Review: FOLA, Unknown Neighbours

Unknown Neighbours
Ranters Theatre, Creative VaQi, Theatre Works
15 March 2018
St Kilda
to 18 March
fola.com.au

Soo-Yeon Sung . Photo by Andrew Bott

Developed by Melbourne's Ranters Theatre and Seoul's Creative VaQi over four years, Unknown Neighbours is somewhere between a walking meditation and sticky-beaking in stranger's houses and a stranger's head.

Four actors, from both companies, stayed in a house when the owners were away and were left to create. The experience begins at one of the houses; you get the address when you book.

In an Acland Street house – one that no one I know could ever afford – Korean actor Soo-Yeon Sung uses a hand-help projector to Google translate her thoughts about the house, the woman who owns it and how the plants in the garden know that they are loved.

While the house is clean and decluttered enough to be ready for an open real estate inspection, it's hard to hide personality. Still, the heart of the experience is about getting to know Soo-Yeon far more than getting to know who lives there. (Our group  knew that we had the people who lived in the house with us, which made the option of snooping and discovering awkward.)

And this is only part one work.

Next, we followed the performer down one of those streets that's so old-school St Kilda that it's possible to forget just how many chain stores are now open in the malled-up part of Acland Street or that renting here is now so expensive that the groovy people have moved to the burbs. There's the Secret Life of Us exterior block, 1940's deco apartments with round windows and dark staircases, 1970's brick boxes that are hideous on the outside and gloriously huge on the inside, and slick new buildings that blend so well that you have to actively notice them. Or it's walking to the next venue. Or stomping along and feeling a bit sad because you moved to the burbs.

So much of this work is the choice to make your own story. Or listen to the people around you; the things I heard about an actor!

The four house-groups meet in the park by the adventure playground that St Kilda people know about – that's now safe and less adventury. As the sun sets, we can see buildings built in the nineteenth century, and five performers ( I don't know how they were shared among the houses) gather in front of a tent.

There's a guitar, wind chimes and a dog.

I repeat, there's a dog.

On the way back to Theatre Works – there is a lot of walking –, a little girl waves from the window of a 1970s brick box. She seems shocked that only a couple people notice her.

After a quick trip through Anglican church built in the 1850s, it's time to sit in the theatre and watch as the pieces of the last couple of hours float into place and. And the dog totally stole the show.

Review: FOLA, Worktable

Festival of Live Art
14 March 2018
Arts House
to 25 March
fola.com.au 

It's the third biennial Festival of Live Art (FOLA) with events at curated by Arts House, Theatre Works and  Footscray Community Arts Centre, and new event partners West Space, Temperance Hall and The Substation.

I love live art. It's hard to define. For me it is art where the audience create the work with the artist and the experience is more personal than collective. It's about breaking down that wall between artist and participant, and maybe out a little bit about yourself in the process.

Live art can be as challenging as it is welcoming. I've been naked, I've walked the St Kilda and stuck labels on strangers, I've got into bed with Yana Alana, I've been in a bath in a shop window, I've danced with strangers – I'm down with the live art experiences. But I'm not twerking, wearing a onsie or hugging a stranger – which cut out a chunk of the week one program for me. That thing about finding out things about yourself...

The Arts House program isn't as busy as in past years. There's a new bar to hang out in – and they sell toasties – but aren't smaller shows or exhibitions to experience while waiting for your next show. This leaves it feeling a bit empty. So much of live art is sharing your personal experience with other people.

Worktable
Kate McIntosh

Worktable is a live and growing installation that each participant helps to create. The creation starts with the choice to destroy. I want to do it again. And again.

The initial experience is individual and private, but it expands to include people who are there with you and all those who have been through before.

And, even if you try not to notice, it'll show you so much about yourself.

Step one: Choose an object from shelves that look like an outer-suburban op shop. There's crockery, handbags, toys, typewriters, books and even a packet of cigarettes (not from an op shop). You choose your object based on knowing you will be taking it apart.

