A weekend in Natimuk part 1

Logos | 03/11/2009 - 11:12

I've just got back from a long weekend in Natimuk a small town (527 people) about 25 kilometres from Horsham on the Wimmera Highway. It's about a five hour drive from Adelaide across some really boring territory.
Anyway, why was I there and why am I telling you this?
Well, every two years Natimuk has the Nati Frinj an Arts Festival held over a weekend. I think it's more or less this weekend every two years.
Natimuk is an odd place, its very close to Mount Arapiles which is apparently one of the finest climbing venues in the world featuring everything from the equivalent of nursery slopes to truly magnificent and challenging climbs. I'm not a rock climber so I am prepared to take their word for that. Anyway the town has a group of residents who live there because of the climbing, they also (logically enough) have a group of residents who work in agriculture or who are retired farmers etc. For the purposes of this article however there is the local artists community. Thriving and containing some very well known Australian visual artists. Once again not really my area. But they decided to have a festival every two years. This was (depending on who you talk to) either the third or the fourth and I was there because Theatre Group Gumbo, a Japanese company that I work with, went there for very personal reasons I won't go into.
The festival is largely focused on visual arts and while I didn't see all the exhibitions the ones me and my partner looked at were all very good (sometimes a little deep for me I have to admit). We saw an amazing performer called (I think) Tony Yap who has developed a dance form starting from Butoh and then going off into many interesting areas. It was a collaboration with a double bass player (no name I'm sorry) and a local artist called Anthony Pelchen who was Gumbo's connection with the Festival.
We also met Tubby the Robot. Do catch up with this guy if he comes to a shopping centre or other venue near you, especially in the Eastern States as he is great. Fantastic character well loved by the kiddies.
To my experience.
We were booked to perform in the Soldiers Memorial Hall. It was a very hot weekend and of course there was no AC. There was three phase but no in house lighting at all. I knew that so I took a car load and set it up myself.
We got in at 9.00am on the Friday with our first performance at 9.30pm Friday night. 12 hours, no problems I thought.
It took me and my ever faithful sidekick (my partner Jo) two hours or a bit more to set up the small rig I had brought, focus (no real blackout which made that interesting)and plot some states into the board. We had to play hunt the power point for a while to find different circuits to power some of my gear and the PA.
The performers arrived very timely just as we finished setting up. It's now 11.30am. The first rain storm occurred about now. Yep the first, more later.
Gumbo's style is very physical and very stylised and takes some shaking down into new spaces, They need a fair amount of time to work this out in the area they need to perform in,kinda like dance performers in weird spaces. This can take some time and during the three or four hours this was going on the storms gradually got longer and louder.
I basically busk Gumbos' shows from a preset range of scenes. This is important because two shows are rarely identical and they play off the audience so much that sometimes they go off in a totally improvised direction and I need to go with them. I mention this because of an event that I will soon describe.
Mean while Ian (sound guy) and I sat and waited. Eventually about 3.30pm we were given the cuts and the additions to the script and were told a run through, no costumes would start at 4.00.
It did, more or less. We had been offered some hot soup and the guys went to get some which held us up a bit.
So off we went.
The storms by this time were very close and very loud and very very wet and about 40 minutes into the run a huge clap of thunder went off, one of my lights went out and one of the actors yelled "It's smoking."
It was. It was a brand new Icolour 4, never used before. I unplugged it and on we went using the one remaining Icolour and the lights on stands.
Anyway, we finished the run through and a break was announced and we started (or were due to start) the dress rehearsal at 7.00pm.
At 6.45pm the lights went out.
All over town.
In fact everywhere within a 60 mile radius.
Ooops.

I will finish the story later as I now have to go out. ...

