How to Fringe 2017: Declan Greene

Declan Greene
Writer, director, dramaturg, expert cleaner of pink slime (ask me about Lilith: The Jungle Girl in Edinburgh)
Sisters Grimm
Resident Artist at Malthouse Theatre (Malthouse 2018 season was launched last night) 

SM: My other equally-favourite sister. Our first enounter was Cellblock Booty in 2008.
 

Mink (and Declan Greene)

The Melbourne Fringe in three words.
Tipsy, Wasted, Hungover

A favourite Melbourne Fringe memory
Being asked to do a one-off night at the Fringe Club! It was called Fugly, and was a night of weird alterna-drag starring Art Simone and Olympia Bukkakis – where we also asked three theatre-makers to devise drag acts for the occasion.

Zoe Coombs Marr and Mish Grigor did a reading from Stephen Sewell’s The Boys with poorly-applied facial hair (very proto-Dave), Angus Cerini performed as a female bodybuilder (for which he got a full body-wax and spray tan, though certainly no-one asked him to). But the highlight of the night, for me, was The Rabble’s performance. Mary-Helen Sassman appeared onstage in a bathrobe and fake beard, looking very heavily pregnant, and told a series of increasingly nauseating ‘dead baby’ jokes – then stripped off her robe to reveal that she wasn’t wearing a fake stomach but was, indeed, very, very heavily pregnant... At which point she started thrashing to death metal and finally sang a gorgeous rendition of Odetta’s "Sometimes I Feel Like A Motherless Child". As legend now has it, Mary-Helen stuck around to watch a few more of the acts, then went home early and a few hours later gave birth. Amazing.

SM: I was there for the first half and will never forgive myself for missing MHS.

What is your experience as an independent artist being part of the Melbourne Fringe?
The Fringe Hub is a blurry, blurry world and I’m sure most of what I’ve done there isn’t fit for print.

What makes the Melbourne Fringe unique?
It’s not like Adelaide and Edinburgh where there’s a huge influx of artists from interstate and overseas presenting their work to a new audience. It’s far more localised: an occasion for a bunch of Melbourne’s most brilliant artists to present new work simultaneously, with a sampler of great stuff from out-of-town. And it works because the quality of independent theatre/art in Melbourne is so high anyway. Soooo... *tongue-pop* (I can’t actually do a tongue-pop).

What’s your advice for choosing what to see in the Melbourne Fringe?
Listen to the buzz and book in early instead of waiting until stuff is sold out and you have to beg the artists to stand in their bio box (this is advice I hope to one day take myself). Oh, and see the stuff you’re genuinely curious about – not just the 50 shows you feel obligated to see because you know someone in it. Unless ALL of your friends are amazingly talented (and let’s face it, they’re not). Don’t burn out or have a boring Fringe.

Do you think there’s a better system than star ratings for reviews?
Look, I fucking hate star-ratings as much as any other artist, but a fringe festival environment isn’t where anyone goes for nourishing long-form critical engagement. I think there’s an unspoken amnesty where it’s accepted, generally, that star-ratings are a necessary service for audience members in an open-access environment that’s saturated with art work of varying quality...!

Five shows/events that you will not miss at the 2017 Melbourne Fringe.
Church curated by Mama Alto
Let’s get Practical! Live. Presented by The Very Good Looking Initiative
The One by Jeffrey Jay Fowler
Betty GRUMBLE: Sex Clown Saves the World
One Of The Good Ones. A Blackfella sci-fi exploring race and space

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.

part 1
part 2
part 3
part 4
part 5
part 6
part 7
part 8
2014
2013
2012

Review: Cain And Abel

Cain and Abel
The Rabble and The Substation
21 July 2016
The Substation
to 30 July
thesubstation.org.au

Cain and Abel. The Rabble. Photo by David Paterson

The Rabble don't make easy theatre, but it's an easy choice to see them.

Always starting with a well-known text – Orlando, Frankenstein, The Story of O,  Room of Regret (The Picture of Dorian Grey) – they deconstruct, bring the subtext to the front, and rework the text until it's distilled into something that's somewhat unrecognisable but holds the essence of the work. You don't need to know a text to understand a Rabble work, but when you do, you will have to read it again.

This story is Cain and Abel's; their chosen text is the Christian Bible. Cain was the firstborn of Adam and Eve and killed his brother Abel because God preferred Abel's gifts. There's a lot to unpack in those few verses. This is the text that explains and tries to justify so much of the hatred and violence that we're arguing about everyday on Facebook.

With Dana Miltins, Cain, and Mary Helen Sassman, Abel, they begin by re-imagining it as two sisters and placing the story deep within the implied and actual violence that women experience.

