Cramming into Trades Hall at 11am midweek may not suit everybody, but for the launch of The Age Melbourne Fringe Festival 2008 program, nothing could have been more appropriate.

The Melbourne Fringe Festival prides itself on demolishing boundaries, and to see be-suited politicians, the media and fashionably attired arts administrators rubbing shoulders with scruffy artists was poetry in motion. It was also a powerful statement from the Fringe organisers that, while the festival may have the support of big media players such at The Age and Channel 10, it still retains its identity as a challenging, alternative arts event.

Melbourne Fringe Festival Creative Producer Emily Sexton maintains the festival is still very much about “pushing boundaries”.

“With Fringe, success doesn’t mean mainstream,” she told MCV. “I think we can absolutely have a relationship with The Age and Channel Ten without loosing any of that cutting edge or really exciting kind of art.”

At its heart, she says, Fringe remains a festival for and by the artists.

“They (the artists) are really deciding what kind of a festival we are, and that means the art you see in Fringe really is the latest ideas from some of our most intriguing people.”

The 2008 Melbourne Fringe Festival boasts 290 registered events, 97 of which are free, ranging across all creative disciplines; from theatre and comedy through to music, cabaret, dance, circus and the visual arts. Iconic highlights such as Fringe Furniture and the Fringe Festival Club at Arts House, North Melbourne continue; and there’s an expanded digital arts program - Digital Fringe - reaching outside the city into regional Victoria. This year also sees the Fringe Festival stamp its mark on Federation Square, in a program dubbed Fed/Fringe.

Emily Sexton is particularly excited at the Federation Square development, which features site-specific works produced by the Fringe Festival and free to the public.

“It’s a wonderful development opportunity for these artists and it’s something that we will definitely expand over the 2009/2010 festivals,” she says.

The Fed/Fringe program includes work from companies including Trace Elements and First Impressions Youth Theatre; Team Loko’s Human Graffiti (presenting what they describe as ‘electrifying feats of skill, stunts and stupidity’); and Omnific Assembly’s Totem: Dolls with Souls – an installation at Federation Square’s Fracture Galleries of dolls created by the artists reflecting how they feel about themselves.

On Thursday, September 25, art will literally flood across Federation Square in Overflow, featuring projections on the square’s East Shard by artists Shakthidharan and Aimee Faizon. Overflow imagines a futuristic Melbourne submerged in water, and will evolve over the duration of festival, incorporating images of the various communities that visit Federation Square.

The queer arts also get a good airing during the Melbourne Fringe Festival. There’s work from The Town Bikes at the Festival Club (Dance-a-thon 6000); bent physical theatre at the David Williamson Theatre, Prahran (Strangers in the Light); and camp cabaret by Jacob Diefenback at The Butterfly Club, South Melbourne (Master of Disguise).

But that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Festival punters are encouraged to cast their net far and wide, as it’s the very nature of Fringe arts to question and explore sexual and gender identity. One theatre company doing just that is Sissies and Sluts, headed up by writer/director Lee Gambin.

“When I write the characters I’ll set up their sexualities, but they’re always pretty perverse,” Gambin tells MCV.

“It’s never boring; it’s never straight or gay – they’ll have a fetish for something or a weird complex sexuality that I think is more interesting to write about and more interesting to watch.”

Sissies and Sluts rose out of a love, admiration and respect for the outsider. The company’s offing at this year’s Fringe Festival is Where You Been Hidin’ Hettie Rae? – a play inspired by the splatter films of Herschell Gordon Lewis (Two Thousand Maniacs!, Colour Me Blood Red, The Wizard of Gore).

 “We’re out to mortify the audience with confronting subject matter and nothing’s taboo – it’s important that we push the envelope; it’s necessary and essential for original independent theatre,” Gambin says.

Gasworks Arts Park in Albert Park will also be a focus for queer performance, with the staging of the Drag Showbiz Showdown. Produced by Bumpy (of King Vic fame) this gender-bending extravaganza will feature the toast of the Drag King/Queen scenes. Performers include Rocco d’Amore, Crystal Love from the Tiwi Islands, Koko Mass and Lewdy Lush.

Along with the seriously bent, weird and alternative, Melbourne Fringe Festival continues to attract established talent. Gay UK comedian Stephen K Amos is reprising his Melbourne International Comedy Festival show, Stephen K Amos Gets Next to You at the Athenaeum Theatre; while the improvisational ensemble of Julia Zemiro, Ross Daniels, Genevieve Morris, Geoffe Paine and Russell Fletcher return with a Fringe season of Spontaneous Broadway.

Zemiro, who is best known for hosting RocKwiz on SBS, says this will be her third Fringe show in six years.

“As artists we’re constantly fighting for our existence, constantly saying the arts are as important as everything else,” she tells MCV.

“So in an environment where artists are constantly justifying their existence, it’s wonderful in something like the Fringe Festival to take art out onto the street for people who don’t normally go to the theatre.”

The Age Melbourne Fringe Festival
September 24 – October 12

www.melbournefringe.com.au

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