This year, the Crack Theatre Festival will feature an event entitled SHORT AND SHIT, a short play competition (which has nothing to do with and was not inspired by any other short play competitions, not that I even know what you’re talking about because I’ve never heard of any others) which aims to find The Worst Playscript in Australia. We’re looking for playwrights to dig out the most turgid and gutwrenching unfinished fragments from their bottom drawers and submit them.

Directed by Laura Scrivano, our ace performance ensemble will attempt to breathe life into your ghastly mistakes and the most pompous, derivative, angst-ridden drivel will win A PRIZE!*

Does Paul Atreides write better scripts than you even after he is dead?
Image from Cryo Studios’ Dune.

This is your chance to finally see a production of that self-important high-handed historical romance you wrote when you were 17, or to discover whether that insulting screed about your ex-partner is as brilliant as it seemed after 675ml of Kirov vodka.

If you’re up for it, mail cracktheatrefestival at gmail dot com with:
- A short extract (max 5 pages) of the script;
- A 1 paragraph explanation of how this masterpiece came to be.

Entries close Tuesday 21 September.

Is your play about a hanged werewolf? Maybe it should have been.
Image from Wikimedia Commons.

SHORT AND SHIT takes place as part of the Crack Theatre Festival:
2.00-3.00pm Friday 1 October
Lodge of Instruction: Crackhouse, 102 King Street, Newcastle NSW

* freedom from the shame and guilt which has haunted you all these years and a certificate

The title of this post is the whole story. It’s true, it’s real, the program for this year’s Crack Theatre Festival has been published, on this very website.

Since emerging in 2009, Crack has taken its place as the sullen teenage goth in the This Is Not Art family, cheating on its Maths assignment while drinking cask wine in an underpass. In 2010, join us for a very special coming of age celebration at the Crackhouse on King Street from 30 September – 3 October as we unleash a blistering program of performances, gigs, panels, forums, workshops and interventions by an array of Australia’s most creative and accomplished theatre artists, including Sisters Grimm, The Last Tuesday Society, Shh, and The Masters of Space and Time.

Check out the full schedule of events on the Program page, or have a butcher’s at this year’s lineup on the Artists page. Do it all, do it right now!

The Masters of Space and Time’s Up to your Arse in Alligators, featuring as part of Crack 2010

In the meantime, Crack is the subject of discussion on the internet this month (and not in relation to any criminal or civil court cases!). National magazine for youth performing arts Lowdown this month features an article on the Crack Theatre Festival, written by none other than outgoing co-director David Finig. And as you’d expect from Finig, it falls somewhere between serious reportage and Livejournal confessional.

From the darkness of the truck’s interior, a pale ghostly shape lurched forward into the light. In the harsh glare of the floodlights, the shape resolved itself into a tall figure dressed in a loincloth and smeared white paint, a constellation of glowing LEDs bound to his skull with sticky-tape. Lifting a megaphone to its mouth, the figure barked: ‘I’M SUSAN SARANDON! I WAS IN THELMA AND LOUISE!’ As a DJ concealed in the back of the truck began to play, the megaphone-wielding creature loomed over the crowd shrieking that he was married to Tim Robbins and asking the crowd, “What famous movies have you been in?”

Check it out at Lowdown Online, or simply sit closer to the fire and blow on your hands, waiting in tense anticipation for the truth to be revealed: what will happen at Crack this year?

In the meantime, we have some extremely exciting news: Crack has a new director! Joining current co-directors David Finnigan and Gillian Schwab, we are pleased to welcome the inestimable Ben Packer as director for 2010-11.

Ben runs the independent theatre company ‘little death productions’. Most recently, he directed Strangers in Between by Tommy Murphy (Store Room, 2009), Motortown by Simon Stephens (Griffin Stablemates, 2008) and Mercury Fur by Philip Ridley (Theatreworks & Griffin Stablemates, 2007).

Ben will direct the 2010 festival along with David and Gillian, then following David and Gillian’s departure, Crack will recruit a new director to join Ben in 2011. The position of 2011-12 co-director will be advertised on this site from October, so keep your eyes peeled.

We are seeking a new co-director for 2010-11! The successful applicant will work with current co-directors David Finnigan and Gillian Schwab. In 2011, the successful applicant will help select and support the next co-director.

If you’re a creative and committed individual with a knowledge of (and a love for) Australia’s emergent theatre community, this is your chance to get your hands on a vibrant, exciting national festival and give it some of your own flavour.

Download an application form HERE.

Applications close MONDAY 17 MAY.

Congratulations to all those artists, audiences and fellow travelers who attended the launch of the Crack Theatre Festival in 2009; 1. It was amazing, and 2. No-one got killed.*

Now, your kindly hosts David Finnigan and Gillian Schwab are very pleased to announce the dates for the festival in 2010: Thursday 30 September – Monday 4 October. Write it in your diaries with a leaky red pen and smear the ink with your thumb. NO EXCUSES. IF YOU DON’T ATTEND YOU CAN STILL GRADUATE BUT YOU CAN’T COME TO THE FORMAL.

