What Melbourne Loved in 2018, part 10

Three amazing women today who all work (mostly) in independent theatre.

Emilie Collyer
Playwright, dramaturg and curious human

Emilie Collyer. Photo by Ross Daniels

Favourite moments in 2018
My favourite moment was watching Sheree Stewart's show Pilepileta at Theatre Works as part of Melbourne Fringe. A gut punching and also uplifting piece that was everything Fringe is about for me. New voices. New words. New ways of telling stories.

Other moments that have stayed with me are: Kai Bradley's incredible monologue about violence in Rachel Perks and Bridget Balodis's (double water sign) Moral Panic, Peta Murray's intimate and affecting work vigil/wake at Arts House, the power and devastation of Bighouse Dreaming by Declan Furber Gillick (directed by Mark Wilson), and Janelle Da Silva's unclassifiable and ground breaking show Frankghanistan at the Melbourne comedy festival.

Looking forward to in 2019
The real gems will pop during the year of course. But of things I know about, I am excited to see Queer Lady Magician by Creatrix Tiara. I missed it at Fringe so am thrilled it's having another life at Midsumma. Also looking forward to The Butch Monologues at Theatre Works for Midsumma, Jenny Kemp directing Caryl Churchill's Escaped Alone at Red Stitch and the collaboration between Alison Croggon and The Rabble,  My Dearworthy Darling, at Malthouse.

SM: Emilie's play Contest really needs a second season, but what I love this year about Emilie is that she sees lots of shows. She knows so much about indie theatre in Melbourne because she's out there seeing it and supporting it.


Alia Vryens
One half of comedy duo PickUp

Alia Vyrens. Photo by Jamie Breen, Very Serious Photography

Favourite moments in 2018
Jude Perl's I Have a Face really got me in the guts. The show was light and incredibly skilled. Jude's composition is so unusual and delightful... but really it all boiled down to the last song, which really hit me when she sang about being in a group of your friends and still feeling alone.

I don't often cry in theatre, let alone comedy cabaret, but Telia Nevile's Untitled No. 7 was the show I saw right after Jude's, on the same night. It was a fairy tale about the dangers of being cursed with a knowledge that you are special and deserve to be gifted the golden key to success. This also suckered me in the guts... so many of us independent artists are striving, pushing, working, running, climbing to reach this level of 'success' that I'm not sure everyone really understands. Both of these shows, back to back, made me reassess myself a little, and made me desperate for a wine.

 Zoë Coombs Marr's Bossy Bottom. As an aspiring comedian, I'm in awe of what Zoe did with this show. It was clever and funny and crafty and stupid and intelligent and personal and witty and genius. It was everything that I hope to one day make.

Looking forward to in 2019
My favourite types of performance are when genres are smashed together, when comedy is staged and crafted as intelligently as "real" theatre, and moves and impacts you just as much as something serious. I love it when music can play an integral part of the storytelling, and when the laughs make you think about something new. So, I'm mostly looking forward to the fringe stuff in 2019. I don't get excited by a lot of big shows (honestly, I can't afford to see any of it...),  I'm excited by the independent artists working in festivals or doing it on their own, smashing ideas around and making beautiful things inside incredibly limited budgets.

 But if I have to answer in one sentence? I have to be self-serving and say PickUp's, new show –Nerds are Sexy (for MICF at The Butterfly Club) – and the evolution of our long-running music variety night Funny Music Mondays.

SM: This week's Christmas Funny Music Monday was the just fabulous – seeing Sammy J and Randy back at the B Club was special – and my birthday was on a Monday this year. Being a significant age, there was an assumption that I'd do something and I was never going to get to it. So, a free show with awesomely funny people at a club that serves great cocktails was perfect! Funny Music Mondays is back next year.

Jean Tong
Writer, dramaturg

Jean Tong

Favourite moments in 2018
The Fall at Arts Centre Melbourne. Brilliant, heart-wrenching, relevant. It comes with my favourite Q&A moment that saw the audience being told that white people should hang tight and give POC space to ask their questions first... followed by three white ladies taking up the full Q&A time with zero hesitation. SPACE. Who gets to take it up?

Highlights: seeing Prize Fighter multiple times while audio describing the show; getting drunk and watching the baby onstage disrupt/become the performance in Baby Cake; watching an audience full of Potter fans absolutely losing it for Puffs silliest/funniest gags.

Looking forward to in 2019
Watching Anchuli Felicia King take over Melbourne and Sydney theatre, and inevitably the rest of Australia, too.

Truly Madly Britney by Stage Moms; Mama Alto and Maude Davey's Gender Euphoria; Third Nature by Raina Peterson and Govind Pillai; Beast by Krishna Istha – Midsumma 2019 delivering the goods.

Hopefully seeing the sector take responsibility for its abusive power structures. Not just the big names getting (finally) outed, but the directors who condoned that behaviour, the ADs who prioritise box office over the safety of their employees, a hierarchy which disempowers people from being honest out of fear of reprisal, etc.

SM: Watching Jean develop as one of our most exciting new playwrights has been a highlight for me this year. I saw Romeo is not the only fruit, Hungry Ghosts and After Hero (co-writer). An indie, a main stage and a university show. Each one exploring stories and that are missing from our stages.

But listen to what she says about making space for voices. And do it. Making space means that sometimes some of us have to shut up, even if it's about something we want to scream about. Often,  best way to support is to stand aside and let other people speak.

