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WELCOME TOUNDER THE RADAR 2010

THE PROBLEMWITH EVILLeon Ewing is a self-confessed unrepentant nihilist – and in a strange way, that’s the driving force behind his art, he says. The humour in his show The Problem With Evil is beyond dark, to the point of absurdity.

“People often wet themselves at the time, and then days later think to themselves, ‘I can’t believe I laughed at that’,” Ewing says. “But the show is intentionally provocative. I would like to shock audiences into action, but I’m an utter nihilist myself. I read The Road by Cormac McCarthy and felt like I had come home. I read John Birmingham for laughs.”

So, as a nihilist, does this mean that Ewing reckons that Evil has already won, and that humanity is on a slippery slope to its own doom?

“Yeah, I think the time for action has been and gone, and we didn’t give a fuck,” he says. “The only thing left is to enjoy the twilight years of our civilisation – beyond a human timescale the planet will adapt and evolve, but I

think we have reached an evolutionary dead end. I’m open to being proven wrong, but I don’t see the evidence that we are up to the task.

“Interestingly, it is this nihilism that motivates me to lead a rich and full and happy life, because I don’t believe in the future – only the moment. There is a great Charlie Chaplin quote: ‘Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long-shot’.”

This might all sound a bit depressing – but it’s given Ewing a new perspective on the world. Rather than getting depressed by, say, an oil spill, he thinks ‘Hey, great material!’.

So, fuck it, Brisbane – we might as well enjoy the time we have left, and The Problem With Evil seems a mighty fi ne way to piss away one of our last few precious hours – a PowerPoint presentation with live feeds of puppets manipulated into cameras, beatboxing fi sh, and skeletons playing rockabilly.

BAZ MCALISTERWHAT: The Problem With EvilWHERE & WHEN: The Studio, Metro Arts Monday Sep 20 to Wednesday Sep 22

THE POMEGRANATE CYCLEViolence against women is an ugly and deeply embedded side of our society. It’s odd, then, that such an act would be so frequently depicted – with arguable indifference – in the otherwise graceful and aesthetically sophisticated world of opera. Eve Klein thought so too, and it was this realisation that led to the eventual development of her take on violence against women, as inspired by the story of Persephone, in The Pomegranate Cycle.

“In many operas, female characters experience violence, go mad and die or are killed,” Klein explains. “Rarely do they pick up the pieces of their life and live it again. When I was teaching music technology, I had worked with a number of students who used the recording process to tell stories of how they healed from violence. My experience with these students was that the technology empowered them to move their stories to a new space, a place where they felt comfortable with themselves and their history. With Pomegranate I wanted to draw from that idea and use the textures of ambient electronica to break open stories of violence depicted in traditional opera and tell a story of healing.”

It’s an ambitious goal, to be sure, but one that Klein seems entirely capable of achieving. She’s an intelligent lady; she’s laden her work with metaphors and meanings that provide added emotional depth for those who understand them – although she does concede that perhaps the best place from which to grasp Pomegranate’s true scope is from the audience.

“Pomegranates are laden with meaning. They have been used as a symbol of divinity and worship across many cultures, and are present in the scriptures of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam,” Klein says knowingly. “A lot of the earliest opera was based around ancient Greek mythology so I wanted to draw from that tradition, and based The Pomegranate Cycle around the myth known as The Rape of Persephone. In the myth, Hades steals Persephone into the Underworld. While there he tricks her into eating pomegranate seeds. When she is allowed to return to her mother, she is told that she must return to the underworld each year for several months, effectively winter, because she has eaten the seeds.”

MITCH KNOXWHAT: The Pomegranate CycleWHERE & WHEN: Out the Back, Metro Arts Thursday Sep 16 to Sunday Sep 19

THE MONTH OF SEPTEMBER IS A MAGICAL TIME OF YEAR. THE FIRST RAYS OF SPRING SUNSHINE STREAM THROUGH THE CLOUDS, PEOPLE START HAVING PICNICS AGAIN, AND THE BRISBANE FESTIVAL TAKES OVER THE CITY. AND AS PART OF BRISBANE FESTIVAL IS UNDER THE RADAR, A SHOWCASE OF EDGY CONTEMPORARY THEATRE FEATURING PERFORMERS ACROSS AUSTRALIA. YOU’LL BE ABLE TO EXPLORE CHILDHOOD ANXIETIES (CHEER UP KID) AND SOCIAL NETWORKING (SMUDGED), BE OFFENDED BY COUNTRY BOGANS (COUSIN LOVE) AND POSSIBLY PUSHED BY AN INTERACTIVE SAUNA (THE BATHERS), AND GO ON MUSICAL JOURNEYS WITH ZACK ADAMS (LOVE SONGS FOR FUTURE GIRL) AND SUNWRAE TRIO (PRIMAVERA). BUT LET’S LEAVE IT UP TO THE PERFORMERS THEMSELVES TO HELP YOU DECIDE, SHALL WE? READ ON, FOLKS, TO ENTER THE WORLD OF UNDER THE RADAR.

