THE INDEPENDENTS: FESTIVAL OF NEW WORKS. - Canberra Theatre Centre Courtyard Studio.

 

The Independents: Festival of New Works – Program 1

Canberra Theatre Centre Courtyard Studio – October 9 - 11, 2026.                  

 Week 1 - Reviewed by BILL STEPHENS.

Promising a celebration of bold theatre, dance and storytelling from some of the country’s most exciting independent artists, this festival presented by the Canberra Theatre Centre offers four shows from the Sydney Fringe Festival, two being works by local artists and creatives.

The festival runs over two weeks with two shows being presented in tandem in the same venue each week.

Mikelangelo in the Belly of the Whale.

  Co-created by Michael Simic and Tracy Bourne and performed by Michael Simic.

Croation-Australian singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and performer, Michael Simic and his alter ego, Mikelangelo, are no strangers to Canberra audiences, having built up a loyal local and International following over the years both with his band, the Black Sea Gentlemen, and as a solo performer. Indeed, his Canberra performances last year saw him celebrated as The Canberra City News 2025 Artist of the Year.

This solo show, also first seen in 2025, is perhaps his bravest and most personal offering to date, delving as it does into his relationship with his father, and the challenges of his own fatherhood while maintaining are peripatetic career as an entertainer.

Beginning on familiar ground with Simic as Mikelangelo in storyteller mode, accompanying himself on accordion, exhorting his audience to join him on an adventure for which they need to learn some three-part interpolations to a jolly sea shanty ominously entitled “The Eye of the Storm”.

A skilled storyteller and practised charmer, when a line in another shanty, “The Art of Consumption” reminds Simic of his father, he suddenly drops his alter ego, to dwell on his own childhood, specifically, his relationship with his father, leading to thoughts of his own efforts at being a good father and husband.  

It is in this section that his show is at its most captivating and compelling. But just as revelations threaten to become too personal, Mikelangelo returns, along with a storm, a giant squid and a sperm whale, which swallows Mikelangelo.

In the whale’s belly, Simic argues with Mikelangelo. They duel. Simic sings “The Man You Want to Be”, strips off most of his clothes just as the whale decides to eject him through its sphincter, from which he emerges covered in silver glitter.  

But at this performance, the lights came up too quickly, revealing Simic frantically covering himself in silver gel, forcing him to drop all pretence of acting, and forever the entertainer, rescue the performance with an awesome display of charm and showmanship.

For all its strengths, Mikelangelo in the Belly of the Whale remains a promising work-in- progress with unsolved challenges for both performer and director.

ICHOR  - Directed by John Fabry for Treachery of Images (TOI).

Ichor is an astonishing physical theatre work performed by John Fabry together with Matteo Panucci, Bayley Prendergast, Anthony King and Callum Stephens.

As each took the stage, initially costumed in drab brown leather and cloth, their bodies smeared with ash, the suggestion was of primordial, neanderthal creatures, who crouched, hissed, snarled and grunted ominously at each other, in an effort to communicate and socialise, but without established rules to guide them as to how to proceed.

During the process, they discard their outer coverings to impress each other by indulging in hyper-masculine behaviour, posing, pushing and shoving in tightly choreographed episodes.

The discovery of wooden staffs enables them to communicate with rhythmic patterns until one breaks away from the group to sit alone. When another joins him and attempts physical contact, his efforts are roughly rebuffed, to the surprise of both.

For most of the work, performing in brief black trunks and kneepads, the five performers displayed super-fit bodies, and enviable endurance, as they performed Fabray’s physical demanding choreography for a fascinating original work that explores ideas of male identity, conformity and self-acceptance making it a neat pairing with Michael Simic’s work which tackled similar topics in a very different way.

The programming for the second week of the Festival suggests that the presentations on offer will explore similar topics from a female perspective.

                                                               Images provided.



                           This review also published in AUSTRALIAN ARTS REVIEW.