Convergent Pathologies | Midsumma Fetsival interview

One of the more intriguing exhibitions being presented at Midsumma Festival is Premier Event, Convergent Pathologies. Curated by myriad collective's darcy t gunk, the work on display by trans and gender diverse (TGD) artists living with mental illness, is a representation of their experiences of making choices to resist or comply with being pathologised.

As co-founder of myriad collective - a group that seeks to create performance, exhibition and professional development opportunities for TGD artists in Melbourne - finding the talent for this exhibition was not an arduous one for darcy. "Almost all of the artists in this exhibition have worked with myriad collective before, which meant that they understood how we do things, and our ethics and values as a collective. We did an open call for submissions and the response we got was that they were really excited to be part of this exhibition. myriad collective is all about bringing together a broad diversity of trans and gender diverse experience, so I wanted to fit as many artists into the exhibition as possible, whilst still allowing them to present up to 3 works each," darcy says.

The Sparrow Men | Midsumma Festival interview

From humble beginnings in July 2014 to now being a Premier Event at the 2017 Midsumma Festival, The Sparrow Men - aka. Andy Balloch and Marcus Willis - have garnered a reputation as one of Melbourne's most esteemed improv acts. The two have been performing regularly with no script, no direction and no idea on what is going to come out of their mouths for 2 and a half years and could not be more excited to be returning to the festival where they debuted their first full-length performance in 2015.

"Improv is such an incredible art form, and the only one where the process is the actual product. Every night we get to write, direct and star in our own play. And like plays, they can be funny, sad, dramatic, absurd, linear, non-linear, thematic based, premise driven, tackle important issues, non-important issues, it can be meta, non-meta, interactive, non-interactive, in English or not in English. We can play humans, birds, or anything in-between, play 1 character each, or 20, maybe there’s a narrator, maybe not," Balloch tells me.

Cleave review | La Mama Theatre

In 1908, conjoined twins Daisy and Violet Hilton were born in England. About 55 years later, Colleen Burke and her twin sister were born - five minutes apart separated by three years. Burke was born with two vaginas and her sister was born severely disabled with Cerebral Palsy. Presented as part of La Mama Theatre's Exploration season for work in various stages of development, and under the dramaturgy of Doug McLeod, Burke's Cleave explores the relationship that each set of twins has and - despite the decades between them the similarities shared between their lives.

Having only completed the story very recently, Burke performs a scripted reading of Cleave while placing a select number of props on the stage. There is a toy train set, a sculpture of two fused humans embracing, a photo of the Hilton twins and a rolling pin. There are also a number of props revealed throughout the show, which - especially during a scripted reading - allow us to remain visually engaged with the performance.

The Happy Prince | Midsumma Festival interview

Oscar Wilde's The Happy Prince is a short story for children around friendship, love and compassion between a statue of The Happy Prince and a swallow flying to Egypt. However, the story is also a critique of a society insensible to the world around it. As part of Midsumma Festival, the proclaimed purveyors of high camp, Little Ones Theatre will be producing this tale but with their own queer interpretation. 

"It’s funny, because I only read this story as an adult, so I guess I’ve always seen it as a queer allegory. I never had the innocent response to it that those who read it as children had. It has always had a 'queer take' in my mind. That is why I was drawn to it," explains director Stephen Nicolazzo. "I always saw it as an opportunity to further explore my obsession with sexuality and gender, but in this case, what was unique was that it was a love story. I am a romantic as heart and I think what I have always been draw to about The Happy Prince is its unashamed romanticism. It is tragic and it is indicative of the experiences of queer people throughout history and it manages to do this in the space of ten pages."

F. review

It's probably rarer now for parents to need to sit down and speak to their children about the birds and the bees. Books such as "Where Did I Come From?" now seem obsolete, and by the time teenagers are learning anything to do with sex education in high school, they already seem to know it all. Presented by Riot Stage as part of the Poppy Seed Festival, F. attempts to explore how a group of teenagers come to terms with sex and sexuality as most people of the last decade have - through technology.

Unfortunately the execution is not always successful, as the production's central concern with how technology is used with sex is at times completely ignored, or does not explore issues raised to any great depths. Thus, one of the main story lines - where two friends enter into a sexual relationship - is surprisingly developed without the use of any social media or technology whatsoever apart from one scene where the male character refers to the three voicemails he left her. In contrast, a female character's revelation that an ex-partner has put a naked photo of her on the internet is initially met with mediocre disgust by her friends but is immediately dropped and never mentioned again, nor do we see any impact this has on the character.