DANIEL CRICHTON-ROUSEEDITOR

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GOOD CLEAN FUNMelbourne circus pranksters The Caravan of Dooom are making their Brisbane debut with their fi rst full-length show Good Clean Fun. Don’t be misled by the title; only two of the three adjectives are accurate and neither of those is “clean”.

To have some kind of preparatory notion of what to expect from the Caravan of Dooom it might be wise to imagine a sideshow act performed by Iggy Pop and the Stooges – if they were coherent Australian political satirists with absurdist leanings and a taste for audience participation. The Caravan blends acrobatics-driven slap-stick comedy with not-so-clean humour, a DIY ethic, and a healthy dose of irreverence.

Performer Captain Ruin cheerfully explains that the show is likely to include “whips, chains, cigarettes, knives; quite a lot of bodily fl uids, a little bit of acrobatic skill, but not too much” and, he continues, “a lot of nudity,” because “you’ve got to have nudity; it goes with the bodily fl uids.” If the nudity, weapons and bodily fl uids don’t draw you in, Ruin also assures that there will be “carnies, a few motorcycles, hundreds of packs of cigarettes, lots of booze and thousands of stunned onlookers”.

Captain Ruin promises that Brisbane “can expect some good, wholesome clean fun, as well as some bodgy acrobatics, targeted political satire, and a feel good message at the end that you can take away with you.” And what’s the take-home message? “Buy a T-shirt.”

WHAT: Good Clean FunWHERE & WHEN: Out The Back, Metro Arts Friday Sep 10 to Monday Sep 13

LOVE SONGS FOR FUTURE GIRLShane Adamczak is halfway through the run of his show Love Songs For Future Girl at The Blue Room in his base of Perth when he speaks to Time Off. Or, rather, we should say, Zack Adams is halfway through.

“Zack has always been a vehicle for me to explore performance styles that I’m interested in and I’ve been able to live out my rock’n’roll star fantasies on stage,” Adamczak says. “Sometimes I feel like we’re a married couple. And like any relationship I think time apart is essential. I spent so much of 2009 performing Zack shows (in Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney, and New York) that by this time last year, I was so incredibly ready to move onto a new non-Zack Adams project that I just had to force myself to take a break from writing.

“So I spent a few months working with my band The Spin Chorus and various other theatre projects and it was really refreshing. When I came back to write this new show it was all fresh and exciting again and I was able to approach the character with new eyes and ideas.”

The new show marks Adamczak’s fi rst visit to Brisbane in four years, and is a semi-autobiographical refl ection on relationships of the past. Adamczak says his dating history has been pretty rich ground to mine for material – even though he’s embellished parts to protect the innocent (and the guilty).

“Sometimes life just hands you these great stories and ideas and you can’t pass them up, you don’t feel the need to make things up,” he says. “Unfortunately the part about being dumped after a long tour was based on a true story! It’s been interesting to see how much I can get away with, but the show is essentially fun and I wouldn’t go out of my way to make anyone (even fi ctional versions of people I know) look too bad.”

BAZ MCALISTERWHAT: Love Songs For Future GirlWHERE & WHEN: Friday Sep 10 to Monday Sep 13

HOWARD GREY’S UNSAME DAYSpeaking on behalf (and as half) of the pianoBoat project, Raku Pitt is “really excited and a little nervous about the trip to Brisbane. We got involved because the ethos of the programme seems to be a great match for our own endeavours to connect our passions for multiple artforms through experimental approaches to street theatre and performative installations.”

Pitt and his sister Freya are introducing themselves, the disillusioned Howard, and a mystery plant peddler through puppetry, music, storytelling and animation in a family friendly show.

The idea for the show “was seeded by seeing a wild fi g tree growing in a drain on an inner-city street and also noticing the increasing profusion of guerilla gardens being tended in unlikely urban spots,” and it’s grown into a conceptual exploration of how stories and meaning can take on a life of their own and fl ourish in different forms.

“Its distinctive aesthetic starts with richly detailed 2D drawings which are simply animated,” explains Pitt. “These city scenes are inhabited by videoed silhouettes of the protagonists as well as by live shadow puppets interacting with the projected characters. The soundtrack is also provided live for each show by piano-accordion and voice.” It’s a lot for two people to take on, and the multimedia presentation is being used to develop ideas about performance as well as to be engaging in and of itself. The Pitts are “intrigued by the possibilities that could arise from uniting various forms of expression and communication, from the simplicity of stripped-down shadow-storytelling and acoustic music to the hypnotic power of digital and analogue projection technologies,” and Howard Grey is a way of playing with these, and of getting audiences even more involved in the storytelling and “actively imbuing the show with their own Whys and Therefores”.

BETHANY SMALLWHAT: Howard Grey’s Unsame DayWHERE & WHEN: Riparian Plaza Tuesday Sep 14 and Thursday Sep 16, Stamford Plaza Hotel Helipad Wednesday Sep 15, Queen St Mall Friday Sep 17

NEON TOASTIn today’s speed-dating, online-meeting, ex-stalking society, it seems there is a never-ending list of ways in which folks try and win someone’s heart. You might take them to a formal dinner; you might just put formaldehyde in their dinner. Whatever, there’s no judgment here – but the point remains that even if – if – you fi nd someone you’re initially compatible with, there are still so many variables at play that could turn the whole thing into a disaster. Like, for example, when a loaf of bread is being baked. Man, dating is hard.

