Packing review | Melbourne Fringe Festival | Queen Victoria Women's Centre

Who would have thought that packing up a stranger’s art studio would not only make for a Melbourne Fringe Festival show but make for an amazing Melbourne Fringe Festival show? Packing is an interactive performance made for one person at a time where we have been hired to help Marigold pack up her art studio. Except Marigold can’t make it and must communicate to us through What’s App on what to pack as she shares snippets of her life, past, present, and future. It’s a beautifully captivating work by Eleni Telemachou that is over way too soon.

Telemachou and her set designer Nancee Kilpatrick have fashioned an authentic studio with paints, painting, photographs, sketches and personal belongings all scattered around the room. The floor and walls are adorned in colour and there is a “mix tape” that Marigold has playing for us. Oh, and she’s also left snacks.

Through voice memos and texts via What’s App, Marigold gives clear instructions on what to pack and when, and what to dispose of. This still gives us ample opportunities to look – not snoop - through her personal belongings and find letters, photographs, ticket stubs and other surprises in pockets, frames and sketch pads. Each item provides a deeper indication of Marigold’s story, including what led her to Australia and what is taking her back home to Italy.

Eleni Telemachou is sending people Packing with her new interactive show (Melbourne Fringe Festival)

There are two camps when it comes to packing: those who love it and see it as a sign of adventure and those who loathe it and see it as painful and arduous task. With her upcoming immersive and interactive Melbourne Fringe Festival show for one person at a time, Eleni Telemachou is giving people the opportunity to live their dream or nightmare by packing someone else's belonging, and along the way unpacking ideas around growth, places and endings. It's a solo

"The idea of Packing came to me while I was flat-hunting around Melbourne. I was so bored going through the same process again and again until I started paying attention to the different objects tenants had lying around their flats." Telemachou recalls. "These simple objects held so many stories about who the tenants were, what they valued and where they had been."

Celebrating love and human connection with Love Letters | Melbourne Fringe Festival

The art of writing letters is very much a rarity these days. We might send each other lengthy emails or texts, but putting a pen to paper and handwriting our thoughts and experiences to then post to someone doesn't happen anymore. But this is not the case in Love Letters. Presented as part of the Melbourne Fringe Festival, Love Letters follows the lives of a man and a woman from their childhood to adulthood through decades of correspondence sharing their growth, fears, successes, failures and loves.

Fini Liu, in the dual roles of playing the male character and directing the work, was attracted to the obstacles that this work presented. "What drew me to the work is how extremely authentic and sincere piece it is. We also need to tell the story of two people spanning 40 years within just an hour so it was a challenge to be able to deliver this while allowing the characters and the story to breathe and be fully realised.

Thy Thus ‘Twas | Melbourne Fringe Festival interview

Comedy trio The Travelling Sisters are returning to the Melbourne Fringe Festival as the travelling blokes in their new show  Thy Thus 'Twas . With their unique sense of humour and absurd comedy that is grounded in the banal, their upcoming show focuses on three mates, Darryl, Vinnie and Berrick, who are out to make their thespian dreams come true.

The brains behind the men, Lucy Fox, Laura Trenerry and Ell Sachs, spent a good part of the last 12 months touring their side-splitting hilarious show Toupe but are now looking forward to hitting the stage with their new baby. "It's like when you're shaking a bottle of bubbly, just before you pop the cork...it's the feeling on the underside of the cork," Trenerry tells me. "This show has been brewing in our collective fantasy world for over a year. It's always exciting when you're birthing a new one. How will it be received, what will it become, what is this new beautiful beast?! Who knows!"

Seen & Heard - Melbourne Fringe Festival review

We always look at performers with an air of admiration about how confident and sure of themselves they are, and while we may follow their careers for years, how well do we really know them? Created by burlesque artist Becky Lou, Seen & Heard is a show that revolves around the art of storytelling and performance that allows audiences to not only get to know the person behind the performer but also provides an opportunity for performers to expose themselves in ways they never have before. 

Becky Lou gets the evening underway with a titillating burlesque routine that then leads to her recollecting a tale about her decision to not have children and her teenage ‘pregnancy’ scare. It sets the tone well for what will be an evening of openness and engaging stories. 

Seen & Heard is very much a variety show with various guests each evening, however the artists that Becky Lou has chosen to take part in this season of the show fully commit to being authentic and honest with their stories. It is a strange feeling seeing these people become quite vulnerable with the issue or topic they have chosen to share with an audience.

