How to Fringe 2017: Tim Wotherspoon

Tim Wotherspoon
Playwright, director, actor, sound designer, musician

Future Loves Burning
26 September – 1 October
Aeso Studio

Tom Wotherspoon. Photo by Elizabeth Millington

If you could invite anyone to your show (and you knew they would come), who would it be?
Esperanza Spalding, John Lennon, David Bowie

I mean, pragmatically thinking, I suppose, someone who can make it rain. Take our poor theatre, cross the water and have a grand old time.

But mainly Esperanza Spalding because she’s just so amazing.

The Melbourne Fringe in three words?
Blinking eyes drinking.

A favourite Melbourne Fringe memory.
It’s all one big wash. It’s all one magnificent wash. I never used to dare dance, but I know at some stage in the past seven years I threw caution to the wind and found my boogie.

Find your boogie at the Fringe Hub. If it’s not there, you can borrow mine… it’s idiosyncratic and isn’t for everyone, but you’re quite welcome if you need to use it for a bit.

Your experience as an independent artist being part of the Melbourne Fringe.
I’ve been involved in Melbourne Fringe every year since 2010 just after my partner and I left VCA in the middle of our actor training. She has gone on to become one of the most cherished emerging/established writers in the city, I daresay the country – and I guess I’ve done ok, too. Fringe gave us a safe space to do risky things. This is the most fundamental virtue of the whole thing – if you make something and you throw your spirit into it and nurture it and swirl it all together, whatever you end up with, there is a living celebration of its emergence throughout the whole festival. It is, in fact, the whole festival. The audiences, artists, producers and techs are all swept up in the same swirl and that swirl is a beautiful thing. It is necessarily supportive because we are all breathing the same air.

What makes the Melbourne Fringe unique?
I haven’t been to other fringe festivals – that is what makes it unique to me, it’s the only Fringe I know…

So it’s like Christmas where everyone’s got presents for everyone but you don’t wrap them because most of them are performance art or are otherwise totally impracticable to wrap.

Your advice for choosing what to see in the Melbourne Fringe.
Listen to the buzz, support your friends, support your community. Whatever compels you, be compelled and get in there and watch it. Cool picture? Twisted blurb that keeps bumping round your mind? Go check it out.

Do you think there’s a better system than star ratings for reviews?
Well, probably but I can’t conceive of one, not now anyway, we’re still rehearsing. Themain virtue I can recognise in the star rating system is that it’s a shortcut for people who don’t feel they have the time to read a whole review. They can look at the stars and realise what direction is due north and off they go, they’re set.

Five shows/events that will not miss at the 2017 Melbourne Fringe.
Too Soon, Too Now
High Achievers
Death Art 'n Death
The Sky Is Well Designed
Ode To Man

SM: I know that some of these shows have finished, but it's also cool to know what great stuff you missed and can see when and if they bring them to the next festival.

Mini review: POINT8SIX

POINT8SIX
La Mama
17 February 2016
La Mama
to 21 February
amama.com.au

Adam Cass. Photo by Jason Cavanagh

Tim Wotherspoon writes mind-twisting, hilarious sci-fi that makes his audience continually re-think everything they've seen.

POINT8SIX starts as a time-travel story that breaks the rules about time travel, the future and the past – I think. With East Berlin, human robots, 1970s albums, David Bowie, hints of bright orange, and time that loops like a spirograph, trying to keep up with the plot is a trip in itself – just don't forget to sit back and enjoy the Absurd comedy.

Directed by Kirsten Von Bibra, the pace matches the rhythm of the script and the cast (Wotherpoon, Adam Cass, Brianagh Curran, Matt Furlaini, Amy Jones and Yvette de Ravin Turner) understand the sci-fi and mystery, but leave it up to the audience to find the truth.

It finishes this weekend at La Mama, but I'm sure we'll see it again.

Last chance: The Safe House and Dolores

I caught a couple of late-season shows this week that finish this weekend. You can still see both: The Safe House tonight and Dolores tomorrow afternoon.

Dolores
Q44 Theatre Company
14 May 2014
550 Swan Street, Burnley
to 18 May
q44.com.au

Dolores is from new company Q44, an ensemble of nine actors.

They've created a wonderful new theatre space on Swan Street in Burnley and are letting Melbourne know they are here with a work by New York writer Edward Allan Baker.

Set in Brooklyn in the 1970s, it's the story of two sisters whose lives have always been controlled by violence. It's an actor's dream to play parts like this, and Nicole Melloy and Gabriella Rose-Carter embrace its intense naturalism with the kind of understanding and heart that let's us be flies on the wall in the kitchen.

The Safe House
3rd Room Theatrical
16 May 2014
Owl and the Pussycat
to 17 May
3rdroomtheatrical.com

Another newish company is 3rd Room Theatrical who are performing The Safe House, down the road from Dolores, at the gorgeous Owl and the Pussycat in Richmond.

This new work by Tim Wotherspoon, who performs it with Lily Constantine and Rhys McConnochie, is a low-tech sci fi, lost-in-time mystery-comedy that makes it's audience think and re-think their theories and conclusions every minute.

We're in a room with Josie, Alan and Sid. They might be spies or time travellers or sick. Sid might be or might have been a her. It might be the 1980s or the future or today. And no one knows if it's safe. With tone-perfect performances, The Safe House is mind-fuckingly funny and always a step ahead of its audience.

They've had some intimate audiences, so it would be amazing to see them adding in extra seats and filling up tonight.

Review: Ubu Roi

Ubu Roi
5 Pound Theatre
18 July 2013
The Owl and the Pussycat
to 27 July
owlandcat.com.au

Ubu Roi is a mess. A filthy, mud-spluttered, cover-me-with-plastic glorious mess.

Founded in late 2010, the 5Pound theatre ensemble are making their mark in Melbourne. Based at The Owl and the Pussycat in Richmond – once a single front workers cottage – they present plays that they love, which have so far ranged from The Blue Room to Pygmalion.

Director and Co-Artistic Director of 5 Pound, Jason Cavanagh, loves Absurdism.  He directed Ionesco's Rhinoceros last year and was thrilled to get into the 1896 script by Alfred Jarry that's said to be the inspiration of the mid-20th century style and had it's French audience rioting at its first performance.

Papa Ubu (let's call him Kevin) wants to be King. He's a greedy man whose childish behaviour destroys everything he tries to control in a world with snot and poo jokes that would put a poo-obsessed four-year-old to shame.

So Cavanagh fills the stage with reeking mud and with Mattea Davies's faded grotesque glory design, Tim Wotherspoon's dripping sound and Doug Montgomery's lighting the space is so viserally vile that I was glad I'd worn wellies. Mud is flung as underwear and excess body hair turn to brown and the front row pull their plastic covers over their to protect themselves from political shit fight that's played out before them.

Ubu Roi is a text that's read (or read about) more than it's performed, but seeing it is much more fun than reading it. Cavanagh grasps the wholeness of the story (it's very loosely based on the Scottish play), but the ending feels empty. And, while he lets his delightfully hilarious cast (Nicholas Dubberley, Amy Jones, Susannah Frith, Andi Snelling, Colin Craig and Antony Okill) revel in the mucky humour, there are times when they seem to be enjoying it a bit too much. The moments when they step away from charater and the ridiculous world to pull the plastic safety curtain across are perfect, but they need to decide if the world they are slipping and sliding in is real and dangerous or a playground for buffoonery.

As the mire gets stinkier by the day, Ubu Roi is going to fester until its grossness is squirmingly irresistible. So cover up and watch safely as 5Pound refuse to be safe and dull.

This was on AussieTheatre.com.