“We found some classifi ed advertisements and became interested in how people described themselves and what they wanted in a partner,” performer Rachael Dyson-McGregor explains. “How do you frame yourself accurately in a few lines to attract the right mate? At the same time we were looking at the process of baking and how the accuracy of chemistry, craft and timing is very specifi c. Like fi nding a partner; there are so many variables that can go wrong ... We saw the parallels between these two ideas and began to overlap material we were making into the show.”

The show has already faced one such proverbial disaster in the departure of a previous cast member to be replaced by newcomer Zac Jones, which ordinarily would be no big deal (did Rhodey look different in Iron Man 2?) but for the fact that Mr. Jones would be replacing Miss Departing Cast Member. Still, the troupe pressed on.

“Our new cast member is a man, where before we were three women so that immediately changed the dynamics in the group,” Dyson-McGregor says. “We were eager to develop the material from the original show and it didn’t seem right to transfer old choreography from one dancer to another so we went back to what was the essential idea behind each scene and shaped new material around that. It was great to throw out old material that we had lost connection with and re-work the main ideas. I think the show has strengthened in this process.”

MITCH KNOXWHAT: Neon ToastWHERE & WHEN: Sue Benner Theatre, Metro Arts Thursday Sep 16 to Sunday Sep 19

MOTHLIGHTName and role:Skye Gellmann, co-deviser and artistic director.

Tell us about Mothlight?We are creating a performance installation. We can’t tell you too much about what our installation is – it’s a surprise – but we can tell you it takes infl uence from those little winged creatures, moths! We want Mothlight to be a real experience for our audiences. Within this environment, intense yet brazenly honest circus performance about estranged intimate relationships takes place.

How did it evolve?Originally the idea started with how interesting I thought moths were as symbols. I like all the things moths can mean to different people. So I applied for Brisbane Festival’s Under The Radar programme, and Melbourne Fringe’s Hub with my idea and got both. I decided that it

would be interesting to work with a non-circus performer for this project, and found Naomi Francis, who was a new friend, rock climber and engineer in the water sector. Also I like to fi nd interesting ways of lighting my work. In the past we have used fl ash lights, slide projectors, but this time I wanted to use everyday light bulbs. So. Moths were interesting. Lights were pretty. Mothlight, seemed an appropriate title.

What themes and ideas does it involve?We look at the different ways people treat each other. We mainly look at objectifi cation of peoples bodies and the natural need to redistribute emotional energy in physical and sometimes violent ways. Also the role of touch within intimate relationships and all communication, is a big part of the work.

WHAT: MothlightWHERE & WHEN: The Whitlam, Metro Arts Tuesday Sep 21 to Friday Sep 24

BIRDMACHINEDance and robotics might seem a somewhat unlikely combination, but multidisciplinary artist Ivan Thorley – along with composer and programmer Federico Reuben – has used these almost diametrically opposed elements to create installation piece Birdmachine. While he admits that it might seem a little “outrageous” for a dancer to explore movement using robots, this incongruity – creating responsive robots that move with some of the poeticism of a dancer – is representative of Thorley’s larger interest in our relationship with and expectations of technical objects.

With Birdmachine Thorley’s aim was to create an autonomous environment for his robotic creatures to exist in; the challenge, then, was to build robots that appear completely unreal – the critters themselves are more alien than animal – but which respond almost naturally.

As he says, the creatures have “a tiny bit of randomness; that’s what we wanted to get in to the environment. With a lot of responsive media installations people expect to put something in and get something out, but in the environment things don’t actually work like that. We wanted these guys to just be existing in their own world.”

The point of making a “grotesque” world for these dark and creepy robots to inhabit, Thorley explains, “is to mimic those elements that we have in our lives and put them into an artifi cial environment... If you situate that with a sound and an ecology… people suddenly read it as being alive.”

While his dance background is evident in the mimetic responses of the robots Thorley is keen to delineate between human performance and his immersive installation.

“There are other projects that I’ve seen with dancers performing with robots, and I’ve always found that the relationship between those two things sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t. So to put a performer in the installation and make it a performance; I just think it looks ridiculous.” He adds that there’s an expectation “that the dancer will be replicated…that’s a very linear view of how technical objects should be manipulated; that we should be at the centre. I was really interested in developing a movement vocabulary [specifi c to] those technical objects.”

HELEN STRINGERWHAT: BirdmachineWHERE & WHEN: Sue Benner Theatre, Metro Arts Monday Sep 20 to Wednesday Sep 22

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BRIGHTNESSArguably one of the most ambitious works to be showcased by this year’s Under The Radar programme, Denis Buckley’s Brightness is a multimedia performance encompassing poetry, cinema, and live performance designed to interrogate contemporary society’s complex relationship with the signifi cant intangibles of spirituality and the environment. While originally designed to be performed solely in Ireland, Buckley has since decided to bring it to Australian audiences.