I chose a film camera. It was from the 70s or 80s and I would never have been able to afford it.

Step two: Go alone into a room with your object. This is where you know why you signed a release before starting because there's tool-lovers wet dream laid out and begging to be used. Teeny screwdrivers, a vice, hammers and enough safety equipment to know that you CAN smash and not bleed.

But I wasn't going to smash – I could hear people smashing in other rooms. I started finding every tiny screw and undoing it. This went on for a while and I needed the vice to hold it still as I found the cogs and wheels and connection that I could see and understand.

But this was so well made that 20 minutes in, I still had no idea how the focus-puller worked.

It was then that I looked at the choice of hammers, chose the rubber mallet, put on some goggles and  smashed it. Tried to smash it. This camera wasn't coming apart. I put it in the vice and broke a pair of pliers trying to pull it open. I used a metal hammer and made indentations in the wooden work surface because this beast still wouldn't yield its secrets.

And before I could keep going, it was time to move into the next space with my box of broken bits.

Step three: Put your object down, choose another box of broken, sit at a fully-stocked craft table – I love a craft table – and put it back together in any way that you want.

I found a smashed gold and orange tea pot. I chose it because I'd looked at it outside and knew that I couldn't break it because I might have bought it if I'd seen it at the op shop.

I sat at a table by myself and tried to put this broken-beyond-repair, no-longer-wanted, cheaply-made, not-at-all-significant, maybe-once-loved object back together. Maybe I should do the hugging a stranger one, wearing a onsie?

I gave up on glue and used sticky tape (and because the glue was getting mixed with the smear of my blood that I didn't notice until I was trying to put white sides together).

Other people made new objects from their chosen pieces. There was an amazing pink head piece – "It's very Machine Dazzle" someone said; we all got the reference – and a doll made from a paint brush. People sat together and chatted as they made something new.

I only got up and talked because I had to be at another show and couldn't stay any longer. If I wasn't time restricted, I wouldn't have left until I'd somehow stuck that tea pot back together.

Step four: place your new object with all the others that have been made earlier.

FOLA: Blind

Festival of Live Art
Blind
Duda Paiva Co, Black Hole Theatre, Theatre Works
9 March
Theatre Works
to 19 March
theatreworks.org.au

Duda Paiva. Photo by Patrick Argirakis

FOLA is over but this extraordinarily beautiful Blind is still on at Theatre Works until the weekend.

My review is at The Age/SMH.

FOLA: Hotel Obscura

FESTIVAL OF LIVE ART
Hotel Obscura
3 March 2016
Secret hotel
to 5 March
fola.com.au

Love Bank at Hotel Obscura

Hotel Obscura was two hours and six Live Art experiences, three as a group of 12 strangers-cum-friends, three as one-on-one experiences with artists. There were 12 individual experiences, so the other 9 could only be experienced by talking to the people who did them in the final group get together. The utter joy of this last experience was realising that it wasn't disappointing to miss some because it was possibly more fascinating to hear how people described them.

My review is at The Age/SMH.

PS. My favourite experience was Love Bank, where Caroyln Hanna leads you through a room (with an amazing view) to find your memories of love. From despair to desire, it was a remarkably exposing experience that's done without ever being made to feel exposed.

FOLA: Arts House Ticket

FESTIVAL OF LIVE ART
Opening night at Arts House
2 March 2016
Arts House
to 13 March
fola.com.au

FOLA. Casey Jenkins. Photo by Justin McManus

The North Melbourne Town Hall is full of Live Art experiences. Buy a ticket to get in and you can curate your own experience. I recommend using the full six hours because I missed too much in my 4-ish hours.

And I'd love to go back every day to see Bron Batten go on another date. I so want a wonderful stranger to fall in love with her on stage, and for her to fall in love back, but then maybe she couldn't make her amazing, existential-dilemma-driven theatre.

My review at the The Age/SMH.

