Worlds Apart: Melbourne Fringe Festival inspires artists across the globe

The Melbourne Fringe Festival is in its 29th year in 2011, and will be farewelling its 20s in appropriate style, with a mixed-bag of fresh, contemporary and daring work. Amongst its offerings is a cross-discipline, cross-country performance piece, No Matter Where You Go, There You Are. Erin James spoke to writer and performer Jennifer Williams to find out more about this intriguing show…

 The Melbourne Fringe Festival is in its 29th year in 2011, and will be farewelling its 20s in appropriate style, with a mixed-bag of fresh, contemporary and daring work. Amongst its offerings is a cross-discipline, cross-country performance piece, No Matter Where You Go, There You Are. Erin James spoke to writer and performer Jennifer Williams to find out more about this intriguing show… 
When Jennifer Williams gets on Skype to chat about her Melbourne Fringe production, she’s bleary-eyed and yawning. ‘What time is it over there?’ She asks. Its 4pm AEST, but Williams isn’t on AEST, she is currently living and working in Ireland, and she’s only just woken up. (see picture, above!)
What is a person in the final preparations for a Melbourne Fringe show, doing on the other side of the globe? A good question, Williams concedes, one that she asks herself regularly and which also forms the central core of her show, No Matter Where You Go, There You Are: an exploration into the world’s fascination with travel, migration and belonging.  At the Melbourne Fringe Festival this month, Williams’ innovative, multimedia production will feature two actors concurrently sharing stories of relocation – one via video and one live onstage – in a conversation which takes place between the two mediums (stage and film).  The premise of the show, conceived and written by Williams, is a subject which Williams is intimately familiar, having spent a great deal of her childhood travelling the globe with her family.  “I blame my Dad for my itchy feet. If he complains about me constantly packing up and leaving the country, I remind him that was how I grew up,” she laughs.   Her decision to move to Ireland earlier this year was an impulsive one made over several glasses of wine, but thankfully has served as the foundation for what promises to be an intriguing show. “I had a few ideas about shows I wanted to make, one of which was about the experience of moving to Ireland, a country in the middle of an economic meltdown”, she explained.   Williams is not one to sit back and wait for opportunities to find her. Since graduating from Actors Centre Australia in 2009, she has written, performed and produced her own one-woman show about the life of Jane Austen, All is Safe with a Lady Engaged, and performed and co-produced Bronte (about the lives of the Bronte sisters) as part of ATYP’s 2010 Under the Wharf program. Determined to create theatre in Ireland, she set about making contacts before even leaving Australia via the one and only social networking tool, Facebook.  “Through Facebook, of all places, I found an artistic online community called ‘Mutant Space’, which is a directory of creative people in Ireland, and all over the world. You list your skills and experience and then others can contact you. I tracked down a couple of directors and asked them if they were interested in making theatre with me. One of them was”, Williams told AussieTheatre.com.  Finding Irish director, Yvonne Coughlan, turned out to be hugely inspiring. “She took my idea for a show and just exploded it. She said, hey, I know this Irish actor and writer who has just moved to Melbourne. What if we combined her story with yours? Suddenly the show wasn’t just about me and Ireland, it was about all people who pack up and move, looking for excitement, adventure, looking for something better”, Williams explains. 
Williams and Irish performer, Cathie Clinton, (pictured, left) started an email correspondence, through which they got to know each other.  “Even at the start, we had little connections, things in common. Like, when we first moved, we both became convinced we were pregnant, which is kind of a neat metaphor for the start of a new life in a new country”, laughs Williams. 
Due to the honesty of the performers during this email exchange, the show has developed into something highly personal and intimate, a ‘warts and all’ stickybeak into the migrant experience.  “There are some things I say in the show I’m not sure I want my Dad to hear. But, our director insists that’s the most interesting stuff,” Williams admits. 
For the Melbourne Fringe, Cathie Clinton will be performing live, interacting with Williams through a pre-recorded video. But that’s not the end of the show, not even close. “We’ll then be filming Cathie’s performance, and that will be brought back to Ireland for me to use at the Wexford Fringe Festival. So, its really like a conversation, as my half of the show will change in response to what Cathie performs and writes”, she explains. 
Both women have big ambitions for the project: “We’ve got another performer in Alabama who is keen to be involved, so if things go well, we’re thinking we could take it to the 2012 Adelaide Fringe and a festival in Alabama. That would be really exciting.”  
But whilst they do have one eye on the future, at the moment its all about the Melbourne Fringe.  No Matter Where You Go There You Are opens on September 26th, 2011 at the Clifton Creative Arts Centre, Richmond, with Jennifer Williams and Cathie Clinton.  For more information about this piece, visit www.melbournefringe.com.au