It far from easy to watch, but it's impossible to look away because the astonishing can occur at any time; blink and you could miss Abel putting glitter on her steak-covered eye.

With Kate Davis's design of white, red and silver, there are punching bags the size, weight and feel of humans. The sound when they are beaten is heavy enough to feel. And they bleed. There's a lot of blood. From the watery runny to the thick and clotted that hides its truth in the red.

The red and white belong together and are made more insidious with silver glitter. It's the stuff worn by drag queens and teenagers to make them shine, and it floats from above as a god comes back into the story and director and lighting designer Emma Valente makes it sparkle and change like it's a living swarm, and dares us to gasp at its beauty as it falls on the clots and floods of red.

Cain and Abel. The Rabble. Photo by David Paterson

Sassman and Miltins are remarkable. Working with Valente and Davis for many years, they have created a style of performance that encompasses everything in and around the text, but is internalised and cut back until it's a moment of truth; a moment that's felt as much as it's seen. It's like waking up from a dream that lasted seconds but felt like hours. They confront us and dare us to look away or to laugh at the horrific and to cheer – and maybe forgive – the side we're meant to despise.

Cain and Abel was first seen at Belvoir in Sydney and this second season has been developed at The Substation in Melbourne. The opportunity to develop original works and get them beyond a first season is crucial. Creators need multiple seasons and audiences to change and perfect work. Too much great work gets lost with single seasons and too many astonishing shows, like this, never have the chance to be shared.

This was on AussieTheatre.com.

Sometimes Hobart: Orlando interview

Dark Mofo
Orlando
The Rabble
darkmofo.net.au

12 June 2015

It was cold in Hobart last night. The sun’s out today but tonight promises to be colder, darker and weirder as the third Dark Mofo festival opens and this gorgeous city celebrates art that’s made for icy dark nights. A highlight of the theatre program is The Rabble’s Orlando, which opens tonight at the Theatre Royal and finishes on Sunday. I flew down to Hobart for the festival and spoke to members of The Rabble as they rehearsed in Melbourne.

Orlando. Mary Helen Sassman & Dana Miltins. Photo by Sarah Walker

This is the third production of Orlando. The first was at the 2012 Melbourne International Festival and it was part of the Brisbane Festival’s independent theatre program in 2014.

Emma Valente, co-founder, with Kate Davis, and director of The Rabble, says that festivals “provide such an important context for our work. During a festival audiences are more adventurous, they are more likely to see something that they may never chose otherwise and they are excited to see something different. They are also an important meeting place for artists, a place where you can talk with and see work from artists from all around the country and the world.”

With renowned performance artist Marina Abramović as part of Dark Mofo, The Rabble are ideally placed to welcome audiences who are eager to embrace original creative voices.

No one makes theatre like The Rabble. They leave some critics – like me – and audiences raving with love; while others have stormed out in fury.

The first time I saw them was Special at La Mama in Melbourne in 2011. I took a friend who said she’d see anything as long as it wasn’t contemporary dance. At the end of this show, she looked at me and said, “I wish it had been contemporary dance”.

The stage was mouldy green with a toilet-paper back curtain, a mound of earth and an exercise bike. Actor Mary Helen Sassman was eight months pregnant and wore a native American headdress and a pink stretchy dress, when she wasn’t naked. With 60+ actor Liz Jones, the work explored the sometimes hilarious and mostly painful and warped relationship of parental resentment. It was like watching a dream that you thought (and maybe wished) you’d forgotten.

No one makes theatre like The Rabble dare to make.

Orlando is based on a deep and layered understanding of Virgina Woolf’s 1928 novel about a young man who doesn’t grow old but becomes a woman and lives for three centuries. Woolf’s story is on the stage, but there’s very little of her text.

I think that the truth of any work is in its subtext: the words that are never spoken or written, the scenes that are never seen. Meaning is found in the white spaces between words on pages and the silence and empty space on a stage. It’s why we can read the same books and see the same shows and argue for hours over the truth about what creator was sharing.

A Rabble work is formed in that empty space. Their work lets us get lost in the white void where words disappear and meaning becomes clear.

It’s difficult to describe the experience of seeing their work, so I asked Dana Miltins, who plays Orlando, to explain it.

“Oh my gosh I find this question really hard as well… I can’t fully answer it.

“To me, The Rabble have a unique way of distilling a novel that captures its spirit without telling the story as it reads, blow by blow. If you’ve read Orlando then I don’t believe you’ll feel ripped off by our version – the themes and ideas that exist within and behind the narrative are all there; but, the play exists on its own as well and is very much The Rabble’s Orlando.”

Orlando. Dana Miltins. Photo by Sarah Walker

The process of how it becomes The Rabble’s Orlando is as fascinating as the result.

