What Melbourne Loved in 2021 (and 2020), part 3

Daniel Lammin and Ash Flanders are total SM favourites and have told us what they love since it began. Today one asks:" What’s the fucking point?". The other asks: "Can chronic narcissists be grateful?". Both answer beautifully. 

Ash Flanders
40

Ash Flanders
(Easier than the Zoom button that makes you look pretty.)

What theatre/art/creative experience did you love the most 2021 (or 2020)?
Oh, Lord, what is time? I can’t remember this morning let alone the year. I really enjoyed seeing Fuck Fabulous at Arts Centre Melbourne. I’m a major fangurl of Sarah Ward so it was a thrill to come out of lockdown and see the beautiful, trashy, super-smart, incredibly entertaining, political world she created. But it was the offstage world that stuck with me. The night I attended had such a weird mix of an audience and it felt like none of us knew how to even be in a theatre. But I’ve never felt a crowd so connected to each other as when a performer peed in a glass and held it out to the audience. As soon as one person yelled out DRINK IT – in my mind, a freaked-out guy in a suit who couldn’t believe the words had leapt out of his mouth – we all joined in. We were one puerile collective mind. You’ve never felt the collapse of gatekeeping more than hearing 200+ people in the arts centre chanting for someone to drink their own piss. It was infantile and joyous and when the performer skulled the whole thing it was like Jesus with the loaves and fishes: one jar of piss quenched all our thirst.

Selfishly, I have also loved being able to present SS Metaphor at Malthouse. I’ve always appreciated the production side of things but seeing a whole team of people come together to help execute this thing I wrote was very, very moving. Which begs a larger question – can chronic narcissists be grateful? Yes, yes we can.

What surprised you about finding new ways to make art in locked-down worlds?
I went long on the last question so I’ll just say that I never knew I could write a play from my own wardrobe, but I sure can! I wasn’t surprised that as artists we all found ways to continue our work and problem-solve, but, sadly, I also wasn’t surprised by the lack of government support. Personally, I was most surprised to learn that I really can’t live without writing. And that at 40 I’m still happy to rehearse out of Stephen Nicolazzo’s apartment and use a TV remote as a mic.

What did you do to stay connected to your arts community?
Almost everyone I’m friends with is part of the arts community so a lot of it was just checking in and hanging out whenever we could, either virtually or on long walks. Those long walks were actually my favorite thing about lockdown. Conversation flows so well on a walk, especially if it’s with Richard Higgins and you have a whole graveyard to explore. I also have to say I was lucky enough to get two shows up this year which sounds amazing until you realise Ash Flanders is Nothing only ran for two nights and SS Metaphor could still be sunk by killer bees, another cheeky earthquake, or, I dunno, an asteroid?

What are you looking forward to in 2022?
(Hopefully) Finally getting to do a full season of my show End Of. at Griffin Theatre in Sydney. It might even mean I get to go on a plane, see some friends I haven’t seen in two years and tell a whole new city about my favourite monster, Heather Flanders. I’m also looking forward to getting to see more theatre, doing a little mentoring and hopefully writing more stuff. I think lockdown has really taught me to appreciate any chance I get to do this theatre stuff, so it’s all gravy, baby (ewwww).

SM: My favourite memory of Heather Flanders was 2020 opening night of End Of. It was the day before the Comedy Festival cancelled. A day when we didn't know if theatre kissies would kill us. Heather came in for a hug and, "Well, we've gotta die from something." I so hope Sydney gets to see End Of. END OF.

I've seen less than usual of Ash this year (he didn't ask me to go for a long walk in a graveyard with Richard Higgins), but I went to a preview of SS Metaphor last night the Malthouse. As it's was a preview, it will be different by opening night. But, think "Carry On The Poseidon Adventure" with queer heroes and Ash playing the straight captain in a moustache, and a wannabe who thinks they can save the never-ending cruise with entertainment – and tap dancing, which is now is etched in my soul. 

Daniel Lammin
Director, writer, Disney fanatic, film critic

Daniel Lammin.

 

What theatre/art/creative experience did you love the most and how did you stay connected?
I didn’t see a lot of live performance this year. I could use the lockdowns as an excuse, but the truth was that I just... didn’t want to. With the precariousness of the world at the moment, I turned to cinema for artistic need and comfort rather than theatre. As much as nothing gives me greater joy than sitting in the dark and watching a piece of live performance burst into life before my eyes, I find the moments beforehand (congregating in the foyer, small talk, those gross bits of networking we inevitably end up doing) almost too difficult to bear, and that was before we were locked in our houses and both my sense of myself as an introvert and my social anxiety increased. In a year when so much was distressing or confronting, I just didn’t have the nerve or the energy to return to the community again in the same capacity. Frankly, I was too scared, as scared as I always have been, but now all the more aware of how anxiety-inducing the world of a theatre foyer can be for me.

Maybe that’s why I had a great time wandering around Because The Night. I didn’t particularly enjoy it as a piece of theatre, but what I loved was the complete anonymity it gave me. I could fully engage with this work, be part of a collective in the act of experiencing it, and no-one had a fucking clue who I was and I didn’t have a fucking clue who they were. I could be present without any sense of anxiety, and allow myself full permission to observe and to play.

