What Melbourne Loved in 2021 (and 2020), part 1

Welcome back. 

This time we are back. We have to be back. We got though. We're still a bit wobbly, but we're still here.

I've asked some of the What Melbourne Loved favourite and long-running contributors to tell us what they've been up to and what they've been enjoying in the last couple of years.

2019
2018
2017
2016
2014
2013
2012

Penelope Bartlau
Artistic Director: Barking Spider Visual Theatre
Bohemian who will create art out of air if she has to

Penelope Bartlau. Photo by Jason Lehane

What theatre/art/creative experience did you love the most 2021 (or 2020)?
I had a fantastic time with the Melbourne Fringe. A work that stood out was Strange Kit’s HOLESP@CE. It was an Alice-in-Wonderland never-ending slide into the internet. The work was deliciously riddled with virtual non-sequiturs, uncanny and clever silly notions and surprises, and laugh-out-loud moments. I had a fantastic time with this work, by myself, in lockdown.

What surprised you about finding new ways to make art in locked-down worlds?
I reinvented my animistic artistic tendencies, which are normally reserved for puppetry, to create geo-located sound works: The Object Monologues. This is a project whereby public landmarks reveal their innermost thoughts – loves, losses, passions and idiosyncrasies. The project is housed in an app, Echoes, free for anyone and everyone to download, and unrestricted by location. I undertook public engagement in the development of the work via social media – which really worked. 

Also, I took the opportunity to create a work with my offspring, artist Klari Agar. We cooked up a plan and Postcards from the North was born. This  also had a high degree of public engagement via social media. For both projects, I used social media as a method for public co-creation during lockdown. Postcards from the North was delivered online and as a short-print run of 6 printed postcards. The printed version was mailed to people as a pack, and. from feedback, the postcards found their way to Europe, America and Japan! (They travelled way more than we all did…)

What did you do to stay connected to your arts community?
Ummmmm…. (Insert cricket sound here)

What are you looking forward to in 2022?
Like everyone, all the projects have bounced into next year – so it’s chaotic until mid-May. Hopefully, fingers and everything crossed, we (Jason Lehane and me) are going to Ireland to take up our Cill
Rialaig arts residency, which was cancelled this year. We have bought the plane tickets and are hoping like fuck we can go….

What are we doing there? A project called Feathers and Earth, which is a 3-year investigation into the geographic features and bird life of three diverse sites. The sites are connected by an abundance of significant birdlife and unique geographic terrain. Cundare North (regional Victoria) 2021, South West Ireland, and at Chateau d'Orquevaux in north-eastern France in 2023. Concerned with degradation of our natural world, this project explores cycles of decay, destruction and rebirth (birds) while looking at what lasts beyond the annihilation of climate-change (earth).

SM: Respecting the true nature of 2020-21, I begin with someone whose art I haven't seen since 2019.  This has been first time I haven't seen one of Penelope's works in years. I'm downloading The Object Monologues as I write. We sat next to each other at a show early in the year, so at least we've seen each other!

Robert Reid
Playwright, director, critic, broadcaster
Media ain't dead; he's making it in his living room

Rob Reid

What theatre/art/creative experience did you love the most 2021 (or 2020)?
Obviously a LOT of the theatre I watched this year was online. For me, the best thing to have come out of these pandemic years has been the widespread uptake of digital platforms for theatre. Getting to see work from around the country and not just waiting and hoping it might tour to Melbourne has been amazing. I really really really hope that continues in the new world. I loved Rovers by Katherine Lyall-Watson with Barbara Lowing and Roxanne McDonald presented online by Riverside Theatres and filmed live in Queensland at Redland Performing Arts Centre. Terrific story telling, two terrific actors and a great connection with the audience. 

I also totally loved That One Time I Joined the Illuminati by Lou Wall at Melbourne Fringe, because I'm a lapsed conspiracy nerd and I missed it at MICF. 

As for things i saw in an actual theatre, I was completely absorbed in Jayde Kirchert's Mara Korper at Theatre Works presented by Citizen Theatre. (I can't believe that was MAY this year.) And, special mention has got to go to Malthouse's Because the Night. Not that I loved it... I liked a lot of it even though it had its flaws, but seeing an immersive theatre work on that sheer scale was pretty amazing. 

