Fringe Debate: Break the Internet

Marcus is an artist living in Naarm, originally from Lutruwita. He makes experimental contemporary performance that combines the body, text, sound design and meme-adjacent media. His work uses the relationship between audience and performer as a site for bizarre new encounters, often involving schisms in language, parafictional world-building and bad dancing. Increasingly, his work considers performance as a potential tool for 'performing the internet'. His work is for anybody, not everybody.

His recent works The Crying Room and Subliminal Massage both received multiple awards, and he is currently developing a major new project with Harriet Gillies. He has collaborated in Australia and internationally with many renowned artists and companies including Michael Portnoy, Xavier Le Roy, Kaldor Public Art Projects, Hermann Nitsch, Pan Pan, Willoh S. Weilland, Malthouse Theatre, Belvoir Street Theatre, Mona Foma, Dark Mofo, Tim Crouch, Pony Express, Charles & Zak, House of Vnholy, Terrapin, Josh Foley, Shian Law, Geoffry Watson and Mark Wilson. His writing has been published by This Container and Malthouse Engine Room Blog. He has received fellowships from the Ian Potter Cultural Trust and Mike Walsh Foundation, and in 2021 is excited to be mentored by Aphids as part of their SUPERMASSIVE program and Experimenta.

Cher Tan is an essayist and critic. Her work has appeared in the Sydney Review of Books, Hyperallergic, Catapult, The Age, Disclaimer Journal, Cordite Poetry Review and Overland, amongst many others. She is an editor at Liminal and ...

Miss Cairo has been an advocate in the performing arts industry for her queer, trans fam and communities of colour and is The Director of The People of Cabaret. She has a strong focus on mental health and well-being, and is committed to ensuring that artists find their self worth and value in the work they produce.

Miss Cairo has travelled extensively around the world and has trained in many different art forms: cabaret, burlesque, singing, drag, physical theatre, mask and mime, dance, writing, wig making, costume design/making - to name but a few skills! Her varying skills have helped her develop a thoughtful approach to live performance in regard to responding to, and being sensitive to, audiences' reactions. Miss Cairo developed a strong sense of improvisational techniques in her early years.

Sinéad Stubbins is a Melbourne-based writer, editor and cultural critic, and the author of In My Defence, I Have No Defence. She made her name writing TV recaps for Junkee on shows such as The Bachelor and Game of Thrones, and she’s also on the writing team for The Weekly with Charlie Pickering on the ABC. She has written for The Guardian, The Saturday Paper, frankie, The Big Issue, New York Magazine and many other publications.

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.

Archie is a young director based in Australia. He makes stylised absurd comedies with heart. Archie works in close collaboration with his partner and producer Alicia Easaw-Mamutil and the pair strive to make ambitious, stylised, irreverent films.

Archie’s most recent short film The End, The Beginning had much success in Australia and overseas, most notably winning the Award for Best Original Music at Flickerfest 2021. Archie is a philosophy major and wrote his Masters thesis on absurdity and existentialism in comedic film making.

He has a Bachelors Degree from the Australian National University majoring in philosophy and has graduated from the Masters of Directing at The Australian Film Television and Radio School. Archie is currently writing in the third person in an effort to trick you into thinking that there might be a team of interns working on his bio... there is not.

Alicia has been producing absurd comedies for close to a decade. She works in film but is deeply influenced by theatre. She creates warm but fiercely passionate work environments. She picks her crew carefully and prefers to work with friends.

In recent years Alicia has chosen to work exclusively with her partner and Director, Archie Chew. Their films are defined by textural and colourful production design, orchestration of movement and music, and comically existential stories. They tell stories that compel audiences to stop wasting their lives, define their passions and pursue them relentlessly. Alicia has a Masters of Arts Screen: Producing, from the national film school - AFTRS, where she wrote a thesis on the need for auteur producing in comedy filmmaking. It was not received well. Regardless, she has put her thesis to practice and her work has been featured in several film festivals internationally, particularly in Sweden. In Australia, her work is received warmly too, with selections at Sydney Film Festival, St Kilda Film Festival, Melbourne Queer Film Festival and two Academy Accredited wins at Flickerfest. In addition to this, she has assisted a variety of Producers including Judi Levine and Lizzette Atkins. They loved her thesis.