Things to do when you're thirty

Every once in a while I get obsessed. I have the make up of a zealot so let's all consider ourselves lucky that I am in no way religious, new wave, politically conservative nor radically active.

For my thirtieth birthday last November I received two gifts in particular that alluded to my obsessive nature. I was given me a turntable and a first pressing of The White Album, coincidentally released exactly 10 years before I was born. My parents gave me a mixmaster. Pastry and LPs ensued.

It seems that last year I was briefly obsessed with blogging - and now in the cold, sober light of the morning I've looked over what happened here and am in amazement and wonder. You were there, and you were there.

I am humbled by what occurred when I flippantly began to publicly rant. When I reconsider the spirit in which this venture was born and the state of mind I am now in, I think I have this little pastime to thank in no small part. I was reengaged with the performance scene in a way that hasn't been the case for years. I had a voice and an opinion that seemed to be held in some regard. And the voice, at least shall continue, comrades. 

Last year during the fringe I had a wonderful, spirited, challenging, honest and generous exchange with Marcel, the director of 'There' which I had every intention of publishing as I believe in a right of reply, but the moment seems to have passed. Marcel will be the first to be invited to review my next work, and I will invite him to published it here. 

I saw a few more things at the end of last year, things which uplifted and confounded me as much as anything else last year, but again, the moment has passed.

Oh, and there was a delightful evening of Throwies.

So, there are many things I am seeing this year. There are many things I am looking forward to seeing. My own work will, at some stage, be a part of the mix.

And if there's anyone still interested out there: ta.  

Review: War Lounge

War Lounge

Directed and Devised by Suzanne Kersten

Artists Clair Korobacz, Paul Moir, Julian Rickert and Christine Logan-Bell

Presented by t.v.

Here's a disagreement. How exciting. 'War Lounge' is something I went to see based pretty much solely upon Born Dancin's endorsement. 

I had so many problems with this piece, and not in a good, provocative, questioning things I had previously believed to be self-evident truths, kind of way. 

There are, in my humble opinion, problems with this piece on pretty much every level. 

Level One: Semantics

There is a basic semantic point I will make - not in order to be petty - because I believe it to be indicative of one of the problems of this performance. At least one-third of the piece paraphrases the experience of people who have lived in Iraq, sometimes in their own words, sometimes not. While this is, in itself, interesting, I call its relevance into question simply because the title of the performance is: 'War Lounge' and it is clearly stated that the intention was to make a piece about war. 

There is a serious argument that the occupancy of Iraq is not a war. War has never been formally declared. 

This may seem trivial but I believe it is integral. Part of the ideological problem with the US led invasion of Iraq is that it is not legal. 

This doesn't mean that it is not a good starting point for a performative exploration (on the contrary, last year's 'Gifted and Talented' was my favourite performance in the Fringe), it just illustrates a simple research problem (which I'll go into detail about later) and naivete. 

Granted - Iraq, its decimation, population and internal conflict was only one third of this piece, so I'll move on. 

Level Two: Distance From the Material

There was interest for me in the stories and opinions of Iraqis sought and collected by the performer. I would have preferred to hear them directly - recorded on video or audio - but they were presented sensitively and interestingly in the garage / store room of the performance site, which was set up as a kind of museum. 

Whilst this was pleasing it did keep all the content at an arm's length, seeming to categorise these experiences as cultural or anthropological curiosities, viewed by us at a distance, through the prism of one performer's experience and understanding. I thought there were a couple of missed opportunities to let us as an audience experience something for ourselves, such as lining us up against a concrete wall, which was done, but so gently and nicely that the experience was one of relative comfort. 

Level Three: Performance

Another way in which war was addressed in 'War Lounge' was an exploration of the life of poet Wilfred Owen and the parallels between his life and the life of one of the performers and this exploration was much more interesting to me. However, the performer of this section was somewhat stilted, stumbling over words and lacking in charisma. The content of this section was far more appropriate and relevant. And there is no doubt over the legal or semantic status of the First World War, in which, Owen took part and about which he wrote. 

The nature of some site specific performance works is an intimacy between the audience and a performer, and this particular performer seemed awkward and uncomfortable, not necessarily with the intimacy, but the intimacy made it all the more obvious. 

Level Four: Installation

The final section I will address took the form of an installation. Formally, this kind of work - art installation / intervention within the context of a site specific performance can be problematic - someone who is presumably a performer / theatre-maker producing something partly as a visual art response and partly as an intervention recording the experience and then feeding that back into the performance in the form of a projection or installation. It succeeds not as a piece of visual art installation because it is not executed with the skill and craftspersonship reflective of contemporary art practice - it still looks like a show (ie, visible cables gaffer taped to the floor). I am aware that this sounds fussy, and perhaps it is. I don't mind these things in theatre, its partly its charm, but as an installation it doesn't reflect the level of skill that art installations are executed with. And the video work was incredibly shonky. Video art has come a long way in twenty years, the bar is quite high in terms of technical achievement. The video in this was bad to the point of distraction. 