What did you do to stay connected to your arts community?
Staying connected to the Arts Community during all this of course hasn't been easy, but starting Television is Furniture and being able to interview artists about their work, review that work and also just talk about Australian Theatre, feels like it was a good way do stay in touch with everybody.

What are you looking forward to in 2022?
It's weird to think about what I'm looking forward to for 2022. I'm finding I'm pretty gunshy about getting invested in coming shows. I know Dan said there'll never be another lockdown, but I don't know... There's plenty of variants and unvaccinated populations out there for them to mutate in. Also, now this is a tool governments have in their kit to respond to disasters with, what's to say the next pandemic, or the next poison-ash filled summer skies, or the next whatever isn't going to lead to more show cancellations and theatres sitting dark. That said, I CAN'T WAIT for Virginia Gay's Cyrano.

SM: Rob pretends to be a true cynic, but he's really one of the most persistent and positive people in our community. The arts world isn't a fair place. When I first saw one of Rob's plays back in 2001, I thought that by 2022, I'd be sick of seeing a new Rob Reid every year on our main stages. This year Witness Performance, the bench-mark criticism site he created with Alison Croggon, went to the archives. So Rob created his own YouTube channel and made Television is Furniture. Already there are more interviews, reviews and content there than on or in most sites or publication. Remember that no one pays indie media, so please keep supporting it with clicks and reads and love.

What Melbourne Loved in 2019, part 7

Today we have amazing directors who have been SM supporters since the beginning: Declan, Daniel and Penelope. All still work as indie freelancers and also have had some pretty damn cool positions in some pretty damn cool places. Each make theatre that collaborates and shares and has created three of the most astonishing and original aesthetics around.

Declan Greene
Theatre-maker, half of Sisters Grimm, and, as of verrrry recently, AD of Griffin Theatre

Declan Greene, who knows that there's enough of his headshot in today's arts media

Favourite moments in 2019.
Adena Jacobs's Titus Andronicus. I'm cheating a bit cuz this was in Sydney, but Adena is as definitively "Melbourne" as it gets. Adena and Eugyeene Teh's procession of images was a spectacular, ever-deepening nightmare, and I'll never forget it.

The Rabble's Unwoman. Enough will be said about the exquisite design and imagery, but can we please talk about how its second act is The Rabble making a piece of straight-up *playwriting!!!* – and some the best on any stage in Melbourne this year, at that (Dana Miltins and Mary Helen Sassman). This just a few months after director, co-creator Emma Valente decided to casually dash off an opera to end My Dearworthy Darling. At this point I'm pretty sure there is nothingThe Rabble can't do.

Little Ones's Happy Prince. Another slight cheat as I finally got to see it at Griffin in Sydney, but it was as exquisite as I'd been told countless times. Such a masterful study in theatrical minimalism; only 60 minutes long and every second, every breath mattered.

Stone Motherless Cold and Miss Jane Doe at Cocoa Butter Club. Cocoa Butter Club is always a great time, but these two performances at the closing night of Iridescent festival were the definition of a Fire Act. On the tiny Hares and Hyenas stage, Stone delivered a jaw-dropping masterclass in high-femme eroticism, and then Miss Jane Doe pounded a watermelon to pieces by jumping into the splits. No moment in any traditional theatre this year could ever top it.

Cloudstreet at Malthouse. What an event. That ending with Benjamin Oakes's final words as Fish, and that cascade of water held in a final suspended second before a snap to blackout... Beyond.

Krishna Istha's The Beast. I could watch Krishna read the phone book, but very happily I didn't have to, because their first foray into stand up was blessed with some amazingly good jokes and some very silly stagecraft (co-created by Zoe Coombs Marr). So stupid, so smart, so prodigiously funny. It's back in Melbourne next year, don't miss it.

Looking forward to in 2020.
As of next year I'm living in Sydney, so seeing all the stuff people are looking forward to is giving me big pangs in the chest. There's so much stuff I wanna see. At Asia TOPA: Adena Jacobs and Ida Ayu Wayan Satyani's The Seen and the Unseen and Sipat Lawin's Are You Ready To Take The Law Into Your Own Hands?". A production at Theatre Works of Kim Ho's incredible The Great Australian Play. Ra Chapman's K-BOX and John Harvey's The Return at Malthouse. Ben Law's Torch the Place at MTC. A new Ash Flanders solo show (!!!). Argh. I will miss this city so much.