Actor Sassman (who plays Orlando’s lovers, along with Angus Cerini) describes a Rabble rehearsal.

“A typical rehearsal starts with a 30-minute high intensity workout – usually circuit training but not always. I’m confused as to whether this is done as a bonding/unifying tool or to encourage competitiveness amongst the cast – either way we often find ourselves comparing abs and keeping a lunges tally. Once we’ve all broken a cool sweat we start to work. It’s always physical, very little discussion. Just on the floor and getting on with it. Emma and Kate work us hard. We love it.”

The work involves hours of improvisation and exploration of character and text, most of which never make it to the stage. The finished product is a distilled and clarified version of the results of this process.

Sassman talks about how they met through La Mama about nine years ago, although Valente and Davis met at Swinburn University earlier.

“Thank goodness! For Emma, Kate, Dana and I, our four-way working relationship was forged in blood, sweat, baby’s tears and breast milk (Mary Helen and Dana have performed while pregnant and Kate’s baby is due in July) as we made and toured shows on shoestring budgets – us with huge ideas and small CVs.

“I think we surprise each other, inspire each other and above all we truly trust each other to approach the making of the work with full integrity. Now with this Orlando we have Angus on board – fearless, eerily gifted and generous, he fits in just fine!”

The company are never afraid to share their admiration and trust for each other. At the end of the first Orlando season, I asked Miltins how she worked with director Valente to create her emotionally fearless and physically demanding performance. She simply said, “Emma’s a genius”.

Dana goes on to describe Kate as a genius. Davis and Valente work together to create each new work but while Emma directs (and lights), Kate designs. What’s most striking about her design is it’s use of colour and texture.

Orlando begins in a world that’s milk and semen white. With pebbles, fur, tulle, cotton and water, it’s a world that begs to be touched, felt and rolled naked around in.

Miltins says that Davis creates sets “we have to exist in, as opposed to on. There’s generally quite a lot to negotiate on her sets and I see them sometimes like an additional character. You have to interact with them and respond to them; they affect you and your performance. I love working in these environments and I think Kate’s a genius.

“I love most the element of danger that comes with it. To me, that element is what puts the sizzle in live theatre. Just the idea that anything could happen.

“The slipperiness, the way you have to lift you feet to clear the water when you walk, the way it changes your balance, and of course the cold. Her sets make you exist in the present because they demand attention and focus just to physically negotiate the terrain. And really that’s all any actor wants, to be truthful and present in the moment.”

There’s a pool of water on the Orlando stage. Dana is “praying, seriously praying” that the plans to heat it for this season come off.

This was on AussieTheatre.com.

And please read Josephine Giles's interview with soprano Allison Bell.

Review: Frankenstein

Frankenstein
The Rabble and Malthouse Theatre
25 March 2014
Beckett Theatre
to 5 April
malthousetheatre.com.au

My uterus is still reacting to The Rabble's Frankenstein.

I say it every time, but no one makes theatre like The Rabble does and Frankenstein is stretching their own boundaries far enough for Malthouse to include content warnings. Read them and you'll know if you should give it a miss.

Working with their actors, co-creators Kate Davis and Emma Valente devise work based on well-know texts. Hours of improvisation and development never get near the stage (and they kept cutting after the previews). What's left is distilled, clear and so potent that it's not safe to take in more than sips.

The novel Frankenstein was written by an 18-year-old woman. In 1816 Mary Shelley was on holiday in Geneva with her new husband Percy (whose first wife had recently suicided), and writers Lord Byron and John Polidori. They had a competition to write the best horror story. Mary won with the beginnings of the novel that was first published anonymously in 1818 and in her name in 1823.  It's about a doctor who creates life: a monster who doesn't want to be alone.

The Rabble tell it as a story about fertility and birth, knowing that between 1815 and 1818 Shelley lost three children at birth. Finally, one baby survived.

In this story, an infertile doctor (Mary Helen Sassman) wants to be a mummy so much that she's going to fight until she makes a baby by any means possible, helped by her assistant (Dana Miltins) and adopted blind daughter (Emily Milledge). The return of her brother (David Paterson) makes for awkwardness, but not as awkward as the fact that she creates a monster (Jane Montgomery Griffiths). 

With the horror-film monster often better known than the book, there's as much reference to horror films as to the novel – especially those made to squeal and look away from and those that treat women atrociously. 

The orange stage is alien and uncomfortably beautiful, and filled with hundreds of black water-filled balloons.

Like monster eggs, they are slippery and wobbly and range in size from a mensturating to a first-trimester uterus, which becomes squeal-and-look-away clear when the first is ripped open into a bucket.

