Entanglings

Entanglings: August

Emilie Collyer — Mon, 31 Aug 2026 22:00:58 GMT

I buy a book called Sea Diseases by W. Cockburn and leave it on our kitchen table to see how long it will take for my partner to comment on it. The book came from eBay and was delivered via being thrown over our small front fence onto our scrappy front garden while it was raining. I was home so once I got the notification, I dashed out to rescue the book. I wrote a huffy feedback comment to the company that delivered it about the book being left in the rain when there is a very obvious sheltered doorstep just inside out gate. Then I wondered if a drone delivered the book and if so, it probably wouldn’t think to look for a covered front door step. The only place to put the feedback was in a box called HOW DID OUR COURIER DO so then I worried that my wet book complaint might lead to some poor courier getting fired. It is a time of reading. I am reading about men going to sea and going to war and killing and dying. I am reading about rocks and stones and minerals and mining and how humans have built a world from the materials of the earth. I am reading old minute books and title summaries and newspaper articles about uses of land. I am reading plays about fathers and daughters and desperation and love and revenge and being at the mercy of the Gods and I am reading German mourning plays called trauerspiele about humans who make their own tragedies. I am reading poetry books about wetlands and deer women and George Sand. I eek out words not the right words yet but place holders for words that will come later once the poems and play that are currently invisible take more shape and have more form. Here are some words from the not yet play: ‘A girl child. Too soft for the world. Who will look after you?’ I read a paper about how many parent-child acts of murder and aggression are present in Greek myths. These acts are mostly perpetrated between fathers and sons but there is a decent amount of cross-sex-gender aggression too. I listen to a podcast about how Elvis Presley had a habit of forgetting the words to the spoken bridge of the song Are You Lonesome Tonight? The lines are kind of corny but they are also intensely emotional, as many things we call corny are. This issue of forgetting was exasperated after Priscilla left him. A man afraid of being abandoned and alone, being abandoned and alone. I try to hypothesise something about spoken words being more exposing, more vulnerable than sung words. Big emotions get channelled into song precisely because they are too hard to speak, and I know this means something for me about poetry and playwriting and compressing emotion so it can be uttered but I can’t quite put my finger on it yet. Did you know Elvis had a twin who died in utero and his mother died when he was 23? Probably a lot of people knew this but I didn’t. I spend a good few days feeling really sad for Elvis, for this wildly famous man who must have been carrying so much sorrow. I buy a jacket online and when it arrives it is nothing like the photograph so I email to tell them I want to return the jacket and they say we are sorry the item didn’t meet your expectations (my unreasonable expectations that an item I receive should be the item I purchased) and they say it will be very difficult to return but what we can do is give you a 10% refund and if you don’t like the jacket maybe you can give it to someone else or donate it to a charity so it can make someone else happy.

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Hello and thank you for reading Entanglings 2026! In 2024 I wrote Unfurl, a weekly poetic response to a performance work. In 2025 I took a hiatus. This year I am writing a monthly missive with the aim of capturing a poetic/prose snapshot of the ordinary/mundane life of an artist. It will not capture everything, of course. It will be idiosyncratic and inconsistent in what it notices and reports on. It is inspired by thinkers such as Lauren Berlant, Ann Cvetkovich, Sara Ahmed and Kathleen Stewart who are interested in how the everyday affective quality and experience of our lives are worthy of attention and may enlighten something about how we live and how we might want to live.

