Comedian David Quirk has had four different women located around the world dream about him. These women all contacted Quirk to tell him about their dreams and from these communications, Quirk has created his stand-up show, Cowboy Mouth, which is being presented as part of this year's Melbourne International Comedy Festival.
Quirk cleverly uses the four encounters as touchstones for his anecdotes, in which he takes a step back from the dream and looks at the bigger picture or implications. The first one involves a woman reading a review about one of his shows and talking about this, which leads Quirk to recall a memorable encounter he had with a fan. Watching Quirk on stage for the first time, this story immediately gave an indication of the type of personality he has and the misadventure and trouble that seems to follow him wherever he goes, and subsequently set the tone for the rest of the show.
One delightful certainty during the Melbourne Fringe Festival is that there will be a number of performances being held in random and uncommon locations, and ____day Night's Dream is another great example of this. This immersive show explores the dreams of seven people, and it does so on a 16th floor apartment overlooking the city.
Interestingly, the dreams are all based on the performers' (Iryna Byeylyayeva, James Christensen, Aram Geleris, Daniel Holmes, Madeleine Johnson, Sara Laurena and Freya McGrath) own dreams, and performing them within the confines of the apartment creates a literal intimacy as well as a metaphorical one, having been invited into this very personal space, to be privy to these personal dreams.
