Melbourne Fringe: For Our Freedom

The exhibition is open from 10am to 6pm each day.

For Our Freedom is an audio/visual experience exhibiting a collection of stories of identity from Indigenous Australians and asylum seekers, interpreted by multimedia artists.

This debut multi-arts installation combines storytelling, original music, dance and film into an exhibition to explore a narrative of cultural identity in Australia. As part of a projected collection of visuals and accompanying soundscape compositions from different sound and media artists, each piece of work uses a different spoken text from individual writers that shares their poetry and tells their stories.

Each voice tells a story of identity theft, traumatic pasts and uncertain futures yet carries a message of hope and sense of belonging to this country. A collection of spoken word poems from writer/filmmaker and head of the Wilin Centre of Indigenous Arts Richard Frankland and Somalian slam poet Hani Abdile are told in tandem with recorded spoken stories from Abdul Aziz Muhamat and Professor Munjed Al Muderis about arriving as asylum seekers to this country. This compilation of prose and poetry aims to highlight a shared voice of cultural identity in Australia, presented as an audio/visual narrative in a unique immersive installation.

The sound design and original music by Melbourne composer Jordan Gilmour intertwines with the spoken voice to magnify the meaning and narrative of each story and enhance the emotive quality of each writer’s work and is responded to by six multimedia artists to create a collection of short films and animations that are projected onto 4 screens to guide the audience through the exhibition. These three arts practises are intended to play with the audience’s perception of how a narrative is interpreted, shifting each medium from foreground, middleground and background to explore how each practise can carry a story.

All Ages. Alcohol Free.

Dan Poets featuring Yoram Symons

The Dan is Melbourne’s longest running weekly poetry venue is now in its 25th year. Every Saturday between 2pm-5pm, The Dan O’Connell Hotel becomes, The Home of Poets. The Dan is a community of poets, who support each other’s work, and endeavour to improve their poetry. Some of the poets that perform at The Dan have been writing poetry for decades, but many, are just starting their poetry journey.

The Dan is also, for people that love to see poets performing their poems. Our poetry audience can listen, and watch the open mic, with a drink and a meal in front of them, you will hear words from around the corner, and around the world. It’s free entry, and everyone is welcome on the open mic.

Give yourself the gift of a living performance, come and experience Poetry @ The Dan O’Connell. Put your name on the blackboard and be part of the open mic. Co-ordinated and MC’d by the Dan Poet’s Collective, Libby, Steve, Anne, Norman and Tim.

Melbourne Fringe: Passionate Machine

Call mum. Buy milk. Cancel free trial. Everyone writes instructions to their future selves. But what if the future starts writing back?

Rosy Carrick has to build a time machine – because her future self has already done so and is now stuck 100 years in the past. Given that her knowledge of quantum physics is more Arnold Schwarzenegger than Stephen Hawking, Rosy must summon the help of science’s greatest minds if she is to rewrite history and save herself…

Darting playfully between multiple narratives, this complex and original performance explores the realities of time travel and self-determination – taking in Bowie, motherhood and some most heinous hangovers along the way.

Winner of the Best New Play Award 2018 (Brighton Fringe) and The Infallibles Award for Theatrical Excellence 2018 (Edinburgh Fringe), Passionate Machine is a hilarious and searingly honest UK smash-hit about obsession, salvation and finding yourself – literally.

A truly fascinating and empowering piece – ★★★★’ Broadway World

‘Surprising, audacious, original. Superb – ★★★★’ Edinburghfestival.org

‘Playful, engaging, refreshing – ★★★★’ The List

‘A narrative of obsession with a clever and destabilising time-travelling framework, bags of wit and enormous heart… Carrick has crafted something genuinely one of a kind’ Exeunt

‘Gorgeously crafted, clever and uplifting, it is a deeply original take on autobiography, unlike anything I’ve seen before’ Velvet Box Office

‘Elegant, delightful, heartbreakingly beautiful’ Total Theatre

‘Excellent show – this is fresh writing at its very best’ Fringe Review

‘Intelligent, articulate & funny… an entertaining hour full of warmth and compassion’ The Scotsman

Melbourne Poets Union presents Chrys Salt (UK)

Melbourne Poets Union invites you to this very special event featuring renowned UK poet Chrys Salt, plus limited open mic (sign up on the night) and a raffle.

Chrys Salt is a poet with roots deeply planted in the theatre. She has produced four full poetry collections and four pamphlet collections and has performed on Radios 3 and 4, and done readings at venues and festivals across the UK and in the USA, Canada, France, Germany, Finland and India. She was awarded an MBE for services to the arts in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List in 2014.

In recent years she has been the recipient of two Creative Scotland Bursaries, one for completing Dancing on a Rock and the most recent (2017) for research in The Yukon for her next collection based on the Klondike Gold Rush. This is due to be published by Indigo Dreams Pub (IDP) in late 2019.

Melbourne Fringe: Side A

2017 Melbourne Fringe Best Performance nominee Amanda Santuccione is back with her brand new show Side A.

Making a good mix tape took skill, patience and a ball point pen.

Join Amanda as she weaves stories of growing up in an analogue world where labels were things we were born into and fought against. Where figuring out who you were was as hard as figuring out which song came next. Where your identity was hidden somewhere amongst the songs and hiss of a self-made mix tape. This is a world where you would have to wait until tomorrow night if you didn’t press record and play at the exact same time.

Told through storytelling, spoken word and live musical soundscape, this is the debut season for Side A.

Wheelchair Accessible.

Melbourne Fringe: Whiplash

You know this story like the back of your hand. It starts with a date and a Runaway Heart with a suitcase full of memories.

The latest tour de force from eclectic solo storyteller Scott Wings, WHIPLASH is an electric riot of words and physicality. Diving deep inside his own body, Scott chases his runaway Heart as it absconds with his fondest memories – all while avoiding the hypervigilant searching of his Brain. Along the way he meets younger versions of himself and juggles the desires and disruptions of all sorts of organs, trying not to let the whole thing collapse in a mess of blood, sweat and tears. WHIPLASH digs into what makes a good man, a bad man, and a better man. It’s a heartfelt meditation on medication, lost love, memory, age, dating, hope/lessness. And it’s a stunning, sweat-soaked display of storytelling by one of Australia’s finest.

At Ruckus House, a secret Inner North location – book or get in touch to find out more.