Entanglings: July

Emilie Collyer — Fri, 31 Jul 2026 22:00:42 GMT

I am working with a lot of writers. My role is called mentor or dramaturg. I am reader, responder, sounding board, cheerleader, questioner, suggester. We meet online, square heads on a screen, me in my crowded study with the messy bookshelf, recently slightly reorganised but still not organised, books and journals lined up and stacked whatever way they can fit, a small fat alarm clock I don’t know why I keep, an old board game of my partner’s called SOCCER GAME. Or we meet in person, at a small, bright café in Footscray where there are equal parts tradies and laptop tapping solo humans and friends cooing and chatting. Or we meet in person, at theatres where the writers are being supported via programs, as part of cohorts with other writers. Sometimes I am with more than just ‘my writers’ as part of running a workshop or having conversations. We talk about their projects, about craft, about ways to pull an idea through and transform it from thought into performance. Many of them talk about keeping their cast sizes small so the work has a realistic chance of going on. I do this too. I am writing a new play which I thought had three actors but perhaps it works better with two. In fact, it would work best with about forty but that is another version of it. We talk about how the economics of making theatre are shaping the imaginative scales we permit ourselves to work at. I talk to one writer about whether it is okay to write a character into a play that will only appear in one scene. What does this mean for the story, for the actor, for the budget? I see a staged reading of a new work and am thrilled, almost shocked, when actors keep appearing. I lose count. Are there 8 of them on stage? 9?! The bodies fill the space with bodiliness and voice and this is not shrinking to fit, it is exploding. Sometimes I get dizzy plunging deep into so many other imaginative worlds. I read and talk and read and talk. I try to find threads in the work and ask the writers if these threads are the same ones they are trying to weave. I try to offer possibility. I try not to interfere. I am amazed at how these worlds, these plays, transform as the writers return to them again and again. Over a week. Over a month. Over years. This is the hard yards. I am impressed again and again at the tenacity and the passion that drives these writers. With no guarantee of an outcome, a production, of funding. A work is full of thoughts and ideas and concepts and hopes but submerged within them and then, suddenly (it is not sudden, it is after weeks or months or years of hard yards) it appears. There it is! It is a breathing text, alive in the world, hungry for actors and an audience. I am proud. Ridiculous. The writer and this moment do not belong to me. Maybe it is not pride, this feeling of fullness and admiration and warmth that floods me. All I can do is use a lot of exclamation marks to express this un-nameable feeling and draw on its fire. My role is called mentor or dramaturg or many other things but one thing it is always is this sudden, strange sensation. Something like learning or inspired or hope or bloody hell they bloody did it. Despite. In spite. In crowded studies and among lives with work and children and griefs and washing dishes and fitting it in and doubts and terrors they did it. They do it. My own new work is so deeply submerged right now it is bathypelagic. The writers I work with act as guides, shining a light towards the surface.

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Entanglings: June

Emilie Collyer — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 22:02:24 GMT

I walk to the train station in the winter sun, an ideal June afternoon, blue sky and crisp air. The mist is hovering. I change trains at Southern Cross, and many happy Carlton supporters get on. Their team, which had been stubbornly losing for the first part of the season is now, under its interim coach, on a winning streak. I have ear buds in and it is my first pair that are noise cancelling and it is so weird to see all the happy people but not hear them. Like I am in a dream or they are under water. I am listening to an episode of a movie podcast. Spielberg is their guest and they are talking about 2001: A Space Odyssey. They talk about how Kubrick paid a whole lot of young people to paint white stars on a black backdrop. I look at the five teenage Carlton supporters standing across from me, all sweetly interior, with their own listening ear buds in and think yeah they could probably paint good stars. I get to the book launch. It is at an old convent. Convents were not always kind places. There is an aged care facility on the grounds now and parts of the site are used for other purposes including this small, community-run library. When I looked online I found a shiny website called CHORA that is promising the site is going to be made over ‘modelled on the concept of a cosmopolitan and inclusive Greek village’. This seems like an AI hallucination. Tonight though, is real. I walk through a gravel carpark and follow a concrete footpath and see a small light glowing and cross over some damp grass and enter a space that feels like it could have been where nuns might gather to do things. There is a little foyer and a larger area with bookshelves and other cabinets, and a table set up with drinks and snacks and then an interconnected room lined with brown wooden bookshelves all lit with what seems to be a magical golden light. Chairs are lined up in a launch mode and at the back is an armchair too low to see from, but another poet and I have the smart idea to both perch on the arms of the armchair, and it is a good vantage point. It is cold in the room but partway through the event the other poet and I both get warm and take our jackets off. The guest readers and the launching poet fill the room with something hard to articulate but it is something like a restorative truth. At the break we are cold again and zip back into our coats. She and I and another person talk about sports. Art people are not always sport people, but I like it when they are. We are all pleased for Cabo Verde. We agree that the greedy, often corrupt administration of most sports is dispiriting, that groups of drunk (often) heterosexual (mostly) men in public places watching sports can be terrifying. But the players, the athletes, their prowess, their dedication, their stories, are magnetic. Breathtaking. The poet and I enthuse about our shared loved of Beyond a Boundary by CLR James, an elegant and astonishing book about cricket. I try to recall something the author writes about the beauty of human movement and this being one of the things we love about watching elite sport and then I enthuse with not much elegance about how obsessed I am with the shapes that certain cricketers make with their bodies when they strike the ball. We all nod and make supportive noises together. The poet recommends David Foster Wallace’s essays on tennis and I am excited. I didn’t know about this aspect of his oeuvre and now I do. Outside the fog is coming in. The big old convent buildings loom. I have just this very day read The Moors by Jen Silverman, and the slant synchronicity is thrilling. I put my dream ears back in. The podcast is up to a part where they talk about how 2001 is so unusual in how it lets every audience member make their own meaning of it and how wild it was for Kubrick to make a film like that. ‘Like a poem!’ I shout. Triumphant. But I don’t shout it. I say it inside my mind. I think about how choosing to write about one single event will make my monthly missive shorter than when I try to skate across a whole month. Later I will realise just how wrong I can be. I walk towards the train station. Cold flutes of air. Stinging skin. No stars are visible.

