Story & photo Eve Jeffery
Equal parts actor and activist with a pinch of larrikin, Tony Barry says the best way to deal with shit is to turn it into compost.
Tony feels that it has been proven over many years that violent action fails to achieve the desired result in conflict, so another tack is the best bet. ‘Aggression doesn’t work’, he says. ‘The whole idea of conflict and argument doesn’t work. We have to come to a place of love – that was what Bentley was all about. It was a place of love for the land and love for successive generations.’
To this end Tony, along with Greg Aitken and Michael Hennessy, are hosting an event on Friday and Saturday evening. They are calling on all actors, performers, artists, musicians, filmmakers and other creative folk pissed off by political bastardry to partcipate.
‘Politicians can’t be trusted,’ says Tony. ‘They have become carpetbaggers for the corporations and the banksters are hell bent on indebting everyone.’
The idea of the event is to take the piss through a creative collective of ideas and insights. Friday night will be the workshop rehearsal phase and Saturday will see items filmed for a social media onslaught, including uploads to Facebook and YouTube. A similar event held earlier in the year proved to be a huge success with some wonderful material being generated by those who attended.
Tony says that he hopes that participating pranksters will find ways to create a more nourishing game to play. ‘If we’re to avoid perennial servitude we all have to stand up now.’
The event will run from 6pm on both Friday and Saturday evenings at the Drill Hall in Mullumbimby. A gold coin donation would be lovely.
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