We're doing a second festival - introducing VCR Fest

VCR Fest (Virtual Common Rooms Festival) will take over your screens 31 July – 2 August, bringing Fringe Common Rooms to life online while we’re closed to the public.

VCR Fest has inclusive, ground-breaking performances; exciting and inspiring conversations; fresh and fun live music; and some seriously sweaty dance parties where everyone is welcome. It’s designed to recreate the live experience of attending a show, with a ‘digital foyer’ where you can debrief with other attendees and get event recommendations from other artists.

Some of the program will be live-streamed direct from Fringe Common Rooms at Trades Hall (with hygiene and distancing measures in place for artists and staff, ovbs) and others will beam in from other locations in Melbourne, interstate and even New York.

Award-winning comedian Zoë Coombs Marr will present Born Slippy – a brand-new work created especially for VCR Fest. Zoë says it’s “a little bit lecture, a little bit comedy, drizzled with stream of consciousness, and with a complex mouthfeel. Stop trying to understand and just go with it.”

Melbourne-based queer noise-pop musicians Cry Club will bring their empowering anthems to your screen, with their punchy vocals and shoe-gazing guitars bound to inspire a loungeroom dancefloor at yours.

First Nations artist Joel Bray will present Biladurang 2.0 live from a hotel in Melbourne. A digital version of the multi award-winning Fringe hit loosely based on the traditional Wiradjuri story of the platypus, it’s physical, tender, funny and dark.

And in a very special event, the iconic and enchanting New York basement piano bar (and underground movement) Marie’s Crisis will perform live from the West Village for its first Australian live stream singalong performance.

There’s a selection of workshops and panel events including Art x Access: is digital art here to stay?, hosted by Carly Findlay, with guests including king of iso cooking Nat from ‘Nats What I Reckon’, Erin Kyan and more – they’ll be talking about access in arts in the context of COVID-19.

As Simon Abrahams, our Creative Director and CEO says “we are responding to an urgent need to create, present and consume art, and so that means making two festivals this year. VCR Fest celebrates the values of our home at Trades Hall – solidarity, rebellion and collective actions – things we need now, more than ever.”

Check out the full program here – hope to ‘see’ you there!