Five shows for ethereal beings who love magic!
I am actually a giddy kid with magic tricks. Ever since I was a little kid, right to my very adult self, a good magic trick gets me all excited! Here’s some Anywhere Festival shows with real magic, really actually real magic, and mysterious magickal themes for all those lovers of otherworldly impossibilities.
Audiences will experience the camaraderie of sharing in stories and music around the campfire
When I was growing up in South Africa, it was second nature for musical instruments to come out around the campfire late at night. Everyone would sit around the fire and play and sing together. With this show, I really wanted to recreate this campfire atmosphere. These are some of my fondest memories growing up and I firmly believe that this is storytelling, theatre in its original form; just friends sharing tales around the fire.
Sex, Lies & Betrayal - It’s gonna make you blush!
A famous movie star is writing a tell-all book about her life in Hollywood and what goes on behind the scenes. Through story and song, Sex, Lies & Betrayal is a captivating tale of lies, betrayal and one woman’s sexual awakening.
Over The Back Fence | Vulcana Circus
Boasting more than 10 different acts across four venues, this was an immersive, engaging, and exciting journey, part way between a mystery tour and the best school excursion you’ve ever been on (only with no teachers and more beer).
Imagine being treated and viewed as a burden on the medical system. It's time to widen our perception of disability.
Necklace is an intimate, autobiographical and participatory performance exploring the experience of being treated and viewed as a burden on the medical system whilst bringing to light the joys, struggles and triumphs from diagnosis to acceptance. At turns funny and gutting, this story reminds us to be adventurers, always searching for the treasure within ourselves and others. The work in progress showing will surprise and delight you and widen critical conversations about our perceptions of disability.
"The show is made up of true stories and experiences of young people in share-houses during Covid-19, from all over the world."
Welcome to Rose Street, a share-house filled with passive aggressive post it notes, scattered Uber Eats bags, deep love and even deeper frustration. The best party of the year is being planned… that is, until lockdown is announced.
In Ireland and Scotland the Wake for someone who has passed is more often than not held at a pub.
‘The Wake’ is an improvised musical show centred around a Wake for one of the cast. The audience chooses which cast member is going to be the deceased on the night and the show unfolds about their life. A delightful mix of stories, songs and scenes inspired by the audience – with laughs aplenty!
"I went searching for snippets of inspiration in old articles on the terrors of youth" - Iley Jones on creating 'Good Talk'
Good Talk is a 40 minute two-hander revolving around high school sweethearts Jiā lǐ and Erin. While avoiding the realities of their deteriorating relationship they return to their hometown for their high school reunion. Upon arrival they find themselves alone with their thoughts and feelings, listening to each other and finding the cracks in their 10-year relationship. What was thought to be safely secured and locked in, is now exposed and left raw.
"What’s most important is finding performers who want to showcase their talent through new or existing material, and be a part of an event that lifts each other up."
Brisbaret is for people that want to discover the incredible performers around their own city who they might not see otherwise. If you enjoy laughing at the state of the world and experiencing a vast array of live performances, but perhaps don’t have the longest attention span and want to do something fun on a weeknight that you can still get to bed before 11, Brisbaret is for you!
Ingress | Bridie Hooper
The show was richly layered with all manner of symbolism, and heavily dosed with extremely high-level acrobatics. And of course, youthful vigour is itself a kind of immortality, for who can imagine being weak when one is full of strength? In the summer of life one cannot conceive of the winter of the body. But being young is not an immunity from self reflection, self doubt, self loathing, and self flagellation.
A citizen science group that attempts to contact alien life through the internet
“An artistic mentor of mine used to say ‘confront the materials’. I think this idea holds true with technology as well. You have to confront what the material of your show is, even if it is virtual. I am filled with a kind of dread about the power that is concentrating in the companies that connect us. Over recent years a hugely powerful force has been unleashed through social media, one that possesses us in strange ways and uses us for its own ends. It reminded me of movies like The Thing, it was like a monster has emerged in our world. So I took that genre and decided a shlock horror story would be a fun way to explore our feelings around surveillance capitalism, privacy and the power of big data and artificial intelligence.”
A solo performance-art ritual event where all who enter the space become participants
‘101 Ways to Stare at a Wall’, originally began as a provocative 8-minute performance event! It has actually been inspired by a particular piece of post-war avant-garde music, written by the iconic experimental US composer, John Cage. He liked to work with the Laws of Chance – ‘Indeterminancy’ - to help him compose his works, and I thought I might try that too! So, all stage directives have been worked out by the throwing of dice… And, it has now been expanded in layers, to fill approx. one hour!
It began when I almost lost my son, and he lost a year of his life to drugs
Drawing on elements of verbatim, physical and interactive theatre, this work will explore the myths and realities of motherhood from the highs to the lows and everything in between. The Monster's Mother is an open, honest and often moving portrayal of motherhood with verbatim contributions from mothers of all ages. It will be like nothing else you will see in the Festival.
TOME is not your average impro theatre; It is ordered chaos, a hurricane in a bottle.
What is your creative process like? In a word: Chaos. The question that I constantly get asked when going through rehearsal process is ‘how do you direct an impro show?’, and it’s a good question! Rehearsal for TOME is about developing trust and communication between improvisers, critiquing the technique that the performers use rather than the content of their scenes. During rehearsal process, there are hundreds of incredibly heartbreaking, chaotically funny, and spine-chillingly scary scenes that will never be seen by an outside eye, but after the hours of improvising, team building and technique learning, the quality of the work and comradery of the team is astounding, and every scene is as exciting and thrilling as the next.
It's Parisian salon culture of the 1920's but with an absurdist twist - Think ‘Midnight in Paris’ meets ‘Salvador Dali’.
If you enjoyed Midnight In Paris or The Great Gatsby but also love Back to the Future or Salvador Dali then you will feel right at home at the Time Travel Café. We believe that everyone deserves to feel special and at The Time Travel Café, everyone is.
Two absolute idiot characters bring-their-own pageant all over Australia, performing wherever they can
Beauty queen Victoria Beauvoir and her lifelong devotee Roger Seahorse are on a mission to bring children’s beauty pageants to every Australian town. The Beryls present this narratively driven, immersive sketch show that casts the audience as contestants and pushy showbiz parents as they satirise the pageant world. Leave your name, age and gender identity at the door because The Pageant is a world unto itself.
This show is for anyone who has loved, has lost, who has made a mistake, who has simply lived
Taking place over three years in fictional Brisbane pub, His Majesty’s, this play follows a blossoming new relationship, a young woman who struggles with addiction and a young man who finds himself suffering from a terminal illness. This play deals with love, loss and how we deal with these emotions.
Shanty Club | The Salty Sirens
There’s such a power to communal singing. When a large group of people can come together with a similar interest and sing in union, whether you think you’re a good singer or not, it feels special joining in on the choruses and sharing in the collective voice. Elyse and Kristy have that understanding and knew how to get the audience engaged as they built up to the final shanty which allowed members of the crowd to come up with their own lyrics for us all to sing along to.
‘Removable Objects’ will leave you re-considering your literal and metaphorical place in the world
I like to create a collection of stimulus and inspiration that I know leads or feeds into an idea. I create lists of tasks to do like skills or accents to learn, write large chunks of material to whittle down, and see how I can connect different disciplines. For example, this show had a theme of location and its connection to identity, so I wrote a fictional national anthem, inspired by Irish music my father plays. This led to learning how to program MIDI instruments so I could have orchestral instruments on a budget.