SM: I had my paragraph ready to go about Dec's extraordinary direction and writing of Wake in Fright (with Zarah Newman, of course), but he told me that his moments had to wait until today – and the WIF rave can also wait. My favourite moment was late last night when I heard that he'd been appointed Artistic Director of Griffin Theatre. Sure, we lose him to Sydney, but this is going to be so fucking amazing. I first saw his work in 2008, which was maybe four years ago, certainly not over 11 years ago because neither of us have aged a bit. I still remember Cell Block Booty in vivid detail. This was the kind of theatre I knew had to exist somewhere, even if I'd never been able to articulate what I wanted to see. Queerer than fuck and pearl-clutchingly offensive, its forensic autopsy of camp was doused in vodka and fueled by poppers, while being so brain-draining smart and having a stage that showed what we mean when we scream "representation". And that's before I start listing the amazing people who I first saw on a Sister's show. This re-set my aesthetic and every time I sat in a room surrounded by people who accepted that theatre is inherently dull, I want those theatre makers to go back in time, put on a warm jacket and see that show in the carpark theatre of the Collingwood flats.

Now, as I earn no money as an arts writer, how can I get to Sydney to see every Griffin show...

Daniel Lammin
Director, writer; Producer and programmer Monash Centre for Theatre and Performance

Daniel Lammin didn't let me go and choose my fave pic from FB this year.

Favourite moments in 2019.
I really adored the Grand Gesture, the gorgeous work that Katrina Cornwall and Morgan Rose created with the third year VCA students; a dissection of romance in cinema that was both a through interrogation and an open love letter.

I was also really blown apart by Barbara and the Camp Dogs, which I’d say is the best piece of Australian theatre I’ve seen since the Malthouse production of Picnic at Hanging Rock. It had me on the edge of my seat before emotionally pummelling me with its astonishing storm of words, music, emotion and fury. I don’t think I left the theatre the same person I was when I went in. It was something I knew from the moment I began that it was vitally important that I open my ears, open my heart and listen, really listen, to what it had to say. It demanded that, and it had every right to.

There was also UnHOWsed and The Other Place at Theatre Works, Disinhibition at MUST, Underground Railroad Game at Malthouse, and getting another chance to see and consequently finally fall in love with Dee and Cornelius’s Shit at fortyfivedownstairs.

The ultimate highlight though was Hofer Shechter’s Grand Finale at MIAF. I’d never seen the company before, and will never forget it. There’s no use even trying to describe it in words. If you were there, you know what I’m talking about. Man, I cried. I cried so, so much.

Oh, and touring Forgiveness, a Monash Centre for Theatre and Performance student work created with Penelope Bartlau and Ashlee Clapp to the Wuzhen Theatre Festival. That was pretty fucking cool.

Looking forward to in 2020.
Finally seeing Patricia Cornelius’s Do Not Go Gentle... – I mean, how awesome is that going to be!And seeing Stephen Nicolazzo take on Loaded. And new works from Chris Bryant and Chris Edwards at Theatre Works during Midsumma. And anything Morgan Rose and Kat Cornwall do, the work they make is wondrous.

And directing again. I’ve missed that.

SM: I also miss Daniel directing, but there's next year to look forward to. Daniel's someone I always try and talk to after shows because, as you can read, he feels shows. He listens to what the creators are saying rather than just looking for the connection to himself.


Penelope Bartlau
Artist and director Barking Spider Visual Theatre

Penelope Bartlau. Photo by Sarah Walker

Favourite moments in 2019.
Hands down, my favourite moment was Do Not Collect $200 – an interactive game/performance experience produced by MUST, created by Harley Hefford and team. Its controlled chaos was delicious and its politics searing. Sublimely clever and so much fun. I had seen a number of MIAF shows during the same time frame and Harley's show caught me off-guard. Brilliant.

