Adelaide Festival ends

My friend R and I have been swapping text messages today. It started off with me asking how her scrabble stall went at Barrio. I didn’t even brave the hour long queues this year. Last year I went twice, first by queuing for an hour without a winter jacket, second time when I saw the Michael Rother performance. When I saw that this year’s electronic music events were at the Queens Theatre instead, I snubbed them (thinking about the performers I missed at the festival: severed heads, television,van dyke parks, laurie anderson... ouch). 

Pete viewed the you tube footage links on the festival website, initially thought the program looked amateurish, changed his mind, went on the very last night of the Festival to attend, massive regrets about all the awesome gigs he’d missed out on. I tried to console him by pointing out he’s the father of a young kid, doesn’t get out much anymore, all he does is sound engineer everyone else's music or occasionally perform at midnight.... 

Anyway. My friend was invited to present a scrabble stand as part of Barrio on Sunday 10th March, said it went well, but no new recruits for scrabble YET. I was well pleased to hear it was possible to sleep over at Barrio on the final night by donating $100 to Mission Australia, love that sort of initiative. Have also been loving the festival reviews from The Guardian website, living vicariously (confessed to Pete that my shit-house experience with Women of Letters (changed at last minute to “People of Letters”, including two guys from Big Brother) put me off attending anything ever again at the Fringe Festival which is LAME, I know. I’m still avoiding theatre shows. 

I did manage to put my finger on what was annoying me so much... I’d been seeing productions that were professional in standard, but essentially a re-staging and relocation of a successful play, to showcase local egos. Whilst I hate the term “theatre maker”, I appreciate the crafting of a new theatrical experience, a reworking of a text, the creation of a performance that builds on the audience’s reaction or seeks to influence them , and I'm not getting that from plays, only music. At Writers Week I enjoyed the "Tasmania" Griffith Review panel session, which I attended with Pen. They came up with some fine analysis of the island culture, the good and bad, aligned with how I remembered my two years there. 

I vainly tried to get the kid interested in the kids workshops, and went with my husband to see Glenn Hansard and The Frames. How relieved was I when he appeared on stage and TOOK OFF HIS BEANIE. Had he worn it for his performance, I would have hated him. I have an unreasonable dislike of men wearing beanies in situations which do not require a beanie (warm autumn weather in Adelaide in March; any indoors event-this was both). This dislike is unreasonable, given that when the kid was a bald baby I was always getting him to wear a beanie including in warm autumn weather in Adelaide in march and any indoors event). 

Glenn Hansard and the Frames were great in a wholly reliable way, but I think that’s okay, when its musicians that you like, and have not yet had a chance to see perform. Given that tickets cost $99 per head, the crowd was filled with over 40s and I spotted at least two doctors in the crowd, including our favourite doctor Chris, the only person who was helpful during our pregnancy ("Are you sure" he kept asking when we told him we were babysitting our nephews and let them go to the WCH playground unsupervised,, "Yeah, they'll go to the ED if they have any problems" I said, but maybe that was laissez faire of me). There were also a lot of pregnant women, which made me wonder if there were actually lots of them, or I’m just in noticing mode. I guess at any given time, someone is pregnant. The band kept playing encores and then performed unplugged in the stalls and outside in the side street.