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Entanglings: May

Emilie Collyer — Sun, 31 May 2026 22:01:10 GMT

Theatre continues apace. I see jewel-like meditations on being young and stuck, young and bearing the weight of caring for loved ones, young and horny and hilarious. I see plays about race and power and gender and power set now and set in the past that move audiences to standing ovations. I see ragged joyful experimental performances and slick, polished storytelling performances that weave the audience in and use them cleverly. At one of the plays the woman next to me seems to have difficulty sitting upright. She slides towards me for the whole show while I sit rigid trying both not to disturb her and to subtly teach her the proper way to sit at the theatre. At the end she rises as if refreshed from a deep slumber and says: ‘Well that was worth leaving the house for!’ It is the season of Eurovision on SBS and many sports on platforms one must pay to watch. Indian Premier League on Foxtel / Kayo. AFL on Foxtel / Kayo and Seven. French Open on Stan. Netball on Foxtel / Kayo though it will change to Nine in 2027. Diamond League athletics is the best because it is free on YouTube. Autumn in Naarm sets in. Finally, leaves to scuff through! A new bagel café opens near our house. I learn how it feels to be a cop or a forensic pathologist or a lawyer or a doctor when I watch a tv show about a theatre company and find myself nerdily wanting to correct specific details about the lived reality of working at a theatre company. Of course television shows about cops and forensic pathologists and lawyers and doctors and theatre companies are not purporting to be ‘real’ in any sense. They are made to entertain us. Day-to-day reality therefore must be amended for dramatic and / or comedic effect. I look forward to the tv show about poets about which I will have many corrections. I host two bookish events and read poetry at a third. I get nervous. Audiences are kind. They leave cosy homes on cold Autumn nights not only to scuff through leaves but to listen to words and ideas. I read a poet’s poems to help them decide which poems to put in a small self-published book. I do some grant writing for an arts organisation. It is rushed. I try to cram knowledge of the organisation into my head and spit it out of my hands. I hope I actually help them get some money, but who can say. I attend a critic studio workshop where I am reminded I am not a great critic although I enjoy the workshop very much. I try to write one good poem. I write many ordinary poems. I read a book in preparation for a theatre development. A book written the year after I was born. A book written clean and deep and sharp. About race and power and gender and power set on other planets than the one we inhabit. In the book, which is also interested in time as a mutable concept, an adult character says to a child: ‘Yes you can be four and nearly five at the same time.’ Being alive is strange. Ageing and dying are real but the numbers we apply to put shapes around the thing we call time are arbitrary. I have a birthday. I am 52 and then nearly 53 and now I am 53. I see an ad on social media for a film by Wes Anderson about Martin Heidegger and Hannah Arendt with Bill Murray and Winona Ryder. It is not real. Just a made-up thing. ‘If only Anderson’s Heidegger-Arendt project was real’ says the headline of an article lamenting AI bullshit. The things we yearn for are not always possible. They do not always come true.