What Melbourne Loved in 2018, part 2

As moments come in, I don't try and find themes and connections, but they usually happen anyway. Today, one favourite was programmed by another. And there's discussion about the importance of diversity on our stages, and about indie artists and shows on main stages.

Daniel Clarke
Arts Centre Melbourne
Creative Producer, Theatre and Contemporary Performance

Dan and Donnie

Favourite moments in 2018
Blackie Blackie Brown at Malthouse was one of the most exciting examples of contemporary Australian theatre that I have seen. I sat there completely gripped and amazed by what I was seeing on stage. The direction, writing, performances and stunning AV design all came together to produce an electrifying political work that I hope gets to travel around the globe. Developed over years, this work clearly demonstrates the importance of investment in visionary artists to take the time they need to develop a new work.

Bighouse Dreaming was a devastating and urgent work. It shattered me. I first saw Declan Furber-Gillick perform at Decolonising Stories, an event produced by Arts Centre Melbourne, curated by Candy Bowers. I knew in that moment that here was an extraordinary talent. I vividly remember sitting in the Fairfax foyer watching his performance soexcited that I had been introduced to an artist with such an original, powerful, political and poetic voice. When I saw his work Bighouse Dreaming, directed with exquisite restraint by Mark Wilson during Melbourne Fringe, I knew that here we had someone who would make a major contribution to our culture. Was already doing it. This work needs to be seen far and wide. In schools, in the mainstream, as a tool for urgent change in the correctional services. Much respect to all cast and creatives and Mechanics Institute and Melbourne Fringe for supporting the work.

Looking forward to in 2019
Can’t wait to see Barbara and the Camp Dogs at Malthouse, Deer Woman and Counting and Cracking at Sydney Festival, Emily Sexton’s first year at Arts House, and Bryce Ives’s first year at Theatre Works. And Kylie Minogue, of course, and Queen Kong at Arts Centre Melbourne. In Adelaide, I can’t wait to finally see Bitch Dyke Faghag Whore by Penny Arcade and explore David Sefton’s brilliant Royal Croquet Club Program as part of Adelaide Fringe. Oh and Hannah Norris’s Afteryou, with her Mum, is going to be very special.

SM: Dan has continued the  amazing programming and development work he did at Theatre Works at Arts Centre Melbourne. Not only are we seeing some of the best indie theatre from around the world  at the Arts Centre – the Big World, Up Close program was amazing – , but there are also developments, workshops, discussions and plans that are bringing some of our best independent and emerging performers and creators onto main stages. As this happens, our main-stages become far more exciting places to visit.

PS. I saw Bitch Dyke Faghag Whore in the early 90s.

Monique Grbec
Awesome
Reviewer

From Facebook

Favourite moments in 2018
Matriarch at Melbourne Fringe, a Stolen Generations story of reconnection, and Taha from Big World, Up Close at Arts Centre Melbourne

Looking forward to in 2019
More diverse stories.

SM: Monique is one of the awesome new reviewers at Witness. We met at a show set in the 1980s and bonded over knowing every song that was used.


Christopher Bryant
Playwright and academic

Christopher Bryant. Photo by Lisa Maree Williams

Favourite moments in 2018
I didn't see as much as I wanted to this year, partly for money reasons and partly because this year has just been hectic – but two moments vie for my attention.  The first is the ending of Nicola Gunn's Working With Children. I know it was considered divisive (that wonderful catch-cry of theatre that can't be summed up easily enough), but I found myself enthralled by her words and movement, her humour and her dissemination of philosophy throughout. The moment in particular was the end: she sets up a series of strange childlike contraptions that create a shadowy mosaic... and then leaves. It took the audience I was in about five minutes as they went through the process of sitting in silence, waiting for Gunn to return,  realising something was 'wrong', and finally realising they'd been duped and the show was over. It was outrageous and I loved it.

The second was the growing disquiet of Lottie in the Late Afternoon by Amelia Roper  at fortyfivedownstairs. What started as an all-too familiar narrative about old friends reconnecting on a vacation slowly filled up with dark humour and just a touch of existential dread.  I can't get the feeling of being in that audience out of my head: as audience grew more and more uncomfortable while also never quite being sure *why* they were uncomfortable.

Looking forward to in 2019
So much and, as always, my brain seems to have forgotten anything specific, but that's the great thing about Melbourne – there's always so much to see! I am keen for Golden Shield by Anchuli Felicia King at MTC (she's doing so well, and I'm so excited to finally see one of her works). and MUST's adaptation of Slaughterhouse Five at Theatre Works (I saw it at Monash but it's just so great to see quality student work getting a second life).

SM: I didn't see any of Christopher's work this year – to be fair, he was OS a fair but – so my favourite moment has to be his Facebook panic when he realised the international flight he was booked on left at the end of the day not the next day, as he thought. He made the flight. I felt ill when I read it.

UPDATE: I saw Sneakyville that he wrote! How could I forget that! It was about Charles Manson and explored why people love and are obsessed with the worst of people.

What Melbourne Loved in 2016, part 9

Today we here from three amazing kick-arse women and actors: Andi Snelling, Mary Helen Sassman and Genevieve Giuffre.

And we're reminded that La Mama turns 50 next year. Here's to spending a lot of time in Carlton next year.