Cabaret diva Mama Alto gives a touching recount of growing up somewhere between two genders and the sanctuary that they find in music. Circus artist Anna Lumb takes a humorous look at the stress and pressure of being a person with two jobs (the circus and a parent), about being an ‘in-betweener’ and how sometimes that that is exactly where you should be.

When Our Molecules Meet Again Let’s Hope They Remember What to Do review | Melbourne Fringe Festival | Arts House

Once upon a time there was an alien called Natalie. Or Nat to his friends. Nat informs us that it's this thing that these alien creatures do where they shorten names for their friends as a term of affection and we wouldn't understand because we are human. And so we enter the whimsical storytelling world of Stuart Bowden with his new show When Our Molecules Meet Again* Let’s Hope They Remember What to Do *Probably in Space.

We follow Nat as he arrives on Earth and hear the alien's observations on the nature of humans and their peculiar behaviours and way of thinking. This leads Nat to begin questioning his own thoughts on life, death and everything in between, particularly after meeting up with his alien nemesis Sammy. There's a playful nature to Nat's personality but it's also laced with melancholy and loneliness that's demonstrated through some singing and music.

There's an overarching theme in When Our Molecules Meet... of not sweating over the little stuff and accepting what happens in life. Bowden further emphasises this idea by having Nat reading his own story to us off a script. Despite this being his own personal account of what happened, there are numerous moments when Nat loses his place and anxiously tries to locate where he's up to or his looping pedals and sound don't work quite the way they should so he goes back and re-does the line. 

No matter how prepared we are for something or how confident we feel, there's always the possibility that it won't go according to plan and how we react to it is what shapes who we become. Nat's deadpan reactions to the earlier mentioned difficulties in the show become his most endearing quality.

Seen & Heard - Melbourne Fringe Festival preview

Becky Lou has been gracing the burlesque dance stage for a number of years and has thrust, shimmied and shaken her body through a variety of acts that have entertained across the country and throughout the world. But how many people actually know who Becky Lou is? Presented as part of the Melbourne Fringe Festival, Seen & Heard gives performers the opportunity to share their own personal stories with audiences and allow audiences to see these performers in a very different light.

"Performing was so much fun, but eventually I became aware that while I was completely comfortable dancing and tumbling about naked on stage, I was always silent. Was I really so liberated and empowered if audiences were only seeing and not hearing me?" Becky Lou tells me. "Around the same time I started seeing some really talented storytellers from around the globe at Adelaide and Perth Fringe festivals and noticing local story slams and podcasts like The Moth. I started making solo shows that combined my goofy burlesque with personal storytelling and it worked. Audiences seemed to find it really affecting. But then, you know, I got a bit bored of the sound of my own voice and became curious about other people's stories."

"Some of the best true tales are heard backstage or late at night at artist bars. I thought it would be cool to apply the concept I'd used for my solo show to a variety show and let the public in on what fascinating people were behind the feathers and greasepaint. It felt important to me to create a platform to expose the humanity, vulnerability and authenticity of people who were most often seen for their physical prowess, visual magnificence and otherworldly stage presence."

Survival Party - Melbourne Fringe Festival preview

When the end of the world comes, where do you want to be, what do you want to be doing and who do you want to be doing it with? If your answer was to have a Melbourne Fringe Festival show performed in your house with ten of your closest friends joining you, then the The Lounge Room Confabulators have got you covered with Survival Party.

"In Survival Party, the apocalypse has happened. Gathered in a home somewhere in Melbourne, there is a small group of survivors. A small group of friends. They commune, two visitors arrive and a story is told," one half of the Lounge Room Confabulators, Stuart Bowden tells me. "It's about the power and importance of storytelling. It interrogates our relationship to the places we inhabit, and the memories that we store in them. There are also sing-a-longs and some pretty sweet dance moves performed by live wolves."

While Bowden and his Lounge Room Confabulators collaborator Wil Greenway have their storytelling focused individual shows on during the Festival - When Our Molecules Meet Again* Let’s Hope They Remember What to Do *Probably In Space and the way the city ate the stars respectively - they have still managed to squeeze in eight performances of this highly unique show.