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Entanglings: April

Emilie Collyer — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 22:01:31 GMT

My enthusiasm for trains continue. I see many comedy festival shows with R. We started going out during comedy festival so it is always anniversary time. It is fun to be out on the trains and at the shows together. I do get sick one weekend so have to take a few days off going to see shows. At the shows the seats are always jammed close. We must sit close to people we hate. Not personally, just their bodies and noises. The people give us germs, and they squirm or talk or check their phones or eat chips. They are heckled by the comedians. We are glad we are not heckled. A woman who is heckled starts to really get into it: where DID we meet? she asks her friend as the comedian asks her then stares in disbelief at the length of her answer. We want to be punished and told what to do. Mildly though, this is BDSM for the fainthearted. Some of the comedians want us to love them. Some of them want to remind us we are loathsome. We wait in corridors to go into shows. We are lucky this year to have participant passes because we both made shows, so we can get in to shows for free but only once all the proper paying audience has gone in. I am bewildered by people who are not running or looking anxious as they arrive at shows right on start time or even minutes late. Why are they not running or looking anxious?! At one show there are only a few seats left. Our friend with a pass doesn’t get in although once inside there are empty seats with reserved signs on them. Minutes after the show starts the festival director comes and sits on one, she sits right next to me. I guess it is more important that the festival director gets in than our friend. Between seeing comedy festival shows and going to work and trying to understand precisely what Age Up is providing my mother, I am writing carefully chosen words for playwriting opportunities to demonstrate how worthy I am for these opportunities. I am writing carefully chosen words for speeches for poetry books I am launching. I am writing carefully chosen words to endorse a poetry book and may use just 60 words. If you are reading this you can appreciate I find ‘just 60 words’ very hard. The hardest of all the carefully chosen words. I go to a non comedy festival show about the weird glory of bodies and talk to an artist about the possibility of 3D printing from our own cells as a food source and watch an episode of The Bear which is basically scallop porn. A playwright online asks where the risk in theatre is these days as companies say they want risk but their appetite seems so tame and I say a lot of it is in strange comedy shows and independent theatre about the weird glory of bodies made with no money. The festival finishes. I go to see other shows. At interval at a main stage theatre I want a choc top only to be told they have sold out of choc tops. I find this strange as it is the first preview, so the theatre has been dark for a few weeks. You’d think restocking on choc tops would be a priority for a first preview. As I walk away dejected and choc-top-less I see the artistic director of the company also go and ask for a choc top. She walks away looking slightly sad. The play is a classic and my feeling afterwards is like I have looked closely at a beautiful poem or artwork for two hours and I love this feeling. Another theatre work I see is more like an anthology of and I sit right on the side so almost see it from behind which is discombobulating. A third piece is more like a novel or a memory puzzle and in each one my body is present and I have feelings. A book I am reading, which is a novel called Transcription by Ben Lerner, suggests that screens separate us from each other, from the world, from ourselves and that this can be isolating and cold but also something of a salve in a world we are often overwhelmed with feelings. The feelings I have in a theatre are mediated somewhat but they are my own and they are given space and time to be. April has proven a long artist lyfe entry and I apologise. I will try to be more economical in May.