Andi Snelling
actor

Andi Snelling. Photo by Sarah Walker

AS's favourite moments in Melbourne theatre in 2016: I'm the sort of person who uses the word "love" a lot. And I do mean it when I say it. I love colour co-ordination. I love satire. I love cry-laughing. And I really, really, really super love theatre. This year, I recall saying the word "love: in relation to something I’d seen on a stage in these ways:

Am I Right Ladies? (Luisa Omielan, MICF): I loved the dance party atmosphere Luisa created as you entered and exited her show. It made me feel like everyone in the audience had suddenly come together to be in the same feminist, fist-pumping gang. Like we instantly got every other stranger in the room. It was that simple and powerful.

Nelken (Tanztheater Wuppertal, Adelaide Festival*): I loved this show and the way I ended up there. Sometimes with theatre, you don’t go to it, it comes to you. I randomly wound up with a ticket to this show via a fortuitous conversation with someone I bumped into at the Adelaide Fringe Artists Bar. You know, one of those a-performer-I-met-once-at-a workshop type connections? He had accidentally gone on the wrong night to the show, but the ushers, for whatever reason**, hadn’t noticed his tickets were for the following night and they let him in and he somehow got seats. So on the real night that the tickets were valid for, I ended up going! I had second row seats so could literally smell the Nelken (carnations) – actually, they were fake, but I could definitely smell them, that’s how excited I was to be there. Apart from the show's historical significance, I feel like this was the first time I saw Tanztheater done the way it's meant to be done. I've always felt actors lack physical expertise and dancers lack acting expertise, so seeing these two elements beautifully melded together hit my heart hard. This experience was one that goes well beyond the minutes and seconds of the show itself.

* I know it’s not a Melbourne theatre moment, but I’m a sometimes rule-breaker and this was my favourite show of the year. (SM: Breaking rules is a rule here.)

** I like to think they subliminally knew that Andi Snelling chick just has to see this.

Purge (Brian Lobel, MICF): I loved the way something of significance in my life changed because of this show. Purge was totally out-of-the-box: part–game show, part–love story and part-lecture, which got my cry-laughing juices going (which you already know is a thing I love). It was a highly interactive theatrical experience in which Brian shared his story about how he had kept or deleted 1300 of his Facebook friends, based on strangers' decisions. During the show itself, I ended up on stage re-friend requesting an old friend who I had unfriended the year before after a bitter falling out. This personal moment for me became a personal moment for everyone in the audience that day. And I wasn't the only one who got up. I realised how extraordinary it was that a kooky comedy show had got me reflecting so soberly on my connection to the humans in my world.

What AS is looking forward to in 2017: Somehow managing to score a free ticket to The Book of Mormon!

SM: I love anyone who uses the word love even more than I do. Andi's Deja Vu at Melbourne Fringe was dance theatre at its best. It was emotionally dark and at times very weird; for most of it, I had no idea what it was about or what was going on – and that was the point. I loved being able to sit and watch a performer without having to assign any meaning that wasn't my own. It was like crawling around in emotion and not being able to tell which were hers and which were mine.

andisnelling.com

Mary Helen Sassman
actor

Mary Helen Sassman. Photo by Brett Boardman

MHS's favourite moments in Melbourne theatre in 2016: I guess I can't name watching my four-year-old make his ballet debut in an excerpt from The Nutcracker as my faourite moment in a theatre in 2016?  It's not what you think, it's just that I got to watch his face in the theatre after his item had ended as he fell deeply in love for the very first time. Awwwwww.

I have two legitimate favourite moments to share:  One was to witness the harrowing transformation of Jane Montgomery Griffiths as a woman dying in Wit. She killed it. She crushed me. She is remarkable.

The other was Jess Thoms in Backstage in Biscuitland. I howled with laughter and crumbled with shame while she performed with vulnerability, with sheer resilience and at every step with consumate story telling skill.  This was the piece I raved about in the school yard.

What MHS is looking forward to in 2017: La Mama turns 50!!! What does this mean? Well, a party of course. But also a book on the history of my favourite theatre (oh the stories, oh the pics!) And then a season curated by Liz Jones where she has invited loads of excellent people who have worked here to present a work for a few nights.  The rest of this town might as well shut down for a time – it's going to be jam packed and so much fun!

Oh, Joan (The Rabble) at Theatre Works will surely be AMAZING (I'm not in it so I'm allowed to say that). In fact, I'd take out a subscription to the entire 2017 Theatreworks program if I could.

And my now five-year-old wants to sign up for jazz and acro next year and that might just trump 'em all.

SM: Mary Helen acts from a place so deep inside her that it feels like we're watching something secret. As for a moment: steak and glitter in Cain and Abel.

Genevieve Giuffre
actor

Genevieve Giuffre

GG's favourite moments in Melbourne theatre in 2016: I loved Hissy fits menacing work I might blow up someday for FOLA. After a long winter of some pretty boring theatre in London, it was so nice to be beaten and tackled to the ground by a giant head banging Bratz doll (main man Nat Randall).

I can still see Mark Wilson's body contorting in front of a black curtain in Anti-Hamlet (what a great show!) The "SORRY" on fire in Blaque Showgirls after the sorry not sorry dance. Ben Grant's yogo and wigs nightmare in The Rug, and how Zoe Coombs Marr's Trigger Warning emerged  like a phoenix out of a desolate tip of a year for independent funding and support.

What GG is looking forward to in 2017:  The next generation taking over... but in the meantime, The Homosexuals or Faggots, Joan, Merciless Gods, The Book of Exodus 1 & 11 and of course the return season of Playing to Win.