This is reproduction that's bleeding, empty, ripped, violent, invasive, torturous, stinking, screaming, agonising, helpless, stitched, scarred, violated, stretched and exhausted.

And it's beautiful.

Blood and pain are such a part of making, or trying to make, new life and finding the exquisite love that's swaddled in a soft bunny rug.

With an infertile naked mutant-breasted monster, a womb that never forgives its emptiness and one ripped out before it had a chance, Frankenstein's honesty is confronting and Valente and Davis never hold back when a visual choice has to be made. Yes, it has to be a coat hanger and it has to be red globby jelly and it's impossible to not see the difference between the naked flesh of a woman in her 20s and one in her 50s.

It's extreme, but no more than the horror films inspired by Frankenstein. In comparison to some, it's mild. And, as we laugh as much as squeal at horror films, it's more than ok to laugh if it gets too much, too graphic or too close.

The Rabble's monster story dares us to find beauty and laughter – and perhaps even comfort – in the horror of reproduction.

I just wish I'd had some ibuprofen with me.

This was on AussieTheatre.com.

What Melbourne loved in 2013, part 17

That's it! 51 members of Melbourne's theatre community have shared their 2013 favourite moments, shows and people.

The last very-loved three are Mary Helen Sassman, Glyn Roberts and Richard Watts.

(And there might be a bonus next week.)

What Melbourne loved the most in 2013

The Sovereign Wife, Sisters Grimm, NEON

Summertime in the Garden of Eden, Sisters Grimm, Theatre Works
They saw a thylacine, Sarah Hamilton and Justine Campbell, Melbourne Fringe
Story of O, The Rabble, NEON
Kids Killing Kids, MKA, Melbourne Fringe
M+M, Daniel Schlusser Ensemble, Theatre Works, Melbourne Fringe

But the MTC's NEON Festival of Independent Theatre is the undisputed winner.

There's still no award statue, no cash prize and I'm in my pjs as I announce the winners, but there are quotables and every show and person mentioned knows that Melbourne really loved you in 2013. 

Mary Helen Sassman

performer

MARY HELEN: I have felt a bubbling undercurrent – sometimes champagne all fizzy pop and sometimes simmering soup all hearty – this year, as though something special is happening to our little industry. We have seen courage and risk-taking robustly applauded.

As a performer, my scariest, most formative and now favourite moment was while performing in The Rabble's Story of O, where scores of audience walked out mid-performance; some loudly exclaiming their disdain as they left. I inherently aim to please – or so I had thought – so was challenged, but ultimately it felt dangerous and honest.

Also this year I have been working at what Chris Boyd has called "Headquarters": La Mama Theatre. What I love most about that place is that it feels like home to so many ridiculously talented people and companies.

My favourite moments there and elsewhere:

A stunning and dark tale in Angela Betzien's The Tall Man. Director Leticia Caceres created an eerie and raw world with some seriously good Brisbane-bred actors Hayden Spencer and Louise Brehmer.

Super Discount (Back to Back Theatre) was super awesome.

Menagerie (NEON, Daniel Schlusser Ensemble) thrilled me. I am now and forever unfulfilled if there are less than three simultaneous climaxes at any one time on stage.

SM: MH's performance in Story of O left me reeling (and I lost count of the climaxes). 

It's almost impossible to get into the head of the O in the book. Mary Helen got into O's head and did what the book doesn't: showed us what this women felt. It's when actors bring more than the writer created to a character that they become so real that we are willing to forget that we're watching an actor.

Glyn Roberts
was Co-Creative-Director, MKA
is Program Manager, La Boite Theatre Company (Brisbane)

GLYN: Well. 2013 was for me one of the most hectic years of my life; although, not the busiest. That was 2011–12: those heady years where we built cutting-edge performances spaces out of eggshells and barley sugar.

My favorite show was The Rabble's Story of O, but that has been talked about quite a bit here. And I finally caught Arthur's Cut Snake, a show that is "performance" at it's simplest and most effective. Such a lovely thing.

My favorite moments in theatre this year were more the symptoms of shows. Watching a Year 10 class from the Gold Coast lose their shit while watching The Economist at the World Theatre Festival in Brisbane or, in Brisbane again for the Brisbane Festival, having MKA's production of The Unspoken Word is 'Joe' programmed alongside so many friends and colleagues from Melbourne.

It was a sign that something was beginning and ending simultaneously. Change was afoot, not to mention the emergence of a curious culture of sharing and communication between Melbourne and Brisbane, cheekily going on behind Sydney's back.

The most telling moments were the white hot fury that MKA's Kids Killing Kids could, on any given night, insight and the bacchaenalian thrill that it would inspire in the hearts of others.