Is the video a recording of the specific intervention, or a piece of the installation itself? These things have very different purposes and therefore different demands. I think its an important distinction. 

Each audience member is given an ipod through which to listen to a soundtrack accompanying the installation. From what I understand, each soundtrack was identical, and despite being told that we could skip tracks, or even press stop, I don't think anyone did, consequently everyone was listening to the same exact thing at roughly the same time, rendering the individual ipods somewhat redundant. Unless I'm missing something. 

So I understand, broadly, how 'Balloon Diplomacy' was arrived at in response to War. To me it trivialised the subject matter somewhat in its whimsy and flippancy. That is just me though, I'm  not stating that as an error of judgement upon the performer's / creator's part, just my taste. Which is, it must be said, questionable to begin with. 

On the other end of the spectrum, as much as I disliked the distance created by the museum installation, it was executed beautifully.

Level Five: Research

My final issue was with the misappropriation of a quote. It was not an intentional misappropriation, but again, nothing some more research couldn't have addressed. 'The act of War is a failure of imagination' is a well used quote and one which has various sources attributed to it, however I don't believe the original source to be a philosopher residing in Tempelstowe, as the performer told me it was - and while he may, indeed, have quoted it, that doesn't make it his. Personally I am familiar with it through Andrew O'Hagan's excellent opening address to the 207 Sydney Writer's Festival (if you haven't read it, do, now. Don't read any more of my drivel, just go, save yourself. While you still can). Whilst he doesn't use the quote directly O'Hagan makes a point that I think the creators of 'War Lounge' could have benefited from - imagining other's loss, not just listening to it, or reading their account of it but applying it to ourselves. 

Going out and actively meeting Iraqis is probably a good thing to do. Asking them about their country, their experiences and their loss is a great thing to do. Asking them for an object that represents their country is a good, if somewhat difficult, thing to do. But to make a performance directly out of that experience and using the content gleaned assumes certain things about us as an audience. That we don't know any Iraqis, that we haven't heard their loss, their grief. It was not disingenuous, but it was condescending. And those experiences weren't the performer's to tell - she no doubt had permission - but her experience was one of asking people around Flinders Lane if they knew people from Iraq, then meeting people from Iraq. Then asking them things. Then listening to their answers. Then telling us. In a show. In South Melbourne.   

Not my cup of tea. 

So as you will have assessed by this point, I don't think this is a must see performance.

'Gifted and Talented' succeeded on so many levels. At its core, it applied a certain specific experience foreign to us to another certain specific experience familiar to us, and illustrated how closely aligned these two experiences are. One experience, an atrocity, the other, a right of passage. The show by Post was so formally daring and the darkest comedy I have seen in ages. Its point was made effortlessly, without angst or earnestness. 

But what do I know. 

 

Review: Scattered Tacks

Scattered Tacks

Performed and Devised by Skye Gellman, Terri Cat Silvertree and Alex Gellman

Festival Hub, Rehearsal Room

Until 11th October

Without wanting to unduly raise your expectations, this is magnificent. I had no expectations going into this, I saw it because a show I was supposed to be seeing was cancelled. And boy, was that fortuitous. 

From the opening I found this to be totally compelling. 

The three performers / devisers work against the performative history of circus to create something weird, silent and non-theatrical in a traditional sense. The minutia of their performances are heightened and sit in the foreground, the tricks receeding and becoming byproducts. Some moments seemed purely voyeuristic - on the one hand you're watching something that is a private moment, on the other a quite incredible trick is pulled off. But the the performer looks straight at you. Not challenging - somehow submissive. And it forces you to reassess your presence. 

And this is their feat, and it is by no means a small one. To reverse the paradigm of traditional circus, to dare you passively not to look. To emphasise the elements normally glossed over. 

Whilst the tricks are excellent, they are not what matters here. And this moves circus into a  newer, more theatrical area, I suppose in that sense it is somewhat aligned with 'Acrobat'.

The experience was that of a series of vignettes and resonant images, lit largely by the harsh, isolated light of head mounted LEDs (and you know how I love LEDs), exaggerating the performers' seemingly translucent skin and ethereal, almost over-exposed appearance. 

There are some fantastic moments of the performers forcing your attention to a tiny detail - the sound of a bowling ball that is being rolled around and balanced upon, picked up through an onstage mike held close, or their final trick, only seen by a couple of short flashes of their LEDs.

There is a convention amongst a circus audience to applaud tricks which was quite uncomfortable here. It never really took off and was always quite sparse and self-conscious. In itself, that is a credit to the show - it really is absorbing and the silence that fell on the audience was total, apart from those sporadic moments of obligatory applause. 

I understand the need to applaud, particularly if you have a vocabulary for this kind of performance and understand the degree of skill that the performers are utilising, for me though, this sat more comfortably in the world of theatre than circus. And the applause broke the tension and was too intrusive. It threatens to destroy the strange, delicate little world that these performers had done so well to create. 