What Melbourne loved in 2014, part 9

And with Bon Batten, Rhys Auteri and me, it's time to farewell Melbourne's favourite moments for 2014.

What I Loved in 2014 will be up on Monday.

Bron Batten
I don't know how to describe what she does, but it's fucking awesome

Bron: There was heaps of stuff I loved this year (contrary to the popular belief that I hate everything), Green Screen as a part of Neon, Oedipus Schmoedipus at Belvoir, Calpurnia Descending  at The Malthouse and Have I No Mouth at the Melbourne Festival.

Credible, Likeable, Superstar, Role model at Theatre Works was bloody astounding and I left the show feeling like I'd been kicked in the chest. Touching, funny, real and relevant.

Other good stuff was Tessa Waters's Womanz, Trygve Wakenshaw’s Kraken at Melbourne International Comedy Festival, Dr Professor Neal Portenza makes me laugh a lot and watching Adrienne Truscott's Asking for It and Zoe Coombs Marr's remount of Dave kicking the comedy world in the balls.

And witnessing a small, balding David Sedaris sell out Hamer Hall by literally reading from an A4 piece of paper made me really happy because you just can't predict what people are going to like.

SM: There was the anaconda at Last Tuesday Society's YouTube Comment Orchestra, the look on her face when I told her that I liked Marzo, but it has to be the moment in the Use Your Illusion (NO, not "that" moment) when we realised that the hypnotist was an actor.

Rhys Auteri
writer, musician, possum

Rhys: I wrote a first draft of this and it was far too long, going into too many shows – even after seeing under 50 shows for the year, my lowest attendance for many years. As such, I’ve heard of at least half a dozen shows that sounded like I missed something special, but oh well.

Sisters Grimm’s Calpurnia Descending  again made me suspect that they write their scripts in bold and underline, possibly scrawled in lipstick and adorned with stickers. Hilarious and razor sharp, clever, it indulged in its own delightful vacuity to find surprising moments of emotion and revelation. Its use of live video and other media was brilliantly executed and helped the Sisters Grimm continue to develop the theatricality of their work to match their pointed writing and perfectly over-pitched performances. The image of Paul Capsis climbing a staircase to nowhere, draped in a green screen of lost possibilities was mesmerising.

My highlight of the Melbourne Festival was Circa’s fantastic Opus. Their ability to transform the skills of circus into a touching and vast language of dance was revelatory and brought an array of new ideas to an ancient craft. There were lots of tumbles and lifting and jumping, but these spectacles of strength were presented not for their own sake but pitted towards a higher visual aesthetic of movement. Basically I felt pretty fat and unfit after watching this – I’m not entirely sure this wasn’t their whole plan.

Nicola Gunn once again delighted with Green Screen – playful, engaging, maddening, confusing and crystal clear all at once. Gunn is fearless in her exploration and use of theatrical language to say what cannot be put merely into words. A teacher of mine once commented that great theatre was like a dream, an intense unforgettable experience that nonetheless proves difficult to explain to those who were not present. The image of Gunn riding a slowly deflating thrown of air mattresses seemed at once courageous, ridiculous and omnipotent.

I was fortunate enough to catch Jono Wants a Wife at the Fringe. It was an unassuming piece that really delivered. Jonathan Burns’s confessional solo piece gave a rare glimpse of the vulnerable male journeying from awkward adolescence to heartbreak and often self-loathing – romantic, inept, confused, ashamed and predatory. The woman I saw it with found it a revelatory insight into the male of the species:  “I didn’t realise that men think like that” (or something to that effect). It was a brave, warts-and-all performance, perfect “poor theatre” storytelling.

Melbourne favourites Blue Grassy Knoll premiered their new score to Buster Keaton’s The General. Their ability to transform the crowd into a raucous mess of cheers and boos transport you back to the days and spirit of silent cinema. If you think you might like to get into Keaton – this is the way to do it.