The same went for Mark Wilson's Unsex Me, which divided audiences with many to this day still unable to control the volume of their voice when the piece is mentioned (which is excellent).

Both shows represented my swan song as a Creative Director of MKA and both were shows that forced those that saw them to lay their cards on the table. These pieces not only polarised members of the audience but exposed who they were ideologically, aesthetically, sexually, culturally and artistically. It was these moments where theatre managed to expose people's essence and foundations and had them leaving the theatre raw and alive both livid and joyful.

As Elie Wiesel said, “The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference.” If we avoid indifference from here on in then I think we will be set to have a good 2014.

SM: I was going to talk more about Kids Killing Kids and a bit about Group Show (what a bunch of writers!), but I'm going with:

 "If we avoid indifference from here on in then I think we will be set to have a good 2014."

Let's all take that in to 2014.


Richard Watts
writer, broadcaster, the guy who sees more shows than anyone and should be given a present by Melbourne's independent artists for all the amazing support he gives

Ho and Ho

RICHARD:  Between all the performance delights that Melbourne had to offer, as well as the biennial Castlemaine State Festival, the World Theatre Forum at Brisbane Powerhouse, and a truly spellbinding performance by Pantha Du Prince and the Bell Laboratory in Barcelona (hands down my favourite performance of the year in any artform), 2013 has been an excellent year. Congratulations to everyone who made and staged work this year – you’ve been amazing, and I can’t wait to see what you’ll create in 2014.

This year got off to an excellent start with Psycho Beach Party at Theatre Works, a camp feast of satire and leopard print, beautifully performed and designed and excellently directed and performed.

I also adored the MTC’s Constellations, a heartbreakingly beautiful exploration of love across parallel worlds by UK playwright Nick Payne starring Alison Bell and Leon Ford; Gob Squad’s Kitchen (You Never Had it So Good) at the World Theatre Festival, which featured some of the best integration of technology and the audience I’ve ever seen on stage; and, at the same festival, I Heart Alice Heart I by Irish company HotForTheatre, the single most romantic production I saw all year – I was sobbing happy tears by the end of the play, and I certainly wasn’t the only one.

Coming back to Melbourne, I was amazed and delighted by Brisbane circus company Casus and their show Knee Deep at the Famous Spiegeltent (a venue I’ll miss in 2014), an intimate display of physical skill that playfully subverted gender norms, and I laughed uproariously at the Indigenous fairy tale Wulamanayuwi and the Seven Pamanui at the Castlemaine State Festival. I also shrieked with mirth at Lucy Hopkin’s superb solo clown act Le Foulard at Tuxedo Cat and at the return season of the wonderfully rude and hugely entertaining  Slutmonster and Friends. at Northcote Town Hall during the Melbourne International Comedy Festival.

Windmill Theatre’s School Dance was wonderful too – its awkward geek heroes really resonated with me, reminding me of my Dungeons & Dragons-playing high school days – as was Simon Keck’s hilarious play about suicide, Nob Happy Sock at the Imperial Hotel, though in a very different way.

I missed some of the MTC’s NEON season due to a trip to Spain but I was very taken by The Hayloft Project’s exploration of myth and theatrical form, By Their Own Hands, and, seemingly like everyone else in Melbourne, was thrilled and delighted by Sisters Grimm’s subversive, playful, confrontation and brilliant The Sovereign Wife.

Back at Theatre Works I saw one of the most riveting performances of the year in The Palace of the End – overall a very strong production, with an absolutely riveting performance by Robert Meldrum, who I couldn’t take my eyes off. Simply astounding.

On the other side of town at La Mama I was equally enthralled by Maude Davey’s My Life in the Nude, a classic encapsulation of the adage "the personal is political" in cabaret form, while the equally powerful The Bloody Chamber at the Malthouse, skilfully adapted by Van Badham and directed by Matthew Lutton, not only made me see Alison Whyte in a new light, but gave me a new appreciation for the feminist fairy tales of Angela Carter. Great stuff.

I finally caught up with sci-fi puppet epic The Omega Quest at Revolt in Kensington; cheered Geraldine Quinn’s excellent Sunglasses at Night: The 80s Apocalypse Sing Along Cabaret at the Butterfly Club; was made to empathise with beastly men thanks to Patricia Cornelius's superb Savages at fortyfivedownstairs; gasped in wonder at Richard Vabre’s absolutely exquisite lighting for Stuck Pigs Squealing’s night maybe at Theatre Works;  delighted in a bite-sized range of contemporary and traditional dance styles in Nat Cursio’s Private Dances II at Northcote Town Hall; was taken aback and enthralled by Branch Nebula’s Whelping Box at Arts House Meat Market; and adored Elbow Room’s Fewer Emergencies at the Owl and the Pussycat.