That sense of engagement without the terror of the theatre foyer reached its sublime peak for me
with St Martins’s flat-out wonderful online production Us, created by Katrina Cornwall and Morgan
Rose, who are pretty much my favourite theatre makers in Melbourne. It wasn’t an online work made out of necessity, but one that was actually fucking interested in the digital form. We’ve seen far too many artists treat this form as second-rate, but Kat and Morgan and this remarkable group of young people and their parents fully engaged with its possibilities, looked into every nook and cranny for what could be done and made something so alive and generous and moving and communal. I felt more seen by and connected to these performers than most in-person work I’d seen, and they couldn’t even see that I was there. It gave me that giddy feeling I used to get in the old world before Covid of seeing something special – and god I loved it. There was a generosity of spirit, a joy in the act of creating and sharing, all aspects that are indicative of Kat and Morgan’s work together.

The same can be said of their gorgeous Riot Stage work this year, Everyone is Famous, which was another act of theatrical generosity. That one had the extra power of having seen these young people grow as theatre makers through the many years of Riot Stage work, see their ideas sharpen and their voices get louder. There was no separation of us-and-them, no sense of watching young people as if they were animals in a zoo. In that instance, my agony in the foyer beforehand was worth it for the
magic I saw in the theatre itself.

As well as discovering how much of an introvert I really am through the many lockdowns, the other
unnerving discovery I made was this: I didn’t miss theatre. I didn’t miss making it, and I didn’t miss watching it. As the days ticked on, this didn’t change, and I began to wonder whether I actually really wanted to stick with it. It wasn’t just that it didn’t seem a viable option at the moment, it was the realisation that my career, while it had given me so much, had also taken an awful lot from me, and I wasn’t sure it was worth it. And then I stepped into the tumultuous rehearsal room of Bloomshed’s production of Animal Farm, and it all came flooding back – the chaos, the fights, the blood, the sweat, the fear, the tears, the joy, the insanity, that taste in your mouth and that shiver all over your skin when something special happens. I found it again and I was hungry for it, and I realised I wasn’t ready to give it up. Maybe one day I will, and certainly when it happens, it will be on my own terms and I will be fully at peace with it. But not yet.

So if I have to say what creative experience meant the most to me in 2021, it was making a show
that almost no-one got to see. It breaks my heart that we never got to see it through, but, my god,
there was magic happening in those rehearsals; theatre that was true and honest and passionate. And connected, just as works like Us and Everyone is Famous and even the wandering journey of the audience through Because The Night. Because if theatre isn’t about people and connection and being with one another in a time and a space fashioned from magic and dreams and passion, then what’s the fucking point? 

What are you looking forward to in 2022?
And what of 2022? Who knows. It feels foolish to put too much stock in it. I’m very excited for the projects I have lined up, and really hope they don’t end up as unfulfilled dreams like Animal Farm. I can only hope. But maybe it’s time for something new. Something isn’t working, and I don’t know whether that’s to do with me or to do with the industry or maybe a bit of both. There’s a pull at my leg, that restless need for movement. Maybe it’s time to find a new adventure somewhere else. Who knows! But I’m excited to find out.

SM: Animal Farm being cancelled upset me more than losing other shows. It wasn't just because I wouldn't see it; it was everything. It was the goddamedness of going back into lockdown, it was knowing that they'd rehearsed in lockdown and previewed in Geelong. It was ready. It was so the story that was for now. And it was created by some of my favourite makers. Losing this one really really sucked.

Daniel watches film and the two of us must never see films together because our critical reactions to them are so often on opposing ends of the scale. But TV is different. Not long ago, I watched Ted Lasso and saw that Daniel loved it more than I did – and that was saying something. I loved Daniel's love of Ted Lasso.

The Bloomshed. "Animal Farm". We will see it one day.

Review: Fuck Fabulous

Midsumma
Fuck Fabulous
Arts Centre Melbourne in association with Fat Fruit
Fairfax Studio
21 April 20210
to 2 May
artscentremelbourne.com.au

Fuck Fubulous

My review is in Witness Performance.

(Apologies for not posting it ages ago.)

What Melbourne Loved in 2019, part 5

So today, our federal government dumped the arts ministry.

I'm running out of positive today, then I get this contribution: "A lot of the works that stayed with me explored post-humanism, native peoples self-determination or the post apocalypse; further cementing that theatre is dangerous, vital, conversational and provocative. No wonder funding is drying up, like the creek beds of our planet."

It's easy to give up at the moment, so we need to let artists and theatre makers know that their work makes a difference. Have your say here.

Joshua Ladgrove
Joshua Ladgrove The Wise

Joshua Ladgrove and Frobert selfie

Favourite moments in 2019.
Someone in the front row of my show using their iPhone torch to loudly search through their bag for a lolly, and then try to quietly unwrap said lolly while I stopped the show and watched them the whole time unbeknownst to them; it was very funny.