Grand Finale by Hofesh Shechter at MIAF was relentless and powerful. I hope never to miss one of this artist's shows when they are in town. Speaking (again) of MIAF, Stephanie Lake's Colossus remount was a gobsmacker: compelling and beautiful.

The hair forest of The Rabble's Unwoman (Kate Davis's design) was marvellous, and the second scene with Dana Miltins and Mary Helen Sassman was a rare moment where I felt like my story – our story as women – was represented in such a sharp, gut wrenching and fearless way.

Looking forward to in 2020.
Lots of very interesting work involving infrastructure, transport, regional development and communications.

SM: I haven't seen anything of Penelope's this year: that's not good at all. As she's just stepped down as Creative Director Women's Circus, perhaps there's more Barking Spider to see next year.

What Melbourne Loved in 2018, part 7

Today, we celebrate more indie shows.

Penelope Bartlau
Artistic Director, Barking Spider Visual Theatre
Creative Projects Director, Women's Circus

Penelope Bartlau. Nicked from FB, possibly taken by Jason Lehane.

Favourite moments in 2018
1. MUST's End Transmission: the most insane, intricate set I have ever experienced (go Jason Lehane!) – a spaceship with crystals growing and secret doors and hidden rooms

2. Women's Circus 2018 Cabaret PLACE  because I laughed so hard, gasped and cried.

3. Daniel Lammin's Sneakyville, at fortyfivedownstairs, for what was not revealed and for fabulous, unexpected directorial choices.

4. In a Heartbeat at La Mama, just before Fringe, because audiences had the best time.

Looking forward to in 2019
More unexpected work in weird-arse places.

SM: Goodness, I adored In a Heartbeart. I really did have the best time.

Fleur Kilpatrick
Playwright, director, enthuser 

Fleur Kilpatick and the company of "Terrestrial", State Theatre Company SA
Photo by Kate Pardy

Favourite moments in 2018
It was in The Bachelor Season 17, Episode 5. It was a very quiet moment. The Bachelor had just approached one of the contestants and had 'can I steal you for a second'ed her. They left the stage. In an episode of The Bachelor, the camera would have followed them but, in that theatre, we did not. They were gone and we were left to stare at the other contestants. The ones who weren't picked. And they sat. In silence. One ate a chip. That crunch of the chip on that silent stage, these candidates at love held in stasis: that was my favourite moment.

Looking forward to in 2019
I'm very excited about the programming from Theatre Works, Darebin and, up in the south-east, MLIVE. But, most importantly, I am looking forward to us as a community confronting some demons in 2019 and, hopefully, making our workplaces safer, more respectful and more generous as a result. I'm really hopeful that 2019 will be the year we do away with the idea that there are different sets of rules for creative work places: everyone has the right to feel safe and respected at work. Bring it on.

SM: It's a bit meta, but I love that Fleur's new work Whale has already been mentioned a lot as something people are looking forward to in 2019.

Tim Byrne
Theatre critic, Performing Arts Editor – Time Out Melbourne

Tim Byrne. Photo by Sophie Reid

Favourite moments in 2018
I can pinpoint the precise moment this year because I had a jolting physical reaction to it, as involuntary as it was thrilling. At one point in Stephanie Lake's Colossus the cast of dancers rushed screaming at the audience and the kinetic energy, that sense of the potential and the danger of the human body en masse, felt like a shock of electricity through my own body. It was a terrifying moment, political and primordial at once, and one I'm unlikely to forget.

Looking forward to in 2019
Given that, I can't wait for Stephanie's follow-up work at Malthouse for Dance Massive, Skeleton Tree. It is about grief and the ritual of grieving, and should prove a highlight of the dance calendar. I was very pleased to see Stephen Nicolazzo tackle and triumph with Tennessee Williams's Suddenly Last Summer this year; I'm hoping to see him turn to Joe Orton next, maybe with (hint, hint) Loot or Entertaining Mr Sloane. They'd make a good match, that pair.

SM: I still read Tim's reviews, especially if I totally disagree – oh, I do – or if it's a show I didn't see. I also love that he notices if I'm not around.

Review: In a Heartbeat

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

In a Heartbeat. Barking Spider

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What Melbourne loved in 2016, part 1

2016 has certainly been a year.

