“Every year we are just overwhelmed by the amount of artists that just want to be part of the festival,” enthuses Jayne Lovelock, the CEO of Melbourne Fringe Festival. It’s her second year working for the festival and despite the vast amount of responsibility she has taken on, Lovelock is handling the position with enthusiasm and care. “What it means is that we get a whole range of people wanting to try out new things and their works, that perhaps other festivals don’t get, which is really exciting.”
This revelation is unsurprising though. Melbourne Fringe Festival operates as an open-access festival, meaning that anyone who wishes to perform for the festival can do so. It’s because of this format that Melbourne Fringe Festival has established a prolific reputation in Melbourne’s arts sphere for presenting challenging and fascinating works that are reflective of the current trends in Melbourne’s arts community.
“A big part of what we do at Melbourne Fringe Festival is [see] how artists are working. We’re finding more and more that the lines are really blurred between art forms. We’re lucky [though], because we really become barometers for what’s happening in the arts scene because of our open-access nature, which means we get an array of works that are happening [right] now and are really, really relevant,” explains Lovelock enthusiastically. An apt example of this is the recently commissioned Digital Gardens and Digital Creatures.
It’s the first year these events have been introduced to the Melbourne Fringe Festival program and it sees a variety of filmmakers, animators and video artists collaborating to create two modern digital installations. Digital Creatures will see a selection of short films and animations projected onto the walls of the Little Creatures Dining Hall in Fitzroy, while Digital Gardens, which will be situated in Melbourne’s City Square and the City of Stonnington, will be an interactive pop-up playground that allows you to engage with performances you just saw on a digital medium.
“More and more artists are approaching the idea of a digital space and that of a virtual presence through social media; not just as something about publicity and a voice, but really as a part of their practice,” observes the Creative Producer. “We’re seeing more and more artists that [participate in] those spaces really influence and impact the kind of work that they’re making. As a festival, we try to really tune in and actually respond to what artists are currently making and what they’re showing us they’re interested in. So, for us, it was a really natural movement moving into a digital space.”
Despite Melbourne Fringe Festival’s hype during September and October each year, the festival operates all year round providing support in the lead to the festival — “we take over 7,000 calls with questions ranging from ‘how do I find a venue?’ to ‘do I need a publicist?’ to ‘do you think my show sits in the category of performance or comedy?’”— and Artist Development Programs to emerging and established artists all year round. Selected artists are also offered the chance to present their work on Melbourne Fringe on Tour, which takes successful Melbourne Fringe shows and tours them around regional and metropolitan Victoria. Most notably, however, is Melbourne Fringe Festival’s Awards program.
“Every year we have up to 80 – 100 judges seeing work throughout the festival, so it’s a large range of people that have a sophisticated insight into the arts scene [and] that have expertise in particular areas, in art and practice, and are really committed and engaged to seeing work and engaging with it critically,” says Lovelock, outlining how the Awards program works. “The awards program is something that we’ve developed over a long period of time and it’s really quite something valuable for artists; artists are really proud to be able to say they won a Melbourne Fringe Award” — and why not?
Slutmonster and Friends, a comedy/musical about two brothers who get lost in an erotic forest and meet a hyper-sexualised hermaphroditic monster, received a Highly Commended in Comedy award at Melbourne Fringe Festival last year and went on be nominated for a Golden Gibbo Award at this year’s Melbourne International Comedy Festival, re-establishing the adeptness of the critics that Melbourne Fringe Festival hires. “It’s something that we take very seriously because the artists take their work very seriously, so it’s important that we approach it with the same kind of care and thoughtfulness that the artists do.”
An impressive feat considering that Melbourne Fringe, on average, has over 300 events each year, therefore, it is no surprise that choosing events to attend is just as difficult for the festival CEO as it is for the public. “Ultimately what I say is: ‘Pick a show in a genre that you feel comfortable in, with a performer you know and go see it’,” advisers Jayne Lovelock. “’For every show that you feel comfortable with, pick something outside what you would normally choose. Go and see something that is in a genre you’re not familiar with or a performer you’ve never seen before. It really gets you in a space that challenges you and gets you to go and see new and different things.’”
BY AVRILLE BYLOK-COLLARD