SM: This is easy: every moment Genevieve was on stage in Lilith, the Jungle Girl. She captures the soul of broken people and makes their pain so hilarious that it hurts to keep watching because you're trying to laugh and cry at the same time.

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What Melbourne loved in 2016, part 6ters

Part sixters is all Sixters Grimm. Where would we be without them?

Declan Greene
Resident Artist, Malthouse Theatre; and lots of other things

Declan Greene in rehearsal for Lilith. Photo by Deryk McAlpin

DG's favourite moments in Melbourne theatre in 2016: I spent a lot of this year very anxious about the dwindling support for independent artists. In particular those early career artists who missed out on the brief flourish of Heliums and NEONs and Downstairs Belvoirs and Wharf 2s that kick-started the careers of a lot of my friends. (And that was before the additional two-handed-fistfuck of NPEA/Catalyst and everything it ripped away from the small-to-medium sector).

So my favourite moments happened every time I saw early-career artists making incredible work in total defiance of the mess they've been plonked in.

Of these moments, my favourite-est was probably Embittered Swish's Our Lady Of The Flowers, an excavation of Jean Genet's novel, created by a phenomenal team of trans and non-binary artists led by Mick Klepner Roe (this was Mick's graduating piece from the VCA directing course). It seemed to exist in a state of constant slippage. A dream-like space where where gender, performer/character identity and temporality were in constant flux, and a thread of dark eroticism and violence pulsed beneath every fluctuation. The cast were uniformly exceptional, and there were moments that took my breath away: a horror-tinged monologue by Cinnamon Templeton about hormone therapy plus a sweating, pig-like doctor;  the visceral, driving sound design by Romy Seven. It wasn't a perfect work, but it felt daring, thrilling, and genuinely original in a way few art does.

In addition to this, I completely heart-and-soul loved Ian Michael and She Said Theatre's HART, Katy Warner's A Prudent Man, Mama Alto's Extravaganza, The Very Good Looking Initiative's CULL and there are probably a million others I'm forgetting, but those were some of 'em.

What DG is looking forward to in Melbourne theatre in 2017: Finally seeing Ash Flanders's Playing To Win. Cuz he's a genius, duh.

And I'm super-biased, but pretty much the entire Malthouse 2017 season has me imploding with excitement: The Encounter, The Black Rider, Wild Bore, and Revolt. She Said. Revolt Again and more and more and more. Seriously, its all so good.

SM: Lilith, the Jungle Girl was something else (co-written and directed by Declan) and there was The Listies in Hamlet:Prince of Skidmark (written by Declan), which I went to Sydney to see. This gave me a brilliant afternoon with my niece and nephew (this was their first theatre show!) and, side-splitting Listies performances aside, was easily the most astute adaption of Hamlet I've seen. I was thrilled that the first Ophelia my niece saw was a super hero who took charge of her life instead of giving all of her emotion to a boy who wasn't worth her time.

But favourite moment was Declan talking about how mid-career artists should choose an emerging artist and mentor them because a lot of the opportunities that these mid-career artists had no longer exist.

Ash Flanders
home owner, still skinny, power bottom

Ash Flanders. Photo by Sarah Walker. Slight improvements by Jeff Miller, Photoshop and the Jim Henson archive

AF's favourite moments in Melbourne theatre in 2016: Without a doubt my favourite theatrical moment in 2016 was anything Dave said or did – or mimed – in Trigger Warning. Zoe Coombs Marr has created a metatextual behemoth that captivates and terrifies audiences in the most brilliant way possible. I have never laughed as hard as I did the night I saw that show. It's too bad she's already married to Rhys Nicholson, because I'd love to be her husband/wife/significant otter ...  and then steal all her ideas.

I know it's only meant to be one thing but I can't miss a chance to talk about Anti-Hamlet. This was my first time seeing Mark Wilson's work and I was utterly blown away by the singularity of his voice. This freudian fantasia – mixed with Australian politics, queer theory and Shakespeare – was chock-full of dense, meaty ideas and concepts; I don't remember any other show in 2016 making me think quite as much as that show did.

And OMG this just reminded me that this was the year I saw The Listies in Hamlet: Prince of Skidmark! I'll be quick about this but it was certainly worth the day-trip to Sydney and back. These guys made even the most cynical, jaded, bitter power-bottom remember why he ever fell in love with theatre in the first place. I can't wait to catch The Listies Ruin Xmas this month!

(I'd also like to mention my favourite onstage moment: looking out at my father as I penetrated myself with the leg of a stool while naked, covered in pink mud and chained to the MTC floor.)

What AF is looking forward to in Melbourne theatre in 2017: Oh god, I know it's beyond shameless to pick Declan because he's clearly going to pick me, but in all honesty The Homosexuals, or Faggots is what I'm most looking forward to. Because, duh, I like his writing a lot! I've heard bits of it and am already considering what outfit to wear when I picket the theatre with my other outraged, middle-class gay brethren. Personally I'm also looking forward to working with a band for the first time in Playing to Win and hopefully making more of my webseries Friendly with Peter Paltos (www.facebook.com/friendlywebseries).

SM: It's a tough choice for Ash this year: kittie onsie or nude and covered in pink goo? Nup, can't decide which was better.

I'm going to watch Friendly asap (cos I adore Peter P).

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What Melbourne loved in 2014, part 4

Today Fleur Kilpatrick, Soren Jensen and Kerith Manderon-Galvin talk about moments of human connection. If that connection isn't there, what's the point of making and going to see theatre?