Looking forward to in 2020.
Creating a new show.

SM: I saw his seminar about bilge pumps (its name changes) at MICF and Melbourne Fringe; it's the only show I saw twice this year. And that wasn't enough. Even when I knew what was coming, he still surprised me. Watching this show is fear clashing with the joy of complete trust that he's going to make everything pay off. And he does. If the world were fair, he'd have his own tv show and be so fucking famous by now that he wouldn't give a toss what bloggers think.

There's a final 2019 showing of Joshua Ladgrove's Award Winning Bilge Pump Show TOMORROW (Friday 6 December).

It's a fundraiser. In order to create new shows, artists need money. It's not like there's funding.

It's at Docklands. This is the ideal place for a bilge pump seminar. (It's at the library, which is actually really groovy.)

You can book here. It may be the best seminar yet.


Carla Donnelly
Broadcaster and critic

Carla Donnelly selfie

Favourite moments in 2019.
2019 has been a year of incredible art for me. Music, film and my beloved theatre. There have  been so many amazing performances that my memories become nested into moments that had my jaw unhinge with tears of disbelief that life could be so beautiful. A lot of the works that stayed with me explored post-humanism, native peoples self-determination or the post apocalypse; further cementing that theatre is dangerous, vital, conversational and provocative. No wonder funding is drying up, like the creek beds of our planet.

Sarah Ward’s alien/rock/monkey space rock opera The Legend of Queen Kong: opera singing MOTHER FUCKER to a baroque harpsichord psychedelic freak out.

Ursula Yovich’s defiant, heartbreaking and vulnerable rock musical Barbara and the Camp Dogs: too many moments to list that had me in tears.

Mr Burns, a post-electric play was an absolute miracle of production, the amount of moving pieces to get right would have been back breaking. Its message of the way humans make meaning and connect, how memory works, and our utter compulsion to tell ourselves and each other through story completely blew me away. The pop medley was the prestige in an already inconceivably incredible independent theatre production.

Emma Hall’s World Problems. A simple conceit – a woman builds a trampoline on stage, with a monologue projected at/to the audience. Emma tells us the story of how ‘you’ let the world die. The mental gymnastics I went through to avoid complicity took me to at least half way through the show before my heart sank and I started to cry realising that it *was* us. We did let the world die.

The Honouring (during Yirramboi) was a work of such tenderness and pain; I am crying now thinking about it. Jack Sheppard’s physical rendering of Indigenous suicide through text, movement and puppetry was staggering. A work that didn’t get enough attention. Nor the festival really; Yirramboi is extraordinary.

Joel Bray’s Daddy (also at Yirramboi) a was another incredible work featuring dance, text and tableaus presented to the audience by following Bray around the room. Joel Bray is filled with rage and hope and love and desire and this was beautifully rendered. It was electrifying.

The Patricia Cornelius/Susie Dee power combo continued to slay with Love: stories, faces and bodies I never see on Melbourne stages. Working class people. Drug dependent people. The traumatised. The vulgar. The aberrant. All lovingly and respectfully brought into focus. I walk away from their shows thinking why do I never see these kinds of stories? Who has the keys?

Them (La Mama) was one of the most profound plays of the year. Mystical in its realisation the perfection of casting, time, place and script. It is truly gifted to make a drama about war deeply funny in places. It had me laughing and sobbing and believing the best in humanity that plays like this can find a stage.

I flew to Sydney to see Adena Jacob’s Titus Andronicus and it did not disappoint. Jane Montgomery-Griffiths was clearly having the time of her life in this role. My moment of the year was Catherine Davies ‘comic relief’ clown smearing shit all up the back of her legs whilst doing a sexy dance. Just when you think things can’t get worse, that happens to you and you wonder how life can get any better?

My last three are the most creative and original of the year. Yay for Canetoads! at Melbourne Fringe  was one of those word-of-mouths gems that I would never have known about. So skillfully wrought with colonialism succinctly expressed through the “white death” of the sugar cane industry. Ordinarily this pun could have been one note or on the nose, but Kendra Keller’s tremendous skill and commitment makes our complicity and embeddedness in this horror felt.

Subliminal Massage at Melbourne Fringe was truly one of the most left field and surreal works I’ve ever experienced. A post (post?) human exploration/celebration/exhibition of the trash bag of western “culture”. Puns, portmanteaus, wellness, white cubes, black screens… This AI hasn’t been updated in a century and his database has festered. Glitched out, hilarious, touching, terrifying… just absolutely fucking mind blowing.

And finally Unwoman by The Rabble. From the fecund idealisation of the function of femininity to Yumi Umiumare's butoh – 50 minutes of screaming and giving birth to rocks in a concrete prison reality. This work truly communicated the female experience. Funny, paternalistic, objectifying, non-agentic, tedious, primal – you name it it was in there. The design was also exceptional.

A deep gratitude to all these artists (and the 60+ other performances I saw this year). The  diversity of skill and talent in this country is staggering, and your work, minds, hearts and bodies make my life worth living.

