Zagazig | Curtain World
Zagazig is a beautiful daydream made manifest, I hope it rises again and again, and for all that it will likely get tighter and have better funding in the future, and possible more rehearsals, actual stage hands, and all that other periphery, this beautiful cacophony of original handmade nonsense will always have a soft spot in my heart.
Slippery | Curtain World
There is a clear internal logic to the fantastical in Slippery, but with just enough of the familiar that it’s both hilariously weird and painfully relatable. Slippery feels like being pulled down a rabbit hole into a fantastical genderless fever-dream where everyone in the Vatican is gay, spoons are idiots, and cucumber vape juice will kill you. It’s unashamedly absurd, unapologetically queer, and hysterically funny.
Again, You Have Trusted Me | Sarah Stafford
I think I’m a fan because Stafford can silence a room as easily as she can get one onside, and that’s a skill, an artist that makes work that’s rough and stabby and is Not For Everyone. It’s so refreshing actually. I actually can’t think of another work I’ve seen in ages that felt so sharp-edged, so fresh in style and tone as this strange dark tonic.
Ruby Moon | Ad Astra
Ruby Moon is an important work and was inspired by the headlines of missing children in the past. When we think of the tragic news of Daniel Morcombe and William Tyrell, and how today we live in a world where media plays such a big role in our lives that when a story like that happens it becomes almost unavoidable to not get caught up in the anxiety or feel the grief of their family. I think it does a great job at exploring the corruption of innocence and how our perceptions can drastically change after such incidents.
Sewer Rat Girl | Siobhan Gibbs
The entire performance is overflowing with chaos but it is a sort of unruliness that can only come with rigorous curation and planning. A personal highlight was a joke made about intermediality that made my HECS-debt a little more worth the trouble of paying it back.
Red | Dancenorth
The voyeuristic tone was set from the moment I entered the warehouse. A separate audience bank on the opposite side of the bubble along with the bubble itself were constantly there to remind me I was watching. That I was invading the privacy of the individuals contained within. What could have been read as an invasive observation of an endangered species’ mating dance very quickly became an allegory for the final members of a species scrambling to preserve their world as it collapses around them.
A Midnight Visit | Broad Encounters
What the creative team of A Midnight Visit have created is truly something wonderful that transported me into a world where my imagination could run wild. I felt childlike exploring the rooms and listening to the characters, as though I was romping around an exciting large playground for the first time.
Lucy & Me | Nicolas Angelosanto
Lucy & Me charmed me with the tale of man, Sphenn, and his bike, Lucy, trying to get home to Germany. We followed the two on wacky adventures as they tried to make money for a plane ticket. Sphenn was part trickster and part fool, an effeminate, romantic, simple-minded, European caricature. Nicolas brought enthusiasm, extremity and maintained his character well. I enjoyed his commitment to silliness, wiggling his whole body or licking the corners of a stamp feverishly until he got a laugh.
Plastica Fantastica | Jennifer Laycock
Plastica Fantastica was clever, poignant and a real knee-slapper. A woman obsessed with plastic, who is also allergic to plastic. How can she live without the one thing she loves the most? Brilliant.
The End of Us | Rouge Theatre Co.
Full of sharp dialogue, witty exchanges and very episodic in nature, Fenton’s writing created a very surreal landscape which surprised and delighted. The thread that wove the scenes together was split into two, jumping between different stages in Meredith’s (Georgie Oulton) and Archie’s (Calum Johnston) plutonic marriage mandated by law.
Hello, Gaz Rhumbo! | Lightning Bolt Creative & Willem Whitfield
A fascinating play, with a whole lot going on. Hello, Gaz Rhumbo is a bizarre and fun-filled trip into the life, and untimely death, of our title character. The entire affair is reminiscent of a slightly perturbed gameshow, wherein the contestant gets a short recap and then has to fumble his way through a series of zany questions he is woefully unprepared for.
Booff | Clint Bolster
A delightfully imposing clown, when captured in the intimate setting of the tea room, Booff becomes even larger than life. I felt quite giddy, it’s such a space to step into, an otherworldly experience. If you were to enter this beautiful parlour from the chaos of a summer festival, you would be instantly transported to another world entirely. In this Booff has done that most perfect of magic theatre tricks, he has made the outside go away and the inside somewhere else.
Hello, Gaz Rhumbo! | Lightning Bolt Creative & Willem Whitfield
The show advertises itself as an absurdist comedy. The absurd element is spot on, with clever writing and joke props. A fully grown man in a diaper wails like a baby. A woman uploads information directly to her head and seems to orgasm. Frequently, the characters spoke in a voice from beyond their own experience, laying down exposition that felt simultaneously jarring and hilarious.
We The Aliens | Ela Bartilomo and Cecilia Martin
As I was watching We the Aliens, I kept on think about who are the aliens and how do we relate to them. Etymologically, alien means foreign, strange. It is the ‘Other’ to which we cannot relate. And yet, we do have a relation with the alien, albeit in negative terms. The alien is that which we negate from ourselves, that we make foreign to us, and that we perceived as strange and threatening. The body of acrobats and contortionists is a good representation of this concept and also an entry point to reflect on it.
Awesome Ocean Party | Giema Contini & Brisbane Powerhouse
Giema Contini is arguably one of the best and most reliable theatrical performers in Brisbane City’s creative community. Regardless of the stipulations of a role or production, she brings a profound generosity and openness to her work that lends everything around her a strange and gentle veracity – a heavy and playful sense of emotional honesty.
The Bluebird Mechanicals | Too Close To The Sun
The Bluebird Mechanicals may be one of the tightest, most considered and deliberate works I’ve ever seen. There isn’t an inch of the show that doesn’t feel like it’s been refined and distilled to its purest, most impactful essence. It knows exactly what it wants to say and exactly how to say it. But, the work’s choice of vocabulary and materials in articulating its ideas are so removed from the norm that, again, it can only easily be described as weird.
Tyrone and Lesley in a Spot | David Megarrity & Nathan Sibthorpe
A co-production with Metro Arts and Brisbane Festival, David Megarrity and Nathan Sibthorpe’s Tyrone and Lesley In A Spot is a ukulele-led dance of screen and song that transports you on a whimsical journey of small discoveries through laughter.
The Nest | Chance Collective
Sometimes you see a bit of art that is so stupidly fruity, you get a little giddy. From the wantonly creative women at Chance Collective comes a deliciously strange and unrepentantly weird wander into a surreal date night. Straight up, no apologies, this is my jam.
WonderWombs | The Dust Palace (NZ)
This is top quality contemporary neo-burlesque. Full of provocations that subvert stereotypes of 'woman', it is righteously sex-positive and utterly refreshing for it. Yeah these girls are hot, but it's never about who is watching, it's all about how good it feels within.
Bitch On Heat | Leah Shelton
Leah doesn’t pull any punches as she utilises high-camp, absurdist, lip-synching performance art to explore the history of the sexualisation and vilification of the female body through ancient myths, porn, the politics of stereotypical 50’s house wives, and revenge movies heroines.