Sydney Fringe: Little Fictions

Olivia Watson
8th Sep 2016

Monthly short story night Little Fictions is going weekly for the month of September, with a string of special shows as part of the Sydney Fringe Festival.

Every Monday night in September, in a side room of the gorgeous Knox Street Bar, Little Fictions will put on a night of stories written by writers, and performed by performers. 

Each night has a central theme around which the stories are formed. Scoop attended the first Sydney Fringe event, which saw ten short stories and pieces of microfiction (very short stories) performed under the title theme of "Vaginal Spray".

The event description promised the following:

If you find ads for intimate feminine products offensive, you’ll love this show. We have smelly women, hairy women and women who write love-notes to their vibrators. There is a guy struggling to understand his girlfriend’s head-shaving grief over the death of poet, Dorothy Porter. And a terminally-ill nun shocks her elderly companion by searching the male escort ads. We take a fresh look at Mona Lisa and a long hard look at paedophile priests

Not deterred by the intense title, it was a sold out crowd who attended for the night of feminist tales (for women and men). 

We heard a series of microfiction from local writer Susan McCreery, who was present at the event, and a bittersweet tale of a nun's struggle with identity and sexuality in her final months of life, written by Felicity Volk.

At the most harrowing point of the night, performer Lauren Hamilton Neill delivered with grace a confronting tale of abuse, and the Little Fictions team were good to offer a very clear trigger warning before this piece was read. A few well timed lighter, shorter pieces were to follow, to gently soften the mood once again.

Miles Franklin 2016 winner Alex Patric was featured with his deliciously worded study of a woman's all consuming obsession with words and fiction, "The Ink On Her Lips", which was read by Little Fiction's regular MC, Adam Norris. The words of this piece were divine - Patric is surely a writer to look up for lovers of inventive manipulation of language.

An absolute highlight of Little Fictions is how they let the writers write and the performers perform. This logical creative collaboration enables each to do what they do best and is definitely a strength of the event.

Coming up for the rest of the Little Fictions Sydney Fringe program are nights called "The Great Unknown", "Sydney Stories" and "Crime Scenes".

Little Fictions is at Knox Street Bar, Chippendale, 7pm every Monday in September for the Sydney Fringe Festival ($15).

Further information on the upcoming shows and their ongoing monthly events can be found in the Sydney Scoop calendar or on the Little Fictions Facebook page. Little Fictions is presented by Spineless Wonders.

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21 Shepherd Street
Chippendale
+61 2 8970 6443

Tue – Wed 4pm – 10pm

Thu – Sat 4pm – midnight

 

http:/www.knoxstreetbar.com