It's been a tough year for artists, theatre makers, administrators, producers, publicists,  journalists and arts writers. We've gone on strike, we've written angry letters and protested and still experienced, made and talked about some of the most amazing theatre that's been seen and made in Melbourne.

Not every show gets written about, but getting a review/interview/feature/tweet isn't necessarily a reflection on a show. Great ones get missed; meh ones get words.

So let's spend the next couple of weeks remembering what we loved and remembering that it's going to take a lot more to dull the hearts and minds of people who make and see theatre.

Sarah Walker
photographer extraordinaire

Sarah Walker  in front of her award-winning photo of Dash. Photo by Mike Greaney

SW favourite moments in Melbourne theatre in 2016: I had two, one full of joy, one full of anxiety.

Jess Thom's Backstage in Biscuitland at Melbourne Festival was such a revelation.

I heard her chatting to Richard Watts on RRR a few days prior, ticcing "Biscuit! Hedgehog! Beans!" between words, and my initial reaction was a sense of very visceral, physical anxiety. Something about the uncontrollable nature of Tourette's made my body freak out. So getting to spend an hour with Jess's incredible brain and wiggly body was such a brilliant experience, because so swiftly, the experience of seeing her tics settled into the texture of her performance, and only the surprise and joy of certain flights of verbal fantasy remained in the space. Jess yelling "Wind! You’re a 19th century fuck up!" had me in absolute hysterics, and her grace and humour and refusal to be victimised was fierce and badass. What a lady.

Also in Melbourne Festival, I was one of the Benefactors choosing how to spend $300 in The Money.

The group floated a heap of ideas, from the thoughtful – supporting disadvantaged kids in a local school – to the ridiculous – suspend the money from a helium balloon and just let it go. With 20 minutes to go, a man bought in to the Benefactor table, thanked the person who'd bought his ticket and the woman who'd just given him 20 bucks so he could speak to us, and made his case: he was homeless, his tent, backpack and sleeping bag had been stolen, and the money would make a huge difference to his life. My two friends and I said, "Well, I mean, it's perfect. It's local, immediate, we know who we're impacting – and it takes guts to stand here and ask this. Absolutely."

But the group didn’t vote to give him the money. One man accused him of being an actor. Another didn't believe that he'd spend it on the items he'd listed. This table of left wing people sat around arguing about a man who'd come to ask for our help, and they talked about him like he wasn't even there. The suspicion and presumptions and callousness at that table will never leave me. The show ended in a flurry of disagreement. The money rolled over. The man walked out. And I was just so, so enraged and ashamed and horrified. I suppose that's what theatre should be. It should make you feel. But it didn't feel good. It felt mean and cruel and impotent. If you can't help someone right in front of you when they’re asking for it, when can you?


What SW is looking forward to in Melbourne theatre in 2017: Oh my god: The Black Rider. I just so badly want that show to be the most anarchic, brutal, chaotic, brilliant and overwhelming spectacle that I’ve ever seen. I want to walk out with fire in my veins. So, you know. No pressure.

The photo by Sarah Walker that she sent me because it was a favourite one that she took.  I'm pretty sure the show, Kill Climate Deniers, will make an appearance soon. 

SM: One of my favourite things about the favourites is that I could re-name it Photo by Sarah Walker (of course). Danny and Penelope (below) both captioned their photos "Photo by Sarah Walker (of course)". Sarah's style is so recognisable and emotionally palpable; she captures the heart of the person she's photographing, and brings life to the stillness of a production shot. It's hard to imagine Melbourne's theatre scene without photos by Sarah Walker.

Danny Delahunty
director, ticketing manager, suave dresser

Danny Delahunty. Photo by Sarah Walker (of course)

DD's favourite moment in Melbourne theatre in 2016: I saw some pretty great shows this year but, wow, The Echo of the Shadow at Melbourne Festival. This is what live performance should be.

Every sense I knew I had (and some I was discovering for the first time) was stimulated. I followed my own story down the rabbit hole and didn't look back. I erased my footprints in the sand; I giggled as my shadow was tickled; I ate strawberries dipped in melted chocolate, lay tucked up in bed as a story was quietly read to me; and had a woman lay an egg in my hand, only to feel it crumble between my fingers as her legs snapped shut. And as I sat drinking spiced tea served from an upturned boat on an isolated beach somewhere underneath ACMI. I wrote about time and our personal relationship to moments in our lives, and left it in a wicker bowl for the ghosts and shadows to read.