Lost In The Looping Glass review | Melbourne Fringe Festival | Scratch Warehouse

I've often said if I had the time to learn any musical instrument I would choose the violin. There is something incredibly calming and meditative about hearing an accomplished musician play such an instrument. Upon learning there was a performance by violinist and sound artist Helen Bower as part of the 2015 Melbourne Fringe Festival, I made sure I would not be missing.

Bower's Lost In The Looping Glass is a 50-minute violin concert played alongside a loop pedal. She records fragments or sequences on her violin from compositions by local and international composers live, and has them playing on loop where they gradually layer on top of one another to create their own music.

Top Spot review - Melbourne Fringe

Presented as part of the 2015 Melbourne Fringe Festival, Top Spot is a one-woman show performed by two blonde bombshells, Gloria and Delia. Well no, it's just Gloria's show. But actually it's really Deliah's show. Either way, it's a great evening of cabaret, burlesque and comedy as the two women fight it out for the highly coveted "top spot" in the eyes of the audience. 

Having been working together since 2013, Stephanie Marion Wood (Gloria) and Elizabeth Dawson-Smith (Deliah) are a perfectly matched and complimentary team to watch on stage together. Having previously seen the two perform twice in Miss Friby's Two Pound Parlour, I expected to be in for a night of naughty hijinks and I was not disappointed.

Little V's Terrible Tea Party review - Melbourne Fringe

Little Vaginia is having a tea party and we are all invited! Presented as part of the 2015 Melbourne Fringe Festival, Little V’s Terrible Tea Party is a dirty little cabaret that brazenly explores the darkest recesses of morality and perversions where our hostess will also be revealing a big surprise!

Yasmin Mole is perfect as the unhinged and somewhat psychotic Little Vaginia. With her big curly hair and pink frilly dress, she is a life-size version of the dolls that are scattered along the stage. Her wide innocent eyes are unsettling as she sings about abortions and rape and her quavering voice is constantly on the brink of losing her self-control. Joining Mole are Charlotte Righetti, David John Watton and Jack Lad as the three clowns, and their physicality, facial expressions and their individual character traits are all well constructed.

Transplant review | Melbourne Fringe Festival | Club Voltaire

Every now and again, there is a show that is so unexpected and unusual that it remains vividly with you for quite some time after seeing it. Presented by Such As They Are and as part of the 2015 Melbourne Fringe Festival, Transplant is one such show. Performed at its uniquely designed installation space in a corner of Club Voltaire, it is a self-proclaimed medical fairytale that seamlessly infuses puppetry and performance.

As we wait outside the curtains of the performance, a nurse (Tim Ratcliffe) appears and before we know it, we are being prepped to assist in a surgery. Nothing is forgotten in the process, as we are told to swab behind our ears, have our nostrils examined and if anyone has been travelling overseas in the last month, well…

Homme review - Melbourne Fringe

Created by the House of Vnholy and performed as part of the 2015 Melbourne Fringe Festival, Homme is a performative piece that explores male identity and contemporary masculinity within Australia. Through a series of vignettes and in complete silence, the differences between what it means to be a male and be a female are subtly explored.

It is standing room only during the performance, with Homme enveloping virtually the whole space. The white flooring is bare except for a number of select items, including a washing machine, a bundle of black balloons, a megaphone and a plinth. The two performers – Matthew Adey and Natalie Abbott - are dressed in black and the only time they speak is when they ask audience members for assistance with the props.

I'm Not Alright review - Melbourne Fringe

Daley King has been living with depression for over a decade, and longer, if you consider the fact his father has also lived with it. In his 2015 Melbourne Fringe Festival show debut, I’m Not Alright, King takes us on a poetic journey on mental illness via physical theatre, jazz soundtrack and puppets.

Apart from using his own experience, King has interviewed a variety of people with mental illness to create this story. King has a great ability to engage us with the poetic flow of his words as they paint a picture of a person who is struggling with his sadness and loneliness. The jazz music creates a contrasting image of laughter and chatter that signifies the mind-set that people with depression can have without King needing to explicitly state.

The Reality Event review | The Suicide Ensemble | Melbourne Fringe Festival | The Tuxedo Cat

Led by Daniel Gough, The SuicideEnsemble presented an evening of 'fun and death' for the 2015 Melbourne Fringe Festival. The Reality Event is divided up in two halves, GAME and SUICIDE. GAME puts its audience in the driver seats of theatre creation whereas in SUICIDE, we are forced to confront the idea of 'safe' theatre and its boundaries between art and life.

