Watch out for Indigenous theatre legend Uncle Jack Charles on November 21, and the captain of queer cabaret Ash Flanders, who brings disaster-movie themed variety show S.S. Metaphor to the stage on December 5.
Independent theatre can be hard to navigate in normal times, but there’s one event Melburnians have been eagerly awaiting since that terrible day on May 18, 2018, when the theatre building at La Mama was gutted by fire.
Ash Flanders, Melbourne’s captain of cabaret.Credit:Nicole Cleary
The grand reopening of the newly rebuilt La Mama in Carlton will proceed at last, accompanied by the free War-rak/Banksia Festival, running December 9-12 with over 300 artists participating. It’ll also coincide with one of the few survivors of the 2021 season, Olivia Satchell’s let bleeding girls lie, brought to life by an excellent cast.
Afterimage for Tomorrow, part of Fringe Focus Taiwan.
For the adventurous, the Melbourne Fringe Festival will be rebooting some 2021 highlights shelved during lockdown. If you want to whet your appetite for overseas travel, there’ll be the virtual reality event Fringe Focus Taiwan, running at Loop Bar from Nov 15-20, where you can don a headset, sip cocktails and immerse yourself in exotic locales, while kids will get a chance to enjoy the giant cardboard playground created for the 20th anniversary of Polyglot Theatre’s We Built This City on December 4-5.
As indie and experimental performance venues reawaken, you’ll be able to sample some of the cultural vibrancy in which Melbourne takes pride.
Theatre Works in St Kilda rebounds with the First Nations contemporary circus show Common Dissonance from Na Djinang. Arts House reopens on December 1, producing a suite of boundary-pushing performance including ENTITY, a new work from Geelong’s internationally acclaimed Back to Back Theatre.
Natalie Bassingthwaighte in New York outside the Jagged Little Pill theatre.Credit:Evan Zimmerman
Many venues will focus on the important work of staging new Australian plays. Director Susie Dee and playwright Melissa Reeves team up for Archimedes War, a black comedy inspired by the dehumanising technologies of modern warfare, at Darebin Speakeasy from November 23.
Michael Veitch revisits the story of his great-grandparents aboard a plague-stricken vessel in Hell Ship: The Journey of The Ticondaroga at 45downstairs, while Red Stitch Actors Theatre resumes normal service with Eric Gardiner’s Prayer Machine, about high-school lovers reunited in middle age.
The Melbourne Magic Festival is going to squeeze in two weeks of shows at The Laneway Theatre, Trades Hall, The Butterfly Club and their new home, Arrow on Swanston.
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And for cabaret and comedy fans, The Butterfly Club and Chapel Off Chapel offer bustling programs. The former opens the doors with Death and the Discotheque, a “rave parading as performance” reflecting on the joy and heartbreak of nightclubbing. The Brunswick Ballroom, which bravely opened its doors for the first time between lockdowns last year, has also survived to see the summer.
Frankly, new venues like it would be welcome right now.
With an enormous backlog of live performance frustrated by the pandemic, producers say finding a free stage is becoming a medium-term challenge for artists looking to reconnect with audiences.
Fresh announcements keep coming thick and fast, and no theatre guide is likely to remain current and complete for long. So, keep an eye out. You never know what might turn up next as Melbourne bumps in for a bumper season of stage business.