Every page of my story was captured in a book that filled up as I journeyed through this strange land: a drip of melted chocolate, a few grains of sand, the smell of my shadow, shards of eggshell. .. and all I need to do to relive the extraordinary sensory experience any time I want, is flick through that book page by page.

What DD is looking forward to in Melbourne theatre in 2017: It's too early to tell for sure, because based on the trend of Fringe this year, I've no doubt we will continue to see some absolutely amazing immersive performances born. But from what has been programmed that I know of? Most looking forward to The Black Rider: The Casting of the Magic Bullets by Malthouse and Victoria Opera. I absolutely love that album.

"When it gets too hot for comfort / And you can't get an ice cream cone / 'Tain't no sin to take off your skin / And dance around in your bones"

SM: Danny recently directed Blessed at the Poppy Seed festival. It opened on the day Trump was elected and the audience were ...  I don't know ... we didn't understand the world that night. But this play brought us into a world that saw the horror of life and made a change based on love (or illness or god). And, as a community, we relaxed, had a drink and stopped ranting on Facebook for a few hours.

Penelope Bartlau
storyteller, creator, grower of garlic

Penelope Bartlau. Photo by Sarah Walker (of course)

PB's favourite moments in Melbourne theatre in 2016: Can I have two? Is that allowed?
Let’s say yes…

Melbourne Festival: The Echo of the Shadow by Teatro de los Sentidos.

Oh I know I know it's an international work, but there were a handful of Melburnians cast into this extraordinary experience. The experience? One at a time, each audience member is lead into a dark labyrinth. Inspired by the story of Hans Christian Anderson in which a journeyman lost their shadow, you become the journeyman. Every sense is attended to as you vanish into an incredible and beautiful underworld. You are attended to by gentle hands, fed a chocolate-coated strawberry, you crush an egg on someone’s thigh, and are laid down on a bed for one, in a boat, and gently rocked as you listen to the water, waves and wind. Travelling this labyrinth, this story, was one of the most singular, gentle, breathtaking and moving events I have ever encountered.

Tremor by Ashley Dyer. This work, a true hybrid of design, sound and dance, is one of the most progressive and adventurous pieces of new theatre I have seen. The set, designed by Jason Lehane, was a musical instrument made up of blades of metal – a field of blades, embedded into moving platforms. The sound designer, Nigel Brown, played the set to manipulate sound throughout the piece, as three dancers navigated their perilous environment.

I’m also really happy for Jodee Mundy, that her work Imagined Touch has been such a success.

Ok – 2.5.

What PB is looking forward to in Melbourne theatre in 2017: I am looking forward to seeing what Whitenight Ballarat promises – and hope it will be something fresh and other than Whitenight Melbourne. I am looking forward to working on The Sound of Cancer, a science-arts collaboration that explores the disease with the aim of demystifying it. I always look forward to Next Wave too.

SM: One of my favourite experiences this year was House of Dreams by Penelope and Jason Lehane. It was also one of those ones that didn't get a review.  The Johnson Collection in East Melbourne was the home and is the legacy of antique dealer and collector William Robert Johnson. House of Dreams was an immersions where every room of the house was filled with Johnson's mementos but told the stories of Penelope's dreams. Dreams which could have been Johnson's dreams and felt so familiar as our collective dreams. Some rooms I wanted to move into, others creeped me out a bit...

part 1
part 2
part 3
part 4
part 5
part 6
part 7
part 8
part 9
part 10
part 11
part 12
part 13
part 14
part 15
2014
2013
2012

Review: One suitcase: four stories

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

Linda Catalano. Photo by Sarah Walker

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Review: Psychopomp & Seething

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

Kate Brennan. Seething. Photo by Sarah Walker

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

And it gets darker.

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

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

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

This becomes more evident in Psychopomp.

Aislinn Murray. Psychopomp. Photo by Sarah Walker

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This was on Aussietheatre.com.au.