Fleur Kilpatrick
playwright, blogger, mentor

Photo by Matto Lucas

Fleur: Melbourne theatre is in a really great place right now. On a regular basis I find myself dumbstruck, standing in awe in a theatre foyer, words inadequate to describe what I’ve seen. I saw over 80 shows this year. Here are some of my personal highpoints:

Red Stitch’s Grounded. I wrote of it at the time that it was “outstanding storytelling that immerses us so deeply in one person’s world view that it changes our own”. But I also wrote of the very personal impact this show had on me: “Sitting there and hearing of the brown people made grey by the drone’s cameras, made body-parts by their blasts, and I was acutely aware – although no one would know it to look at me – that these people looked just like my beloved grandmother… I knew this and it tore me to pieces. In showing how America de-humanises both its own and my grandmother’s people, Grounded found humanity for both”.

There was exceptional new writing to be found in Melbourne and Fringe was full of it: Marcel Dorney’s Prehistoric made me want to riot. It was the best possible mix of rage, heart, comedy and music and my heart felt like it was exploding in my chest.

Also during Fringe I saw Emilie Collyer’s Once Were Pirates and Mark Wilson and Olivia Monticciolo’s Richard II (on the same day so that was a total overload of amazingness).

Emilie’s work somehow found a way to present the dilemmas of being “the modern male” through a story about pirates marooned in Northcote: after centuries and centuries in which physical dominance and brutality have been a man’s most desirable attribute, how does one suppress that violence and find their own self-worth in their suit and tie?

Richard II was perhaps the most politically challenging and defiant work I saw all year. I wrote at the time about how proud I was of Mark and Olivia, who “grabbed Shakespeare’s text with their teeth and dragged it into our ugly present. This is independent theatre at its best: vicious, dangerous, entertaining, hilarious and completely of this moment in time”.

But the work that I’ll carry with me into the future, cradled most tenderly to my chest was Roslyn Oades’s Hello, Goodbye, Happy Birthday. I didn’t write about it at the time and still sort of don’t want to. My experience felt too private. Aside from just being utterly swept up by the storytelling and performances, this was one of those shows that changed my perception of what theatre can be: how delicately it can make its point and how tenderly it can give voice to a community.

Thanks Melbourne. I love you.

SM: Fleur wrote The City They Burned. She wasn't there the night I saw it; I wish she had been so that she could've seen that my reaction was deep in my guts and very real. This is also the show I've argued about – professionally and personally – the most about this year. I saw it push known and refuse-to-acknowlegde buttons as it got reactions from "best thing I've seen" to "some things should never be written". I think that's what we want from theatre. I'd rather someone hate a show than think "meh"; at least they felt something real.

And we both mentored at MUST camp. Drama camp was awesome.

And School for Birds, always.

Soren Jensen
actor

Soren: With a new little one taking up much of our time, I missed more of the good stuff than I got to see this year. But made it along to a few standouts.

Hard to go past the end of year Calpurnia Descending. Powerful cast, hilarious, subversive and the technical elements of the live movie staging of Act 2 blew my mind the more I thought about it. Irreverent, fun and with a deeply-touching final image.

Also the powerful work from MKA with Richard II was very memorable. Intelligent political satire with two compelling performances, and a strip tease from Mark Wilson as Julia Gillard that made me angry, until I realised how not far off the point it was of our treatment of our first female PM. It was topical, with the right balance of classical text and modern satire.

But my favourite moments this year came from when the fourth wall was dropped in some of the things I experienced in theatre this year:

Mark in Richard II dropping all performance and addressing the audience with “They remember Whitlam”

Pop Up Playground's True Romans All, which threw you into the story of Julius Caesar, making you choose a side and meet the characters, and your choices determined the final outcome of the attempted assassination.

Mockingbird’s Quills, which led the audience straight into the asylum of the “lunatics”, which I had the pleasure to observe as assistant director

And finally, the experience of The City They Burned, which fully immersed the audience in the world of Sodom, making them present, validated and, in the end, complicate in the action that was unfolding.

I found with all of these, when the question is asked what can theatre offer in a modern interactive and expanding world of technology, that I could remember these moments of direct human connection between audience and performer, to the point where the audience could influence and help shape what was being experienced in that particular performance and say “This”.

SM: As a performer in The City They Burned, Soren did get to see my reaction, and was responsible for some of it. Soren is an actor who consistently creates characters from the inside out. I don't see his acting. As the cast of City interacted with the audience, there was a moment when I was hiding on a staircase in case someone asked me to dance. Soren's character was someone I wouldn't normally chat to at a party and when he came towards me, I had no where to hide, so had to give in and do what I was asked to. All we did was move to another part of the room. He also saved my theatre date by moving her to a less-confronting spot.

Kerith Manderson-Galvin
playwright, performer

It's much easier for me to think of my worst moments in theatre of 2014. That time I thought a show was a comedy and it wasn't. The time I thought the show I was in didn't exist. The times I was hurt by shows and times when I hurt myself because of my inability to sit still and just enjoy something.

The best moments are:

5) I took myself on a solo date to see Miley Cyrus. I wore Sally Hansen Airbrush Fake Tan and drank pink champagne and danced in new shoes next to teenagers. Miley was funny and fearless and clever and so was the show. She tried to get all the girls in the audience to kiss each other and I cried of happiness. Then she sang "Wrecking Ball" and I cried because that song is really moving and I had a difficult break up last year where I listened to Miley on repeat. When I left the show a young girl yelled out "Lady Gaga" and she was talking about me.