And finally, I caught a few hours of the 52 hours straight improfest that was Little Soap on the Prairie. This completely improvised durational saga featured fantastic character work and storytelling that ran the gamut from absurd and silly to heartbreaking and poignant. It’s easy to dismiss a work like this as somehow “lesser” than similar durational works by “serious” theatre groups like Lone Twin, Forced Entertainment or Nature Theatre of Oklahoma. But this was not merely an exercise of self-indulgent theatre games. The ability of the performers to plumb the depths of fascinating characters, while creating an epic and engaging story was pretty magical. I will always remember the murder of Constance (played by Jenny Lovell) in the final hours of the show. As her murderer crept towards her – hands outstretched to make a gun - you could sense the tension in the performers and the audience. There were actual gasps as the murderer shouted ‘bang, bang’ and pulled the trigger. This moment was about as simple as playing on stage gets, yet it was one of the most powerful things I witnessed this year.

Other shows I loved this year included Therese Raquin, Applespiel Make a Band and Take on the Recording Industry, The Government Inspector, Neighbourhood Watch, Single White Slut, Sex Idiot and Marzo.

SM: The first time the possum hissed in Bucket's List.

Anne-Marie Peard
writer

Photo by Sarah Collins

A-M: Some of my favourite moments this year were in Live Art experiences. There was the small group experience of Yana Alana snuggling into my chest, with six of us on her bed, in In Bed With Yana Alana; asking a stranger if I could stick a label on her and take her photo in Take the Call;  the unexpected joy of making a band with Sam Halmarack & the Miserablites; and writing a very bad poem in bed with my cat for A Day Like Every Other.

But the one I'll never forget is The Rest is Silence: the 4 am encounter at The 24-Hour Experience. I wasn't well and I was so close to going home at 5 pm, but I wanted to go to the forensic morgue. There were no actors: it was just the staff running through what they do when a body comes into the Homicide Room (crime and accident victims) and then showing us how they harvest tissue. And the staff then sat and talked to some of us – at 5 am – about their jobs. It was the most real, fascinating and honest encounter I had seeing arts events this year.

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FOLA: Make the call

FOLA
Make the Call
zin
26 April 2014
St Kilda, near Theatre Works
fola.com.au

It started sitting on a bench waiting for a phone call.

It ended sitting in a park with a kangaroo.

It was brilliant.

Click on the pic to see it big.

The 24-Hour Experience, part 5

 FOLA

24-Hour Experience

29–30 March 2014

24hourexperience.com.au

I went home after the morgue. I sent a goodnight tweet to those still going at 7 am and woke up at midday as they were starting the final picnic.

I went home because I was meant to be at Comedy Festival shows that night. I didn't make them and I wish that I'd gone though. I don't know if I would have made it, but I know I missed some great stuff.

Here are Ali Alexander's pics.

Would I do it again? Hell yes!

Finally, there were lots of artists involved in creating the Experience and all the 24 works. Please visit 24hourexperience.com.au to see who they were. And, on behalf of all of us who loved this experience, the final thank you must go to the volunteers who looked after us. 

Hour #18 The Culture of Forgetting 5 am

Hour #19 Inheritance 6 am

Hour #20 A Day And A Night 7 am

Hour #21 Confessional 8 am

Hour #22 Random Choir of Mutual Wonder 9 am

Hour #23 How TV Makes Our Lives Exciting 10 am

Hour #24  Tell Me What You're Really Thinking 11 am

Hour #25 Picnic 12 pm

These three did all 24+ hours without a break. 

The 24-Hour Experience, part 4

FOLA

24-Hour Experience

29–30 March 2014

24hourexperience.com.au

The lead up to 1 am gave us time to lie on bean bags and seats in the Federation Square atrium, be grateful for chocolate and wish we'd nicked some wine from dinner. It was good for us who were getting sleepy, but was a bit of a downer for the new starters. My favourite bit was a teenage girl, who was out for drinks, asking me what drugs we were taking to do this. She didn't believe that it was just chocolate and adrenalin.