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Entanglings: March

Emilie Collyer — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 22:30:10 GMT

I get the new train from West Footscray to Parkville. This is a dream I have had much of my adult life, living in the west and travelling so often to the inner north, to see plays at La Mama and do workshops at Kathleen Syme Library and University of Melbourne and meet friends for coffees and dinners at Heart Attack and Vine and Ti Amo. It is amazing. It is as good as I had imagined! One train four stops! I get a plane to Sydney. The plane is late of course because it is very hard to coordinate planes these days. I am going the opening night of a new production of a play of mine at a repurposed army barracks. Some of the reviewers love the play. They are correct. Some of them do not like it at all. They are incorrect. Or else I am incorrect and should immediately re-write the play to please them. I nearly get scammed by a woman called ‘Ressie’ who ‘loved my poetry book’ and wants to put it on a reading challenge with just a small registration fee. I manage to realise ‘Ressie’ is probably not her real name and ‘Book Curator | Scout’ is probably not her real job before giving her any money. I am mostly sad that ‘Ressie’ probably didn’t actually ‘read’ or ‘love’ my book. I am mostly going to previews of plays to save money. A play about a rooster fills me with joy. Two plays about pain from the past finding a way to the present pin me to my seat. A big budget play with big budget design about a big moment in local history is extremely important. I do not like it as much as the other plays. Maybe I am incorrect. Maybe I am correct and the playwright should re-write it to please me. I go to a poetry reading where a poet a very good poet says: I have probably read too long. Yes the answer to this is usually yes even for very good poets. I perform at a local festival event in a repurposed drill hall that glows. The show I am directing for comedy festival opens in a repurposed function room. The show I have outside eyed for comedy festival opens in a repurposed basement. The show I have done some writing on for comedy festival opens in a repurposed bar. It is the happiest time of the year in this city with the soft autumn weather and so many people wanting to go somewhere and laugh. I delete a friend follow on Instagram from ‘lucasmelvin8929 I’m single’. I consider hooking ‘him’ up with ‘Ressie’. I share posts about shows so more people might see the shows or so people know I see shows. I guess it is both. There are so many shows to see and so many people who want to see something to make them laugh make them cry. Make us laugh make us cry make us forget make us remember that is the thing really isn’t it. To make art to see art to share art that helps us remember.

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Entanglings: February

Emilie Collyer — Tue, 03 Mar 2026 23:59:45 GMT

I drive to Carlton to watch a play about zealotry in a theatre that used to be a courthouse. The play is long, the theatre is full. Afterwards we know we have been in a deeply rich and beauteous world even though many of us didn’t understand all of it. I drive to Carlton to attend a literature workshop. I submit poems to journals. One is accepted. I share the online journal issue which I have guest edited. I drive to Box Hill and then to Fitzroy to take my mother to an appointment. She has had to fast all morning and the appointment itself takes a long time. She has to sit in a chair with a canula in her arm and is instructed not to fall asleep. I cannot stay in the room with her. I wait in the waiting room. The television shows footage of protests at Flinders Street Station against the impending visit of the Israeli President. I drive to West Footscray for the launch of a literary festival. The Maribyrnong Mayor presides. He is young and very handsome and was born in Sudan, three unusual and thrilling attributes. I drive to West Footscray for a writing session for a show I am working on. It is hot and we drink a lot of bubble water. I drive to Carlton for a book launch. I see a lot of people there I know. It is celebratory. A book about how to age, something we are all rightfully terrified about. I watch the men’s ICC T20 World Cup where Australia plays terribly and is rightfully ejected early from the competition. I watch a thrilling match between South Africa and Afghanistan that ends with two super overs. I drive to Windsor three times to see a classic Australian theatre trilogy. I spend two days in the dream of the play. It holds me. I drive to Docklands for a book launch where I am launching the book. It is raining. The book floats. My play is not nominated for any theatre awards. My play is nominated for a literary award. My play wins a literary award. I drive to the city to watch new poets perform their work. I eat cannelloni at Pellegrini. I drive to East St Kilda to watch a play about devastation and activism by a young writer. I drive to the Botanic Gardens to watch a Shakespeare play on a cool and humid night. My friend says if January felt like a year, February was over in a week. There were not as many stifling days as I thought there might be. She may be right though in that time, as ever, is accelerating.

Thanks for reading Entanglings! This post is public so feel free to share it.

