The Crack Theatre Festival

It's a blast! I swear, never seen such a variety of acts in one evening. I hunted down the Crackhouse, the main venue for the Crack Theatre Festival, part of TINA, last night, only to find that the Caravan of Doom had just started its act. Between the chainsaw, the weather girl in a spangly bikini, the punk transvestite not wearing underwear and the use of the naked body as a costume, it was entrancing.

They played with the idea of being a performer, becoming self-concious on purpose in order to transition from one act to the next and managed to involve the audience in some of their shenanigans. The stage was not a stage, the action took place amongst audience members, luring them into a sense of co-creation. One adjective for it would be mesmersing. I was repelled, fascinated and swallowed up by their performances, forgetting the setting and the lack of stage props.

I left the Caravan of Doom in the middle of passing a hat to go do a reading for National Young Writers Festival, in an event called Well Hung Parliament. I now realise that I should have written something viscerally sexual, like the MC did, instead I chose to write a piece of political fiction. It was well received, but from that point on, the evening turned into a political rant with unprepared ramblings coming from most of the writers. One poem did make me wonder if setting a theme like Well Hung Parliament is not akin to provoking writers into being witty when there is nothing left to be witty about. The general feeling at the reading was one of disappointment with our current political state. It was disheartening.

In order to lift our spirits, we, the writers, decampted en masse to the Crackhouse, to watch the mad cabaret put on by The Last Tuesday Society. The spangly, glittering performance was the perfect foil for post-election blues. Brisbane's own BURN Collective gave the evening a boost with their Scary Story Slumberparty. They set the scene beatifully with fairy lights, a young mother in a housecoat, lights out, torches and pillows. Sadly, none of the stories were scary... I left in search of social entertainment only to be pulled into a discussion of Brisbane Festival by a Melbournite who was bagging Under the Radar. Our city rivalrly was interrupted by an invitation to a warehouse party somewhere in Hamilton, which I declined, thinking of the festivities to come in the next three days.