But it was nearly time for an underground adventure that promised a hardhat and the use of torches because we were going to something called The Trench!

Hour #14 Under the City 1 am

Photo by Ali Alexander

The sound and video installation in the "trench" was beautiful. It was about drains through the city  – water and sewerage – and the people who work in them. The calming soundscape of water echoed and bounced off the walls of the large concrete room, but it wasn't a trench. It was a large room, a couple of flights of stairs down where we didn't get hardhats or need our torches. It's so wrong to be disappointed by something that was really good, but we were tired and excited about going into an underground trench. 

Hour #15 Beaufort Wind Lounge 2 am

This was a two-parter. While half of the group went into a wind tunnel installation in BMW Edge (no pics, but it was very lovely), the others sat in bean bags and were served green tea and Japanese treats.

The tea ceremony didn't start well because we upset the artists by moving all of their placed-for-the-piece-to-work bean bags. But we moved them back and understood that they they were in small groups so that everyone could have a very beautiful and intimate sung tea-pouring ceremony. Which then proceeded to prove that the world is split into two groups: those who like squidgy, flaccid, sweet-but-savoury Japanese desserts (like me) and those who don't (I had an extra one to make up for them).

And 2 am may be the strangest hour. Adrenalin is both running out and kicking in. It's an hour for activity and laughter rather than gentle contemplation. 

Hour #16 Theatre Is My S(k)in 3 am

No pics for this one. We were crowded into one of the gallery spaces in the atrium and listened to an artist who has worked as a stripper and lap dancer. 

Her story was genuine and fascinating, but there seemed a sense of disbelief that no one was terribly shocked by it. The time of night was spot on but, even though I understand putting it in a posh art space, the story didn't connect to the space.

But we got whiskey. And I have never enjoyed a whiskey more than I did then.

Hour #17 The Rest is Silence 4 am

This was what we'd been waiting for. 4am. It was time to go the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine and the Donor Tissue Bank. We were walking through the back streets of Southbank to go to a morgue!

This was the event that drew the most people to the Experience with more people joining us on four-hour tickets. The staff who met us there were astonished at how many people turned up.

Out of respect to the place, we were asked to make it no-photo zone.

This wasn't a performance. The staff who work there ran through what they do when a body comes into the Homicide Room (this is where crime and accident victims are brought), then took us through the Tissue Donor Bank (where human tissue is collected and stored).

For all the marvellous concepts and artists and everything else wonderful about this experience, this was my highlight.

It was just like a crime TV show, but so much better. We stood behind a glass wall looking into the room where bodies are assessed and post mortems are carried out. The staff wear wellies, it's sterile like an operating theatre but there are lots of knives and hoses.

The staff wheeled in an empty gurney and assessed the 'body'. This included a forensic pathologist coming in after being at the opera and another member of staff calling the family to ask about tissue donation. It wasn't gruesome and there was never a moment when the 'body' wasn't treated with respect. 

Next we had to put on the sterile gowns, shower caps and booties (putting the booties on at 4.30 am was a real test) and it was into the Tissue Donor Bank where we saw frozen skin and powdered bone and were allowed to ask anything.

Even though I have tissue donor ticked on my drivers license, I had no idea what it meant. While organ donation has to come from a live (brain dead) patient, tissue (skin, heart valves and bone) can be collected up to 24 hours after death.

Burns patients need hundreds of skin grafts. People having orthopedic surgery need extra bone. Heart valves go to people having heart surgery.

If any of my family and friends ever have to wonder, I am a donor. I have no concerns about what happens to my body after I die and hope that it can be put to as many good uses as possible. 

Some of us stayed longer and talked to the staff about their experience of working there and of having a large group of enthusiastic and over-tired arts-goers coming to see them at 4 am. They also asked us about our experience and best answer was: "I expected it to be about death, but it was all about life".

