FESTIVAL & FRINGE

Perth was the first Australian city to establish a Festival....although most people don't know this and think that Adelaide got in before us.

Perth's Festival fed my cultural appetite from an early age. The first Melbourne Theatre Company production I saw in 1969 was part of the Festival. We might have lived in the most isolated city in the world but the Festival meant that artists, particularly from the UK, Europe and the USA, found their way here.

The richest festival time for me was in the late 1970s and early 1980s when I produced and presented an arts program on 6UVS-FM (now 6RTR-FM) boldly called the Stupendous Stereo Stage Show. My helming role meant that I had access to all the visiting artists for radio interviews and the reward for publicity? Free tickets. I met all sorts of people before they became really famous. I remember taking the cast of an Edgar Allan Poe production to the beach only to discover that none of them really knew how to swim. It woudn't have been a good look to lose Steven Berkoff that early in his career.

My walls used to be covered with Perth Festival posters so it was wonderful to see some of them hanging on the walls of His Majesty's Theatre. 

Susan had her own connection to Perth's world of performance as one of the founding Board Members of Artrage in the 1980s. Her reward was life membership of the Fringe.

Over the years of being away, we have come back to visit Perth in the summer. Usually it was Christmas/New Year with the parents but in more recent times, we tried to match our morning swims with evening performances. One of the best places for summer nights in Perth is at the Sommerville Auditorium on the campus of the University of Western Australia. The idea is to go early and have a picnic on the grass and then retire into deck chairs to watch art house movies with a gentle breeze wafting from the nearby Swan River in a space framed by pine trees. A true combination of relaxation and entertainment - although this year, there was a near miss when a branch fell onto some (luckily empty) seats. 

This year we've been on an historic crime walk, seen an evening without Kate Bush, enjoyed the glorious music of Tami Neilson, had an multisensory experience watching indigenous people in the West Kimberley catch and kill their food on film and then eating it ourselves in Killa: Pindan to Plate, watched the exuberant Soweto Gospel Choir, seen a compelling piece of American verbatim theatre, Is This A Room, watched part of the fascinating 24 hour performance about work, Twelve Songs, seen the clever whimsical theatre work of the Great Last Hunt, sung along to the lively story of the Warumpi Band in Ilbijerri's No Names No Blanket, and finally, after returning from my side trip to Melbourne, the magnificent Pamela Rabe with a fabulous cast in the Black Swan/Belvoir coproduction of August, Osage County.

Curtain call at the State Theatre Centre for the cast of August, Osage County

Not a bad list of shows given that our focus since arriving has been house hunting!