Reviews

According to the Oxford dictionary, burlesque is “A variety show, typically including striptease.” However, as I discovered watching Hot Sauce Burlesque, it is so much more!

Yes, the girls do take their clothes off and show us what they can do with their tassels, but it is obvious that there is a real sisterhood between them. When not performing they are sitting at the side of the audience in robes encouraging each other.

Melville Theatre’s Venus in Fur, written by David Ives, is a dynamic and expertly presented two-hander that had the audience on the edge of their seats.

Set in New York, Thomas Novachek is directing his own adaptation of Venus in Fur, and lamenting the suitability of the actresses who have auditioned for lead character Wanda von Dunayev, when actress Vanda Jordan crashes into the room and demands an audition. Despite seeming obviously unsuitable, her reading is amazing and the lines between the novel, the play and life become increasingly blurred.

Homer’s epic 2,800 year old poem Iliad describes a few weeks in the final year of the siege against the city of Troy, in particular the quarrel between King Agamemnon and Achilles.  In Memorial: An excavation of the Iliad, published in 2011, author Alice Oswald set out to translate the Iliad’s atmosphere, it’s ‘enargeia’ rather than its story. In doing so she has stripped the Iliad of its narrative and drawn forth the biographies and brutal killings of the 215 soldiers Homer named.

Worktable is a new participatory live art installation by Kate McIntosh and is part of  the Live Art Festival from 14-25 March at the Arts House, North Melbourne Town Hall.

As part of the test audience for the new show I feel at ease to say it was quite an inner exploratory adventure. The workstation ambience had a pensive atmosphere. Worktable is an active, creative, meditative and or destructive participatory exploration of live installation.