The 24-Hour Experience, part 3

FOLA

24-Hour Experience

29–30 March 2014

24hourexperience.com.au

Hour #10 Australian Gothic 9 pm

Photo by Ali Alexander

Ok, so we're sitting in the old exercise yard at the Watchhouse of the Old Melbourne Goal. This was where many like those-now-mostly-known-from-Underbelly-etc beat the shit out of each other and it hasn't changed since it was closed in the 1990s.

But we were sitting on our portable seats, eating excellent choc top ice creams and watching a film about convicts in Tasmania.

We then went for a wander through the Old Melbourne Gaol cells. This place was closed much earlier (1929), but it's still a place where people were hanged and it's gently creepy wandering about night and looking at it as art.

Hour #11 Tales from the Laneways 10 pm

Photo by Ali Alexander

This was an unexpected continuation of the stories that started in the Elizabeth Street toilets. It was also a non-photo performance; after all, we don't take photos in the theatre.

I thought I knew all of the tiny laneways in the city; I didn't. And, even the most friendly daytime shopping lanes feel very different in the dark.

Here were stories that we don't always want to see. Stories about people from behind dumpsters, in corners that never see a street cleaner and in front of passers by in the middle of the street, but are still ignored or turned away from. Raw and real enough to confuse passers by, the triumph of this work was that it found compassion and hope in the lives of people who don't have much hope.

Although, my favourite moment was a couple coming out of a club and having no idea what they were looking at. I wanted to call out, "Don't worry, it's just middle class white people watching actors pretending to be druggies and calling it art." God, I love this city.

Hour #12 A Band On Every Corner 11 pm

On the approach to this hour, those in for the long haul were considering breaks, coffee and time out. 

But a group of us were caught in front of St Paul's cathedral where exhaustion led to dancing. Except me, I became bag bitch because I was far too tired to dance. 

There were four bands, but I have no idea if two of them were seen by anyone on the Experience. No matter, as they would have been seen by passers by, which is terrific, but proved that Experience performances needed to be focussed.

Hour #13 The Midnight Hour 12 am

Sadly, midnight was the most disappointing hour. What should have been a celebration of halfway, a farewell to the first 12-hourers and a welcome to the next 12-hourers was a bit blah. 

Getting popcorn from a giant piece of popcorn was neat, but the films being shown on the Fed Square screen didn't fit the mood of exhausted excitement and anticipation of the dark hours that were to come. And the group split up, so we couldn't say goodbyes and pop the party poppers we'd been saving since getting our Experience packs some 12 hours earlier.

Photo by Ali Alexander

But we could now start the count down until the morgue visit and the chocolate supplies bought earlier came into their own.

The 24-Hour Experience, part 2

FOLA

24-Hour Experience

29–30 March 2014

24hourexperience.com.au

It turns out that I didn't need to go home after a mere five hours, I just needed some alone time and a pandan bun.

Hour #7 Bathing Beauties 6 pm

This is the show that brought me into the experience of the Experience.

The pool at the gorgeous Melbourne City Baths is old enough to still be measured in feet. We sat wearing headphones in the gallery above the pool and listened to stories about women who swim – the pressure, body shape issues, pain, joy, competition and freedom – while watching women who fit their own images swim: synchronised, racing and pleasure. Place, theme and story merged beautifully and it felt like the stories belonged to the space.

Hour #8 The Catalyst Club 7 pm

Photo by Ali Alexander

The Catalyst Club was formed in 1910 by 19 women who were Melbourne University alumni. They called themselves the Cats and the secret club still meets today. This meeting was performed at the Victoria Room at the Queen Victoria Women’s Centre (so close and yet a world away from QV) and men were allowed to attend.

There were place cards with information about past members, like writer Joan Lindsay, and the performance was a meeting with a paper, a meal and a discussion.

The food was excellent, it had to fuel us for a few hours, and we got to wear cat ears!