Looking forward to in 2020.
Seeing Daddy again at Midsumma; Fun Home and Slap.Bang.Kiss at MTC; Grey Arias, Do Not Go Gentle and Loaded at Malthouse;  Asia TOPA.

SM: Carla is another critic who keeps going even when everything seems bleak. And, those earrings!

What Melbourne Loved in 2019, part 1

What Melbourne Loved officially starts in December, but let's get started now. OK, this is a reminder to write your contributions. Fill in this form.

And what better way to start than with three of my favourite people, artists and creators who all put perspectives, concepts, point of views, writing and artists that are STILL dismissed or ignored on our stages. This is why we keep coming back to theatre.


Stephen Nicolazzo 
Director
Little Ones Theatre

Stephen Nicolazzo

Favourite moments in 2019.
The works that really stayed with me this year were a combination of fierce feminist performance art, dance and fiery theatricality. My all-time favourite moment of 2019 was Bitch on Heat by Leah Shelton at Theatre Works. It was pure genius: violent, sexy, disturbing, visually arresting and genre bending. One of the most glorious examples of how heightened physical performance can touch the soul, be critical and have a vital and unique pulse. I have not stopped thinking about it.

Other works that shook me were Antony Hamilton’s sensual, expressionistic masterpiece Token Armies for Chunky Move and the Melbourne International Arts  Festival, The Rabble's poignant and darkly humorous Unwoman, Bron Batten’s deeply confessional and arresting Waterloo at Melbourne Fringe,  Adena Jacobs’s horrifying and nightmarish Titus Andronicus at Bell Shakespeare, and two shows in New York (which I know are not Melbourne but too good not to mention!): Heidi Schreck’s deeply moving political meditation What The Constitution Means to Me directed by Oliver Butler, and Jacquiline Novak’s feminist manifesto about giving head, Get On Your Knees at Cherry Lane Theatre.

A personal highlight was meeting camp and queer theatre legend Charles Busch (writer of Psycho Beach Party) in New York City and getting the chance to spend a day with him talking about queer theatre history, the significance of comedy and his run in with Paul McCartney. I also had the pleasure of attending the 2019 Director’s Lab at Lincoln Centre Theatre. It gave me a new love and appreciation of Melbourne theatre and all of the vital and exciting work we create. Also, directing the INCREDIBLE Joel Bray in his work Daddy, which was presented as part of Yirramboi Festival, Liveworks and Brisbane Festival. AND FINALLY, getting to reunite The Happy Prince team after two and a half years at Griffin Theatre Companyin Sydney. Truly nourishing.

Oh! And getting to do Merciless Gods at Arts Centre Melbourne was the single greatest theatrical experience of my life?!

Looking forward to in 2020.
Asia TOPA's presentation of The Seen and Unseen, Jenny Kemp's production of Anatomy of a Suicide at Red Stitch, Paul Capsis and Michael Kantor's Go To Hell at Malthouse, K-Box at Malthouse, Triple X at Queensland Theatre/STC, and anything at Arts House, Dance House and the many exciting shows and events for Asia TOPA and the new Melbourne Festival.

SM: Stephen convinced me to go ahead with this again this year. As I see everything he does, I'd already seen the work he got to remount this year, except Daddy. I tried both seasons and sometimes it's not possible. But there is another chance next year.


Mama Alto
Jazz singer, cabaret artiste and gender-transcendent diva

Mama Alto. Photo by Alexis Desaulniers-Lea

Favourite moments in 2019.
I loved seeing the virtuosic piano performances of Andrea Katz deftly incorporated into the Cameron Lukey and Gary Abrahams's vision of 33 Variations.

I loved the absolute triumph of Queen Kong during Midsumma: Sarah Ward and her incredible band, with fully integrated Auslan with interpreter Kirri Dangerfield and Deaf interdisciplinary artist Asphyxia, on a journey through the cosmos and the interior universe of the human psyche, confronting so many of our contemporary issues through glam rock cabaret. And that powerhouse voice!

Looking forward to in 2020.
I am looking forward to hopefully seeing even more; one of the hardest things, for me, about working in the arts is that sometimes you miss out on seeing things because you're also doing a show!

SM: The absolute gut-felt joy of Gender Euphoria at Midsumma will be a life-long favourite moment. Then multiplying that again at Gender Euphoria at the Melbourne International Arts Festival. I feel better about life just by thinking about it again. As a critic, I get dismissed for criticising shows that dismiss how they perpetuate fucked-up and hurtful ideas about gender, race and sexuality (last week, I saw an opera that still has people onstage in unnecessary slanty-eye make up). So when artists like Mama and Maude Davey and producers like Daniel Clarke make and support shows that show us how the world should be, our community shares a sigh of relief. Is it really so hard to think about the impact your art has on your audience? Of course, it is easier to not invite people who might not shower you with meaningless stars and to encourage an audience who all look and think alike.

But nothing was quite as good as the look on Mama's face when she arrived at her surprise-birthday-party-cum-intimate-performance-spectacular, organised by Creatrix Tiara. 