What Melbourne loved in 2014, part 6

Today, it's Penelope Bartlau, Declan Greene and Sarah Collins with discussion about how ongoing funding makes conservative theatre, why some audience member's should be removed from the world, and why Google should shut down when cat guardians try and diagnose their pet's non-existent illnesses.

Penelope Bartlau

director, writer, creator Barking Spider Theatre

Penelope: Theatre moment knockout this year has to be Punch Drunk’s Sleep No More (New York City). I wish I could have my max-highlight from something in Melbourne because there is SO much going on in this city; we have such remarkable and vital theatre here.

I know plenty have talked about Punch Drunk's  Sleep No More – and justifiably. Why is it so compelling? Because it’s utterly unpredictable, it’s a completely individual experience as it’s virtually impossible for any two audience members to take the same passage and see the same things. I was determined to understand the dramaturgy – and not be disappointed. 

The backstory: they took Macbeth and cut it up and laid out the rawest pieces of the story for us to experience. It’s set in an old hotel – in the Speakeasy period, but it’s not like any hotel you’ve ever been to. Hotels are designed for guest ease and smooth navigation. They took an old hotel and reinvented it into a dreamscape. There are no stage left or right entrances or exits in a dream; so-too it is with Sleep No More.

The work is designed to be, in part, cyclical – by knotting one part of the narrative to the next in a way that is deeply poetic, and all the more so as it was told without dialogue. For example, Lady Macbeth’s dance of persuasion morphed into her “take my milk for gall” scene, to Macbeth’s return after the murders – the first time around – and then this was repeated, added to and completed a second time around by merging directly to her mad “out damn spot” scene. 

To follow any of the action, you had to make an immediate decision about which character to follow – if any, and if you could keep up. You could easily take a misdirection and lose a character, and end up in Burnham Wood encroaching on Dunsenane, or stumble upon someone burying a foetus in a graveyard, or simply get lost. 

It seems no irony to me, that I pursued narrative – given my role as an artistic director and writer, and my set/lighting designer husband Jason Lehane was absorbed primarily in the installations/set – that we had totally different experiences. We came out, compared notes and all the conversations we tracked around the show were “did you see this?” or “did you encounter that?”. Sleep No More is a masterpiece.

Regarding theatre in general in Melbourne, the most dynamic work is – as always – coming out of individuals and from smaller groups, productions and companies. 

I met a guy who knows a thing or two about theatre in New York, and my ears are resonating with his philosophy on funding. It’s no real news to hear it, but he says “Ongoing funding makes artists risk adverse” – heard it here before. But this is resonating especially now in light of the Australia Council six-year organisational funding that is in the offing for 2015. If it’s true – and I think it is – that everything is based on economics, then this six-year strategy is born of deeply conservative economic drivers. Bring on the ecology, and let us “little guys” flourish and make more work, everywhere. The big trees are going to grow bigger and cast greater shadows across the forest floor: the floor dwellers have to become even more inventive, more subversive and louder artistically and politically – if we are to not only survive but thrive.

SM: Penelope's Barking Spider Theatre created an amazing experience in the State Library that started with the Press Dress worn by Matilda Butters to a fancy dress ball in 1866. It explored how Melbourne society saw women and Chinese immigrants in the 1860s and tied it all to now with moving (and moving) explorations of fashion, ethnicity and bodies. It was all so beautiful, but my favourite moment was standing in the State Library Dome room – which was full of people studying and Facebooking – knowing that in any moment their peace would be broken by loud drums.

Declan Greene

playwright, director Sisters Grimm

Declan: For me: 2014 was all about the grrlz.

It started with post’s Oedipus Schmoedipus at Belvoir: a playful satire of the recent adaptation trend – and the dead, straight, white men that continue to colonise our cultural imagination. Coming off Belvoir’s 2013 season, it was conceptually brilliant site-specific theatre. Watching some 20 unrehearsed volunteers dressed in mismatched bed sheets as ‘ghosts’ – while attempting to replicate terrible dance moves off a video monitor – was one of the most joyful experiences I’ve ever had in a theatre. And summoning this mass elation from the idea of death was fkn genius.