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Part 2

Author: Logos
Date: 04/11/2009 - 07:54

So anyway, there we were standing in a very hot very humid quite dark hall with no power.
There was a certain amount of running around in circles looking for which circuit had blown but it very quickly became obvious that as the emergency lighting and the exit signs were on and nothing else was that there was no power coming into the hall.
We checked outside and everything was off up and down the street.
At this point of course I would like to remind you that we have had a run through (stop and start) but no real dress and while we have all done the show before it has in fact changed in some parts significantly. And we haven't had a full dress.
So we keep getting updates, someone turns up and tells us that the power is out for a 100km (60miles) radius and then someone else shows up and says that the power won't be back until morning.
Around this time someone turns up with a little 240volt petrol generator and we rig a flood in the foyer powered from the generator outside.
The suggestion is floated that we could do the show with a gennie and after some calculations it's decided that a 5Kva would be needed, so the search is on.
It eventually turns up from a performance down the road that had been running of a gennie.
So in the meantime we had been unplugging everything finding extra cables and running all the power out of the door.
In the middle of setting up it suddenly occurs to me that there are some Health and Safety issues in running a show in a hall with no exit lights no emergency lighting and no audience lighting of any kind.
Bugger!
After much discussion with the organisers about ten ushers all with torches are rounded up (including my long suffering partner) and used to seat people and given strict orders to hang around throughout the whole show.
The audience are seated and told about the issues and the show goes ahead only about 20 minutes late which is a miracle.
The only concern that I have is that each time I bring up a new lantern the whole rig fades a bit and I can hear the note of the gennie change as the load increases.
About half way through the fans in the ceiling come on and I realise that power has been restored.
Yay!
Of course we can't stop the show and restore the mains power so we press on and the show finishes at about 11.00pm and we all collapse for a moment to recover.
There is a show on at 10.00am and we therefore have to put everything back as it was, which takes a while and go and have a late supper and a drink.
To add insult to injury we can't get the after hours door open in the hotel and have to sneak in through the front bar and a mob of very loud and very happy drunks have a party on the street outside our hotel window.
The rest of the weekend was much less challenging really, although there were some major problems with a film that Gumbo was showing when it was presented the first time. It turned out to be mostly the settings on the projector.
There was a halloween party on the Saturday night which we didn't go to partly because of the projector problems and partly because we felt a bit pushed around by the organisers.
The Sunday was a great day, caught a dance show and met Tubby again and looked at a few art exhibits before winding down at the end of the night at a Crawfish boil at the local Bowls club.
The festival is a great idea and hopefully will go on from strength to strength. We had a great weekend but are now very happy to be home.
My Icolour 4 seems to have been burnt out by a power surge although why that was the only piece of gear actually damaged is beyond me. It will go for repair this week.
Natimuk was an amazingly friendly town as well.

Is that all there is? Well if that's all there is my friend, then let's keep dancing.
www.tonymoore.id.au

Busk?

Author: Daniel M
Date: 04/11/2009 - 11:37

I don't understand the term "busk" in your line; "I basically busk Gumbos' shows from a preset range of scenes."

What do you mean, Tony?

I've looked it up and am unable to put it in context. Seems like a technical term: Is it?

Thanks,
Daniel M.

Sounds like a depressing

Author: Walter linos (not verified)
Date: 04/11/2009 - 13:42

Sounds like a depressing story, going to a small country town in the middle of nowhere. I'm sorry to hear it and I hope you get over the experience. And if it does get you down try Beyond Blue:

http://www.beyondblue.org.au/

Cheer up Eye-wink

04/11/2009 - 13:59 Daniel M Walter Depressed.

I busk he busks they busk etc

Author: Logos
Date: 04/11/2009 - 14:07

In this context to busk means that I improvise the lighting to an extent from a set of colour states and specials each on a sub master. This gives me the freedom to respond to the Gumbo tendency to improvise.

I don't see where anyone got that I was depressed. I enjoyed the weekend. The drive from Adelaide on Thursday and then back on Monday was immensely boring but Natimuk was a nice place, with very friendly people.