Robert Reid
Playwright, game maker, critic

Robert Reid. Photo by Sarah Walker

Favourite moments in 2019.
MDLSX by Motus at Arts House.  Okay, I guess if I had to pick one thing, then it would actually be this because this is the first thing I think of every time I think of filling in this form. Incredible solo performance, and incredible use of tech, sound, light, story, meta narrative.  Hard, fast, brutal, honest, smart... yeah, MDLSX was my fave, I guess.

BUT, Barbara and the Camp Dogs at Malthouse comes a close second. Terrific night in the theatre; never felt for a moment the show didn't care if I was there or not; told the story we need to keep hearing; not a dry eye in the house; rock and roll theatre.

If they were they only things I'd seen all year, I'd have been pretty happy.

Looking forward to in 2020. 
I dunno, it's so hard to look forward to things at the moment. I'll be happy just to see who survives into 2020. What I'd like to be looking forward to is a restructuring of the funding models and an increase in budgetary allowance for the arts... Is that so much to hope for?

There is at least one show I'm looking forward to next year. Sipat Lawin is coming out with are you ready to take the law into your own hands. I am going the hell to that, I can tell you.

SM: I'm pretty chuffed that Witness is still going, but it's too easy to choose my favourite Rob moment this year: The Bacchae. Produced by MUST at La Mama, written (over many years) and directed by Rob, and with a huge cast of the most amazing women and female-identifying performers, it was an epic afternoon and evening of theatre that put women in the centre of the stories and found the point of views that are too often ignored, even when women are the story.


2018
2017
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Review: Madame Nightshade’s Poison Garden

MELBOURNE FRINGE 2017
Madame Nightshade’s Poison Garden
La Mama, Anna Lehmann Thomson
21 September 2017
La Mama
to 1 October
melbournefringe.com.au

Anna Thomson. Photo by Theresa Harrison

My review is at The Age/SMH.

Review: Shit

Shit

Dee & Cornelius

26 June 2015

Southbank Theatre, The Lawler

to 5 July

mtc.com.au

Shit is the shit. The fourth show of the 2015 MTC Neon Festival of Independent Theatre screams louder and stronger than the women it's about and inspires us to make our support for independent theatre as louder than possible.

Writer Patricia Cornelius says, "Really good independent theatre is radical. It is actually going to shock you. It is actually going to make you think differently." Shit is astonishing independent theatre. 

I don't understand why every theatre company in the country (and beyond) isn't competing to get the next Patricia Cornelius and Susie Dee play. From their days with the Melbourne Workers Theatre to their 2103 award-winning and independently-produced Savages, their consistent accolades somehow don't translate to commercial demand.

Shit is about three women who have been arrested and are locked up. Their crime isn't revealed until later – and shown remarkably with Marg Horwell's design – but the act isn't what the work's about.

Nicci Wilkes, Peta Brady, Sara Ward

Sam, Bobby and Billy are women whose stories are rarely told on our don't-upset-the-subscribers or our let's-talk-about-me stages. If we do see them, they are characters to laugh at; they are not "us" who go to the nice theatre. They are women who punch and fight. They are women who have never felt safe and joke about having a bed room door with a lock, wanting a bed with sheets and a doona cover, or remembering if someone ever hugged them as a child.

Their stories are confronting and raw, but not because of who they are. They confront who the audience are. The talk about being on public transport and knowing that all it takes to make someone get off is to yell at them. I would, and if I saw them at the train station, I'd get in the safe and crowded front carriage. This is theatre that lets us see ourselves through someone else's eyes; eyes we may never have thought of looking through.

Cornelius's writing leaves me shaking. Her dialogue sounds natural but it isn't like spoken language. She makes the profane poetic and lets language be so much more than words with assumed meaning. Her text has shape and rhythm and feels like it's beating to the heartbeats of her characters. It makes us listen to every "fuck" and "cunt" – and there are many – and really hear what they mean. And she only tells what needs to be told, leaving the subtext and the untold as the voice on stage that sneaks into your guts and doesn't let go.

This text is given life by Susie Dee's direction. Dee lets the actors be everything their character asks, while still working as one. She finds ways to make the shape of Cornelius's words become visible. She take us from violent gutter back to the stage and reminds us that we are watching theatre and, as such, are complicit in creating the world and the lives we see.

All of which is nothing without Peta Brady, Sarah Ward and Nicci Wilks as Sam, Billy and Bobby. Each embody the pain and anger that fuel these broken women while never letting the audience feel pity. They put up walls but the truth seeps out as they show us why we're laughing at the type of darkness and violence that can only be laughed at to save yourself from despair.

This Shit is why we go to theatre. This Shit is real. It's what can happen when a creative ensemble are given the resources to work together and not be concerned with pleasing or fitting criteria. It's astonishing theatre that needs to be presented as far as it can be seen. It's unmissable.

This was on AussieTheatre.com . 

What Finucaine & Smith loved in 2013, a New Year present

The ever-exquisite Moira Finucane and Jackie Smith wanted to include their favourite moments of 2013, but were worried that they hadn't seen much theatre in Melbourne this year, so they given everyone who reads Sometimes Melbourne, a New Year's gift of their Ten Moments of Revelation.

