Abrahams says he couldn’t be happier captaining Fringe 2015. “I see a great future for the Melbourne Fringe,” he tells Beat. “I’ve got lots of big plans. My job this year is essentially to deliver the festival that Jayne (Lovelock, last year’s CEO) put together before she left.” Abrahams says he’s asking big questions of the Melbourne Fringe, wondering about things like the actual meaning of ‘Fringe’? “What are we on the Fringe of?” he asks out loud. “Fringe should be about voices we don’t hear enough of, and I’m keen to increase the diversity of Fringe – to this end we have established a diversity scholarship scheme to hear different viewpoints.” Fringe has come a long way from a festival devoted to performance and Abrahams is keen to see more visual artistic activity taking place in Fringe, preferably involving Melbourne’s more prominent buildings. “My interest is in large-scale public artwork,” Abrahams continues. “What is it to be a citizen of Melbourne? How can we discover and rediscover our city via our public buildings? We can start to answer those questions with an artistic take, with a beautiful art project.”
Fringe has always been a platform for young and emerging artists, Abrahams says, but he wants to see established artists come back to Fringe with more experimental works, with ideas that they want to try out, make art for art’s sake. “Fringe is for independent artists at all stages of their careers. Fringe is about discovery – audience discovery of artists and artists’ discovery of themselves; we want to see artists discover new aspects to their artistic practices. We want to see established artists come back to Fringe and try something new.” He notes that there is a growing trend, especially amongst very successful comedians, to return to Fringe with a show in preparation for next year’s MICF. “One increase is in well-known comedians putting on shows in Fringe – from my perspective that’s great. You can spend one afternoon or evening and go from seeing a free exhibition of public art to the Fringe Hub, see a show staged in the back seat of a car or something, then see a mainstream comedian, and do all of that in four hours or so – that’s the joy of Melbourne Fringe.”
Abrahams talks about the core values of Fringe as being access, inclusivity, participation and democracy. “You can get no more democratic than an open access festival. So how can we reflect that?” Beat wonders how much of this year’s Fringe is Abrahams’s doing. “The structure is all set up,” he answers. “My involvement has been curating within those structures, deciding what goes in them, to have a go at playing and deciding in that space, and meanwhile dream up things for next year. I’ve been lucky, I’ve inherited a strong festival, it shifts and changes…we evolve what we do, bit by bit.” Has he noticed any particular trends in performances or events this year? “There’s an increase in live art and theatre, and an increase in the breakdown of traditional art forms, we’re seeing a lot more participatory work, of hands on immersive participatory experiences involving sensory overload, these shows are designed with that in mind. There is more and more engagement with participants in shorter works. This is a reflection of our shorter attention spans and our changing cycles of attention. At Fringe we can see durational works of 17 hours, or something can go on for 23 minutes. Fringe is a process of discovery: we have a pretty dynamic Fringe Club program this year featuring live-art participatory events, like The Side Part and the Wilin Warriors – they do a beautiful job; there’s Uncommon Places, where we have commissioned artists to make site specific works in 18 spaces – you can see these beautiful interesting artworks across Melbourne, and there are maps you can download, we’ve got artists from 15 different countries, and this year is the first time we’ve had a curated kids’ program at the Fringe Hub.”
Abrahams says the first thing he did when he moved into his Fringe office was to go through decades of old Fringe Festival programs from about 1994. “Everyone who’s anybody has come through Fringe; they’ve all performed in Fringe. It’s astounding. The Melbourne Fringe Festival is such an amazing strong brand. Our philosophy is that anyone can do anything in Fringe.”
BY LIZA DEZFOULI