In GAME, we are divided into five teams with one of The Suicide Ensemble (Pavle Banovic, Esther Dougherty, Finley Kube, Remi Roehrs and Sampson Smith) as the team captain. If the team loses a challenge, the team captain is publicly "shamed" and sent away. The "shamings" range from a public "dacking" to eating a tablespoon of wasabi. There is a pack mentality to the proceedings as we are encouraged to laugh and cheer while this is happening and despite its title, there is still a deliberately and grimly dark element to GAME.

His Ghostly Heart review - Melbourne Fringe

Performed at this year's Melbourne Fringe Festival, His Ghostly Heart is an intimate 30-minute two-hander with a couple lying in bed just after having sex. Written by Ben Schiffer, best known for his work on TV series Skins, and directed by Richard Edge, its exploration of love and what it means to be loved is designed to be performed entirely in the dark.

Unfortunately, due to the necessity of the exit sign inside the performance space, the venue was not in pitch blackness, which was ultimately integral to the show’s overall effect. While you could not see facial expressions, the body outlines and movement were still quite visible. In order to experience this the way it was intended, I did have my eyes closed during the performance.

Bodies Over Bitumen review | Melbourne Fringe Festival | Arts House

This year's Melbourne Fringe Festival has seen a variety of circus performances using the art form to create some highly unique shows. There's been glow in the dark circus and circus that is inspired by climate change, and now with Bodies Over Bitumen, there is outdoor circus that takes us out to the streets of North Melbourne.

We follow the three performers, Skye Gellmann, Alexander Gellmann and Naomi Francis, down side streets and main roads as they perform various tricks and acrobatics. Similar to other Fringe Festival shows, Suburbia and Citydash, Bodies Over Bitumen invites its audience to look at their surroundings in a new light and to take notice of what is there. 

Become a Functional Adult in 45 Minutes review - Melbourne Fringe

Sophie Joske wants to become an adult. She wants to be accomplished and respected as a person, but she's not quite there yet. Presented as part of the 2015 Melbourne Fringe Festival, Become a Functional Adult in 45 Minutes is a cautionary tale in which Joske explores what life must be like to be a successful adult.

Joske sets her sights on graduating from the Mature Learning Academy as an 'adult' so she can finally go out and live her life. What follows, is a series of satirical 'self-help' tests in a variety of categories, such as work, social skills, relationships and sex, to assess just how prepared Joske is at handling these situations as a fully-fledged adult. Sadly, she fails at each, but not without some laughs along the way.

A Star Is Bored review - Melbourne Fringe

Nick Eynaud doesn't just want to be famous. He wants to be rich, famous and powerful, the triple threat. His 2015 Melbourne Fringe Festival cabaret show, A Star Is Bored, reveals the lengths he will go to in order to make his dream come true - so long as he doesn't actually have to do anything to earn it. Thanks to reality TV, he might be able to make that happen.

Eynaud takes us on a journey of his life that begins with his wide-eyed WAAPA school days through to the harsh reality of living back home with his parents in Reservoir. Along the way, he informs us of his obsession with Netflix and more specifically, reality TV shows; including Masterchef, Real Housewives and Toddlers and Tiara  - the latter resulting in an incredibly hilarious audition tape that needs to be seen. 

and now we wait. review | Melbourne Fringe Festival | Northcote Uniting Church

Playing at the 2015 Melbourne Fringe Festival, Stephanie Clark's and now we wait. plays out like a grim re-imagining of The Breakfast Club for, in this case, there is a shooter loose in the school and the five teenagers find shelter in an unused theatre. While they nervously remain hidden not knowing where the shooter is and waiting for the nightmare to end, the group gradually faces some truths about themselves and what is ultimately important to them.

Based in Warragul, Impact Theatre is an enterprising company that focuses on young people writing and creating original theatre productions. The cast ranges from 18-21 years of age, is a combination of first-time and regular performers with the company. While the difference in skill levels and ability to play more nuanced characters between them is evident, the entire cast (Emily Legg, Sarah Hartnell, Kyle Wright, Daniel Warenycia and Clark herself) remains dedicated to their characters and the situation they find themselves in. However, Hartnell as uptight smart girl Emily, and Wright as the jokester Nick, provide the most convincing performances of the night.