We remember again why Melbourne is one of the most creative universes in the world, why the passion and energy and commitment of artists, and artisans, and people who run all kinds of incredible theatrical venues spaces and ventures, create some of the most exciting art in the world.

(I'm very excited by part 8.)

From ten years ago when Mary Lou said "Yes" to staging The Burlesque Hour at fortyfive downstairs, to Moira and Jackie saying "Sure" when someone wants to try something new, the last ten years of Finucane & Smith have resulted in some of the sexiest, sassiest, angriest, saddest, most outraged, most painful and most celebratory live art.

They took the negativity away from burlesque and made it an outrageously wonderful feminist celebration of women and men and love and everything else that should be celebrated far more than it is.

A while ago, I suggested that the lane way behind fortyfivedownstairs is re-named Finucaine & Smith Lane. Who do we have to hassle at the City of Melbourne to make this happen?

But over to Jackie and Moira.


Finucane & Smith travelled most of 2013. We were in Brighton, London, Paris, Buenos Aires and a few other assorted locales of glamour like Brisbane and Canberra, so we didn’t get to see much Melbourne theatre other than that which we created, but we did have some incredible revelatory moments with the art and artists of Melbourne. We have picked ten moments of New Revelation, many from artists we worked with for the first time this year, that will live in our memories for many years to come.

1. Afternoon, November, our little lo fi studio.
James Welsby comes in. We have never worked with him before. I'd met him in Tasmania a year ago, when Moira was talking about creating new work to some artists and the Finucane & Smith salon adventure approach to artistic risk taking, where we try out new work and new artistes and new collaborations: high risk art in low risk, lo-fi, low overheads salons. Well, James said he’d like to be in our next salon, and Moira said, "Sure". One year later he comes over in the afternoon, and shows us three fantastic short dance works, and then says, "I have a fourth I made it up this morning. It’s a kind of a sexy star wars dance that combines bump-n-grind, with a very lo-fi star wars costume and Ozzy Osbourne." Two months later it’s an uncontrollable hit.

2. Afternoon, October, the home of Kathryn Niesche, circus luminary of Appetite and Club Swing fame.
She wants to show us a Dutch Street organ her dad made. Handmade, handpainted, complete with Wurlitzer rolls. We love it. She has an idea about being an organ grinders monkey. She has Prince song "Organ grinder". We say, "Sure!" She gets the organ into Hares and Hyenas book shop, it’s very heavy. Two nights later she is rocking it out with her heritage organ in a monkey costume with her own personal grinders played by Lily Paskas and, yes, James Welsby. We were thrilled and her dad would have been proud.

3. Evening, February.
Everyone knows how extraordinary Vika and Linda Bulla are. But this is Vika Bull as a New Revelation. Vika Bull in the Etta James story. Every song jaw dropping. We cried. We gasped. Our jaws are still dropped many months later. She rocks in a way that is hard to describe.

4. Evening, August.
Moira is doing Iggy Pop’s "Candy" in jeans and no shirt, Iggy style, Vika and Linda Bull dressed in blue Supremes evening dresses, style on style, singing the Candy part. What an honour. What an honour. It rocked in a way that’s hard to describe.

=4. Morning, March. We have been commissioned to create the opening night event for Moomba, which we call Boom Boom Moomba. Disco seemed very important. So we created a red hot disco mama with Sarah Ward. She says, "I am not going to play a disco diva, I am going to be one." And so she proceeds to become the diva with the fever. Then she says to Jackie, "I am not going to ham it up, I will play it straight." Well anyone in Buenos Aires in October this year or Melbourne in July or on the banks of the Yarra on that hot March night would know that Sarah Ward playing it straight looks like a 1metre high white afro wig, spades of blue eye shadow, a costume that looks like an edible mirror ball, back up dancers, wild eyes, wild voice and sunglasses on the back of her head. Nice.

5. Hares & Hyena Bookshop, Late Afternoon, November.
Sarah Doogs McDougall, about 6 foot of pure larrikin circus talent walks in. She has mixed up the day and the act and comes with her hoops, but we already have a hoop act. Never mind. Can she do something on the bar we ask? Sure! She goes home and makes up a plate juggling, bottle juggling, tea towel juggling calf-eyed, sexy-silly-super-clumsy routine about a waiter being in love, and comes back the following night. She’s a hit. We call it Dumb Waiter. Look for it in the circus hall of fame.

6. Early Evening, June.
Jade Leanord, a beautiful young jazz diva, has given us a CD. We find it under a pile of dishes a few months later, and invite her to come and join us in Glory Box for a night. So she’s on the piano doing the most beautiful rendition of "Over the Rainbow", but the piano is offstage and ground level, so she needs just a tiny gentle visual support to draw the audience into her world. So one hour later, we have Ursula Martinez, of the red hanky strip fame, and Jess Love, of Candy Butchers fame, slowly processing down the catwalk, with animal heads on, holding hands, while Jess walks on champagne bottles, and they both end side of stage looking at Jade on the piano. Magic.