“Brightness was conceived and made in Kerry on the south west coast of Ireland. The work is region specifi c, in the projected skies and the sweeping cadence of the language. The Atlantic predominates here. The vast expanse refl ects unseen worlds, both real and imagined. This early ecological imagining is found in cultures worldwide and none more so than in the Aboriginal practice of Dreamtime.

“I wanted to show how central a part Irish poets and poetry played in imagining Ireland, going on to suggest if imagination has brokered a country and that country has forgotten or worst misunderstands the unseen, then it is time to break down and start again,” Buckley continues. “I don’t see this principle as local. To bring this work to Australia will change it irrevocably and that for me is the most exciting part.”

MATT O’NEILLWHAT: BrightnessWHERE & WHEN: Queen St Mall Stage Sunday Sep 12 to Tuesday 14, Thursday Sep 16

PAPYROPHOBIAIN YELLOWIf Melbourne’s Theatre of Rats is any indication, youth is most certainly not wasted on the young. None of the ensemble’s members have yet seen the dark side of 20 and they’re confi dently tackling feminism, madness, and polysyllables with one-act black comedy Papyrophobia In Yellow.

Rats performer Andrew Eddey explains that the company was formed after a group decision to drop out of their various university degrees to pursue – hopefully – lucrative careers in the performance arts. “We’re all approaching 20 so we decided we’d get things done before we lost the opportunity,” Eddey jokes.

Their Brisbane Festival offering Papyrophobia is based on some pretty heavy material. The black comedy is inspired by a short story – The Yellow Wallpaper – by early 20th Century feminist Charlotte Perkins Gilman, which chronicles a young woman’s descent into madness after she’s locked in a yellow wallpapered room in an attempt to cure her “hysteria”. Gilman herself underwent the archaic “rest cure” to treat post-partum depression, but after the prescribed immobility, forced intellectual stagnancy, and deliberate overfeeding drove her to the brink of insanity the audacious lady wisely decided to cease treatment.

Eddey – who plays Papyrophobia’s protagonist Allison’s nefarious husband– explains that in the Theatre of Rats interpretation the prisoner of the hideously wall-papered room begins to see not just a woman – as in the original – behind the eponymous paper, but a cast of characters who either lure her deeper into psychosis or facilitate her metaphorical escape, in a satirical one-act romp.

“Maybe they drive her insane or maybe they make her free. That’s the question. We wanted to explore that kind of side of madness and visions…that’s what we wanted to explore.”

HELEN STRINGERWHAT: Papyrophobia In YellowWHERE & WHEN: The Studio, Metro Arts Friday Sep 10 to Tuesday Sep 14

THE LAST MAN TO DIEThe cross-platform artists behind The Last Man To Die love to argue – in fact, arguing about new ideas, philosophies and the future is what brought the four together.

“We decided to take one idea, the concept that a person could live forever, and focus our artistic philosophical and social argument on that,” says Charles Martin, the group’s musician. “That particular idea has been one we’ve talked about for a while, among other concepts from trans-humanism, and we thought we could probably contribute a new perspective.”

The experience, Martin says, is a mix of going to see a play, a concert and an exhibition.

“The idea is that the audience is entering a museum where the exhibits aren’t physical objects, but stored personalities and scenes from different time periods and different dimensions,” Martin says. “When you come to our show we give you a special ticket at the door with a ‘QR code’, a 2D barcode, and during the show you can scan your code at a special station, which changes the whole performance environment. Each time a ticket is scanned the whole nature the space and the performers can change. It’s okay to move around so you can focus on different elements or whatever you happen to like best.”

The major theme of the work is an exploration of the ethics, practicalities and consequences of extending human life indefi nitely. During the writing process, the artists did a lot of reading and spoke to scientists on the subject.

“Although there’s lots of interest and many research ideas in anti-aging, it’s hard for researchers to pursue them,” Martin says, “both because of the way medical research is set up and because many people have the attitude that we don’t/shouldn’t want to extend our life spans. Even so, the real research results are fascinating and so are super-cool ideas from science fi ction and future studies. There are, however, squillions of crystal-worshipping crackpots, but we generally stay away from them.”

BAZ MCALISTERWHAT: The Last Man To DieWHERE & WHEN: The Whitlam, Metro Arts Tuesday Sep 14 to Friday Sep 17

PRIMAVERARae Howell’s just back from a residency in regional Victoria where she’s been working up new material for the East Coast tour she’s about to start developed from another residency she did at the end of last year, a UNESCO one in Brazil. She’s a little bit busy at the moment.

“I guess I only got, like, 500 emails?” She says she’s picked up “a whole heap of amazing rhythms” that are going to come out in Primavera, with a “quite funky and toe-tapping quality” to both the new compositions and the pieces she’s reworked to fi t the current incarnation of Sunwrae, the group she composes for and performs with. Sunwrae has been around in various forms for long enough to release four albums and play at places like Golden Plains and The Spiegeltent and SXSW, and they cover enough ground musically to have a range of audiences.