* If you know otherwise, keep it to yourself.

Curated by professional deviant HADLEY and featuring sensory and visceral art experiences plummeting through the senses from Melbourne’s Spill Collective, lush wonky beats, manic disco, jungle, dub and dark techno by Sydney’s Svelt, absurdist mashups of ringtones, youtube raps, beats from dubstep to breakcore and trashy pop zombification from the internet bargain bin of Canberra’s Dead DJ Joke, the Year 12 Formal is a participatory performance which YOU are invited to take part in.

At 2pm on Saturday in the Grand Lodge there will be a Year 12 Formal Briefing Session for interested participants. Join PE Instructor/Formal curator HADLEY to learn how YOU can take part in this large-scale performance party. You will run through the basics of facilitating an idiot event, ranging from finding performers to what happens when someone gets kicked in the face.
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SUNDAY SCHEDULE OF EVENTS

Applespiel’s Morning Commercial Radio Breakfast Show (3 of 3)
10.00-11.00am, Lodge of Lounge
Crack Theatre Festival’s new home of the freshest morning beats. This live performance work is a sideways glance at the ways we create and receive information. Applespiel will be constructing a trendy and commercially viable radio show right before your eyes – with no more scripted material than Kyle Sandilands has wit and grace. Everything will be generated from the audience, what is happening in the room and other festival events. Sit down, tune in and find your place in the network of jingles, radio plays, long time listeners first time callers and great classic hits.
Featuring: Applespiel

Act Two: Experience is one thing you can’t get for nothing
10.00am-4.00pm, One Penny Black (Hunter St Mall: cnr Hunter St/Morgan St), Salawi (cnr Hunter St/Auckland St), Sprocket (cnr Hunter St/Watt St)
“Experience is one thing you can’t get for nothing” – Oscar Wilde. Following on from Act One at TINA 2009, Tantrum Theatre’s Emerging Writers Program returns with three short plays that are designed to be performed by you! Find a lover, stranger or friend, grab an espresso, take a seat, put on a pair of headphones, and listen to a play unfold as you are given directions to speak and do what you hear. In this thrilling new mode of performance, there are no actors and no audience – just you! Performances commence every half hour, limit of two people.
Writers: Dean Blackford, Penelope Kentish, Bradley McDonald
Featuring: Tantrum Theatre

Year 12 Formal
6.00-11.00pm, The Entire Crackhouse
On Sunday night, the Crackhouse will bear witness to an event of tremendous significance: YOUR YEAR 12 FORMAL. Amidst the turbulent maelstrom of music, dancing and carnage, the audience is welcome to become performer, performer to become audience, woman to become man, dog to become bicycle! This time, let your hormones take over and turn a night out into a nightmare! This is the last night of the rest of your life. The punch has been spiked WITH URINE. BYO vomit or make some when you arrive. Don’t come stag, lest you find yourself alone when Green Day’s Good Riddance (Time Of Your Life) is being drunkenly howled by your weeping History Teacher.
Featuring: Hadley, Spill Collective, Svelt, Dead DJ Joke, every hormone-ridden artist in this city
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Image by Talsit.
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Return to program page.

Thursday 30 September

Friday 1 October

Saturday 2 October

QWEER D.I.Y TH3ATR3 TROUPE SIST3RS GRIMM (AKA!1!!! ASH FLANDERS & DECLAN GREENE) R A R3LATIEVLEY MINOR CUM-STAIN ON TEH FABRIC OF OSHTRAYAN TH3ATR3!1!!11!1 WTF LOL TH3Y R RESPONSIBLA FOR HIGHLEY DISPOSABLE TRASH-THEATR3 WASTE SUCH AS MOMMIE & DA MINISTER, CELLBLOCK BOOTAY, LITTL3 MERCY AND THEYRE BIGAST HIT 2 DAET BUMTOWN DA MUSICAL!!!11!1 HAETZ BAK OF CUZ WE R HELLA HOT BIATCHAS N WA JUZT DONT CAER!!!!!111!11!1!1!1!1!!!!11
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SATURDAY SCHEDULE OF EVENTS

Applespiel’s Morning Commercial Radio Breakfast Show (2 of 3)
10.00-11.00am, Lodge of Lounge
Crack Theatre Festival’s new home of the freshest morning beats. This live performance work is a sideways glance at the ways we create and receive information. Applespiel will be constructing a trendy and commercially viable radio show right before your eyes – with no more scripted material than Kyle Sandilands has wit and grace. Everything will be generated from the audience, what is happening in the room and other festival events. Sit down, tune in and find your place in the network of jingles, radio plays, long time listeners first time callers and great classic hits.
Featuring: Applespiel