This left me quite exhilarated.

Without wanting to sound presumptuous, I would probably go if I were you.

  

Teasing my Fringe

I've now dipped my toe into the waters of the fringe. I've only seen a couple of things thus far. I will see more, really, I will. Although nothing like what Born Dancin' has committed himself to. What is this, an extreme sport? Jesus.

Blinkers 

Devised and Performed by Natalie Medlock and Dan Musgrove.

Directed by Sophie Roberts

Festival Hub, Meeting Room, Arts House

26 Sept. - 11 Oct.

I'm not really sure what drew me to this in the first place. It really was on a whim that I went. I liked their publicity image. I liked the promise of something that sounded a little like Perec's 'Life: A User's Manual'. This was bafflingly charming, and it's not a backhanded compliment, it's rather like the human species - you know, deeply flawed but likeable. I don't want to be mean here, there is a lot to like and there is a lot that is worth supporting here - young artists making their own work, international artists putting themselves on the line to get to the Fringe. And hell, its $16 that could be much much worse spent. 

There just isn't a lot to talk about. Natalie Medlock played a wonderful character who truly was bordering between caricature and pathos. Her accent was obtrusive but so much so that I began to feel as if it was an affectation of her character, in which case it was quite a feat, if not it was a bad accent. Dan Musgrove was a caricature. Despite promising to be something more, it wound up conforming to a conservative structure and story. The two young performers are really promising though. And good for them - creating their own show and bringing it here. That sounded really patronising and I didn't intend for it to be so. I mean it. 

Diatribe

It is a wee bit of a testament to the show that I wound up thinking about the venue a little too much. It's on at the Meeting Room of North Melbourne Town Hall. Now: this place gets kitted out for the Fringe, as does Trades Hall for the Comedy Festival, and this in theory is no bad thing. Fringe needs a hub, and young international artists such as these need a place like this to know they'll be on where the action is and not in some enterprising person's garage in Glenroy. There is just something so... perfunctory about the way it's set up. It's run with great spirit largely, as I understand, by volunteers and this is not the problem, in fact it contributes to what atmosphere there is, absolutely. I just felt that a show, particularly like this, would have benefited from a more interesting space. Something warm and quirky, something as charming as the performers were. And the way the rooms are set up at North Melbourne Town Hall is totally devoid of any character or charm. A few lights, a rig of scaff holding them up, a couple of speakers - on stage pointing straight at us, and blacks surrounding the space. It's unimaginative. I've never seen something that benefits from a set up like this. It's alright for comedy. But for the Fringe? Isn't the Fringe all about quirk and peculiarity? I just think it was cheaply and rather cynically done. They pack shows in there, in what is a curated season, in the Fringe which prides itself on not being curated, charge them I'm not sure what, possibly very little, maybe they do run at a loss, I'm not sure - but to me it isn't worth it. Some rooms of the Lithuanian Club has character. The Meat Market has character. 

I remember seeing Suitcase Royale's 'Chronicles of a Sleepless Moon' in a room like this at Trades Hall during Fringe. And it did nothing for them, they were working so hard to bring their atmosphere to the room and they kind of pulled it off - but they're Suitcase Royale goddamn it, they have so much stuff that they can bring. For a show like Blinkers, it just looked a bit drab. 

 

Whew. Sorry about the rant. Ahem. Yes. Anyway...

The Correction Tour

Devised and Performed by Nathan Little and Amy Bodossian aka Bad Father

Glitch Bar

27, 28 Sept. & 8, 9 & 13 Oct.

This is something. It goes on for a bit too long and its a bit underdeveloped and underdirected but it's really funny, just often enough to make it worth it. And its bizarre. And I've never seen or heard of these two before. And I liked them a lot. 

I would have preferred it if they steered away from the comedy a bit more and really went for something. I think they were headed there (there's a wonderful clip of Peter Finch from Paddy Chayefski's 'Network' played for the dramatic value I think, which was great to see and reminded me of how much I'd like to see that film again and also of how much Peter Finch at his age then reminds me of Albert  Finney now. Incedently, 'Network' was Peter Finch's final film - except for something made for TV in which he played Yitzhak Rabin - what a coupla swan songs!).  And I would have preferred it if a particularly sketch comedy-esque video weren't in it. But on the whole its a really fun thing to see. Kind of Boosh, kind of Conchords, kind of Die Roten Punkte and strangely kind of Forced Entertainment on the surface and I suspect completely unintentionally, although it could have benefited from the kind of deconstructivism manifest in Forced Entertainment and was kind of close at moments. 

You'll have fun if you go. Although I just noticed its only on like five times. Jesus, that's not much. Okay, so go. I think these two will be something soon and then you can be the one saying that you saw them in a funny little place in Fitzroy. And you'll be awesome. And everyone else will be awestruck. And you'll win.