4) During the Melbourne Fringe I went on an OK Cupid date with someone I didn't really want to meet to see a show I didn't really want to see. I cancelled on the date. Then I uncancelled. On the way I got in a fight with someone on the street who then started following me. But I couldn't be happier I went. The show was Post-Mortem and I loved every moment of it. It was gentle and touching and sad and sweet and other words to describe a show with no words. I wish everyone could've seen it. I hope they do it again and more. It took me in to another world and I am so thankful for it. It was untouched and original and genuine. The date turned out to be pretty lovely too although he's a bit of a jerk really. I think he doesn't really like me as a person.

3) Crazy Horse Paris. I went to Crazy Horse in Paris. It was life affirming and probably my favourite thing I have ever seen ever.  There’s also Crazy Horse on Elizabeth Street. I went to the cinema there the other night. I really like it there.

2) Everything about Tobi Manderson-Galvin. Thank You, Thank You Love was exceptional and his best work to date as an actor/writer/director. My favourite Tobi moment is being in Bundanon and looking at wombats and writing songs together. We wrote a really good song about the internet being broken and then replaced the word internet with the name Antoinette: "Antoinette, why are you broken again?" My second favourite Tobi moment of 2014 is when we both went to Live Art Camp and I was terrified the entire time and kept crying but he looked after me. We played a getting to know you game on one of the days. We had to say what we couldn't live with out and I said, "my brother".

1) The Facebook message sent to me by someone in Melbourne Theatre Land telling me I *used* to be a pleasant and likeable girl. I cried for a long time but it's now my favourite thing that has happened all year. If you come and see Being Dead (Don Quixote) chances are that message will have made it in to the show. A woman never has to be pleasant.

**Honourable mention to the other night when I went to a show and asked my date if my hair was as long as the actor's on stage. My date said my hair is longer. That makes me really happy.

SM: Fuck pleasant and likeable. Actually, who wants to fuck pleasant and likeable? I love that Kerith always pulls me up if she thinks I'm being an old fuddy duddy. She made me look at Miley differently. And I love that she sat next to me when I saw her play Don't Bring LuLu at Melbourne Uni Union House Theatre. So often arts writers sit alone or, at least, not next to the artists who created the work we're watching. I love watching people watch their own work.

But my moment was her sending me the picture of her being a wombat because I would have chosen that very photo from all of her Facebook pics.

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2012 Favourites

FRINGE part 6

Bucket's List

20 September 2014

Fringe Hub, Rehearsal Room

to 4 October

melbournefringe.com.au

With wedding song two-steps, a surly possum, dried apricots & words that sound like bucket, don't even think about missing this. Bucket's List is Sarah Collins fourth major work and the first one that she hasn't written for herself.

She wrote it for comedian Justin Kennedy, who is a writer for The Project, co-wrote and performed the very successful Donna and Damo with her, and proposed to Collins on stage during the 2010 Melbourne Comedy Festival season of D & D.

Bucket loved his work at the bucket factory for 19 years and 364 days and was happy to stay for the next 20 years, but bucket peak has been reached. He finds a new job as a wedding DJ, realises  that he's never had his own wedding dance and, with the help of his neighbours and a sexed-up and cynical possum, he goes looking for love.

It's a sweet and loving story that has its dark and weird moments but doesn't descend into the same unexpected bleakness that Choir Girl did, and, while she lets hero Bucket be the hero he needs to be, the foreshadowed ending isn't a surprise.

Kennedy's adorable performance makes it easy to love Bucket and maybe want him as a sweet and odd friend, but he barely utters a word. The performance is all physical (like Mr Bean, but nothing like the Mr Bean character) while recorded narrator, Felix Nobis, tells the story, with Rhys Auteri providing a live guitar score and doubling as the possum who finds noisy love before Bucket finds his own hope of a girlfriend.

Director by Yvonne Virsik (who directed Collins's first work Nothing Extraordinary Ever Happens in Toowoomba (Ever)) ensures that there's guts and humanity in the more twee moments, and Jason Lehane (who directed D & D) created a bucket puppet who may be remembered as the woman who made too many people cry this Fringe.

Collins writing continues to stand out as work that could only be hers. Hers is writing that shows that if you trust your voice and don't try to sound like anyone else, you'll find the people who love your work.

PS.  It started as when Sarah met a wedding DJ who used to be a bucket salesperson.

Richard 11
MKA
25 September 2014
Northcote Town Hall, Studio 2
to 28 September
melbournefringe.com.au

Mark Wilson and MKA made their unforgettable mark in last year's Fringe with UnSex Me, Wilson's penetrative riff on the Scottish play. This year, Wilson is joined by Olivia Monticciolo and they drag Richard 11 into the now to give the politics we seem to be accepting a good double dicking.

With Wilson as Richard and Monticciolo as his cousin Henry, they start as children playing and become adults playing at being Kings of Australia. With slabs of Shakespeare's text and plenty of their own, the story is re-cast as the Rudd and Gillard leadership debacle with numbers meaning everything and a de-crowned King who isn't afraid to do everything he can to undermine the woman who disposed him.

Here's theatre that's about now and us and isn't afraid to question and scream about gender and power and how we accept too much that shouldn't be accepted.

It's political, funny, cruel, honest & what-the-fuck-have-we-done brilliant. And Mark wears gold tights.

It's also sold out.

Bonus: Terrific conversation with random audience members on School for Birds.