Hello and welcome to Entanglings 2026! In 2024 I wrote Unfurl, a weekly poetic response to a performance work. In 2025 I took a hiatus. This year I am writing a monthly missive with the aim of capturing a poetic/prose snapshot of the ordinary/mundane life of an artist. It will not capture everything, of course. It will be idiosyncratic and inconsistent in what it notices and reports on. It is inspired by thinkers such as Lauren Berlant, Ann Cvetkovich, Sara Ahmed and Kathleen Stewart who are interested in how the everyday affective quality and experience of our lives are worthy of attention and may enlighten something about how we live and how we might want to live.

Unfurl: Descent

Emilie Collyer — Thu, 19 Dec 2024 21:01:02 GMT

Descent

We begin upstairs standing awkward in

the light-filled gallery. A story of

selling, of slavery and cruelty

begins. We are led down the narrow stairs.

I have never felt this space used in this

way. The power of descent is potent.

Bodies in the play are held against their

will. Bodies are exploited for others’

gain. The bodies of the actors pulse and

slide. As memories of powers past are

shared and spoken, something cracks. It is the

fourth show in a week I see where looking

back to find new truths releases bodies.

Electrifying reckoning takes flight.

Production:

ILARUN – The Cutting Comb

By Amarantha Robinson

Directed by Effie Nkrumah

Amarantha in Association with Quiet Riot

45 downstairs 5 December - 15 December 2024

Attended Sunday 15 December 2024

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Unfurl is a subproject of Entanglings. Throughout 2024 I have posted a poem a week in response to peformance works. This is my final poem for the year! Thank you for reading and for the generous comments and sharing of the poems. It’s been lovely to know the project has resonated and added something of substance to our arts writing environment. I am going to take a hiatus for the rest of 2024 and decide if I will carry on Unfurling in 2025, change the shape of my responsive writing or take things in a whole new direction. I wish you a peaceful end and beginning of year cycle and look forward to seeing you in theatres and online next year.

Unfurl: Tea

Emilie Collyer — Thu, 12 Dec 2024 21:00:50 GMT

Tea

is for two, is for afternoons, is for

calming and care, is for grieving. Sit down

and sip, as you face death and loss. Tea here

is the titular woke effort by a

do-gooding new family member, so

white (though her brew glows glorious pink). It’s

rawcus elixir from the other side

as dearly departed deals out chaos

to help his family let him go. Love

is spun surreal the stage a roundabout

perfect farce that once geared up doesn’t let

up. Full force Blak comedy ground deep in

what makes us fight who we love, in how we

show care. We spill. We offer. We forgive.

Production:

A Wake A Woke Mob

By Maurial Spearim

Blak in the Room

Melbourne Theatre Company, The Lawler 27 November – 7 December 2024

Attended Friday 6 December 2024

Thanks for reading Entanglings! This post is public so feel free to share it.

Unfurl is a subproject of Entanglings. I am posting a weekly poem in response to peformance works. I owe a debt to Rita Felski for the title, as she wrote about new approaches to critical writing (2015). I am working with the sonnet and other short forms in order to keep the project manageable and see what can be evoked with limited words. The poems are impressions, unedited, so they are a poetic documentation moreso than polished works. My aim is to build a conversation between poetry and performance and hopefully start some new conversations about different ways we can approach, generate and enjoy arts writing. If you enjoy it please subscribe or share with others!

Unfurl: Oil

Emilie Collyer — Thu, 05 Dec 2024 21:01:20 GMT

Oil

Something in the slick of it stays with me.

Bodies glisten as they urge towards an

end. Does it feel sticky? How long does it

take to wash away? What also lingers

is voice. One performer tells of being

teased but I am seduced by the richness

of their tone. Another is paid to voice

television, selling his timbre to

pay bills. We are teased too. Games played. A kind

of flirtation with boundaries where truth

blurs. Once the popcorn comes out and the oil

is poured our sense of centre slips away.

I’m given a beer during the show. I

don’t drink so feel that I should have said no.

Production:

Edging

a new collaboration between APHIDS’ Lara Thoms and artists Sammaneh Pourshafighi and Eden Falk.

