Mere Mortals

Download the Season 2, 2018 program in PDF format or as a word document.

We mere mortals all eventually return to where we began. The prospect can be frightening – and time is ticking! We each experience our lives, our plans, our contributions and our survival uniquely. In Season 2, 2018, we explore what it means to be subjects, to watch the clock, think of the future, and care for each other when the time comes.

First up, heads will roll when we meet two archetypes from different ends of the economic spectrum: the queen, in Melanie Jame Wolf’s HIGHNESS; and in Crackers n Dip with Chase n Toey, Carly Sheppard’s charming bouffon, Chase from Frankston. Jo Lloyd’s OVERTURE nods to both the classical and the contemporary; and one step at a time like this’s Carnival of Futures introduces expert oracles: futurists!

This year’s Refuge proliferates with artworks and experiences focused on how we live through epidemics. Arts House becomes a ‘nerve centre’ for four days as we explore how communities prepare, respond and forecast the survival of disease.

Later in the season we ask you to expand your idea of how we celebrate our short and precious lives. Firstly, we’re discombobulated by a fugue – both musically and psychologically – with Kate Neal and Sal Cooper, and explore ageing and death in Ridiculusmus’s ‘seriously funny’ Die! Die! Die! Old People Die!. With Triage Live Art Collective we consider vulnerability and care in The Infirmary; while The Director teams creator Lara Thoms with a former funeral director, in a work about the ceremonies we all wish we could create. We also host Supper Club: The C-Word, exploring cancer with Dan Koop and collaborators from the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre; take part in a vigil and wake with death-literate artist, Peta Murray; and experience Daniel Jenatsch’s multimedia installation about ‘a mysterious illness’ that saw scores of people taken to hospital from Melbourne Airport.

To close out the year we finally get to see Cigdem Aydemir’s The New National Sport, slated for the Festival of Live Art but unfairly washed-out!

Walk towards the light with us as we lead you through a serious, wonderful and playful season.—

Josh Wright
Acting Artistic Director