Is that all there is? Well if that's all there is my friend, then let's keep dancing.
www.tonymoore.id.au

...Like jamming jazz musicians.

Author: Daniel M
Date: 04/11/2009 - 14:16

Instead of holding a guitar or trumpet, you're holding a master-control of the lights; aimed at the stage, and the performers you're involved with.

I get it. Now. Thanks for the education.

On the other: Walter is scared to be alone, I think. Small towns offer less activity than cities and so it appears as if he identifies that with lonesomeness, and the depression of darkness which would visit him outside of the artificial lights of his city existence. He's kind of a fake person who needs to use Walter to investigate something inside himself, which he hasn't done before and probably won't do again since I've brought this honesty to him so clealry and so probably accurately.

...I think.

Daniel M.

Boring Drive?

Author: Noel Christian
Date: 05/11/2009 - 00:24

I don't know the road you took from Adelaide, but if you go the right way the drive through to Natimuk can be great fun. There is a wonderful antique shop in Goroke, a tiny town called Minimay with a population of 12 human beings and about 24 concrete sheep, some brilliant vineyards round Frances, a major C & W Festival nearby, and one of the most wonderfully spooky timber houses I've ever seen on the road near Servicetown.

Natimuk is great. I spent a week there when I was playing the towns through the region. If you know where to look, you can get a great chocolate and date pudding that will sink a navy, but do so in the most delicious way.

I was playing in Swan Reach one night when a sudden storm came through and knocked out all the power along that part of the Murray. There were flash floods in the street. I don't need much in the way of tech, so was able to proceed under candle-light. Passers-by came in just to get out of the rain and stayed for the pleasure of the performance. The health and safety issues didn't occur to any of us - until afterwards when we found that several cars had been washed down the hill and into a heap. My car was spared. It was cowering behind the toilet.

I strongly recommend Natimuk and all the festivals of the Wimmera.

Truly, the drive is only boring if boredom is what you want to achieve.

Daniel M...In regards to

Author: noway
Date: 05/11/2009 - 08:23

Daniel M...

In regards to the last line you offer

'...I think'

Ill pick you up on that and state You are a lying!

Good on ya, then.

Author: Daniel M
Date: 05/11/2009 - 14:27

On ya Greg.

Sigh...

Daniel M.

from the Long Suffering Partner....

Author: Rapunzel
Date: 05/11/2009 - 12:23

Ah now Noel, you have a point BUT we went to Natimuk via the highway...hence the boring bit where all you see is a string of hay (or a grain of some sort) field after field after field after field...

Sadly we didn't have time to go the scenic route. I'd have loved to see the spooky house, concrete sheep, etc.! Natimuk itself is great. I found a truly yummy source of banana pancakes with walnuts..heaven!

In my role as Long Suffering Partner it fell to me to rip up the cabling and re-lay it (and re-tape) whilst waiting for the generator...in the dark. Amazing how your night vision kicks in!

And yes, toilets are good for parking behind and offering protection for cars...cowering or otherwise. I hope it recovered sufficiently in spite of it's traumatic experience?

The Wimmera rocks, we recommend it...just take the scenic route rather than the highway if time permits!

"Life is too short to stuff a mushroom"

Without Long Suffering Partners Theatre and the World Would Stop

Author: Noel Christian
Date: 07/11/2009 - 01:33

Rapunzel

Don't ever go by the highway. There are not enough roads in regional Australia to ever get lost - although you can get delayed a bit. The highway out from Murray Bridge to Bordertown is one of my least favourite drives - but kaniva and Nhil I enjoy.

I am told that Natimuk has a bamboo farm that is able to supply theatre companies with structural bamboo of most varieties.

My car did survive the terrifying experience in the Swan Reach flood, but died some years later not far from that spot.

I do not cower behind toilets, neither do I suffer during terrifying floods for I, too, have a long suffering partner and without her I would be lost (roads notwithstanding).

All the best

Noel

A weekend in Natimuk part 1

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