Arts House 27 November – 1 December 2024

Attended Sunday 1 December November 2024

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Unfurl: Song

Emilie Collyer — Thu, 28 Nov 2024 21:00:38 GMT

Song

Is it song or singing? I try to find

the right word, the machine that is driving

this story. The thread that runs from body

to voice and what happens when it frays. When

it breaks. We are in a square that is called

a round. Being surrounded by sound is

a salve. The bodies inside our round square

are trying to hold onto each other,

to the threads of a life that is dimming.

The song sings. It’s not a tune we can hum

along to, words are unfamiliar

but that’s not the point. We are there to bear

witness, as she opens her mouth and light

pours. Warm as memory brief as the sun.

Production:

The Hall

By Ro Bright and Pat Irwin

Bullet Heart Club at 45 downstairs 21 November – 1 December 2024

Attended Saturday 26 November 2024

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Unfurl: Hold

Emilie Collyer — Thu, 21 Nov 2024 21:01:21 GMT

Hold

A woman is holed up. Things are a bit

grim. Those human things. Grief. Aging. Lonely.

What is the sum of a whole life? What is

a life? Is an artificial life still

a life? Is a life lived that is small still

a life? At home, my partner tidies rooms

that have not been tidied in years. Why now?

I ask. On stage the lonely woman starts

to care more. Things like a dress. Her hair. Her

companion helps. Flowers appear. They dance.

The audience is very held by them.

The human more than human so human

tale. Holding on. I’m here, I’m holding you.

Production:

Your Name Means Dream

By José Rivera

Red Stitch 26 October – 24 November 2024

Attended Thursday 7 November 2024

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Unfurl: Trap

Emilie Collyer — Thu, 14 Nov 2024 21:00:10 GMT

Trap

I sit in the middle which I never

do. I hate to feel trapped at the theatre.

But here I am. I try not to touch legs

next to me. The show is a riot. It

roars. In it people are trapped. In their homes.

In offices. By their desires. Their fears.

It’s Ionesco so of course. They do

not once, as far as I recall, speak of

trapping the multiplying, titular

beasts. Just get out of their way, learn to live

with them. One horn or two, whichever, dig

it into the soil, roam free. At play’s end

I must wait as those near me rise and plod.

My hands are paws, my feet are hooves, stamping.

Production:

Rhinoceros

Spinning Plates co. by Eugene Ionesco, in a new version by Zinnie Harris

45 downstairs 31 October – 17 November 2024

Attended Sunday 10 November 2024

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Unfurl: Joy

Emilie Collyer — Thu, 07 Nov 2024 21:00:29 GMT

Joy

is a word I have not yet unfurled.

Both too common and too rare for what I

feel sitting in the dark as bodies writhe

and voices cry and words are tossed about.

But there is no other word this time. Joy.

Four performers, a well worn text. It’s my

second outing to a revisioning

of the Scottish play this year and this one

sings. It is rude and silly. It jiggles

and prances. It farts and flops around. In

this week where strong man politics grab the

headlines, the antidote is here. Lady

M never wins but she always goes down

swinging and tonight with joy. Joy and boobs.

Production:

Lady Macbreast

By PO PO MO CO

La Mama Courthouse 30 October – 10 November 2024

Attended Sunday 3 November 2024

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Unfurl: Blood

Emilie Collyer — Thu, 31 Oct 2024 21:01:36 GMT

Blood

is where the play ends, a splatter fest.

The audience howls in gory delight.

Teeth sunk into skin. A corkscrew pierces

an eye. A woman beaten. A man’s heart

ripped from his chest. The characters become

limping wounded decimated by blood

lust of right wing shock jock left wing hunger

for celebrity for being seen for

being known. They shout a lot. Too much. The

script is smart and sharp they don’t need to shout

it at us. Energy is in exchange.

We have to hold the excess. A relief

then when the slasher climax erupts and

we can all let go. I leave elated.

Production:

Werewolf

By Van Badham

Arts Centre Melbourne in association with Melbourne Fringe

The Show Room 16 October – 26 October 2024

Attended Thursday 24 October 2024

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Unfurl: Elemental

Emilie Collyer — Thu, 24 Oct 2024 21:00:36 GMT

Elemental

I am reading about rocks. We choose our

seats. Geologic time. Forces that take

millions of years. In the beginning

we see his back. Flow of long hair. Raised arm.

