What Melbourne Loved in 2019, part 5

So today, our federal government dumped the arts ministry.

I'm running out of positive today, then I get this contribution: "A lot of the works that stayed with me explored post-humanism, native peoples self-determination or the post apocalypse; further cementing that theatre is dangerous, vital, conversational and provocative. No wonder funding is drying up, like the creek beds of our planet."

It's easy to give up at the moment, so we need to let artists and theatre makers know that their work makes a difference. Have your say here.

Joshua Ladgrove
Joshua Ladgrove The Wise

Joshua Ladgrove and Frobert selfie

Favourite moments in 2019.
Someone in the front row of my show using their iPhone torch to loudly search through their bag for a lolly, and then try to quietly unwrap said lolly while I stopped the show and watched them the whole time unbeknownst to them; it was very funny.

Looking forward to in 2020.
Creating a new show.

SM: I saw his seminar about bilge pumps (its name changes) at MICF and Melbourne Fringe; it's the only show I saw twice this year. And that wasn't enough. Even when I knew what was coming, he still surprised me. Watching this show is fear clashing with the joy of complete trust that he's going to make everything pay off. And he does. If the world were fair, he'd have his own tv show and be so fucking famous by now that he wouldn't give a toss what bloggers think.

There's a final 2019 showing of Joshua Ladgrove's Award Winning Bilge Pump Show TOMORROW (Friday 6 December).

It's a fundraiser. In order to create new shows, artists need money. It's not like there's funding.

It's at Docklands. This is the ideal place for a bilge pump seminar. (It's at the library, which is actually really groovy.)

You can book here. It may be the best seminar yet.


Carla Donnelly
Broadcaster and critic

Carla Donnelly selfie

Favourite moments in 2019.
2019 has been a year of incredible art for me. Music, film and my beloved theatre. There have  been so many amazing performances that my memories become nested into moments that had my jaw unhinge with tears of disbelief that life could be so beautiful. A lot of the works that stayed with me explored post-humanism, native peoples self-determination or the post apocalypse; further cementing that theatre is dangerous, vital, conversational and provocative. No wonder funding is drying up, like the creek beds of our planet.

Sarah Ward’s alien/rock/monkey space rock opera The Legend of Queen Kong: opera singing MOTHER FUCKER to a baroque harpsichord psychedelic freak out.

Ursula Yovich’s defiant, heartbreaking and vulnerable rock musical Barbara and the Camp Dogs: too many moments to list that had me in tears.

Mr Burns, a post-electric play was an absolute miracle of production, the amount of moving pieces to get right would have been back breaking. Its message of the way humans make meaning and connect, how memory works, and our utter compulsion to tell ourselves and each other through story completely blew me away. The pop medley was the prestige in an already inconceivably incredible independent theatre production.

Emma Hall’s World Problems. A simple conceit – a woman builds a trampoline on stage, with a monologue projected at/to the audience. Emma tells us the story of how ‘you’ let the world die. The mental gymnastics I went through to avoid complicity took me to at least half way through the show before my heart sank and I started to cry realising that it *was* us. We did let the world die.

The Honouring (during Yirramboi) was a work of such tenderness and pain; I am crying now thinking about it. Jack Sheppard’s physical rendering of Indigenous suicide through text, movement and puppetry was staggering. A work that didn’t get enough attention. Nor the festival really; Yirramboi is extraordinary.

Joel Bray’s Daddy (also at Yirramboi) a was another incredible work featuring dance, text and tableaus presented to the audience by following Bray around the room. Joel Bray is filled with rage and hope and love and desire and this was beautifully rendered. It was electrifying.

The Patricia Cornelius/Susie Dee power combo continued to slay with Love: stories, faces and bodies I never see on Melbourne stages. Working class people. Drug dependent people. The traumatised. The vulgar. The aberrant. All lovingly and respectfully brought into focus. I walk away from their shows thinking why do I never see these kinds of stories? Who has the keys?

Them (La Mama) was one of the most profound plays of the year. Mystical in its realisation the perfection of casting, time, place and script. It is truly gifted to make a drama about war deeply funny in places. It had me laughing and sobbing and believing the best in humanity that plays like this can find a stage.

I flew to Sydney to see Adena Jacob’s Titus Andronicus and it did not disappoint. Jane Montgomery-Griffiths was clearly having the time of her life in this role. My moment of the year was Catherine Davies ‘comic relief’ clown smearing shit all up the back of her legs whilst doing a sexy dance. Just when you think things can’t get worse, that happens to you and you wonder how life can get any better?

