Sunday Arts Magazine

13 Sep 2015

Melb. Fringe Festival—Simon Abrahams, Vanessa Wright & Yana Alana

Arts, Comedy, Design, Music, Performing Arts, TV & Film, Visual Arts

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 42:23 — 38.8MB)

David is back from Adelaide and co-hosting with Daniel, who did such a good job on his own last week. Daniel, like Brendan, is a film buff and today reviews 2 films. Firstly Life which is about the relationship between James Dean and photographer Dennis Stock who took the iconic image of Dean walking along a street in a thick coat. Daniel ‘struggled’ through the film and found it disappointing 1.5 stars. The other film is Me And Earl And The Dying Girl—a story of teenage angst but it has a witty, facetious style and a lot of heart…like Juno. 4 stars.

Guests today are all involved with The Melbourne Fringe Festival

Simon Abrahams is Creative Director and CEO of The Melbourne Fringe Festival— 16th September to 4th October 2015. Simon has been with the Fringe a short time and had previously worked at the Wheeler Centre, The Arts Centre & with Children’s Theatre. He feels that Fringe is about ‘discovery’ for artists in that they try out new work before taking it on tour and for audiences in that it provides a space where they can take a risk. The Fringe has complete unknowns side by side with more famous people like Yana Alana, Tony Martin and Geraldine Quinn. There are 400 events, 6000 artists playing to 300,000 people over 19 days. Simon talks about a few highlights. Apart from the website, you can see what’s on via the Red Brochure guide–available at Joy and at info centre in Fed Square.

Vanessa Wright is the Associate producer from Fringe Furniture. Vanessa has a background in art history, curatorship and festivals and, like Simon, has been with the Fringe a short time. Fringe Furniture is a design exhibition for emerging and established designers showing at The Abbotsford Convent Wednesday to Sunday from 11am till 5pm . It’s a chance for designers to experiment with their work. Furniture is mostly submitted but also lighting, jewellery & tablewear. Designers have an opportunity to win one of 5 Awards and visually impaired people can have an audio described ‘tactile’ tour on 19th September and 2nd October.

Sarah Ward and her outrageous alter ego, Yana Alana, is a well-known and loved cabaret star who’s returned to the Fringe this year after an absence of 8 years to do a new show. Her previous show ‘Between The Cracks’ with Yana covered in blue paint, has done really well winning awards and touring all over Australia and NZ and will probably go to Europe and the USA in 2016. Her new show Yana Alana Covered has the tag line ‘camp, curved and clothed’ and this time she is wearing clothes and singing a diverse group of other people’s songs and will not be doing mock arguments with the band. There’ll be more songs and less theatrics with themes such as –What’s real? & Identity.
Yana Alana Covered is on at The Lithuanian Club in North Melbourne between 29th September to 3rd October.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 42:23 — 38.8MB)

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