I learn new words like subduction. While his

counterpart poises, ready to caress,

coax and boom. Where an oceanic plate

slides under a continental plate. His

viola hums and percussion responds.

Essential for earth’s long slow cycle of

regeneration. At times I close my

eyes. Let the thrum take me. A surrender

of sorts. But then I want to look. These two

musicians conjuring, recalling worlds.

Production:

Digital Echoes

By Aaron Wyatt with Speak Percussion

Arts House and Melbourne Fringe 17 October – 20 October 2024

Attended Saturday 18 October 2024

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Unfurl: Red

Emilie Collyer — Thu, 17 Oct 2024 21:01:25 GMT

Red

We are told to bring wine. Red. I don’t drink

[alcohol] so I bring a bottle whose

label says tread softly. We are told a

safe word for the night: watermelon. Huge

curtains are deep red and the tuxedo

stripe on the pants of the pianist. Soup.

Frozen. Red. We see nipples, as promised,

when we opt to listen to an essay

about excess. My table mate has bright

red nails. She is bemused. I liked parts, she

says, but what did it mean? The cream on our

cakes is white. Plenty to be licked but not

every diner finishes. I don’t

use the safe word though my wine is too sweet.

Production:

FEAST

By Pony Cam

The Substation and Melbourne Fringe 9 October – 19 October 2024

Attended Saturday 12 October 2024

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Unfurl: Prowl

Emilie Collyer — Thu, 10 Oct 2024 21:01:22 GMT

Prowl

This work is peripatetic. It prowls.

It hikes. It runs. A body is striving.

It wants something what is it? Chasing dreams

down Athens grimy streets what is it to

make art to make art out of life to mine

the path relentless. A hawk. Some dogs. What

can a moustache do? This work sweats and it

takes aim. It is a body heat seeking.

We are in Trades Hall the home of labour

movement and part way through my eyes lift to

murals and words from the past. Art is work.

Precarity at its heart. If you stop

walking it is mostly to run. When life

stops you dead. Pause. Sip water. Go again.

Production:

A Brief Episode

By Ash Flanders

Melbourne Fringe: Festival Hub Trades Hall Solidarity Hall 2 October – 20 October

Attended Wednesday 9 October

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Unfurl: Lime

Emilie Collyer — Thu, 03 Oct 2024 22:01:39 GMT

Lime

It could easily be vine. Or light. Or

sigh. By lime I mean the small ones Emma

gave us from her tree that look like lemons.

In all that soft space my thirst raised but I

could not reach for my water. We had to

sit so still. As the vine almost hid, as

the wigs so comical but nobody

(much) laughed, something sharp pierced. This line is too

long. I can’t fix it. I say: it was like

Tennessee Williams had a dream he was

trying to remember. But this is not

right and the poem falters (remember

in the piece, how her hand brushed those pants, is

that the colour you thought tasted like lime?)

Production:

Molly

By Caroline Meaden

Melbourne Fringe: Guild Theatre 2 October – 5 October

Attended Wednesday 2 October

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Unfurl: Sweat

Emilie Collyer — Thu, 26 Sep 2024 22:03:51 GMT

Sweat

I like how some people label them sweats.

I like how dancers layer sweats on sweats.

I like how dancers sweat in sexy sweats.

I like how dancers sweat on each other.

I like how the words make the dancers sweat.

I like how fast the words fall like AI

is working up a sweat. Like AI wants

to prove it can work as hard as any

dancer. I like how the dancers know they

are building on sweat that has come before.

The dancers speak like they are not sweating.

Repetition starts to repeat like it

likes to recognise itself, like the past

is sweating through to the present. I like

that what remains is the sweat bodies make.

Production:

Plagiary

By Alisdair Macindoe

Now or Never Arts Centre Melbourne 28 August - 31 August 2024

Attended Saturday 31 August

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