Ms .45's mp3/bureaucratic/gaming blog.

Friday, September 23, 2005

Penny Machinations - Melbourne Fringe fest

The Festival Club at Melbourne Fringe is free this year (it used to be free with two ticket stubs from the night's shows or ten bucks), so I headed down after International Talk Like A Pirate Day at "work" (five bucks, all the piss you can drink) and, um, kept drinking. I had to leave before anything interesting happened (related partly to the drinking, and partly to the fact that public transport closes down early in boring ol' M-Town), but before doing so I shelled out $1 for Penny Machinations.

Basically, you pay $1 per show and you enter a tent on the stage. You have the choice of five tents with a different show, and you have to participate to some extent. I chose Pick A Chair, which has two possible variations, Coming and Going. Any of the tents you choose will have up to four possible variations. I'm not sure which I got, but I entered and was confronted with two people pretending to be my parents, wondering when I was going to get a real job like Imaginary Neighbour (they gave this character a name but I'm too drunk to remember), have I got a real job yet, when was I coming home? This was somewhat disconcerting as, whatever problems I have with my parents, they don't hassle me about work. Being drunk, it took me a few goes to realise that I was supposed to participate. I gave them what I could - not much of a Theatresports person, but I have studied screenwriting - and they wrangled it into their act. For one whole dollar it was, um, interesting. I'm hoping to see some other shows when I'm soberer and have my car.

In the meantime, here's a song by a former director of the big mainstream arts festival (well, mainstream by the standards of arts festivals, anyway).

Dicks Don't Grow On Trees
Robyn Archer
Take Your Partners for the Ladies' Choice

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