Act Two: Experience is one thing you can’t get for nothing
10.00am-4.00pm, One Penny Black (Hunter St Mall: cnr Hunter St/Morgan St), Salawi (cnr Hunter St/Auckland St), Sprocket (cnr Hunter St/Watt St)
“Experience is one thing you can’t get for nothing” – Oscar Wilde. Following on from Act One at TINA 2009, Tantrum Theatre’s Emerging Writers Program returns with three short plays that are designed to be performed by you! Find a lover, stranger or friend, grab an espresso, take a seat, put on a pair of headphones, and listen to a play unfold as you are given directions to speak and do what you hear. In this thrilling new mode of performance, there are no actors and no audience – just you! Performances commence every half hour, limit of two people.
Writers: Dean Blackford, Penelope Kentish, Bradley McDonald
Featuring: Tantrum Theatre

The Woolworths Application Form Was Too Complicated: How I got into theatre
11.00am-12.00pm, Lodge of Instruction
Every year, more artist peers will give up the dream, take on a real job and get on with their lives. Why do you keep struggling on? Tell our wavering artist facilitators what entices / forces you to keep going in poverty and drudgery. If you’re convincing enough, you might put the creative fire back in their bellies. If you’re not, you may find yourself returning from TINA with the newspaper open to the jobs page.
Featuring: YOU

Object Manipulation Research Lab
11.00am Friday – 2.00pm Saturday, Civic Park
An interactive installation. An experiment. A physical collage, driven by an evolving soundscape. With focus and finesse, circus performers, sculptors, puppeteers, musicians and visual artists, and other expert manipulators don lab-coats and delve into unexplored regions of object manipulation. Running for 27 hours over Friday – Saturday.
Featuring: The Red Button and Friends

Choose the artists you want and drag them into the right order: Why curating is like burning a mix CD
11.00am-12.00pm, Lodge of Research
The art of making good theatre is one thing – the art of making other people make good theatre is another. This panel looks at curating: from festivals to variety nights to annual seasons. A selection of  curators discuss how they program, ways to strike the right balance and how quickly the whole house of cards can crumble.
Featuring: Daniel Brine (Performance Space), Bron Batten (Last Tuesday Society), Hadley (National Folk Festival Fringe)

Thank God You’re Not Here Anymore: Theatresports
12.00-1.00pm, Lodge of Research
Is it theatre or sport? Part of the process or end in itself? Exhilerating spectacle or cringeworthy catastrophe? Every performer uses it, but what exactly is it?  A conversation around the art of improvisation: How is it employed by artists across performance mediums? Where do impro groups fit in the Australian theatre landscape?
Featuring: Cathy Hagarty and Benjamin Crowley (ImproACT), Lisa Ellicott (Hunter Impro Network)

Goofbang #5 Launch
12.00-2.00pm, The Grand Lodge
Goofbang is a free digital zine that is distributed quarterly around cities in Australia and abroad. The zine collects artwork from visual artists, video artists, musicians, writers… anyone who can compress their art into a digital file. Goofbang celebrates its fifth issue launch amongst the confines of the Crackhouse. There’ll be fights, free zines and memorable performance from a variety of musicians, spoken word performers and visual artists. We’re legal this year, boys!
Featuring: Nick McCorriston, a selection of music and sound artists

The Two Cultures: Science in Performance
1.00-2.00pm, Lodge of Research
More and more performing artists are seeking inspiration for their work in the sciences. The vital insights provided by scientific inquiry are rich content for the theatre, but engaging with these complex topics presents serious obstacles for the artist. A panel of theatre artists discuss the challenges and rewards of bringing science to the stage.
Featuring: David Clapham and Dan Jobson (Masters of Space and Time), Tom Doig, David Finnigan

The Rise and Fall of Headphones Theatre
2.00-3.00pm, Lodge of Research
The last few years have witnessed the emergence of a form of performance which plugs directly into the audience via a pair of headphones. Does the rising popularity and swift evolution of headphones theatre mark the birth of a new direction for live theatre, or has the fad just about played itself out?
Featuring: Dan Koop, Hayley Forward (Parachutes for Ladies), Brendan O’Connell (Tantrum Theatre)

Year 12 Formal Briefing Session
2.00-3.00pm, The Grand Lodge
On Sunday evening, the Crackhouse will bear witness to a life-defining event: your Year 12 Formal. Put aside the disappointing dregs of your previous Year 12 Formal and prepare to come of age for real in Crack’s glamorous, glitter-strewn free-for-all. Join PE Instructor/Formal curator HADLEY in this briefing session to learn how YOU can take part in this large-scale performance party. You will run through the basics of facilitating an idiot event, ranging from finding performers to what happens when someone gets kicked in the face.
Featuring: Hadley

