Last night, I attended a fundraiser for Black Hole Theatre at a local Melbourne theatre, La Mama. It’s a teeny, tiny, ancient black-box theatre. The patrons there were joking about how, if you drilled into the walls, you could tell how old the building was by the layers of paint–just like a tree. The theatre has a working fireplace, and could seat about 30-40. The Loo was an outhouse in the courtyard, which also was the “lobby” and bar. I thought it was all really cool and charming, it reminded me a bit of the Cultch.
There were three performances at the fundraiser, and the last was by a theatre company called Barking Spider. Helmed by Penelope Bartlau, who also works at the Auspicious Arts Incubator, they do ‘Visual Theatre.’ The piece they did last night involved a percussionist named Leah Scholes and a pile of books, called Page Turner, and it was playful and really fun. This was a brand-new piece that she is performing in Brisbane this weekend, but here is one of their older pieces, Breakfast Serial.