "that face" and has taken on the role of being a menstrual activist. And activism is always best in the form of musical cabaret.

Why are women's menstrual cycles still such taboo? My mother called pads "unmentionalbles" when I got my first period. Is there anyone who menstruates who doesn't have at least one humiliating memory of bleeding all over something. And why do women still make that face? It's not like most of us haven't wiped a splatter of blood off the wall when we've removed a tampon or cup and know  the routine of "rinse in cold water, Sard's Wonder Soap, soak".

Jamie's had enough of it. She also has endometriosis and polycystic ovarian syndrome. That means bleeding for weeks instead of days. And pain*. She talks about the pain, but she's describing it in ways that make people feel comfortable. Her angry uterus's ovaries covered in cysts are are what got me. Even if the cysts are fluffy pink pompoms and her uterus is Alice Albon.

She's also joined by Louise Cumming as a giant emergency tampon and her musical director Thomas Bradford on the piano, who stands in for all men as he becomes a proud menstrual activist.

Jamie mixes her personal story with that of all of us – even if you don't menstruate, you spent a few months in a uterus. With jam, red paint, song and dance, she talks about condescending  gynecologists who are no help, has a Bunnings colour chart for discharge, brings originality to the obligatory "if men had periods" jokes, and touches on issues like what happens when you can't afford or access hygiene products.

It's time to be angry. It's time to make a song and dance about menstruation and make discussions about periods as natural as menstrual cycles. Imagine walking to the bathroom at work without hiding your "product". Imagine going to the loo at a friend's house and not having to think about flushing a tampon because there isn't a bin. Imagine girls in third world countries not dropping out of school because of menstrual shame. Imagine women not getting ill and dying from infections because their hygiene isn't a priority.

I wish I'd seen a show like this when I was a teenager.

And don't get me started about why we don't talk about perimenopause.


*I can't describe the pain of endometriosis; I don't have it. I suspect it's like the worst period cramps and then some. I once tried to describe cramps to a male friend who thought my telling him I was in pain was a joke. Imagine a hand gently cupping your karen's handful (Hannah Gadsby's suggested name if testicles had been named by women); it feels ok, but the anticipation of what could happen is constant. Now, imagine the pressure of that grip slowly increasing. It goes from "I could enjoy this in the right consensual space" to "Ok, that's enough" to "Stop" to "FFS, stop!" to looking around because you feel like you're going to pass out. Then the pressure releases and the still-painful stages back to gentle cupping are a relief. Then the pressure starts again. Now move that pain a few inches up and in.