21st Century Puppetry: A Roadmap
3.00-4.00pm, Lodge of Research
From its deep roots in the Western performance tradition, the art of puppetry has evolved in countless directions and bred thousands of unique sub-genres. This panel brings together an array of puppetry artists working across a range of materials, styles and formats for a conversation surveying the landscape of 21st century Australian puppetry.
Featuring: Michal Imielski (Shh), Paul Black (Surgical Sideshow)

Study Hall (3 of 3)
3.00-5.00pm, The Grand Lodge
Every afternoon, Crack’s Grand Lodge will be open for you to come and CRAM. Drink wine, prep for all your exams, use our fine selection of arts and craft materials to construct a corsage for your Formal date or construct a set diorama for your end-of-semester assessable performance of Titus Andronicus, chat to our friendly careers advisor about how a career in the performing arts can lead to being dressed as fucking SANTA in the food court of a shopping mall in the MIDDLE OF SUMMER, drink more wine.
Featuring: You! And a bunch of scissors, crayons and CLAG.

Our Onliest (2 of 2)
3.00-4.00pm, Lodge of Instruction
Between the ocean and the shore, between the sea and the sky, between two people, between all people; these spaces hold secrets and truths. Our Onliest contains two intimate stories of what it is to be with, and what it is to be alone. Writer-performers Max Barker and Kylie Gral have directed each other in the development and performance of their own original works. As the two stories weave in and out of each other, ometimes interacting, sometimes performing solo, Our Onliest ebbs and flows, surges and crashes like the waves the stories find themselves in.
Featuring: Max Barker, Kylie Gral

Theatre vs Australia forum
4.00-5.00pm, Lodge of Research
In theatres, town halls, basements and carparks across every corner of this country, people are confronting new challenges and discovering new paths forward towards making extraordinary theatre. This is an open forum to discuss the national context of theatre-making in Australia. Where are you from and what’s it like to make theatre there? Come and share your experiences, the problems you face and the strategies you have adopted.
Featuring: Tantrum Theatre, xs Entertainment, your wise self

If It Lives (2 of 2)
4.30-5.00pm, Lodge of Instruction
What does Jack Bonhom have in that box? Melbourne, 1866: a meeting of the Victorian Acclimatisation Society. This august and learned group of academics, land-owners and other men of Empire is dedicated to the civilisation of the Australian bush through the introduction of foreign species. Their motto: ‘If it lives, we want it.’ Before a packed audience of wealthy Society members and eminent guests, Bonhom prepares to unveil what may be the perfect introduced species… This razor-sharp farce demonstrates the law of unintended consequences, handily summed up in the colloquialism – “when you’re up to your arse in alligators it’s difficult to remember that your initial objective was to drain the swamp”.
Featuring: The Masters of Space and Time

Performance vs Poetry debate
5.30-6.30pm, The Grand Lodge
Is performance poetry performance? Is it even poetry? While most performing arts (theatre, dance, circus) require specialised training, production values, directors and rehearsals, poets just get up behind a microphone and read. Two expert teams assemble cue cards, don war paint and go head-to-head in the debate to decide once and for all whether performance poetry is a legitimate artform or an excruciating waste of time.
Featuring: Tom Doig (MC), Hadley, Steve Smart, Candy Royalle, Di Drew, Laura Scrivano

The Rimming Club
7.00-8.00pm, The Grand Lodge
Four estranged friends re-unite on a Greek island, hoping to reclaim the summer of that forever changed their lives. But has too much changed? Can you really ever escape the past? What does poo taste like? (THIS IS WHAT IT TASTES LIKE!!!!) Sisters Grimm proudly present the human centipede of Strien Theatre royalty: all your faves ass to mouth NOM NOM NOM NOM!!!!1!!!
Featuring: Sisters Grimm and friends

Candy Royalle: Love Spectacular (2 of 2)
8.00-9.00pm, The Grand Lodge
This one woman show by performance poet Candy Royalle explores the many different elements of love: Its trials, its tribulations, its joys and its pitfalls. How uncontrollable love is, how wonderful its moments and yet how damaging it can sometimes be. Using song, storytelling and of course poetry, this show brings together over 10 years of work by one of Sydney’s best loved performance poets. Prepare to run the gamut of emotions already known but expressed like never before…
Featuring: Candy Royalle
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Sisters Grimm – The Rimming Club.

Return to program page.

Thursday 30 September

Friday 1 October

Sunday 3 October

The Last Tuesday Society is a monthly gathering that allows performers of all styles and persuasions to try out new and exciting pieces of work in the presence of other interested theatre practitioners.