Who Are You Supposed to Be?
26 September 2014
The Owl and the Pussycat
to 5 October
melbournefringe.com.au

One of the loveliest parts of Who Are You Supposed to Be? was being in an audience who were squeeing with joy as they recognised themselves, their world and every geeky sci-fi reference. And there are many geeky sci-fi references.

I know that because I got most of them. And maybe squee'ed at 5 and 10 and the mourning of the passing of Firefly.

Keith Gow is a Doctor Who fan and wrote a play set at a convention where a con-famous podcaster (Rob Lloyd) meets someone he only knows from Twitter (Jennifer Lusk, who also played this part in the UK) and attacks her for daring to dress as the fifth Doctor.

With enough Doctor Who references to thrill even the most obsessed, it looks beyond the obvious nerd jokes to explore gender issues, sexism and the place of non-cannonical breasts in geek culture.

It is a work for Doctor Who fans and sci-fi obsessives. There's enough for non-fans to enjoy, but it's safe to assume that the people who go to a play about Doctor Who fans are going to get the Blink jokes.

Some of these are on AussieTheatre.com.

What Melbourne loved in 2013, part 8

Today, while Mark Wilson is swanning around Europe seeing Shakespeares, Karin Muiznieks talks about finding creative identity as a young woman, and John Paul Fischbach reminds us how wonderful it was to see Yana Alana's gorgeous blue crack.

Mark Wilson

actor

MARK: At time of writing, there are another 25 days in which to see stuff in 2013 – and given how much I've seen this past fortnight in the pleasure garden that is Berlin, this feels a little premature.

Nevertheless:

Firstly, the NEON festival gave the MTC a vibe I’ve never known it to have – so, so alive – which was really fucking wonderful.

But my total number one experience so far for 2013 happened just last week. European efforts at Shakespeare have resulted in the two worst professional productions of Macbeth I have ever seen, one mediocre and one interesting Much Ado, one great Hamlet, one average Hamlet, and the BEST  ROMEO AND JULIET I HAVE EVER SEEN! Schaubuhne, director Lars Eidinger. It was good.

SM: Was it the moment of penetration, the drooling foreplay or the withdrawal? Or maybe pulling the condom off with his teeth? The Adelaide Fringe crowd didn't get Mark's Unsex Me (MKA), but the Melbourne Fringe mob couldn't get enough of it. I saw it twice. 

The first was a pre-Adelaide preview. When Mark put the microphone in his mouth, I scribbled a note: "Go further, we've seen this, shock me". That note was torn to shreds. He went further, I hadn't seen that and I shrieked in shock. 

The next time I saw it, I was in the front row and saw things that made me laugh so much that I had to drink Krupnikas afterwards. 

Karin Danger Muiznieks
cabaret artist

KARIN: I adored so many productions this year, especially 2 Pound Parlour (Revolt), Palace of the End (Theatre Works), They Saw a Thylacine (at Melbourne Fringe) and Summertime in the Garden Of Eden (Sisters Grimm, Theatre Works).

But the biggest moment of artistic clarity for me came from the VCA Masters of Directing graduate showcase. Peta Hanrahan directed and dramaturged an exquisite stage adaptation of Virginia Woolf's A Room Of One's Own. With a focus on women and the creative process, it explored issues of identity, history and female influence in the arts.

I haven't stopped thinking about the show since. It can be very tricky for a young woman to find her own strong creative identity in a world whose values have been decided by generations of men. Peta's work challenged the perception that women need to become like men in order to succeed in the arts, which really shook me up. I wish I'd seen this before I shaved my head!

SM: It's all about Karin's Hot Box. This is the show where I finally saw Karin instead of character. Her characters are great, but it's the personal that makes this show so strong. When you tell your story, it's amazing how many of your audience find that you're also telling theirs.

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

John Paul Fischbach
CEO, Auspicious Arts Incubator 

Photo by Susan Schoch Gates

JOHN PAUL: My favourite moment was sitting in the audience of Between the Cracks, Yana Alana's cabaret show at fortyfivedownstairs. I felt I was sharing an experience of being with a true international star on the rise.  She is a national treasure!

SM: Is it wrong that my favourite JP moment was getting a perfect and short answer? This guy helps  artists to understand the business side of "the business"; that is brilliant.

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Part 17

2012 part 1, with links to the rest

What Melbourne loved in 2013, part 4

Today, Kerith Manderson-Galvin talks about queer art, Andy Freer from Snuff Puppets talks about what it means to show work in your home town, and Bron Batten reminds us why the funniest stuff makes us cry.

The question everyone is answering is: What was your favourite theatre moment of 2013? (Something you saw, experienced or did.)

Kerith Manderson-Galvin
playwright, performer, activist

KERITH: Mark Wilson. He made me feel like anything is possible. That's just Mark Wilson the person. His show Unsex Me made me feel that and more. And everything.

Queer is something that dismantles and rebuilds and never knows exactly where it's going to take you. Queer can be a body, an act, an action. It is unstill and complicated and complicates. It is funny and strange. Queer is a form of resistance and rebellion. Queer disturbs. It isn't always fun but it can be fucking joyous. It's not easy, it's not normal. That's the point.

One time during rehearsals of Savages, I was sad and Patricia Cornelius (who is mentoring me) held my hand and Susie Dee saw this happen and then I didn't feel quite as sad any more.

The Kreutzer Sonata: A Supple Beauty as performed by Mark Wilson, Tobias Manderson-Galvin and me at Naked Cabaret during the Adelaide Fringe.