Hour #9 Behind the Public Eye 8 pm

photo by Ali Alexander

It's amazing how energy and enthusiasm change when it gets dark, or after some wine and profiteroles.

This work took us into the underground toilets on Elizabeth Street. I've living Melbourne for over 11 years and I've never even noticed them,

Here we saw stories of people who use these toilets, from the desperate to the angelic, and the stories continued above ground.

This was another work that connected space to story emotionally. It was also the beginning of the works (and us) interacting with the public.

Coming up: The Old Melbourne Gaol, laneways and dancing in front of the cathedral.

The 24-Hour Experience, part 1

FOLA
24-Hour Experience
29–30 March 2014
24hourexperience.com.au

It's been more than 24 days since the 24-Hour Experience, the final event of the Festival of Live Art.

My only excuse is that it was in the middle of six weeks of festivals and my tweets tell me exactly how I felt by the hour.

24 hours. 24 shows. A new one every hour in a new location in and around the city.

Designed to explore and reflect on Melbourne's hidden, secret or ignored spaces, the works ranged from earnest to joyous, personal to voyeristic, and already-forgotten to highlight-of-the-year.

I started at noon with the goal to make it to late in the night or at least until 6 pm at the City Baths.

I finally headed home at 5.30 am. I saw 16 shows.

With people on single-show, 4-hour, 12-hour and 24-hour tickets, there were about 50 people doing each experience, with the core group bonding more by the hour. It was like travelling, in that strangers became friends very quickly. And if we go back next year, it'll be a reunion.

Hour #1 Freewheelin' 12 pm

This involved wheelchairs, taking photos and posting to Instagram with iPods that didn't want to play the game. But we met a lovely dog called Lilly on Princes Bridge and her dad took this pic.

Hour #2 The Performance of Everyday 1 pm

Lunch! And our first headphones for the day. We ate while listening to verbatim conversations overheard in another cafe. I so hope they were verbatim because the one about the 40-something woman having laser-eye sex with the 23-year-old man was too wonderful to not be real.

Hour #3 Is there theatre in justice? 2 pm

We're in the old magistrates court as a the barrister prepares for a case. He asks if we think he's a real lawyer or an actor. At 2 am, I looked up and said, "Why didn't we say, 'You're a barrista'?"

Hour #4 The Library of Indestructible Dreams 3 pm

This was my first wow moment and the first one to let me feel the personal connection. It happened in the busy first floor of The State Library.

Earlier in the week, we'd been sent an email asking us to choose a book from the library. I chose an early edition of Winnie The Pooh from the rare books collection. I never expected it to come out and was happy with a Where is the Green Sheep?. 

Green Sheep was waiting for me, but then I saw a plastic bag with my name on it.

It held a 1946 edition of Winnie the Pooh. It wasn't the 1926 one, but it was old and loved and from a time when books were something precious. When I was a child, the paternal side of my family weren't winners, but they gave me books and for that I will always be grateful. Winnie the Pooh was my favourite and one of the first books that I read by myself.

The experience was to follow directions to a spot in the library where two people would meet and read each other a page from their book.

Hour #5 The Guest List 4 pm

photo by Ali Alexander

Finding undeveloped, original Melbourne buildings in the city is always astonishing. This one was in the Lower School House of the Wesley Uniting Church (between Lonsdale and Little Lonsdale streets, where it would have sat a stones throw from the brothels).

The most wonderful part of this performance, by Aaron Pedersen, was that the audience responded when he started talking about the wedding he was attending. He didn't expect the response, but it seemed like it had been written to be exactly like that.

Hour #6 Queerum 5 pm

photo by Ali Alexander

I hit the wall early.  At 5 pm I wanted to go home and had had enough of bloody art and bloody artists. So I didn't go to the installation in a house in Carlton. Instead, I had coffee and a large pandan bun, and headed to Aldi for late-night chocolaty supplies.

Coming up: Bathing Beauties at the City Baths, a cat and quiz dinner, and going into the underground men's toilets.