“The jackass of arty pub performance events…the well-dressed step-child of experimental theatre” – threethousand.com.au

“Last time I performed there I went on stage dressed as a Scotsman to break a box full of asbestos only to be outshone by a woman lip-synching along to Judas Priest’s Breaking the Law with her vagina.” – Thomas Henning
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FRIDAY SCHEDULE OF EVENTS

Writing for Space: Using Viewpoints to Devise Theatre and make Group Compositions
10.00-11.00am, Lodge of Research
This workshop explores the idea of writing and devising theatre using Viewpoints, a physical acting technique developed by Anne Bogart’s SITI Company in New York. Participants will explore individual viewpoints and techniques for theatrical and site specific composition. The workshop will conclude  with a Rapid Response project where participants will use physical, environmental and musical stimuli to create short group performances.
Featuring: Laura Scrivano

Applespiel’s Morning Commercial Radio Breakfast Show (1 of 3)
10.00-11.00am, Lodge of Lounge
Crack Theatre Festival’s new home of the freshest morning beats. This live performance work is a sideways glance at the ways we create and receive information. Applespiel will be constructing a trendy and commercially viable radio show right before your eyes – with no more scripted material than Kyle Sandilands has wit and grace. Everything will be generated from the audience, what is happening in the room and other festival events. Sit down, tune in and find your place in the network of jingles, radio plays, long time listeners first time callers and great classic hits.
Featuring: Applespiel

Act Two: Experience is one thing you can’t get for nothing
10.00am-4.00pm, One Penny Black (Hunter St Mall: cnr Hunter St/Morgan St), Salawi (cnr Hunter St/Auckland St), Sprocket (cnr Hunter St/Watt St)
“Experience is one thing you can’t get for nothing” – Oscar Wilde. Following on from Act One at TINA 2009, Tantrum Theatre’s Emerging Writers Program returns with three short plays that are designed to be performed by you! Find a lover, stranger or friend, grab an espresso, take a seat, put on a pair of headphones, and listen to a play unfold as you are given directions to speak and do what you hear. In this thrilling new mode of performance, there are no actors and no audience – just you! Performances commence every half hour, limit of two people.
Writers: Dean Blackford, Penelope Kentish, Bradley McDonald
Featuring: Tantrum Theatre

Object Manipulation Research Lab
11.00am Friday – 2.00pm Saturday, Civic Park
An interactive installation. An experiment. A physical collage, driven by an evolving soundscape. With focus and finesse, circus performers, sculptors, puppeteers, musicians and visual artists, and other expert manipulators don lab-coats and delve into unexplored regions of object manipulation. Running for 27 hours over Friday – Saturday.
Featuring: The Red Button and Friends

Smaller, More Often
11.00am-12.00pm, Lodge of Research
We all get a thrill from having a big idea, getting a big grant and presenting the big event, but these opportunities usually come too rarely.  Smaller, More Often is an attempt to fight a Big, Rarely arts world by thinking about how live artworks can be created over a longer period of time, even when we only have brief snatches of time and few resources.  For Crack this workshop comes in two parts: Part 1 is a presentation about works that have inspired this thinking and a discussion about these ideas; Part 2 is an active workshop where we can practically put some of these ideas to work around Newcastle. Limited spaces. Email smallermoreoften@gmail.com to register.
Featuring: Dan Koop

Study Hall (2 of 3)
12.00-3.00pm, The Grand Lodge
Every afternoon, Crack’s Grand Lodge will be open for you to come and CRAM. Drink wine, prep for all your exams, use our fine selection of arts and craft materials to construct a corsage for your Formal date or construct a set diorama for your end-of-semester assessable performance of Titus Andronicus, chat to our friendly careers advisor about how a career in the performing arts can lead to being dressed as fucking SANTA in the food court of a shopping mall in the MIDDLE OF SUMMER, drink more wine.
Featuring: You! And a bunch of scissors, crayons and CLAG.

Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Literary Management, Programming, New Writing Development and Dramaturgy from Three Artists Who’ve Been There, Done That and Filed the Show Report About It
12.00-1.00pm, Lodge of Research
Van Badham, Chris Mead and Peter Matheson have, between them, been working playwrights, dramaturges, talent scouts, theatre-makers, producers, actors, script assessors, artist liaisons, grant managers, directors, reviewers and theatre academics. They have all been Literary Managers, responsible for running playwright development programmes and programming for professional theatre companies. In this panel, they will share insights and answer questions about career opportunities for playwrights, text-based theatre-makers and writer ensembles.
Featuring: Van Badham (Finborough Theatre), Chris Mead (PlayWriting Australia), Peter Matheson

Swimming to Cambodia (2 of 2)
1.00-4.00pm, Lodge of Lounge
Spalding Gray was one of the twentieth century’s finest monologists, and Swimming to Cambodia (1985) is his masterpiece. It’s a rambling memoir about a neurotic New York performance artist who lands a small part in the film The Killing Fields, and his crazy times in south-east Asia. Gray is part Woody Allen, part Hunter Thompson, and all class. Swimming to Cambodia is four hours long, to be performed in two sittings.  On the 25th anniversary of Gray’s breakthrough, and the 35th anniversary of Year Zero, Tom Doig will read the whole thing out. It’s really good.
Featuring: Tom Doig