Then it was Fringe time. The controlled simplicity of They saw a thylacine and the judicious blend of comedy and heartbreak in Black Faggot thrilled me; Wolf Creek, The Musical revelled in its low-fi silliness, as did Dr Professor Neal Portenza’s Love Muffins; I was taken aback and thrilled by Mark Wilson’s committed performance in MKA’s Unsex Me, while Big One Little One’s live art piece Confetti was one of the most exhilarating and life-affirming works of the year.

Next came the Melbourne Festival, where my highlights were Nicola Gunn’s post-modern masterpiece In Spite of Myself and Belarus Free Theatre’s electrifying piece of agit-prop Minsk, 2011: A Reply to Kathy Acker.

After the madness of Fringe and the Festival, where I saw 40 shows in 40 days, I collapsed a little, though I still had time to see Malia Walsh and company’s circus-puppetry-dance hybrid Arabella at the La Mama Courthouse, which was superb, as was Sisters Grimm’s remounted, gender-fucking Summertime in the Garden of Eden at Theatre Works.

This was meant to be a brief summation of just some of the year’s highlights – not all of them. Oops. Damn, it’s been an excellent year!

SM: Damn, it has been an excellent year! And Richard has seen most of the shows.

Richard's another one of those people whom I trust if they tell me to see something. Without his recommendation, I wouldn't have seen Slutmonster and Friends. And, to not have seen this fuzzy-pink, giant-cocked slut of a monster is too sad a thought to contemplate. I sat with Richard at Slutmonster and Wolf Creek and, I've said it before, but it's wonderful to be with people who laugh (and cry; Dr Who) at the same things I do.

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

Part 16

2012 part 1, with links to the rest

FESTIVAL: Room of Regret

MELBOURNE FESTIVAL 2013
Room of Regret
The Rabble, Theatre Works, Melbourne Festival
22 October 3013
Theatre Works
to 3 November
melbournefestival.com.au

No one makes theatre like The Rabble do. It's like co-creators Emma Valente and Kate Davis take the concept of theatre and re-create it into something that looks like theatre, but feels like a trip – I don't mean holiday – that simultaneously assults and calms and awakens bits of your brain that you didn't know existed.

Room of Regret is their reflection on Oscar Wilde's only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray. Compared to their recent Story of O and even last Festival's Orlando, it's close to being a literal re-telling. But don't expect a lot of words from Dorian's tumble through perfection, hedonism and despair.

Instead, expect to be immersed into, sometimes almost drowned in, a pool of pure emotion. With no restraint, it batters and confronts, but there's love and comfort around the next corner and the only fear is that of missing out.

The audience (40; there isn't room for 41) are taken into the theatre in groups. All have their heads covered in a lace veil and are lead through a house, with plywood walls and floor covered in gold leaves, and are left sitting in different rooms. No group can see the other, or really see their own group as all sit like statues covered in dust sheets waiting for the summer return of the household. As the lighting brings an eerie autumn twilight, the other draped statues come to life.

Description can't justify this experience and no experience can be the same because of the different views. Sometimes the action is in touching distance, other times it's heard, glimpsed through a doorway or projected onto a screen.

Nothing is lost by being in a different room, but nothing is gained by staying put. If a hand is offered from the cast, take it. My favourite moment was one that no one saw: there was a top hat, a dance, a whisper and a cuddle.

Technically, what's so astonishing about such a complex piece is that it sustains its changing pace and tone throughout the space. The cast (Pier Carthew, Alex McQueen, Mary Helen Sassman, David Harrison and Emily Milledge) show no favour as they dash or slink from room to room and often choose one person to tell their story to. There's repetition that's never the same and reflection is left to the audience, often very literally with mirrors.

Valente's lighting (as glorious as her direction) establishes the changing mood and Davis's design entices with lace, beads, silky leopard print and furs that begged to be felt. But (finally) there's the ability to touch her world. Here the synthetic falseness of the gold leaves can be picked up, the distortion of lace-covered eyes controlled and the touch of flesh is welcomed, but never forced. (I've never come so close to touching and comforting an actor. The only thing that stopped me was seeing my own reflection in a mirror; I now wish I had.)

I've described The Rabble's work like a dream before and it's still as close as I can get. In dreams, illogic makes perfect sense and all that really matters is how you feel, and how you still feel when you wake up relieved or devastated to be safe in your own bed. Description and interpretation only take the felt meaning away from the dreamer.

Room of Regret might be at living nightmare or leave you floating and hoping to never wake up. Whatever, it's not work to force meaning onto because whatever you feel is what it's meant to mean.

