What Melbourne Loved in 2021 (and 2020), part 4

Telia Nevile and Bron Batten were also in the first What Melbourne Loved. I first reviewed Telia in 2006 and Bron in 2008. I first saw Telia perform in 2001 and I would have seen Bron at one of the first Last Tuesday Society shows. I've since seen whatever work of theirs that I can. It's amazing to watch artists develop and find their voices and create such incredible and original work that comes straight from their hearts.

Bron Batten
Theatre maker, producer, performer
Jobkeeper tax expert, excellent hair

Bron Batten. "Waterloo"

What theatre/art/creative experience did you love the most in 2021?I can never just narrow it down to one! So I won’t. I absolutely adored Alisdair Macindoe’s Reference Material at Northcote Town Hall. Sexy, clever, funny, smart, bursting with ideas and self-aware but not (too!) smug. And a dance work. Wonders never cease. Remount please.
 
I saw Michelle Brasier’s Average Bear on Sunday night and it should have won the Best Of at this year’s MICF. Brutally funny and utterly beautifully sad, I ugly laughed/cried the whole way through. Voice of an angel and an absolute quadruple threat.
 
I was lucky enough to make it up to Darwin to perform at the festival and as a result finally saw Selina Jenkins’s Boobs. And it was just as wonderful as everyone had constantly said it was. She’s a master of the raised eyebrow and managed to turn the audience on a dime, whilst holding them carefully in the palm of her hand. Plus, great songs and timeless nipple-centric material.
 
I was also fortunate to see Alice Sing, the great choir from Alice Springs, kill it at their Darwin Fest show, Red Desert, Endless Sky, under the tireless guidance of their super-talented choir master Edward Gould. Beautiful original compositions and arrangements and 50 people singing together who were mic-ed up properly. Unheard of in a lockdown world and completely goosebumps/tear inducing. Magical. Ed and I used to run the OG choir together in Melbourne under the various guises of Choir Straits, Your Love is Lifting Me Choir and This Sex is on Choir. Alice Sings is much, much, much better.
 
Also, while I’m here, massive shout out to the Darwin Festival team for getting through a mid-festival lockdown, re-scheduling shows on the fly and being massive babe legends throughout. Oh and honourable mention to Lou Wall’s That One Time I Joined The Illuminati. Told you I wouldn’t be able to pick just one.
 
What surprised you about finding new ways to make art in locked-down worlds?
Christopher Green’s No Show for The Yard Theatre in London utilised its Zoom audience in clever ways, with audience participation involving home-based tasks, assigned character quests, spotify dj-ing and group karaoke. It was totally worth staying up until 4am to watch it during a timeless lockdown netherworld.
 
I also experienced several shows during Melbourne Fringe 2020 that involved packages being delivered to your house – and the utter delight in receiving personally addressed mail which is not electricity bills never, ever, ever wears out.
 
What did you do to stay connected to your arts community?
I spent a lot of time in 2020 working as one of the many admin’s on the Facebook group Australian Arts Amidst COVID-19, founded by Perth artist Alex Desebrock. In the aftermath of the March 2020 shutdowns AAAC19 provided a focus, gathering point and community contact for many members of the arts ecology throughout endless lockdowns. We tried to help people with the administration involved in seeking government assistance and financial help, relief grants and Centrelink etc. And I was constantly astounded by the generosity, kindness, knowledge and support people offered each other throughout that utterly terrifying time. Though I NEVER thought I’d now know this much about the taxation laws surrounding JobKeeper.

What are you looking forward to in 2022?
TOURING! (Hopefully!)

SM: In what world could Bron and I ever have imagined that my favourite memory of her would be her FB group reminders to put in Jobkeeper details? It's ridiculous, right!? I was also thrilled that she got to Darwin with Waterloo, which I've only seen once (!) and have no idea what its turned into since its first run. Hopefully we will see it in Melbourne again.

 

Telia Nevile
Poet, performer, photographer
Where punk and delightful collide

Telia Nevile

What theatre/art/creative experience did you love the most 2021 (or 2020)?
I loved how the arts (of all types) became more accessible, opening up to people who can’t leave their homes, navigate physical venues, make it into the city, or be in crowds. Being able to watch arts from all over the world was also incredible; it felt a little like being a kid in a candy-store, being free to curate my own festival rather than wait for someone else to do it for me. On top of this, the arts community has always been generous with their time and their skills, but it hit new heights with workshops and classes and online dance parties popping up all over the place. It’s crazy to me that the arts aren’t always recognised as the thing that brings us together and makes us better because they do, and for all of the many, and long, lockdowns, they did. I was just so proud to be part of such a wonderful community.
 