Anywhere but here
1.00-2.00pm, Lodge of Research
Are you nearing the end of your ‘Emerging Artist’ phase? Are you getting ready to explode into the bigtime, or to get a haircut and a real job? Is there some kind of glorious middle ground? This panel takes a look at the journey of a career in the arts and asks what it means for an artist to emerge.
Featuring: Brenna Hobson (Company B Belvoir), Jane Gronow (Lowdown Magazine), Michal Imielski, Jane Grimley

Short and Shit
2.00-3.00pm, Lodge of Instruction
Playwrights! Dig out your worst mistakes and most embarrassing failures from the bottom of your script drawer and enter them into Crack’s Worst Short Play Competition. Directed by Laura Scrivano, our ace performance ensemble will attempt to breathe life into your ghastly mistakes and the most pompous, derivative, angst-ridden drivel will win A PRIZE!
Featuring: Laura Scrivano

Microperformance: An Audience of One
2.00-3.00pm, Lodge of Research
While mainstage theatres pack hundreds of punters into venues, a growing fraction of artists are producing shows in bathrooms and tents for one or two audiences at a time. This panel examines the world of microperformances, and asks whether small really is beautiful, or if it’s just cramped.
Featuring: Dan Koop, Rachel Roberts (Applespiel)

Melbourne Trashthetics
3.00-4.00pm, Lodge of Research
Melbourne is famously Australia’s home of the arts, yet its independent theatre-scene seems to have a greasy film over it that doesn’t wipe off. Join some of the shining stars of Melbourne’s glistening gutters as they discuss the city’s trash aesthetic: where did it come from and where will it lead?
Featuring: Declan Greene (Sisters Grimm), Bron Batten (Last Tuesday Society), Allison Wiltshire (Spill Collective)

The Review Review Review
3.00-4.00pm, Lodge of Instruction
In which our all-star panel of critics examine Australia’s newspapers, magazines, street press, radio stations and blogs to determine WHAT IS THE BEST ARTS PUBLICATION IN THE COUNTRY? Streetpress, glossy mag, blog, (god help us) RealTime? Join us and help rank them from best to worst. And yes, the winner will receive a Certificate of Merit in the mail.
Featuring: Na Milthorpe (Exhibitionist), Jane Gronow (Lowdown), Dee Jefferson (The Brag), Simon Binns (The Perf)

An Afternoon with HelloSquare
3.30-4.30pm, The Grand Lodge
Canberra based DIY label hellosQuare present a special afternoon of sounds as a part of the Crack Theatre program on Friday 1st October featuring Spartak and Perth’s Ghost Of 29 Megacycles. These artists from opposite sides of the country have been exploring individual strands of minimal electronic tones and sleepy guitar drift over the last few years and this performance will be a great opportunity to see their unique approaches to live music in the flesh.
Featuring: Spartak, The Ghost of 29 Megacycles

Blind, as you see it (2 of 2)
4.00-5.00pm, The Playhouse, Hunter Street
Blind, As You see It is a hybrid performance and exploration into the process of losing one’s sight. A visual, humourous yet delicate feast, the performance explores the memories of a 25 year old woman as she loses her vision. Inspired by Philippe Genty, Romeo Castellucci and Polish Plastic Theatre practitioners, this journey into darkness blends magic, original music, dance clowning, puppetry and visual (black art) theatre.
Featuring: Shh

Our Onliest (1 of 2)
4.00-5.00pm, Lodge of Instruction
Between the ocean and the shore, between the sea and the sky, between two people, between all people; these spaces hold secrets and truths. Our Onliest contains two intimate stories of what it is to be with, and what it is to be alone. Writer-performers Max Barker and Kylie Gral have directed each other in the development and performance of their own original works. As the two stories weave in and out of each other, ometimes interacting, sometimes performing solo, Our Onliest ebbs and flows, surges and crashes like the waves the stories find themselves in.
Featuring: Max Barker, Kylie Gral

Theatre for social change
4.00-5.00pm, Lodge of Research
Can you use theatre to make the world a better place? Even if you could, wouldn’t it be more effective to do it in some other way? Is theatre for community cultural development really just a surefire way to get funding? This panel looks at the ways in which the performing arts have been used to effect change in society, and whether the results really justify the expense.
Featuring: Brenna Hobson, Jane Gronow, Van Badham, Alex Kelly (Ngapartji Ngapartji)

Versificator Regis (2 of 2)
4.30-5.00pm, The Grand Lodge
Conceptual poetry/spoken word combined with controlled feedback manipulation and electronic compositions. You’d think being the 1st Australian poet laureate would dictate a sense of class. Cock the pistol and walk 10 paces. Now FEEDBACK.
Featuring: Nick McCorriston, Steve Smart

