Big West Festival: first weekend

If you just went to arts festivals in Melbourne, you’d still miss far too much. 2015 is the tenth Big West Festival. This biennial multi-artform, multicultural festival runs for nine days in and around fabulous Footscray in Melbourne’s west. With 70 events, most of which are free, there’s still plenty to see before finishes on Saturday. Tennessee Mynott-Rudland was there last weekend.

Dwelling
Jessica Wilson
22 November 2015

You might expect open-air theatre on an unprecedentedly cold evening to be unpleasant but this production, about women and children seeking shelter, was so capturing that I barely noticed the cold.

Silent performances accompanied by gorgeous sound design and stunning projection, Dwelling had it all. Highlights included the arresting animation, live guitar ensemble and stunning production design. At once hopeful and horrifying, this production hits home with those who have ever felt unsafe in their own place of residence.

Neighbours
This Side of the Tracks (Kerensa Diball & Yuhui Ng-Rodriguez)
22 November 2015

 

You know you’re in for a great time when you start the performance in a tiny boxing gym accompanied by two state champion boxers.

More guided walking tour than theatrical performance, Neighbours takes you through public spaces and the private homes of Nicholson Street residents as perform daily rituals and tell their personal and community histories.

Watch the state champion boxers in their element; follow a young man on his hunt for hipster youths; be welcomed into family homes (take a lemon or two as you go) and don’t forget to look around – installations large and small can be found on your way.

Today these are your neighbours and, at the end of it all, Footscray feels a little more like home.

 

Factory Reset
Efren Pamilacan
21 November 2015

A concrete car park thumps with bass, lights flashing with every beat. Bodies move, dancing as the projected imagery plays across their skin.

Did you grow up thinking that Melbourne’s West was a wasteland? Well, so did the friends of Efren Pamilacan Jr. and Dennis Pennalligen, both Footscray born and bred. But over the years their friends have begun to move to this side of the river, joining the western community that has become a more transnational space where new identities are formed than industrial wasteland.

An exploration of self and community in Melbourne’s West, Factory Reset breaks down and builds up community and personal identities through hip-hop, music and visual projections.

An almost dreamlike sequence of dances sucks you in and leaves you breathless.

This Is Not A Protest
21 November 2015

“This is not a protest. This is a protest. This is not a protest.”

Men and women in fluoro vests and blue disposable gloves hand out numbered placards and lead the audience through the streets of Footscray to the HOUSE. We will be processed shortly.

Allotted to several waiting rooms, we meet a cheesy game show host awarding us prize-winning getaways to Christmas Island and Nauru, processing officers, a refugee businesswoman struggling to get employed and a desperate doctor-in-training with no housing or education rights beseeching the audience members for help.

Irony meets heart-wrenching reality in This Is Not A Protest. The audience is condescended, interrogated, implored and fearlessly challenged. This may not a protest but this is the kind of show that punches you right in the gut.