What surprised you about finding new ways to make art in locked-down worlds?
It’s a totally different mindset, and once I got my head around it, it surprised me that the show I wrote will have two completely different lives and two ways of expressing itself – the filmed version and the live version. It’s no longer enough to just film a live performance and say that it’s available digitally – it’s a completely independent version of the show that needs to be reimagined and made in its own way. I can’t wait to perform Little Monster live and feel how the show shifts and changes.
 
What did you do to stay connected to your arts community?
As lame as it sounds, I signal-boosted every post I saw of people making stuff, or achieving things, or just sharing small things to be happy about, because now, more than ever, we need to be as supportive as we have the spoons to be. I messaged people I usually just run into in foyers, to tell them that I’d read their posts and felt the same, or seen their digital works and gotten joy from them, or that what they were doing was amazing (because it is). Social media is usually quite alien to me, but during the lockdowns, it felt more like the community noticeboard I always wanted it to be.
 
What are you looking forward to in 2022?
Seeing lots of live performance with an increased focus on accessibility. Seeing live shows and then seeing their digital versions to enjoy the different interpretations and suck as much marrow from the bones as possible. Hopefully touring again to NZ, and then maybe in 2023 to Canada again. Watching the vigour return to community members who were drained by the big C, when they get the chance to do what they love again.

SM: Telia's Little Monster (the filmed version) was glorious and it so won The Best in Festival at Melbourne Fringe. I watched it twice in one day. Watching it felt like she was talking directly to me – and so few shows managed that when they did the big pivot. I am booked in for the opening night of her live version. She also accidentally introduced me to the acidentally-vegan yum of Hob Nobs.
 

Mini review: Picnic

Picnic 
Kage
21 August 2015
fortyfivedownstairs
to 30 August
kage.com.au

Photo by Jeff Busby

Fortyfivedownstairs is dark and feels like it's underground even though the downstairs theatre is still at street level. It's here that dance-theatre company Kage invite us to co-founder Gerald Van Dyck's Picnic. 

It's a picnic with its own kind of darkness, but its more enticing than a bbq with burning onions and sizzling snags (he had me at vego sausages), and made with as much love as your aunt's potato salad.

Conceived, choreographed and performed by Van Dyck, it's impossible to leave without considering him a friend. With a script by Marieke Hardy and music by Alisdair Macindoe, he shares his picnic story with dance, a live video and a bit of magic.

As the audience are welcomed to join in – and a highlight of the show is created by the audience –  it's easy to forget that this delightfully affable man began this picnic alone.

The gentle charm of Picnic feels as familiar as its packet of posh chips, but its heart comes from keeping its secret close and letting the audience bring whatever they want, or need, to make the story and their picnic complete.

Review: Human Interest Story

Human Interest Story
Malthouse Theatre, Lucy Guerin and Perth International Arts Festival
24 July 2010
Merlyn Theatre, CUB Malthouse
www.malthouse.com.au

Lucy Guerin's choreography speaks louder and clearer than most words on our stages.  Human Interest Story explores the overlap of our domestic lives with the "news" and current events. Is it as hard to care as passionately about wars and stuff when Callum might beat Adam at Masterchef?

Be it the nightly news, daily papers or Facebook updates, we each have some connection and interest in the world beyond ourselves, and when Presidents Ahmadinejad and Obama are presented alongside the gossiping of Michael Jackson's former nanny, it's no wonder we feel unable to understand or react in the most positive manner.

Human Interest Story opens with the dancers watching a big screen TV with a monotone narration of the news. In the background, a barely lit, full-size tank sits like a tamed wild cat wondering if it can still attack.  In brightly coloured camouflage outfits, the dancers' words are their music in a world where slicing strassburg (fritz or devon for non-Victorians) at Coles is as important as getting a text about your euthanised dog,  giving your kids scrambled eggs, oil spills and Julia Gillard's view on climate change.

With a wow soundscape created by Jethro Woodward and lighting by Paul Jackson (whom I can never say enough good about), colours turn to grey and black as heartbeats, breath, scrunching newspaper and finally music accompany the dancers, whose intensity and emotion moves from the personal to a deeply personal reaction to a world they are part of and unable to control.

The physical language of dance is often foreign to people like me who love words, but dance like this reminds us of their limitations. Guerin and her dancers (Stephanie Lake, Alisdair Macindoe, Talitha Maslin, Harriet Ritchie, Stuart Shugg and Jessica Wong) create a balance where their skill creates the emotion and response, so rather than watching and wondering how bodies can do that, we feel deep in our guts; feel what we really think about the overwhelming nature of our multi-media contradictory society, even if we can't find adequate words to express it in a tweet. They bring the human response back to the stories.

As this review got unintentionally lost in a week of film festivals and musical openings, the short Melbourne season is over, but Human Interest Story will be at the Perth International Arts Festival next year.  It's great excuse to go to Perth.

This review appeared on AussieThearte.com.