Do nipple tassles point the way to revolution?
5.00-6.00pm, Lodge of Research
Does live performance have a responsibility to shock audiences? Do burlesque, drag and striptease have any value beyond titillation? Is that value enough?  A lineup of practitioners explore the purpose of the smutty arts, and ask, as burlesque is dragged into the mainstream, who is left on the fringes?
Featuring: Declan Greene (Sisters Grimm), Raina Peterson (Ladies of Colour Agency), Margaret Mayhem

Hello You – A Kamikaze Cabaret (2 of 2)
5.00-6.00pm, Lodge of Instruction
Taking the audience on a joyous adventure through the obsessive and the compulsive, the dark and the ambiguous, the desirous and the fallible, Hello You celebrates murky lust and desire in a unique, playful and often moving way. Using a combination of covers, spoken word, circulated objects and original songs, Hello You spans the beginning, middle and end of a very particular performer/audience relationship. Weird, compelling, and endearingly homemade, Hello You offers a unique take on cabaret form.
Featuring: Emily Taylor, Quinn Stacpoole, Martin White

Faster Lady Godiva Faster! (2 of 2)
5.00-6.00pm, The Grand Lodge
Faster Lady Godiva Faster! is an absurdly painful dinner party-come-trainwreck reunion. A performantive dressage event of achivement and embarrassing failure. Three women, one horse and the will to ride all night through an avalanche of stories, poignant, pointless and perky. All is not lost, just temporarily misplaced.
Featuring: Jane Grimley, Nathalie Randall

If It Lives (1 of 2)
6.30-7.00pm, Lodge of Instruction
What does Jack Bonhom have in that box? Melbourne, 1866: a meeting of the Victorian Acclimatisation Society. This august and learned group of academics, land-owners and other men of Empire is dedicated to the civilisation of the Australian bush through the introduction of foreign species. Their motto: ‘If it lives, we want it.’ Before a packed audience of wealthy Society members and eminent guests, Bonhom prepares to unveil what may be the perfect introduced species… This razor-sharp farce demonstrates the law of unintended consequences, handily summed up in the colloquialism – “when you’re up to your arse in alligators it’s difficult to remember that your initial objective was to drain the swamp”.
Featuring: The Masters of Space and Time

The Surgical Sideshow
6.30-7.30pm, The Grand Lodge
A theatre of the demented.
Featuring: The Surgical Sideshow

Good Clean Fun
8.00-9.00pm, The Grand Lodge
Melbourne’s favourite circus pranksters the Caravan of Dooom return to Newcastle with their new show – Good Clean Fun! An absurdist, punk, sideshow-comedy like no other, this whirlwind of visions from a world gone mad promises to be a seminal show. Functioning through it’s absurdity and vicious sense of humour the show delivers an ironic critique of the entertainment industry’s complicity in a global society that is without vision or direction. Presented in an immersive, anarchic theatrical space which blurs the boundaries between audience and performer, the show closes with a frenzied mass communal dance – a rite of purging limitations and anxieties from the body through physical celebration.
Featuring: The Caravan of Dooom

The Last Tuesday Society
9.00-11.00pm, The Grand Lodge
The Last Tuesday Society regularly presents the creme de la creme of Melbourne’s underground performance scene and now we’re going national. Come watch as we conquer TINA with our patented brand of lo-fi, am-dram, theatrical mash up, rock n’ roll vaudeville. Your eyes won’t believe themselves. “The jackass of arty pub performance events…the well-dressed step-child of experimental theatre” – threethousand.com.au
Featuring: The Last Tuesday Society

Can I call Australia home?
11.00-11.30pm, Lodge of Instruction
Join Wildlife Hero Stevo on his quest to discover the deadliest creatures on Australia’s golden sandy shores.  Looking out for threats to man and beast, Stevo encounters an Indian Cobra which he is unable to cuddle.  Feeling lonely and lost, Stevo spots a boat stranded on the pristine beach. Crikey! Boat people! He goes to investigate these strange, dangerous creatures that all Aussie Pollies are so scared of.  With great trepidation, Stevo discovers one species of boat person more horrifying than any other single threat to Australia – Schappylle Scragg. Scragg’s convict heritage shatters Stevo’s idolatory of PM Gillard and unravels the truths about being a true-blue Australian.
Featuring: Dr. Margaret Mayhem aka Schappylle Scragg, Lian aka Stevo, Raja

Scary Slumberparty
11.30-after midnight…, Lodge of Instruction
Bring sleeping bags and lollies and prepare to hold a torch under your chin for an hour of SCARY GHOST STORIES, including highlights from R.L. Stine’s chilling GOOSEBUMPS series by Queensland’s BURN Collective. But there will be NO spin the bottle and NO truth or dare or your parents will be called.
Featuring: The BURN Collective, Youuuuuu….
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The Last Tuesday Society. Image by Leila Koren.