7. A very cold night, July.
Maude Davey. Not new to us, not new to Melbourne. But here is a new insight into her own particular genius, a celebration of what makes her such a special and irreplicable artist. And it all starts with her greeting us, in the rain, in a faux fur tippet, high heels and nothing else. And it only builds from there. Maude Davey. My Life in the Nude.

8. Morning, February.
Holly Durant is a most beautiful dancer. Last year we discovered she had a beautiful voice. This year we discovered she could act. She is a drunken agent’s assistant, bringing booze to two famous stars –played by two famous actresses Pamela Rabe and Caroline Lee – who have collapsed on a luxury hotel bed on Melbourne Cup Day. We are workshopping Jackie Smith’s New Play "The Star" on the 49th floor at Sofitel Melbourne On Collins. Holly walks into rehearsal in a skin-tight chequered race dress, with fluorescent patent-yellow, 6-inch heels and a hideous fascinator and proceeds to fall all over Pamela and reel around the room, singing snippets from earnest new original musicals.  She just ‘wanted to get into character’. Gold.

9. Evening, February, Fortyfivedownstairs, turn 10.
And we remember the first time we ever went in there. We wanted to create The Burlesque Hour but no one, and we mean no one, except John Paxinos, and a few fabulous funders, was interested. I sat across from Mary Lou Jelbart, with her wonderful voice, and keen artistic sensibilities, and she looked at me carefully and said, "Yes I have seen you." Pause. "You are remarkable." Pause. "Yes". And that was it. She didn’t need to know more. And ten years later we bring the Glory Box, as it’s now known around the world, back to fortyfivedownstairs every winter. And from Angus Cerini to Patricia Cornelius, from kamahi Djordon King to Sarah Ward she is still saying Yes. Yes.

10. Afternoon, October.
We are about to go to Buenos Aires to become the first Australian company ever to be invited to Latin America’s most prestigious international arts festival (no pressure) the Festival Internacional de Buenos Aires, but first we need to drop in at a little queer bookshop where we did our first ever cabaret, The Salon. Hares & Hyenas. Nearly 20 years ago. The stage was a door on milk crates, it was byo cushion to sit on the floor, Hares & Hyenas gave the punters bubbly (to help with the floor). A sell out. So here we are, planning a return to the bookshop! As soon as we got back from Latin America! (One month of wildly experimental art, new artists, new ideas, new acts every night!). And we are looking at lights. Everything looks amazing … almost too amazing. Then we discover the wallpaper the lights are playing off is original Florence Broadhurst! That’s why it looks like a film. And they open their home up for the performers to warm up. And they prepare us special Chinese tea so we can keep our energy up. And when we come back from our triumph in Buenos Aires – where they called Moira, La Diosa, (The Goddess) and compared Glory Box to Beckett, Ionesco and Artaud, and where Moira delivered her first ever monologues in Spanish (We knew it was going to be okay when the kitchen staff stopped working to listen during the tech) – and we come home to have one of the most creative months of our recent lives.

And finally, our own special Christmas gift: seeing Jennifer Zea, Venezuelan Soul Diva – who flew to Australia just to perform for us for one night – astound people with her extraordinary and massive voice, and her Latin Soul, in the velvet and luxurious surrounds of Sofitel Melbourne On Collins as she lifted their beautiful roof!

And we say, Gracias.

Review: Between the Cracks

MELBOURNE CABARET FESTIVAL
Between the Cracks
Yana Alana
6 July 2013
45downstairs
to 7 July

How could Between the Cracks slip through my review cracks?! Perhaps because I adored it so much that words are irrelevant. Or because its story is so important that it needs more than a dull quotable about hilarious, positive and sexy politics or how gorgeous the performer is.

Yana Alana started grabbing attention at the 2007 Melbourne Fringe when her outraged feminist poetry and show Bite Me won Best Cabaret and went on to snare some Green Room Awards, rave reviews and sold out shows.

Between the Cracks, which has the best song ever written about anal sex, was first seen at the Midsumma festival and this Cabaret Festival season quickly sold out.  

Yana has dumped her backing band of Pirana's and taken her over-sexed self-involvement to a level that ensures that no one, not even her creator Sarah Ward, can share the attention. Even if the magnificent voice and I-dare-you-to-not-want-to-fuck-me body belong to Sarah, Yana's determined to take every bit of credit and adoring love from her audience.

Naked, except for colbalt blue body paint and a spectacular bedazzling of gems, Yana insists on unblinking attention. Her sexuality is all about her and there's never a question that she'd ever doubt her sexual power.

Yana's nakedness isn't about approval or a statement about body size that doesn't conform to an impossible Barbie shape; it's all about Yana and, for all her negativity, Yana's all about positive sexuality. Even grumpy people can and should have plenty of great sex.

Director Anni Davey, who also directed Maude Davey's My Life in the Nude, gives Yana plenty of space, while ensuring she doesn't lose the love of her adoring fans by keeping the pain behind Yana's anger in reach. Not that she ever lets anyone feel sorry for Yana, because Yana would never allow such condescension.