Sunwrae usually has nine or ten members, but its 2010 incarnation is a trio, playing Howell’s compositions with her on vibraphone, Emily Rosner on harp, and Luke Richardson on double bass, and their Primavera is accompanied by visual projections.

“It’s not theatrical, but there’s a the music and the visual arts, that kind of crossover, and it seemed like the trio would be interesting as a performance in that context. We haven’t done the Brissie Festival before, but we were doing the tour and we just saw it and went for it.”

BETHANY SMALLWHAT: PrimaveraWHERE & WHEN: The Warehouse, Metro Arts Monday Sep 13 to Wednesday Sep 15

SMUDGEDName and role:Richard Pettifer, director.

Tell us about Smudged?It’s a tragedy about social networking, how it makes us all bow down and participate in it, and the play speculates that the human cost of this might be us all becoming clowns in some terrifying circus.

How did it evolve?Megan [Twycross] wrote the script at Melbourne University based on research she had conducted into ‘the self’ and contemporary identity in contemporary media-saturated society with its cornucopia of images, and the judgements these images make, giving us the feeling that one is

always being evaluated. I was part of the initial reading of the script in 2009 (which was very different to the one we’ll present for the Brisbane Festival). Megan asked meto direct after I engaged with her on a number of the issues she proposed, and I have taken things my own way since then as well as incorporating the ideas of the actors and design team who have played key roles in the development process.

What themes and ideas does it involve?Social networking is a key theme of the play and the central problem that it tries to resolve, somewhat successfully but with a degree of ambiguity and fear.

WHAT: SmudgedWHERE & WHEN: The Whitlam, Metro Arts Friday Sep 10 to Monday Sep 13

NOSTALGIASurprisingly, the three Brisbane artists and fellow QUT students collaborating on Nostalgia – Matt O’Neill, Kieran Law, and Ron Seeto – have a relationship that’s based on hatred.

“I hated Kieran when I fi rst saw him,” says O’Neill. “I hated Ron too, actually. I hate everyone. All my best friends, I hate on sight. I fi rst saw Ron at my fi rst drama lecture at university and this guy walks in with a fucking haircut like a samurai and I went ‘You complete wanker’. Then it was in second semester I was in a tute with Kieran, and he looked like a fucking lumberjack and kept referencing all this nerdy bullshit, and I was like ‘I fucking hate you’. I’m still not sure how we became friends.”

O’Neill says that Nostalgia is a work that centres around the way it makes an audience feel, disregarding any deeper level of meaning. From the very beginning of the process, the three had a clear vision of the audience reaction they wanted, and used that as a jumping-off point for their development.

“We wanted people to walk out and go, ‘I have no idea what that meant but I really enjoyed it’ and we knew all the

artists that we had wanted to reference that had achieved similar things – in the literary fi eld, Virginia Woolf and James Joyce; musically there’s early serialist people like Karlheinz Stockhausen; performance-wise, the absurdists like Samuel Beckett and Euguene Ionesco; and performance arty people, even someone like Yoko Ono. We want to get the same reaction those things got – for people to enjoy an experience. We want people to realise that meaning is irrelevant; we want them to engage with things for the sake of being things.”

O’Neill himself fi guratively tripped over the touchstone for this entire philosophy one night while wending his way home after one too many.

“It all came to me one night when I was wandering home at 3am, completely drunk,” he says. “When you’re wandering home drunk in the middle of the night everything’s very funny but very sad but very beautiful but very annoying. All these things sit on top of each other. There’s no particular reason you feel like that – you’re just engaging with stuff.”

BAZ MCALISTERWHAT: NostalgiaWHERE & WHEN: Sue Benner Theatre, Metro Arts Friday Sep 10 to Sunday Sep 12

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THE BATHERSArt Container is a gallery and studio space in Tallinn, Estonia that provides a platform for a loose collaborative group of artists (who are also, in various combinations, academics, writers, and curators) focusing on independent visual art and performance, four of whom are bring The Bathers to Brisbane for Under The Radar. The show, which since premiering in Tallinn in July 2009, has also been enacted at festivals in Latvia, Chile, and Miami, is described by current Art Container manager/curator Sandra Jögeva as “haptic theatre.” Um? It’s “a mixture of ancient Estonian sauna customs, architectural installation, and interactive performance.”

Jögeva and six other performers begin the piece inside a sauna constructed outdoors. As they go through the traditional Estonian sauna customs of “sitting a very hot room, throwing water to the oven, thus raising the temperature inside, hitting oneself with the dried branches, socialising with each other, telling stories,” viewers have visual access to the sauna via windows into it, and also the capacity to physically enter the space and the work itself.

“Every member of the audience can become a performer. The sauna is open for everybody. So far, people with very different social status have taken their clothes off and joined the Art Container Group in sauna, where everybody is just equal. Homeless men from the streets of both Tallinn, Estonia and Miami, Florida. Artists from New York, who came to exhibit their art works to Miami Art Fair and are using that chance to relax from their pressure to achieve and fi nally make it there. Cheerful West Coast party people. Art collectors, gallerists, and curators. Chilean young people, who wanted to buy the sauna and to take it to their home country.”

