Back in 2015, Jeffrey Jay Fowler was part of the team that won Best Performance for Fag/Stag, an outstanding play about the friendship between two best friends, one straight and one gay. This year, Fowler returns to the Festival with his newest work, The One. Already receiving critical acclaim during its run at Perth's Fringe World, the show takes a timely look at the institute of marriage and how love can be one confusing concept.
"Two
unnamed characters, a man and a woman (Mark Storen & Georgia King), meet at a garden party at the
end of summer and fall in love. Across the next few years they remain in
love and eventually he proposes, knocking their romance into turbulent
waters," Fowler tells me. "Mark and Georgia commissioned me to write a show, and then I proposed the idea to them that it should be a show about marriage and love. Because I wrote the show for them, I wanted to use their talents and Mark's talents include playing blues guitar."
While some arts makers prefer to keep the roles
of director and writer separate, Fowler prefers to direct his own work and so
taken on this dual role for The One. "In fact I've only worked as a director a
couple of times on other people's shows and only had one other director
direct mine. I really am a writer/director at heart. I love the control
to be honest. And the collaboration!"
No apocalypse ever runs smoothly and in The Yonder, things could not get any more comedically complicated for the remaining citizens of Earth on board a flight to take them to a deserted planet and apparent safety. This collaborative work between Shannan Lim, Elizabeth Davie and Ezel Doruk on the issues of race, identity and migration is sure to entertain at this year's Melbourne Fringe Festival. Oh, and there's also alien space squids.
"The Yonder is the ship that evacuates the last of humanity out from the burning ball of mess that Earth has become. It’s as much a spacecraft as it is a budget airline, and the audience are the passengers," Lim tells me. "Elizabeth, Ezel and I each play two characters, and they all squabble. Elizabeth is the captain, and the CEO of the shuttle company. Ezel is first officer and an abducted Turkish lounge singer. I am the engineer on board The Yonder and an alien squid baby—I’m really looking forward to this, I think it’s so horrifying and cute."
This is the first time the three performers have collaborated on a work and if Lim has it his way, it hopefully won't be the last. "I met Elizabeth and Ezel separately last year, but we started talking and hanging out and going to see plays, films and gigs. We’ve become very close and will become even closer, I’m sure, from having created The Yonder together," he says. "Part of our process is to just talking about what’s going on with us and the sociopolitical environment around us, then figuring out how to cartoonify that. Elizabeth’s good with structuring the story, and Ezel has lots of playful ideas. They’re both so perceptive and open and committed in general, they’re excellent collaborators."
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.
I've lived in Melbourne for 30 of my 34 years. I've come to know the city quite well in that time with many places serving as a reminder of an experience I've had every time I visit it. But what happens when you can't see that place anymore? Dialogue in the Dark takes us on a simulated tour through some well known Melbourne locations with a twist: the tour is conducted in total darkness. Led by blind guides, we must touch, smell and hear our way around places that were once familiar to us.
Our host provides us with a white cane and we enter the pitch black venue fumbling in the darkness as we slowly making our way to our guide who is calling out to us. She introduces herself as Lauren and she sounds young - or younger than me at least. There's a warmth and confidence in her voice and I start to feel more secure in my surroundings, whatever they may be.
There are moments in our lives where we are thrown a curve ball and all our best-laid plans go out the window. This can take mere seconds or in Annie's case, 50 minutes. Presented as part of Melbourne Fringe Festival, Carly Milroy's Pee Stick is a charming comedy cabaret that follows Annie as she agonisingly awaits the outcome of her pregnancy test.
"Pee Stick is a
story about time slowing down while a single woman waits in her
bathroom for a pregnancy test result. The show largely takes place in
her imagination, where we meet eccentric characters from her world
prompting the big questions: what could having a baby mean for Annie's
professional, personal and family life?" Milroy (who serves as writer and performer) says. "There's a lot of dumb fun in Pee
Stick—awkward high school moments, sea-sick monsters, rhythmic traffic
disputes—but ultimately it's a play about the compromises women are
asked to make in the pursuit of motherhood."
"The play is set in
1987, which meant I could take the audience back to the beginnings of at-home
pregnancy tests when women had to wait up to an hour for a result
(conveniently also the running time of the show!). Even though this kind
of agonising wait has been compressed down to a few minutes in 2017,
the same emotions and reactions are experienced: dread, excitement,
grief, love…it's timeless. I wanted to highlight that the assumptions,
professional barriers and social stigmas Annie grapples with in 1987
unfortunately still deeply affect women today. Also it means I get to
wear a bum bag."