(Speaking of death: I wish it upon the scowling piece of shit who sat next to me in that audience and radiated hatred at the stage. You are 80% of everything that is wrong with theatre in this country.)

I was obsessed with I’m Trying to Kiss You’s Madonna Arms at Next Wave. The production was fantastic – but as a piece of writing. I thought it was the most inventive, brilliant text I’ve seen onstage this year: a wild, bruising journey through female representation in popular culture. And very, very, very, very funny.

The journey in Nicola Gunn’s Green Screen was also remarkable. I admired its emotional bravery; the way it used irony, sarcasm and anger to pry open a very recent grief, onstage, every night. It can’t have been easy to do.

Also The Rabble’s Frankenstein. Also Adena Jacobs’ adaptation of Hedda Gabler. Also Fleur Kilpatrick’s The City That Burned. Also Diamanda Galás’ work-in-progress Das Fieberspital at DARK MOFO. Also Emma McManus’ Carly & Troy Do A Doll’s House at Adelaide Fringe. Also... fuck, I dunno. There was a lot.

There were boys who did some very kool stuff too: Matt Lutton’s epic, unsettling take on Patrick White’s Night on Bald Mountain (Julie Forsythe and Melita Jurisic’s ‘drinking’ scene was probably the finest acting I’ve ever seen onstage), Meng Jinghui’s batshit crayyy take on The Good Person of Szechuan, Angus Cerini’s Resplendence, Jackson Davis’s Jackson! Le Diner est Pret! for Woodcourt Art Theatre...

But yeah. To quote Jim O’Rourke ===>

SM: Calpurnia Descending. Yeah, yeah our Dec’s a fucking amazing playwright, but the first thing that I really noticed about him was his direction (many years ago in a car park). He knows how to take a piece to the knife edge of offence or shock, dangle it over the edge and pull it back at the exact second and turn it into something that’s close to profound, or just filthy.

Sarah Collins

playwright, photographer

Sarah: I feel really bad because I'm going to give an answer so simplistic it will SHOCK. It will be like when Kerith Manderson-Galvin talked about loving Miley, but dull. 

I'm pissed off I am not naming a show that is more original, less well-funded and not even moderately steeped in metropolitan Melbourne theatre controversy. 

You guys know I aim to be controversial with every fibre of my being, always. I never intended for this to be my answer. Never forget that I am a girl who got scalped tickets off ebay to be second row at The Seekers concert. Never forget about the feathers I ruffled when I stood up during Georgy Girl and blocked the view of the 80-year-olds behind me. The term controversial doesn't even cut it. 

My point is, I have barely seen a thing and I feel bad because the one show I did see that I LOVED was such a good piece of HAPPY FLUFFY THEATRE and I know I should have something here involving Paul Capsis, but I just don't, and I blame it on things happening that I can't control. (Like today, one of my cat's pupils is bigger than the other. No other theatre lovers wake up to this kind of insanity daily. It means you guys all get to go out and see the great stuff and I have to stay home googling "uneven pupil dilation + potential feline brain injury + home remedies"). 

So with that out of the way, you cannot judge me when I say:

My highlight was Beautiful the Carole King musical on Broadway.

It was amazing. It was happy. It was hilarious. It was jaw-dropping. It was so so smart and everything most contemporary musicals aren't. Just watch this and tell me you don't feel some tingles. 

Judith D 4eva.

SM: I’ve checked my cat’s pupils. All is good. She was napping in prep for her late-morning sleep, but I couldn’t let her snooze knowing that her pupils may be unevenly dilated.

Sarah wrote the very gorgeous Bucket’s List and introduced "bucketlingus" to our vernacular, but my favourite moment was seeing Facebook explode when she "accidentally" announced her pregnancy on national television (The Project) while being interviewed about Hanson (yes, Hanson) .

2103 Favourites

2012 Favourites

What Melbourne loved in 2013, part 11

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

Daniel Clarke
CEO and Creative Producer, Theatre Works

Photo by Eugyeene Teh

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Penelope Bartlau

Artistic Director, Barking SpideVisual Vheatre

Photo by Sarah Walker

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

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

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

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

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

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

Matt Kelly
list maker

r + M = Listies

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Part 15

Part 16

Part 17

2012 part 1, with links to the rest