The Melbourne Fringe Festival
Last night DocCoffee and I attended the launch of the Melbourne Fringe Festival. We are super excited, like two young kids with forbidden sweeties, because we are a part of it this year, producing our very own show along with two other fabulous improvisor friends.
Earlier this year when applications opened, I was considering submitting a piece I've been dreaming and writing for ages, but I couldn't quite see how I'd manage it financially. Then I thought well, why not do an improv show? I have a husband who is a supremely talented and respected improvisor, as well as access to a network of awesome, skilled performers and a format that none of them have ever done here in Australia - documentary! We started scheming and found that it all came together very easily. So we will be doing our show True Fiction, a full-length improvised documentary, based on a format devised while I was with ImproGuise in Cape Town. Yay!
Back to the launch. It was your usual launch vibe, with free cheap alcohol and good-looking people milling about, ogling the odd person who had misunderstood the point of the launch and come dressed in costume, or carrying a giant whale aloft on a stick. (I kid you not.) Then the speeches started, and with it an element that I'm still getting used to here in Oz - the Auslan interpreter. The interpreter, who's name is Lynn, had been in attendance at the Fringe Forums as well, and so I recognised her immediately. To say that she stole the show last night would be putting it mildly. Characterising every speech she signed with a bit of the speaker's sass or the way she stood while she signed, she became completely absorbing. I couldn't stop watching her.
Added to that the speeches by the two politicians in attendance, the Arts Minister of Victoria and a representative from the Melbourne Mayor's office (who happened to be young and incredibly dashing). They really knew who they were talking to and said all the right things with charm and wit, like berating George Brandis for his arts budget slashing and bemoaning the Abbott government's refusal to allow marriage equality like they were some backward parents that we've become comfortable ridiculing.
It all made me smile, and feel a twinge of sadness at the same time. The Aussies are so progressive in so many ways, and yet they face the same conservative, controlling political tsunami that we face in South Africa. The world is a place dominated by fear at the moment, and the light at the end of that tunnel must surely be art. Or at least let the tunnel be full of gorgeous grafitti!