My last three are the most creative and original of the year. Yay for Canetoads! at Melbourne Fringe  was one of those word-of-mouths gems that I would never have known about. So skillfully wrought with colonialism succinctly expressed through the “white death” of the sugar cane industry. Ordinarily this pun could have been one note or on the nose, but Kendra Keller’s tremendous skill and commitment makes our complicity and embeddedness in this horror felt.

Subliminal Massage at Melbourne Fringe was truly one of the most left field and surreal works I’ve ever experienced. A post (post?) human exploration/celebration/exhibition of the trash bag of western “culture”. Puns, portmanteaus, wellness, white cubes, black screens… This AI hasn’t been updated in a century and his database has festered. Glitched out, hilarious, touching, terrifying… just absolutely fucking mind blowing.

And finally Unwoman by The Rabble. From the fecund idealisation of the function of femininity to Yumi Umiumare's butoh – 50 minutes of screaming and giving birth to rocks in a concrete prison reality. This work truly communicated the female experience. Funny, paternalistic, objectifying, non-agentic, tedious, primal – you name it it was in there. The design was also exceptional.

A deep gratitude to all these artists (and the 60+ other performances I saw this year). The  diversity of skill and talent in this country is staggering, and your work, minds, hearts and bodies make my life worth living.

Looking forward to in 2020.
Seeing Daddy again at Midsumma; Fun Home and Slap.Bang.Kiss at MTC; Grey Arias, Do Not Go Gentle and Loaded at Malthouse;  Asia TOPA.

SM: Carla is another critic who keeps going even when everything seems bleak. And, those earrings!

What Melbourne Loved in 2019, part 2

Today, we hear from some of those artists whose work creates, develops and supports other art and performance in Melbourne.

Here's the form to write your contribution; you get to chose your own photo.

Keith Gow
Playwright and critic
keithgow.com

Some actor & Keith Gow in London. Hello, sweetie.

Favourite moments in 2019.
I was so pleased to see my friend Andi Snelling back on stage in Happy-Go-Wrong telling a deeply personal story about invisible illness, without it feeling at all indulgent – and making an utterly mesmerising, moving piece of theatre.

Some really excellent theatre at Malthouse this year, with Underground Railroad Game, Barbara and the Camp Dogs, My Dearworthy Darling and Australian Realness being utterly superb.

I saw three Arthur Miller plays this year (!), two in London – a bland production of All My Sons and an astonishing mixed-race production of Death of a Salesman – but the best one was by the Melbourne Theatre Company, in its A View from the Bridge.

And some solid, exciting work at Red Stitch this year, too, with Control, Dance Nation and Pomona as the real stand-outs.

Looking forward to in 2020. 
Grey Arias, Do Not Go Gentle... and Loaded at Malthouse. Home I'm Darling and Fun Home at MTC. Orlando directed by Stephen Nicolazzo at Red Stitch.


SM:Keith is another independent writer who writes about shows because he loves them and wants to support our arts community. His reviews are honest and beautifully written. Read him; I sure do. And he supports other writers by reading everyone else's reviews.

Danny Delahunty
Producer of festivals, Lover of art

Danny Delahunty. Photo by Sarah Walker

Favourite moments in 2019.
2019 was a really great year for amazing theatre, particularly in the independent sector. If I put aside my shining conflict of interest with Melbourne Fringe, my favourite moment that has stuck with me is Queen Kong. Everything about it was excellent, but the big thing for me was how progressed the concept of integrated access was in the work (most noticeably with the Auslan elements, which were a core part of the creative work itself and not just an addendum tacked on at the end). It was just such a great example of what can be done to make a work accessible without that accessibility feeling clinical and separate from the creative elements.

I also have to mention the absolutely stunning stagecraft and production wizardry in Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. For such a dire script, the fact that this show was nothing less of spectacular is a testament to all involved. Yeah, I know, budget budget budget and the fact that you could have funded 10,000 indie theatre productions on a fraction of their operational costs, but ... to see a piece of theatre that literally rebuilt the internals of a heritage venue from the ground on up in order to fully come alive felt like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. I also really appreciate the capacity of this show to introduce a heap of young 'uns to theatre for the first time in a context that's a bit more interesting for them than Year 7 trips to Uncle Vanya at MTC.

