Perth’s celebrators of the spoken word and music Ships in the Night are heading to the Fringe World festival in Perth for two nights of words and music – and it’s all taking place inside a yurt.
Conceived in collaboration with The Blue Room Theatre Summer Nights program and writer SJ Finch, Ships in the Grr over two separate evenings, Friday 12th and 19th February, will showcase a selection of talented musicians and highlight some of finest wordsmiths that Fringe World has to offer; including the international story telling darling Stuart Bowden.
The first of the two evenings on the 12th February will feature Scott Sandwich and Jacob Diamond.
Sandwich is a Sydney-based writer and performance poet creating rants, lectures and occasionally some awkward hip-hop. He also likes telling stories about dates, death and the apocalypse. His work has been featured nationally and in galleries around Finland, Norway, and Sweden. Last year, Sandwich co-wrote and performed in The Epic to sold out audiences.
Meanwhile Diamond was named Best Folk Act at the 2015 WA Music Awards and also scored first place in The Big Splash band competition. Diamond is an alt-folk oddity with careful attention to detail and has intrigued and beguiled crowds around the country with shimmering melodies and a general finesse since underage open mic-ing at the age of 16.
On the second evening, Friday 19th February, the Grr yurt will host Stuart Bowden and Sarah Tout.
Multi-award-winning theatre-maker Bowden recently returned to live in Melbourne after spending five years in London. This year he will also perform at Fringe World with Wil Greenway in The Lounge Room Confabulators and solo in Wilting in Reverse. Bowden’s previous shows Before Us and She Was Probably Not A Robot had Perth audiences absolutely rapt in 2015 and 2014 respectively.
Whilst Tout is a Perth-based guitarist and songwriter who has been dabbling in chilled, original, ‘folkgaze’ sounds and performing solo around Perth since 2010. Tout is also a vocalist in the Perth folk/pop group Simone and Girlfunkle.
Both evenings will see the artists perform words and music in response to the themes of apocalypse and rebirth, shipwreck and rescue, ecological collapse, and unfathomable repair.
So why the yurt? Steven James Finch began running the Grr Project, a nomadic creative residency, in 2015. Finch’s yurt, from inside The Blue Room Theatre’s Kaos Room, will play host to a number of different events as part of the award-winning Summer Nights program.
Outside of Fringe World, Ships in the Night is a quarterly gig that bring the work of Perth wordsmiths to life on stage alongside talented musicians in a fresh, intimate context.
Tickets cost $15 per person for each evening and can be purchased here.
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