BETHANY SMALLWHAT: The BathersWHERE & WHEN: King George Square Saturday Sep 4 to Tuesday Sep 7

COUSINLOVE Like the Ekka, Under The Radar this year intends on bringing a little bit of the country to the city – that’s why Metro Arts is to become the temporary squat of inbred knife-happy bogans the Love family. Well, not MetroArts exactly – they’re billeted in the back courtyard, appropriately dubbed ‘The Cage’.

“The Cage makes the Weeping Scab players feel right at home,” says performer Neridah Waters. “For those of you who haven’t been out the back of Metro Arts this is where all the bins, mops and buckets and toilets can be found and where drunk people go to smoke and spew.”

“It even smells right,” says fellow Scab Kellie Vella. “This show wouldn’t work in a straight theatre. It’s made for pubs and back alleys.

“And luckily they allowed us to house such fi lth. There is a lot of liquid spilled and sprayed and squirted throughout the show so many venues are not up for that kind of mess.”

The Weeping Scab players came together over a mutual love of B-grade horror fi lms and a shared sick sense of humour “from the slightly off to the completely rotten” during The Globe’s Schlockfest a couple of years ago.

Punters will have the chance to spend an hour with Granma Love, whose pendulous lactating breasts produce the fi nest milk in town; her nephew/son/lover Jesus Judas Whitey Beer Love who has just had his pretty pig taken away from him by the RSPCA; and his cousin/lover/sister Lou-Ann Love who’s constantly ‘hawny’ and has popped out more babies than an entire Catholic family. And you don’t have to just watch this The Hills Have Eyes train-wreck hurtle off the tracks, you can get involved too.

“Audiences get to taste the delicious Granma titty-milk, throw beer cans at us at anytime during the show, touch up Lou-Ann if they so wish (and probably even if they don’t) and maybe even punch one of her mewling spawn,” says Waters. “Think of it like a stall in the Woolworth’s Pavilion at the Ekka where you get to sample new and exciting things.”

BAZ MCALISTERWHAT: Cousin LoveWHERE & WHEN: Out The Back, Metro Arts Wednesday Sep 22 to Saturday Sep 25

CONCENTRIC CIRCLES ON RED“My works fl ow as new and relating ideas, impressions and improvisations responding to the fragmentation of perception, a glimpse into the incomplete and ephemeral nature of human experience,” performer Velvet Pesu says. “Concentric Circles on Red is a constantly changing rhizome of interconnected elements. It is an organic investigation into the passage of time, a mapping of new ephemeral collaborations with the temporal, each process informing the next allowing nature’s cycles of production and destruction to work hand in hand. My performance art is in constant state of fl ux, a framed act of conscious play, the unfolding, becoming and unveiling of self through process, chance, accident, change, temporality, rhythm, voice, light and image. I have always had an innate sense of spirit, internal rhythm and a naturally powerful voice. I’m an avid collector of ‘organic’ and ‘recycled’ materials that inform my process of art making.”

As you might have gathered by now, Concentric Circles of Red is anything but ordinary. A fusion of sounds, sights, movements, shapes, and recycling (Pesu’s costume is

a playable instrument and made entirely from reused materials), it promises to be one of Under The Radar’s most intriguing performances, and like all good things, it defi nitely didn’t happen overnight.

“It has defi nitely been a work in progress for many years,” Pesu says. “For instance this year I have created a new recycled pendulum instrument out of an old penny farthing bike wheel that is played with two cello bows and hosts up to 40 recycled strings from double bass, cello, piano, and other found materials in prepared fashion. Last year I created the costume which is also played as an instrument and made from recycled and organic materials. I spent months weaving the skirt out of old fi lm strips and other materials with fi lmic qualities that is lit from the inside. It is multi-layered with mirror balls, refl ectors and crystal pieces that capture the light and fragment it in different directions. For the last fi ve years I have been compiling the multiple projections, handmade/drawn fi lm using entirely recycled materials and have modifi ed a purpose built hand cranked projector.”

MITCH KNOXWHAT: Concentric Circles on RedWHERE & WHEN: Sue Benner Theatre, Metro Arts Monday Sep 13 to Wednesday Sep 15

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THE FESTIVAL IN YOUR POCKETDOWNLOAD THE BRISBANE FESTIVALIPHONE APP WWW.BRISBANEFESTIVAL.COM.AU

IN THE LIGHT OF THE MOON“In Light Of A Moon is an exploration of one woman’s obsessive habit of moon tanning,” Friends With Defi cits member Amelia Wallin explains. “The action revolves around the central character of Celeste, and Lisa [Mumford], Maria [White] and myself all perform different sides of her. It’s a lonely life for Celeste, she has spent every night for the past 30 years moon tanning and now she can’t go out during daylight anymore; she gets confused.”

The debut Brisbane performance for the trio, In the Light of a Moon fi nds Friends With Defi cits both exploring what defi nitive characteristics their performances have thus far developed in their twelve month history as a collective and incorporating new areas and disciplines into their work. The entire performance unfolds beneath the trees and park spaces of Brisbane City but, unlike the ensemble’s previous works, Wallin says the work is somewhat more theatrical.