It left me feeling elated and awake wanting to do it again.

And if you want Wilde's telling of the story, read the book.

This was on AussieTheatre.com.

Review: Story of O

NEON Festival of Independent Theatre
Story of O
The Rabble
28 June 2013
The Lawler
to 7 July
mtc.com.au

Carousel ponies, huffy walk-outs and a personal trigger warning when you pick up your ticket: The Rabble have adapted the Story of O for the MTC's sensational Neon season.  It's confronting and confirming and I loved it so much that it hurt a bit to watch.

I love The Rabble's work with the kind of love that defies any attempt at a star rating. In preparation for their version of Story of O by Pauline Réage, I read the book; the reading was less painful than O's preparation at Roissy, but I didn't enjoy it and had no idea what to expect on the stage.

In 1954, Anne Declos was a successful 47-year-old journalist and novelist when she wrote this tale as a gift to her boss and male lover, who fancied the writing of the Marquis de Sade. Despite winning the prestigious French literary prize, Prix des Deux Magots, she didn't publicly reveal herself as the author until 40 years after it was published.

It's ostensibly about a young woman's complete submission to secure her lover. A submission that includes being unable to cross her legs, multiple penetration by anonymous men (without any hint of lube, condoms or a moment to catch a breath to scream a non-existent safe word), whipping, branding and her ultimate exposure (considered almost too shocking at the time) is the waxing off of her pubic hair. And that's before it gets really de-humanising.

Without beginning an argument about BDSM, O gets no sexual pleasure from her submission. It's not about her; it's about her doing it for him, even when he's not around to witness and even when she realises that he doesn't want her. And it's narrated by a distanced and anonymous voice, whose gentle – almost prudish – prose leaves it as erotic as a Jehovah's Witness magazine. If pornography is meant to arouse, there's something much more to this book than its reputation, and its popularity may rest on how its distanced narration and calm description puts responsibility on the reader to imagine what O feels.

Co-creators Kate Davis and Emma Valente make us see how O feels.

And see it in ways far removed from the novel – but this doesn't matter as they only use a handful of words from the text, which it is as accurate as it needs to be and as creative as it should be.

As co-artistic directors of The Rabble, Davis designed and Valente directed, but it's difficult to sense a clear differentiation. With exquisite beauty and understanding, they've taken this fantasy tale about submission out of the imagination of its readers, queered it up, reversed some genders, whirled it around, put it in close up and thrust it back at us with such bold confidence that we understand how it's impossible to say no.

Aesthetically, the 60s French polo necks, jaunty stripes and elastic garters are given a nod, but O's world isn't wealthy Parisian chateaus. At first, it's a girly dream with merry-go-round ponies and pink flowers scattered on the floor. But horses are beasts to ride and poles are used to tie horses up. And even with its flung ribbons, party hats and ice cream, all is not as pretty as it looks.

The cast are as desirous and pleasing as the world they play in. Gary Abrahams is Rene (O's lover), Jane Montgomery Griffiths is Sir Stephen (who is given O by Rene), Pier Cathew is Anne-Marie (the older lesbian who brands O for Sir Stephen), Dana Miltins is Jacqueline (loved by O and wanted by Rene) and Emily Milledge is Nathalie (Jaqueline's teenage sister who just wants to be like O). None of these relationships are spoken on the stage, but each take their character from the book and let them live in this through-the-looking glass world where everything about their book behaviour is questioned.

Milledge's Nathalie is especially moving and as Miltin's seven-month pregnant belly is ignored by Jacqueline, it's gold-clad roundness says more about the sexual portrayal of pregnant women than words could dare.

Which leaves Mary Helen Sassman as O. Her performance transcends any depiction of O that has gone before. She's scared, hurt, excited and – this is the twist – lets O say "No" and choose to keep going. She keeps going towards boredom, acceptance and far more hurt without ever revealing if O's own desires are met. Sassman's performance is already being described as fearless, but I say it's honest. It's so uncompromisingly honest that I think the walk-outs are because she makes them feel everything that O feels, which is far more confronting than the sex and violence shown.

So far, people have walked out. This is wonderful. How often does theatre create a response so powerful that people are brave enough to walk out when their exit is seen by the audience and the performers? On the night I went, the walk-outs were men and I wanted to run after them and tell them to go back in and really look at the stage, because this is how women are seen. If it's so shocking or offensive to leave when everyone on stage is fully clothed, the sex and violence are clearly faked and when kitchen and domestic appliances are the offending objects, perhaps a sense of the true offence can be felt.

If you want to run, ask why and remember the gift is for those who stay and laugh or cringe or cry or wonder if they should be feeling as good as they do.

Story of O is theatre like no one else dares to make.

