Event and Ticketing Details
Dates & Times
Tuesday 24 November
6:15 PM - 7:15 PM
Location
melbournefringe.com.au
For decades, we’ve heard seers of all stripes declaring that ‘everything is political’. In 2020, though, you might be forgiven for reading that with a note of exhaustion. The hopeful overtures of the open internet have well and truly descended into countless – endless – jibes and arguments. Cancelled columnists (and cartoonists) heave their laptops open to lament their newfound obscurity on national mastheads. Even people with vastly similar viewpoints are in furious disagreement over how to agree. It’s rough out here!
Enter the 2020 Melbourne Fringe Festival, and this year’s Fringe Debate: Should Culture Be Cancelled? Is the problem with cancel culture … culture? As arts funding makes like an Australian drought, and Covid-19 drains the dregs of self-reliance, we may yet find out. With six debaters, we hope you’ll join us for a silly, satirical debate about political correctness, impossible expectations and the worth of the arts. Is it time for the cultural industries to go all in – or chuck it all in?
Hosted by Jean Tong and Lou Wall, with Evelyn Araluen, Ash Flanders, Vidya Rajan, Moira Finucane, Stuart Daulman and Zoë Coombs Marr.
Presented in partnership with Melbourne Fringe.
Featuring
Lou Wall
Lou Wall is a multi-award winning comedian, writer, and composer. Since 2017, she has toured nationally with her black comedy cabaret A Dingo Ate My Baby (Malthouse Theatre, Melbourne International Comedy Festival 2017), It’s Not Me, It’s Lou (Melbourne Cabaret Festival’s Emerging Cabaret Artist Award; Best Cabaret Award nominee, Melbourne Fringe Festival 2017) and Romeo Is Not The Only Fruit (Green Room Award nominee; Brisbane Festival 2018; Malthouse Theatre, Melbourne International Comedy Festival 2018).
Lou has received Melbourne Fringe’s Best Performance Ensemble Award 2019 for Oh No! Satan Stole My Pineal Gland! and the Best Emerging Artist Award 2018 for Lou Wall’s Drag Race (Griffin Theatre 2019). Most recently, Lou was the musical director for An Evening with Zoe Coombs Marr at Adelaide Cabaret Festival and featured in ABC’s Reef Break alongside Poppy Montgomery and Vince Colosimo.
Flat-Earthers: The Musical has been shortlisted for the Jeanne Pratt Monash Musical Theatre Residency and for ABC’s Pitch iView and is currently in development through Arts Centre Melbourne and Griffin Theatre Company.
Jean Tong
Jean Tong is a writer, dramaturg and director. Jean is a 2020 Philip Parson’s Fellow and member of the Belvoir Writers’ Lab as well as the Development Assistant at Goalpost Pictures.
Jean’s work includes: Hungry Ghosts (Melbourne Theatre Company); Kill All Adults (VCA); and musical Romeo is Not the Only Fruit (Malthouse Theatre, MICF; Brisbane Festival) which was a Best Writing and Best Ensemble nominee (Green Room Awards 2019).
A reading of Flat Earthers: The Musical premiered at Midsumma 2020 supported by Arts Centre Melbourne, and is currently in development with Griffin Theatre Company. Jean is also the co-creator and co-writer alongside Lou Wall of Dramageddon, a podcast presented by Queen Victoria Women’s Centre and supported by Broadwave.
Jean was selected for Screen Australia’s Developing the Developer and Film Vic’s Plot Twist (2018). In 2020, Jean undertakes a Film Vic placement on New Gold Mountain with SBS and Goalpost Pictures.
Ash Flanders
Ash Flanders is an award-winning writer and performer. As well as acting for other people and creating his own solo work, he runs DIY queer theatre outfit Sisters Grimm with Declan Greene.
Evelyn Araluen
Evelyn Araluen is a Goorie and Koori poet, researcher, and co-editor of Overland Literary Journal.
Moira Finucane
Moira Finucane is a writer, director, performer and creator of volcanic and magic realist worlds … legendary salons, literary variety and intimate theatrical spectacles, internationally renowned for her arresting mix of provocation and entertainment.
Finucane has defined and redefined cabaret around the world - from Budapest to Tokyo, Hong Kong to Stockholm, Ljubljana to Sydney Opera House. She is the black matter of burlesque; a bower bird across artforms, pecking the eyes from culture to create indelible visions of humanity, joy, power and desire.
One half of the legendary House of Finucane & Smith, she has won 15 theatre awards including six Green Room Awards, the Australia Council’s coveted Theatre Fellowship and the once-in-a-lifetime Contribution to Cabaret Award.
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Zoë Coombs Marr
Zoë is a performer, writer, artist and comedian. She grew up in Grafton, where she and her best friend staged a musical instead of going to schoolies week. In 2006 she won the National Poetry Slam Championships under ...
Vidya Rajan
Vidya Rajan is a writer and performer currently based in Australia working across screenwriting, theatre, comedy, and digital space.
A former writer-in-residence at the Malthouse Theatre, graduate of the VCA, and a recipient of Screen Australia’s Developer Program, her work has often been described as surreal, inventive, and darkly funny.
Recently, her sketch writing as part of the The Feed (SBS) won the 2022 AWGIE award for Best Comedy Writing, and her digital interactive experience In Search of Lost Scroll took home Best Experimental Artwork at the 2022 Melbourne Fringe awards and was shortlisted for the International New Media Writing Prize.
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Stuart Daulman
Born in a small hut at the foot of a tall, ominous mountain, Stu has been performing comedy since the Middle Ages. His live show credits include opening for Moses at Mount Sinai, Melbourne International Comedy Festival for the last 12 years, Splendour in the Grass and Falls Festival. Stuart has also been seen on the telly on such shows as Rosehaven, The Weekly with Charlie Pickering, Hamish and Andy’s True Story, Utopia and award-winning sketch comedy show Fancy Boy.
In 2018 he received the Moosehead Award with his show, Death of a Daulman. His latest show Masterclass was performed at Melbourne Town Hall as part of the 2019 Melbourne International Comedy Festival and was widely critically acclaimed. 2020 has seen Stu complete a Masters of Screenwriting degree at the Victorian College of Arts, and development work start on a couple of new comedy projects.
He is a Gemini.