“In Light Of A Moon is quite different from our other works,” the performer says of the work’s genealogy. “In this piece, we’ve been working more with narrative, character, and storytelling which defi nitely feels new to us. It is still a very visual based work, with moments of stillness – which we seem to work with a lot – but I think it still represents something of a new direction for Friends With Defi cits.”

MATT O’NEILWHAT: In Light Of A MoonWHERE & WHEN: City Botanic Gardens Wednesday Sep 22 and Thursday Sep 23, Fig Trees Thursday Sep 23 September and Saturday Sep 25

CHEER UP KIDName and role:Natalie Randall, creator and performer.

Tell us about Cheer Up Kid?Cheer Up Kid is a tragi-comedy that intimately explores legitimate anxieties children face while growing up, from learning to swim, to weeing in public, to generally feeling unwelcome in social situations. It’s set entirely in a blow-up pool. It’s a really confused, manically enthused and strangely distorted representation of what we go though as children.

How did it evolve?Originally it was a short work I made for Performance Space’s Nighttime Statewide programme, which we toured to regional galleries in NSW. The theme of ‘Every Day Hero’ inspired me to delve into the psyche of Bindi Irwin. Cheer Up Kid has sort of evolved beyond Bindi and now delves deeper in the psyche of kids who aren’t tainted by the national spotlight although who still have their own problems to deal with. It’s a bit less of Bindi, a bit more of me and whole lot funnier.

What themes and ideas does it involve?Processed meats, childhood anxiety, Vick’s VapoRub, the function of a tantrum, primary school, and fi rst loves…

WHAT: Cheer Up KidWHERE & WHEN: Sue Benner Theatre, Metro Arts Thursday Sep 23 to Saturday Sep 25

SOFTLY AND SUDDENLYName and role:Sean Whelan, poet, writer, and Andrew Watson, musical director, composer, violinist.

Tell us about Softly And Suddenly?AW: The Interim Loves score a soundtrack to Sean M Whelan’s spoken word story. This is kind of a response to Lewis Carroll’s Hunting Of The Snark. I grew up with that story. My parents introduced it to me, and it has always intrigued me. But here it’s a modern day setting, it’s the Australian landscape and there is something very real and familiar to most people a stake.

SW: I loved the absurdity of the original poem and the idea of turning that idea to the absurdity of love.

What themes and ideas does it involve?AW: Love, loss, cats, horses, the letter B, sad violins, and losing yourself into the Australian landscape. Careful of what you wish for, be careful of what you search for...because your snark may turn out to be a boojum.

SW: Love is defi nitely the strongest theme running through the poem. But also the power of ritual, animal magic and the delicious allure of surrender.

WHAT: Softly And SuddenlyWHERE & WHEN: The Studio, Metro Arts Thursday Sep 16 to Sunday Sep 19

BALLY-HOOTwenty years ago, Kay Armstrong was on tour in Indonesia in her fi rst professional dancing job with a company called One Extra when, during a spontaneous cultural exchange between the traditional dancers from both visitors and hosts, she found herself doing the Nutbush because, well, it was all she had from the Australian ‘traditional dance’ corner. This naturally led to something of an epiphany for the young dancer a while later.

“On refl ection and further down the track I realised that I had spent half of my life in the ballet studio trying to become a sexless, fl ightless bird,” she laments. “This was my culture. I also soon realised, as I decided to make my career in the performing arts, that high brow art is not high on the list of priority in an outdoor-loving, sport-crazed country.

“So jump to 2007 and I decide to make a solo work about an Aussie beer loving chick who has one shoe in the world of the dying swan and the other quite literally the other attached to a six pack of beer,” she says. “It was about identity and the struggle between being who I am, who I was, who I should be and who people think you are... and of course about being silly.”

There you have it; a classically trained dancer from West Sydney who admits to owning ugg boots and can smash beers when the call is raised. Still, that isn’t really the point of Ballyhoo.

“Our ballet bogan chicks make a brief appearance before they get sucked into the mayhem of the space so rather than hammering the point it will be more of a cameo performance as a way of setting the tone of youMove’s festival appearance,” Armstrong explains. “It’s about energy, exuberance, humour and not taking yourself so seriously. Essentially Ballyhoo is about hijacking the space. With a mixture of fl ash mob, performance art, contemporary dance and complete lunacy I think that it in amongst it all there will be something for everyone.”

MITCH KNOXWHAT: BallyhooWHERE & WHEN: Queen St Mall and Reddacliffe Place Sunday Sep 19 to Tuesday Sep 21

THE PRIDESide Pony Productions’ The Pride is a surreal piece of work chronicling a lion’s attempt to renovate his kitchen while maintaining his primacy within his pride. It offers genuine commentary on human behaviour but, at its core, it was the result of a simple fascination.

