There's a strong sense of excitement running through the audience as we take our seats for The Miss Behave Gameshow. All the way from Las Vegas, this part game show part variety entertainment leaves us all wondering what we are in for. Right up until the very end it's constant surprises and a little bit of shock. After all, how many shows do you go to where your sock ends up around a man's cock?
Miss
Behave (Amy Saunders) is a standout as our host and ensures everything runs as smoothly
as can be in a show where nothing can be planned. While there's a structure present, due to the heavy involvement of audience participation, responses and reactions are always going to be unexpected and on the evening I
attended, Miss Behave ended up in a brilliant pash with an audience
member which she took in her stride. Her glamorous and heavily tattooed assistant Tiffany (Bret Pfister), dressed in a tight safari shirt and shorts, brings playful cheekiness to the proceedings and also delights the audience in showing her flexibility and appreciation for Britney Spears.
Imagine having a five-course meal with a group of strangers, where you must democratically vote on all the ingredients that will be used. What if someone is vegetarian or has allergies to pineapple? Or simply doesn't like spicy food? Presented as part of Next Wave Festival, Counterpilot's Crunch Time has its participants doing just that, and as a result, leaves them thinking about much more than just their food choices.
Co-founded by Sandra
Carluccio and Nathan Sibthorpe, Counterpilot's performative dinner party sits us
around a table and through the use of some interactive tools, we vote on each ingredient that our guest chef will prepare in a kitchen that is a few metres away from where we dine. The chefs for each session are public figures in the arts world and include Georgie Meagher, the Director and CEO of Next Wave, and Simon Abrahams, the Artistic Director of Melbourne Fringe. In our session, we are treated to the culinary expertise of Wesley Enoch, the Artistic Director of Sydney Festival.
I spent a lot of 2016 watching a variety of TV shows from a broad range of genres and in my need to always finish what I start, I never "quit" a TV show until I finished its entire season - regardless of how bad it is or how much I hate it. But with the bad comes some utterly brilliant ones, so I decided to list my top ten TV shows of 2016, based purely on their most recent season.
If you're not up to date with the season, read with caution as some spoilers may be revealed.
1. American Crime - season 2
This anthology series drew me in from the very first episode. Felicity Huffman is in top form as the principal of an elite high school whose job becomes very difficult when a student on a scholarship accuses the basketball team star players of rape.
Connor Jessup is a phenomenal find, so much of the season rests on his shoulders and in being able to show the conflicting emotions of his character, Taylor, in dealing with the the ramifications of his accusation.
The story is told through various perspectives and therefore you're never quite sure as to what the truth actually is. While dealing with the alleged rape, American Crime is a nuanced look at race, class and privilege and what happens when the status quo is threatened.
While we live in the era of binge watching, the themes that are explored here are quite heavy and emotive, so a weekly episode was perfect with this (and also gets you excited about what happens next - none of this instant gratification stuff!)
The beauty of anthology series' is that you don't need to watch season one first, and while the first season is brilliant, there is so much more to admire about season two, and reflect on as well.
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.