When we talk about it we say, "Remember that time when we made genuine art".

We were all naked and so was everyone in the audience. We were probably the only people there that had seen the production we were referencing. I played out a long death scene as a voiceless woman/Miranda Otto, Mark read some rather insightful words and Tobi played Chris Brown and Rihanna songs – or something like that happened and it's a shame no one knew what we were talking about, but god it felt good.

SM: Adelaide, hey. We don't have Naked Cabaret at the Melbourne Fringe. Or I haven't been invited.

It's hard to choose a favourite moment with Kerith, but I think it's when she immediately picked me up for my use of the word "gay" in a review.

Andy Freer
artistic director, Snuff Puppets

ANDY:  I have been working with a number of Indonesian artists, over the past six year,s developing a new show, Wedhus Gembel, and, for the first time, we were able to bring the show to Melbourne.

Presented outside at Federation Square it was a highly visual, large-scale spectacle performance involving a giant erupting volcano, a monster that devoured the entire cast (not to mention a few audience members!), as well as magical singing, trances, mask theatre and classical and contemporary puppetry.

It explored the tensions between traditional and contemporary Indonesian life and is a parable about the cycle of life, the destructive power of nature and the nature of duality, from destruction there is creation, from chaos there is harmony. It was truly exciting to be able to share this genuine and unique cross-cultural collaboration with my home town and even more exciting to then take it to Peru in November!

SM: I really wish I'd seen this.

Bron Batten

theatre-maker, producer, performer, Last Tuesday Society cohort

Jim and Bron. Photo by Max Milne.

BRON: I can't really narrow it down to one show but I reckon The Sovereign Wife by Sisters Grimm would have to come really close. Great writing, super smart and very, very funny. Anyone who can work The Corrs's "Runaway" into a post colonial exploration of the settlement of Australia totally has my vote.

I also just saw Super Discount by Back to Back Theatre and was reminded why they're one of Australia's greatest theatre companies. The work has fantastic imagery, is subversive in a really clever and personal way and also is incredibly touching. I was wiping away a tear by the end – bloody good stuff.

What Bron is looking forward to in 2014 at issimomag.com.

SM: Bron's work is personal, subversive and hilarious; yet, she always reaches something personal, secret and real in her audience. Or maybe that's just me? Nah.

One of my favourite moments was reading a review of the Chicago season of Bron and Jim's Sweet Child of Mine. It was written by nine-year-old Ada Grey, who has been reviewing since she was four. Here's Ada's review. I love this so much. Reviewing isn't always about being a smarty pants, it's about sharing what you saw and how you felt.

And there was Bron's appearance in the Last Tuesday Society's Don's Party in July. She walked out naked and sang Bruce Springstein's "Red Headed Woman" –"it takes a red headed woman to get a dirty job done" – on behalf of every woman who was feeling like we'd been punched in the gut politically and were ready to give up. It was so powerful, as a response to our federal goverment's schoolyard pick embarrassment and as a response to everyone who only see women's worth by their naked bodies. I was crying from laughing, but I know there were real tears mixed in there as well.

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2012 part 1, with links to the rest

FRINGE: Unsex Me

MELBOURNE FRINGE 2013

Unsex Me

MKA

29 September 2013

Fringe Hub, Lithuanian Club, Son of Loft

to 5 October

melbournefringe.com.au

I was one of lucky ones who had a ticket to see Unsex Me last night. On its second night of its seven-night run, there were about as many people turned away at the door as were squeezed into the very intimate theatre.  

It was also a show that left me in the Lithuanian Club bar drinking Krupnikas in a conversation about gender, art, sex, the safety of the theatre space, safe sex, drag, homosexuality, penetration, ATM, child abuse and pain that ultimately left me knowing that I really don't want to understand why I love this show so much and wondering what kind of sick fuck am I for seeing it a second time.

Earlier in the year I saw a run of this show before it went to the Adelaide Fringe and I ended up squealing in the foetal position on a brown velvet armchair. Last night, I was on a plastic chair squeezed between friends and at an eye-level angle to its writer and performer – Mark Wilson (the guy with the chicken in the recent sold-out-with-extra-shows Mein Kampf ) – that left me knowing things about him that I'm not sure that I should know.  

Actress (and this is the only time I will ever use the ridiculous feminised version of actor) Mark Wilson is being interviewed about his recent Academy Award, his relationship with Australia's best-looking actor dude, and what it's like to play Lady Macbeth with your partner as Macbeth and your Aussie-legend dad as director. Mark's drag is immaculate, but there are some physical hints that he's a man.

And that's all I can describe because anything further will get me near the top of Google search page that really isn't my readers.

It is sexually explicit.*

It is glorious.

It's confronting and depraved and created with a mix of joy and pain that leaves you hurting from laughter because it's so freaking funny and because it's so cruel that it takes you beyond any sense of shock or empathy into a space where the only choice is laughter or burying your head in your hands and hoping to wake up safely in front of your TV in time for Packed to the Rafters.

Wilson equally thrills and horrifies as the line between self-mockery and soul-bearing truth is too hard to find, which leaves it as theatre that's impossible to walk away from and forget.

There are only five performances left and the venue is small. It's not worth taking your chances at the door, so book now and make sure you include time for a post-show debrief and a shot or two of Krupnikas (the Lithuanian honey liqueur).

*I don't want to give anything away, but if you like your theatre nice, there are plenty of other gorgeous Fringe shows to see.