“The initial starting point for the work was that I had a fascination for the aesthetic of lions; specifi cally, the idea that someone dressed in a lion costume has a certain amount of prestige when compared to someone in a giraffe or elephant costume,” director Zoe Pepper reveals. “It was the research behind that which really gave birth to the work. I basically just looked at the social structures of lions and then used the rigid frameworks, family units and social

dynamics as limitations for the devising and improvising process we use to create the work. It’s always nice to have structure within that format to really help with constructing the material.

“I was mainly thinking about this idea of forgiveness,” Pepper considers. “In that, when you break it all down, the brutality of lion culture is not that dissimilar to the way we as humans behave – the real challenge has been to get these characters behaving like lions while still keeping the audience on side and empathetic with the characters despite the brutality.”

MATT O’NEILLWHAT: The PrideWHERE & WHEN: The Studio, Metro Arts Thursday Sep 23 to Saturday Sep 25

OF THE CAUSES OF WONDERFUL THINGSName and role?Talya Rubin, writer and performer.

Tell us about Of The Causes Of Wonderful Things?Of The Causes of Wonderful Things is a solo show about fi ve children who go missing in a small town. It is an unsettling piece with a dark comic sensibility that involves a rich text, a unique visual language and an intricate sound design. I am playing with an entirely performer-run sound and lighting rig that includes household lamps, tiny LEDs, projections of large format negatives, a reel to reel player and several other playback devices. The characters include a detective, who has basically given up on his life and is bored with his job, a lonely middle aged woman who was looking after her sister’s children when they went missing

and who was never deeply involved with anything until these children came into her life, her sister who works for Pall Mall cigarettes and is an interminable fl irt and lover of men, her boyfriend (who is a puppet), and a Japanese man who speaks with an accent from the southern United States. There are scenes that take place in miniature dioramas, in the underworld, and on a Town Hall stage that is a portal to the dead.

What themes and ideas does it involve?Originally I was interested in exploring the idea of the shadow, of looking at darkness and how diffi cult it is to accept the unacceptable both within ourselves and outside of ourselves. I don’t think there is anything darker or more sinister than children disappearing and it hit a deep note about how the darkest things affect us.

WHAT: Of The Causes Of Wonderful ThingsWHERE & WHEN: The Basement, Metro Arts Thursday Sep 23 to Saturday Sep 25

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18th - 25th September Metro Arts GalleriesLevel 2, 109 Edward St, Brisbane Opening night: 6pm, 18 SeptemberMonday-Friday 10am-4:30pm, Saturday 2pm-5pm An interactive dance installation FREE ENTRY more info alisoncurrie.com

the dance of the home

Photographer Edwin Comey Performer Alison Currie

BRISBANE POWERHOUSE AND MOBILE STATES PRESENT//

An intimate performance that highlights the moral and ethical commitments binding Australians and the people of Bougainville (PNG) in the wake of a brutal civil war.

THE BOUGAINVILLE PHOTOPLAY PROJECT

TICKETS $28

DEVISED BY PAUL DWYER, PRODUCED BY VERSION 1.0

WED 25 – SAT 28 AUGUSTBRISBANE POWERHOUSE

Judith Wright Centre presentsMUSIC

BELLE DU BERRY: QUIZZ

“ Belle du Berry, vocalist/accordionist and lyricist extraordinaire...” BILLBOARD

Experience the intoxicating blend of classic French cabaret and American jazz from French songbird Belle du Berry and Australian multi-instrumentalist David Lewis, who have sold out venues across the globe – including the 17,000-seat Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles.

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Fri 3 Sep 7.30pmTICKETS $34 – $45

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OVER 60 SPEAKERS FROM AROUND THE WORLDRobert Forster – The Go-Betweens (AUS) / Richard Kingsmill - Triple J (AUS) / Michael Azerrad – author (USA) / Michael Gudinski – The Mushroom Group (AUS) / John O’Donnell – Cold Chisel management/Odfellows Publishing (AUS) / Ed Kuepper – The Saints (AUS) / Andy McGrath – ATO Records (USA) / Jonas Woost – digital music consulant (CAN) / Tim Dellow – Transgressive Records (UK) / Dave Faulkner – Hoodoo Gurus (AUS) / Brian Ritchie – Violent Femmes/MONA FOMA (USA/AUS) / Peter Jesperson – New West Records (USA) / Morgan Lebus – Domino Records and Publishing (USA) / Jake Stone – Bluejuice (AUS) / Victor Van Vugt – producer (USA) / Brett Williams – Monotone Management (USA) / Colin Roberts – Big Life Management (UK) / Catherine Bottrill – Julie’s Bicycle (UK) + MANY MORE!

The 2010 Music Industry Summit & Showcase3 days of seminars, events, networking and live music

Brisbane, Australia 8 – 10 September 2010

Full details and summit registration at www.bigsound.org.auTickets for BIGSOUND Live available now through Oztix

Presented by Q Music – www.qmusic.com.auAcross Brisbane’s Live Music Precinct Fortitude Valley

60 HOT ACTS PERFORMING AT BIGSOUND LIVE

Washington, Children Collide, Boy & Bear, The Naked and Famous, The Vasco Era, Ernest Ellis, The Gin Club + MANY MORE!

TWO WEEKS TO GO!