Melbourne Fringe Articles

[Maylin]

In Saturday's Herald Sun (Melbourne), in the Weekend section, there is an article about the Melbourne Fringe Festival. Talks a bit about the festival in an historical context (there is a picture of the first fringe festival poster) and interviews a few regulars. Paul included. Picture of Paul. We've all seen that one before...he's standing near Parliament Station I think (you can see the Princess Theatre in the background), near where PriceWaterHouse Coopers is. His hand is near his face and you can see his "P" ring and his face is distorted in one of those usual "raise one eyebrow" poses. I don't have a scanner atm, so I can't scan it for you...and the article is quite long...well too long for me to type up neway...just thought I'd let you know...I'm sure some kind soul here will oblige and type it up and scan it in. So that's a basic rundown of it. :p

[Spoofy]

damn damn damn....now I have to go see if I can find the paper anywhere

* and runs off*

[Spoofy]

An alternative vintage
Memories are made of this? Sure. When comic Frank Woodlet reels back the years and remembers the night a bar heater caught fire during the middle of his act, he is preserving a precious part of Melbourne's Fringe Festival.

It's the same when clown artist Kate Kantor describes how she jiggled down Brunswick St dressed as a tea-bag, or dancer/performance artist David Wells recalls the gumboots he wore for a largely nude dance routing involving "body percussion".

"It'd good to revist the feelings you had for your art at the start," a still gleefully naked Wells says. "Feelings you might have forgotten."

As the Fringe turns 20 and seeks to document its rich, radical past, performaners of all colours are being urged to tell it like it was, to rock up to the North Melbourne Town Hall, stand before a camera in the "fabulous Brain box" and remember when.

"We want to hear from as many people as possible," Fringe archivist Kate Hunter says. "Everybody's story is valid."

Fringe Vintage - a n exhibition of posters, programs and photographs - goes some way towards capturing 20 years of independent Melbourne arts endeavour.

The postes, particularly, evoke an earlier time when Fringe was firmly rooted in the backblocks of Fitzroy and chafing against the mainstream attractions of Spoleto.

But because so much of this alternative festival is ephemeral, here one night, gone the next, first-hand reports from the front matter most.

Woodley, former member of The Found Objects and the other half of Lano and Woodley, is a reliable witness.

"I will never forget standing on a VW in swimming trunks and pretending to water-ski." he says.

"It must have been one of the early Fringe parades."

Another time, Woodley played Le Joke and gave his audience a fire fright.

"We were doing a sketch on synchronised swimming and throwing wet towels on to a bar heater when somebody in the audience asked politely: 'Should those towels be on fire?'"

Unpredictable, Eccentric, Outrageous. The Fringe can - and should - be all these things.

Paul McDermott, the Doug Anthony All-Star who became an entertainment all-rounder, admits "I've had more wonderful, dangerous, glamorous, devil-may-care and thought-provoking moments at the Fringe than in the more sedate world of entertainment."

The reason is simple: Fringe dwellers take risks.

"A person can do McBeth if they want to," Wells says.

"Or they can take all their clothes off and roll arounf in paint. There are no limitations."

Wells figured in Melbourne's first Fringe Frestival and worked with The Blue People (alongside actor Neil Thomas).

But this versatile performer is best known for his work with dance-theatre group Born in a Taxi.

Wells explains: "We pushed the boundaries of physical expression and found humour in dance."

The mission continues. In the 2001 festival, two Taxi members - Penny Baron and Carolyn Hanna - performed The Twins as part of the laneways program.

Encouraged by the publis'c response, they took it to the Adelaide Fringe and then to Europe.

"The Fringe was the birthplace for that show," Wells says proudly, "a platform for taking it forward to a broader audience."

Kate Kantor's first audience was the one that lined Fitzroy's cafe strip in the late 1980s.

I was part of a marching band celebrating the tea lady and regretting her demise at the hands of Cafe-bar," she recalls.

"We wore blue gumboots and red stockings. Lots of primary colour."

Later, Kantor helped to stage an experimental dance show called Gong House using "sound objects" fashioned from bed frames and hub caps.

Any pictures? Sadly, not.

But Kantor, a former member of The Hunting Party and a leading light with Circus Oz, remembers the buzz this performance generated.

"You want the punters to like what you're doing, obviously," she says.

"But the important thing, always, is to be exploring different artforms and new ways of communicating ideas. The Fringe is a blurry zone where you can do that."

Not everything works, of course. "People fail, sometimes with gusto," Woodley says - but determined artists pick themselves up and press on.


As Mcdermott says: "The desire to express something - no matter how ludicrous, outmoded, outdated or ridiculous it might be - was, and still is, the essence of the Fringe."

Can it be called a leap of faith?

"I'm not sure if people are even aware of that. They just feel compelled to do it," McDermott says.

Having dwelt on the fringe of festivals in Edinburgh and Adelaide, McDermott is finally honouring Melbourne with a solo show: a "hard-core caberat" called GUD.

It's a bit tricky.

When the curtain comes down on his city gig, The Witches of Eastwick, McDermott has only 15 minutes to hotfoot it to North Melbourne and get into a "new head-space".

"GUD keeps evolving," he stresses.

"But the connections you can make up on stage with an audience can lead to moments of great clarity.

"It might have something to do with my heart beating fast...."

The Fringe is growing up, too. Director Vanessa Pigrum hopes the 2002 festival "celebrates the end of adolescence" and the beginning of a bold, new era.

But what shape it takes is anyone's guess. "The Fringe is a wild entity," Woodley warns.

"You never know what's going to happen.

"One night, I remember, The Found Objects come on between a man who made love to a vacuum cleaner and another guy called Elvis the Caveman."

Were they any good?

"Let's just say, you had to be there."

- Herald Sun - Saturday 12/10/02

Image already on my site.....can't link to it (cause Sportsports are bastards!!), but copy and paste the link into your address on browser....

http://mir.spaceports.com/~spoofy/photos/devil8.jpg

[Maylin]

I knew some kind soul would type it up!
:p

Thanks Spoof

[Sam]

AS usual Spoof is the most amazing person on this board - feel free to swap amazing for disturbed.
Great article and 20 years, shit.

[Spoofy]

heeeeeeyyyyyy don't start with a compliment and then change it to an insult.....you'll make me cry

[Beckslee]

Yeh it was a nice surprise for me, I yoinked from my kitchen table to look at and funnily enough it never went back