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Thursday 30 September

Saturday 2 October

Sunday 3 October

Shh is a company specialising in object/puppet works, as well as hybrid and interactive theatre. Shh has received many prestigious awards and has toured nationally as well as internationally, the highlight being a performance at the Sydney Opera House in 2005 with the self titled show: ‘Shh’. Click here to view footage from Blind, As You See It.
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THURSDAY SCHEDULE OF EVENTS

Swimming to Cambodia (1 of 2)
3.30-6.30pm, Lodge of Lounge
Spalding Gray was one of the twentieth century’s finest monologists, and Swimming to Cambodia (1985) is his masterpiece. It’s a rambling memoir about a neurotic New York performance artist who lands a small part in the film The Killing Fields, and his crazy times in south-east Asia. Gray is part Woody Allen, part Hunter Thompson, and all class. Swimming to Cambodia is four hours long, to be performed in two sittings.  On the 25th anniversary of Gray’s breakthrough, and the 35th anniversary of Year Zero, Tom Doig will read the whole thing out. It’s really good.
Featuring: Tom Doig

Study Hall (1 of 3)
3.00-5.30pm, The Grand Lodge
Every afternoon, Crack’s Grand Lodge will be open for you to come and CRAM. Drink wine, prep for all your exams, use our fine selection of arts and craft materials to construct a corsage for your Formal date or construct a set diorama for your end-of-semester assessable performance of Titus Andronicus, chat to our friendly careers advisor about how a career in the performing arts can lead to being dressed as fucking SANTA in the food court of a shopping mall in the MIDDLE OF SUMMER, drink more wine.
Featuring: You! And a bunch of scissors, crayons and CLAG.

Versificator Regis (1 of 2)
6.00-6.30pm, The Grand Lodge
Conceptual poetry/spoken word combined with controlled feedback manipulation and electronic compositions. You’d think being the 1st Australian poet laureate would dictate a sense of class. Cock the pistol and walk 10 paces. Now FEEDBACK.
Featuring: Nick McCorriston, Steve Smart

Hello You – A Kamikaze Cabaret (1 of 2)
6.30-7.30pm, Lodge of Instruction
Taking the audience on a joyous adventure through the obsessive and the compulsive, the dark and the ambiguous, the desirous and the fallible, Hello You celebrates murky lust and desire in a unique, playful and often moving way. Using a combination of covers, spoken word, circulated objects and original songs, Hello You spans the beginning, middle and end of a very particular performer/audience relationship. Weird, compelling, and endearingly homemade, Hello You offers a unique take on cabaret form.
Featuring: Emily Taylor, Quinn Stacpoole, Martin White

Candy Royalle: Love Spectacular (1 of 2)
7.00-8.00pm, The Grand Lodge
This one woman show by performance poet Candy Royalle explores the many different elements of love: Its trials, its tribulations, its joys and its pitfalls. How uncontrollable love is, how wonderful its moments and yet how damaging it can sometimes be. Using song, storytelling and of course poetry, this show brings together over 10 years of work by one of Sydney’s best loved performance poets. Prepare to run the gamut of emotions already known but expressed like never before…
Featuring: Candy Royalle

Blind, as you see it (1 of 2)
7.00-8.00pm, The Playhouse, Hunter Street
Blind, As You see It is a hybrid performance and exploration into the process of losing one’s sight. A visual, humourous yet delicate feast, the performance explores the memories of a 25 year old woman as she loses her vision. Inspired by Philippe Genty, Romeo Castellucci and Polish Plastic Theatre practitioners, this journey into darkness blends magic, original music, dance clowning, puppetry and visual (black art) theatre.

Faster Lady Godiva Faster! (1 of 2)
8.00-9.00pm, The Grand Lodge
Faster Lady Godiva Faster! is an absurdly painful dinner party-come-trainwreck reunion. A performantive dressage event of achivement and embarrassing failure. Three women, one horse and the will to ride all night through an avalanche of stories, poignant, pointless and perky. All is not lost, just temporarily misplaced.
Featuring: Jane Grimley, Nathalie Randall

Penis Tower Anti-Slam
9.00-11.00pm, The Grand Lodge
Newcastle’s own & only ‘free-for-all’, everybody-wins’ spoken word event – the notorious, much loved underground quasi poetry slam – began in the guts of a decommissioned tram in March ‘09. By September the once small, dedicated collective had grown into its new home, ARThive, & has been enjoying high-vibe monthly gatherings of uninhibited (often startling) self expression since. This slam is non-competitive, though there will be an exciting prize for the best in a category – left secret til the end.  All are welcome & everything goes, so bring along yr minds, voices, sign up, & get heard!
Featuring: Penis Tower Anti-Slam, YOU
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Image from Shh’s Blind, As You See It.

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Friday 1 October

Saturday 2 October

Sunday 3 October