Looking forward to in 2020. 
The Asia TOPA program looks great, with my top pick being Metal (Lucy Guerin Inc collaborating with an Indonesian heavy metal choir – it's perfect.) I'm also really looking forward to Le Gateau Chocolat and Adrienne Truscott's Great Arias at Malthouse. Past that, I'm not sure what else it on its way in the indie circuit... usually I read through the "What Melbourne Loved" answers and put together my calendar from that, haha*!


SM: Danny and the team at Melbourne Fringe created a whole new amazing arts venue at Trades Hall! A new arts hub filled with so many performances spaces**. The Melbourne Fringe 2019 brought Trades Hall back to life. As unions struggle and our dear leaders try to portray the idea of people working together to stop exploitation and greed*** as dangerous, it was wonderful to see so many people back in the space created by Melbourne's workers unions. So many people getting together to see so many people creating art that show us our communities and beliefs through different eyes, that shows what the world should be and what it could be if we don't see those different perspectives.

* That's how I choose my shows.
** He may not have slept in September.
*** Join your union.

Emily Sexton
Arts House artistic director

Emily Sexton. Photo by Sarah Walker

Favourite moments in 2019.
Walking into the opening night of the Yirramboi festival at the Meat Market was a revelation. I had never seen the space so transformed and so beautiful, and the performers that night were incredible: Deborah Cheetham, Sermsah Bin Saad, Monica Jasmine McDonald, Allara Briggs Pattison, The Merindas, Soju Gang. It was very memorable and a clear indication of First Nations artists in Victoria going from strength to strength.

I loved the double-bill that saw Vicki Van Hout’s plenty serious Talk Talk alongside the premiere of Joel Bray’s Daddy. It was so interesting to see these multi-generational Wiradjuri artists intersect – their stories, their form and craft, their humour.

Looking forward to in 2020. 
I was lucky to see The Mysterious Lai Teck in Yokohama in February as part of TPAM and it is a fascinating, literary show that left me much to contemplate about the nature of translation, the power of oral histories and the flaws of written archives;  it is coming to Melbourne as part of Asia TOPA.

Can I plug my own stuff? I’m going to plug my own stuff. I’m super excited by the local and international premieres happening in Arts House’s Season 1 in 2020 – did someone say Filipino action thriller musical? We have also announced a new project: Bleed – a biennial live event in the everyday digital. We have joined forces with Campbelltown Arts Centre to explore the relationship between the live and digital experience. From URL to IRL and back again, this is art that meets you where you already are: online, hyper-connected and endlessly networked. As digital increasingly seeps into our communities, identities and culture, we are working with artists who seek to make visible the shifts in power that result. The project will explore different models of sharing art, and in the process celebrate the spaces contemporary art is claiming within a digital public sphere. It will encourage different modes of listening, watching and playing, while still asking the question: where, when and how do we come together? The first edition starts in June at Arts House, Campbelltown Arts Centre, online, in the flesh and in your pocket. 

SM: Every time I see a show at Arts House, I tell myself that I should see more shows at Arts House. (Sometimes, the only thing wrong with Melbourne is how long it takes to get from one side of the city to the other for a 7 pm show.) It's a place where artists are free to make the work that they want and need to make without the pressure of box office and stars. It's a place where work develops and experiments and questions why we do this.

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: Oh No! Satan Stole My Pineal Gland!

MEBOURNE FRINGE
Oh No! Satan Stole My Pineal Gland!
21 September 2019
Fringe Hub: Trades Hall - New Council Chambers
To 29 September
melbournefringe.com.au

Oh No! Satan Stole My Pineal Gland

My review is in Time Out. 

Review: Waterloo

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

Bron Batten. "Waterloo" Photo by Theresa Harrison

My review is in Time Out.

And this interview is great for background.

PS. Gary Abrahams was the outside eye for this show and directed the first Onstage Dating.

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: Polygamy, Polygayou

MELBOURNE FRINGE 
Polygamy, Polygayou 
Alice Tovey, Charity Werk, Margot Tanjutco, Hayley Tantau
14 September 2019
Fringe Hub: Trades Hall – Old Ballroom
To 20 September
melbournefringe.com.au

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

My review is in Time Out. 

Hayley Tantau Polygamy, Polygayou. Photo by Ling Duong

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

Review: The Rapture Chapter II

MELBOURNE FRINGE
The Rapture Chapter II: Art Vs Extinction
Finucane & Smith
7 September 2019
fortyfivedownstairs
To 29 September
fortyfivedownstairs.com
melbournefringe.com.au

Moira Finucane. Photo by Jodie Hutcinson

My review is in Time Out.