Yana's fans are so on her side that there's little she can say that isn't supported and cheered. There's little chance of her getting the Bolt, Sanderland and Jones supporters that troll any woman who speaks her mind along to her show, but if you're a woman who's ever wasted too much of her day worried about your body or a judging gaze, or given in and silenced your opinion because you've been accused of playing the gender card or put in the ugly ranting feminist box, Yana will remind you that it's all bullshit and that every woman should believe in a world where they can walk around naked, blue and bedazzled.

Maybe it's this kind of queer eye for the straight girl that's going to help change attitudes that create the need for more and more work like this.

I saw Between the Cracks on its last Saturday night and it was so sold out that reviews were meaningless, but you there are four more chances to see Sarah and Yana in Finucane and Smith's dead-set-wonder Glory Box Paradise. Her next and last performances are 1–4 August. I feel sorry for anyone who misses it.

Photo by Peter Leslie

Review: Glory Box Paradise

Glory Box Paradise
Finucane and Smith
13 July 2013
fortyfivedownstairs
to 11 August
fortyfivedownstairs

"Art is fueled by passion, liquor and unrealistic expectations." Welcome to Glory Box Paradise and the ninth year of Moira Finucane and Jackie Smith's subversive and celebratory burlesque where the passion is as potent as any cocktail and unrealistic expectations are turned into exquisite beauty.

Is there anything left to be said about Finucane and Smith's Burlesque Hour shows? I've run out of passionate adjectives to shout about how damn amazing this work continues to be.

Nine years ago, the first Burlesque Hour performed to an in-the-know audience at fortyfivedownstairs and later in the Speigeltent. I'd heard about it and bought a ticket for the tent. Here was something we hadn't seen before and so wanted to see so much more of.

Over 125,000 people have seen versions of The Burlesque Hour – that's more than a full MCG. Artists have come and gone and come back, it's had 50 sell-out seasons all over the world, won awards and collected multi-wordgasm reviews from critics who only disagree about the the degree of superlative.

There's a lot of burlesque in theatres and clubs, but no one is doing anything like this. So what makes this burlesque so different?

Rarely do naked women on display make other women feel good about themselves. Whether it's designed to attract a straight male gaze (that really doesn't attract all straight men) or simply because it's rare for women to publicly de-robe unless they fit an image that was created by applying good lighting, a flattering position and Photoshop.

In her current show, My Life in the Nude at La Mama (finishing this weekend), Maude Davey, who has appeared in many Burlesque Hour shows, talks about her realisation that burlesque is about declaring that you are beautiful are worthy of the audience's gaze.

"I am beautiful and worthy of your gaze" is a magnificent beginning for the many women (and men) doing weekend burlesque classes and sewing sequins on undies for their graduation show, but Glory Box Paradise leaps beyond this premise.

On a Finucane and Smith stage, nakedness has nothing to do with a boring flash of boob. With bodies that don't conform to young, spray-tanned, waxed, enhanced and starved images of female naked perfection, there's never doubt that the women performing know their own beauty – and they don't give a hoot if anyone thinks differently.

There are well over 20, 30 and 40. They have body fat and muscle and scars and marks that declare their bodies as so much more than something to gaze upon. (Moira even refuses to uses a hair straightener and goes frizzy!) And they perform work that's as sexy and powerful as it gets.

These are women who are sexual but are never sexualised. Women whose sexual power has nothing to do with control. Women whose sex lives are shameless. Women who don't support any image or idea that going to repress, disapprove or hurt.  And this may be why every act is greeted with cheers.

The gaze of anyone is welcome, but this is performance that's not about earning the approval of the watcher, but about celebrating the performer and her view of the world. A view that's positive instead of critical and one that joyfully leans to the queer side of the spectrum while welcoming anyone who sits anywhere else.

And if you think you've seen it all before, this year is mostly new material, with a couple of old favourites.

Yumi Umiumare is back with genre re-defining punk Butoh, and dancer Holly Durant joined by new performer Lily Paskas. Melbourne favourite Jess Love (The Candy Butchers) is living in London these days, but is back home with some amazing and hilariously off-centre hoop and skipping routines. She also comes with Ursula Martinez. Ursula continues to treat with her disappearing red hanky and her sex change quick change number with Jess is pure joy (with a hint of raunchy goodness).

New to the Box is Sarah Ward and her alter ego Yana Alana. Yana's naked blue real-women-look-like-this gorgeousness thrilled audiences last week in her own show Between the Cracks, but Yana's lets Sarah out to play. In a mesmerising hologram silver corset, her duet of "Candy" with Moira's drag king is a highlight. The only one who nearly overshadows Sarah is Yana, whose cat-suited song about cats has left me singing "pussy wussy wussy" to my cat.

And there's Moira. There's no one like her. As an artist she creates work that is so from her heart and self that no one will ever be able to recreate it. It's gutsy and lusty and masculine and feminine and  refuses to be anything that isn't Moira Finucane.

Photos by Carla Gottgens.

This was on AussieTheatre.com.