Photos by Guy Little

This will also appear on AussieTheatre.com in a couple of days

Melbourne Festival review: Orlando

Melbourne Festival 2012
Orlando
The Rabble, Malthouse Theatre, Melbourne Festival
12 October 2012
Tower Theatre
to 27 October
melbournefestival.com.au

Tell me a story. Tell me in a way that it's not been told before. This is the bliss of theatre. The Rabble's Orlando is so far from the experience of reading Virgina Woolf's book, but as close to knowing its essence (I want to say soul) as possible.

Woolf's 1928 novel Orlando was a love letter to Vita Sackville West about a young man who never grew old, became a woman and lived through the 16th to 19th centuries. This Orlando is a lusty and passionate response to Virgina Woolf (and to great women writers and to all writers and poets) that's as gentle and beautiful, as cruel and painful, as liberating and celebratory, and as embarrassing and shameful as love.

Artistic directors, Emma Valente and Kate Davis, have collaborated for six years with a group of artists (in Melbourne and Sydney) to examine familiar stories, and re-imagine and re-tell them in a new context with an unexpected aesthetic.  Their work is so dense and layered that it guarantees a different experience for everyone watching – and response ranges from "this is why I go to theatre" to "this is why I don't go to theatre". If you don't understand what's going on in one of their shows, don't worry. Find what you enjoy and know that no one else will see the show quite like you do.

Orlando's re-imagined world is milky/semeny white, with crunchy pebbles, billowy tulle, soft fox fur, crisp cotton, smooth pearls and a creamy pool that flows and stagnates though the centuries. It's a world that begs us to touch and feel and roll naked in it; it's almost cruel to make us just watch. And that's before we want to taste.

Dana Miltins performance as Orlando is exquisite, almost hypnotic. For most of the night Orlando says little. Great acting is rarely the words said, it's reacting to what's being said and done, and her reactions pull us into Orlando's heart to see and feel his/her world like she/he does. 

The only thing that rips our attention away from her are Orlando's loves, who are Syd Brisbane and Mary Helen Sassman. If Orlando is all heart and emotion, they are the baser parts.  Sassman's hilarious discussion of our lusty bits is unforgettable. And there's Brisbane in a sporran with a kabana, which may come back the next time you see a Shakespeare. 

Each are so watchable in themselves, but the balance and contrast of the three performers is the sweet, salt and spice that makes this work so finger-licking delicious. 

If you own a falling-apart copy of Woolf's book, this Orlando will be as precious as a first edition. If you haven't read it, don't worry.  I thought I'd read it, but according to the receipt/bookmark in my copy – bought at the Murphy Sister's feminist bookstore in Adelaide in 1993, must have been after seeing the 1992 film – I didn't get past p.49. The joy of The Rabble's work is that there's so much more to indulge in than a mere appreciation of the source.  And, like me, you may be inspired to pop the book on your must-read pile.

At the Festival Hub at a full panel discussion about identity, drag and self, Boy George (who I love more now than I did in the 80s) said, "Sometimes the most political thing you can do is just be yourself." How often are we simply ourselves? Orlando is that search for self through gender and time and relationships and it's more honest and gutsy than anything currently being screamed about gender, identity and feminism.

Photo by Sarah Walker

This appeared on AussieTheatre.com

Review: Special

Special
La Mama and The Rabble
7 August 2011
La Mama Courthouse
to 21 August

The Rabble explore the aesthetics of theatre with a focus on process and theme. Their shows are not easy to read stories and their style could leave you engrossed or cold and mumbling about missing Masterchef for this.

In a mould-green world surrounded by crepe streamers the colour of toilet paper, Goldie rides her exercise bike while Special lies on a hill of soil wearing a stretchy hot pink dress and a North American Indian head dress. And it gets stranger.

From a concept by director Emma Valente and Mary Helen Sassman, Special is ostensively about mothers and daughters. Goldie (Liz Jones – who it's always wonderful to see on the stage rather than the office) isn't thrilled that her daughter, Special (Sassman), is pregnant (as is Sassman).  Special's not too thrilled with Goldie either, but has some more important issues to face before her special day, if Goldie doesn't demand all the attention.

There's little story to follow, rather it's a disturbingly funny peek into the warped emotions and unconscious drivers of the pair. With its lack of logic, distorted aesthetics and was-Freud-really-right moments of parental resent, it's like watching a dream. And, like waking,  you leave with the your conscious memory trying to put pieces together that will never fit.

I admit that I had moments when I had no idea what was going on or what it all meant, but it was beautiful and fascinating and I'm so glad that we have a theatre culture that lets this kind of art flourish.

This review originally appeared on AussieTheatre.com