The Comedy Politic
Charlie Pickering is one of the most exciting names in Australian comedy. Charlie is a political junkie, a law graduate, and was the voice of his generation as a regular team captain for Generation X on Network Ten’s quiz show Talkin’ ’bout Your Generation. He was also on your TV screen every weeknight for five years as co-host of The Project, where the day’s news is dissected, digested and re-constituted by some of Australia’s funniest and smartest. Long before he scored gigs on two of TV’s biggest shows, Charlie was touring internationally, winning awards and playing to sold-out houses. Charlie has earned many an accolade for his live work over the years, including nominations for the Perrier Best Newcomer Award in Edinburgh, the Barry Award for Most Outstanding Show at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, as well as being named Best International Guest by the NZ Comedy Guild. He’s even been nominated for a Logie and in 2011 picked up Media Personality of the Year in the GQ Men of the Year Awards.
Charlie was invited to perform at the prestigious Just for Laughs Festival in Montreal in 2016, guest hosted several episodes of ABC News 24’s Planet America – a political comedy show looking at the US presidential race. He also performed a brand-new solo show How to Tame a Wild Squirrel at the 2016 Melbourne International Comedy Festival and Just For Laughs at the Sydney Opera House.
In 2015 Charlie joined the team at ABC TV to premiere a news comedy show, a tonight show, a chat show and a panel show all in one – The Weekly with Charlie Pickering. The critically acclaimed show aired its third season in 2017.
He’s been called ‘dangerously funny’, which he is. He is joined by support Damian Power, three-time Barry Award nominee and widely regarded as one of the most exhilarating voices in Australian comedy. He has been called the bar-room philosopher. His material is incisive, deep thinking, and has even the drunkest person in the room contemplating their reason for being. He’s genius.
With Mandy Nolan as MC this is one cracker of a show. Byron Bay Brewery. Thursday 2 November. Doors 7pm. Show 8pm. $25. Tix on trybooking.com/SLDY
Naomi’s Beatle juice
2017 Green Room Award winner Naomi Price takes the audience through The Beatles’ immortal catalogue with sparkling original arrangements, covering all the hits including Eleanor Rigby, Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, Here Comes the Sun, Yellow Submarine and more.
With an electrifying live band, psychedelic lighting and dazzling special effects, Lady Beatle delivers an exceptional night out for Beatles fans young and old.
Lady Beatle plays two nights only at NORPA at Lismore City Hall on Friday 10 and Saturday 11 November starring Naomi Price, with Mik Easterman (drums), Andrew Johnson (bass), Michael Manikus (piano) and Jason McGregor (guitars).Tickets: $25–55. Bookings: norpa.org.au or 1300 066 772. Patron advice: Suitable for all ages. Low-level coarse language.
Screenworks offer the chance to write
For aspiring screenwriters, having the chance to sit in the writers’ room of one of Australia’s leading production companies can be a career-changing opportunity.
Now in its fourth year, that is exactly the opportunity on offer as part of Screenworks’ Inside the Writer’s Room program, which will provide the chance for four regional NSW early-career screenwriters to observe the process of writing a television drama in some of Australia’s most significant drama-production companies. Applications close on 8 November. This initiative has been made possible with support from Create NSW.
Since starting the program in 2014, Screenworks has already supported 13 participants, who have had opportunities to contribute ideas for plotting, character and story development, helped with note taking, submitted sample scripts, as well as received professional feedback on their own scripts.
Screenworks’ Inside the Writer’s Room is most relevant to emerging or early-career writers of television content, and more specifically TV drama or comedy series, or authors of fiction transitioning to screenwriting. For this first time, this opportunity has been extended to residents across regional NSW.
Apply online via Screenworks’ website. Applicants are required to provide a sample of their work as well as a support letter with their submission. Deadline for application is 5pm, Wednesday 8 November. For info call 6687 1599 or email events@screenworks .com.au.
Japanese Festival
Our Japanese community is launching the inaugural Japan Festival on 26 November, 9am–4pm, in the heart of Byron Bay, at Main Beach, Surf Club and surroundings. Through the festival, Byron Japanese Community Association’s mission is to be the bridge between Japan and Byron Bay and contribute to the rich international profile of Byron Bay and its diverse cultural communities. The festival is FREE and open to the public. It will be located at Main Beach and the Byron Bay Surf Club and is supported by Byron Shire Council and community organisations.
Get Your Hustle ON
On Friday 3 November Byron Bay’s Popped Creative returns with the first of a four-part series designed to connect, inspire and entertain the local community: HUSTLE.
HUSTLE. is a series of panel discussions featuring the best and brightest in creativity, entrepreneurship and boldness in our local region, where industry leaders share stories of their greatest success and failures on their path to achieving their goals. Presenting Andrew Crawley, co-founder of Jack Media, a Byron Bay-based digital marketing company,with a three-year growth revenue growth rate of 178.6 per cent and and now ranked number 43 in Smart Company’s Smart50.
Jim Hearn is the author of High Season: a memoir of heroin and hospitality (Allen & Unwin, 2012). He is a regular contributor to Griffith Review and a winner of the New Philosopher Writers’ Award in 2014. He worked on the screenplay for Chopper (2000) and holds a PhD in Cultural Studies from the University of Technology, Sydney. Jim’s inspiring and colourful story about life and art will have the HUSTLE. audience amazed.
Filmmaker, male model and one of the greatest music-video actors of our time, legend has it that Vinnie LaDuce spent several years roaming and performing in the bass-heavy clubs in the East End of London before his relocation to Byron Bay, where the cocktails and the summers never end. Vinnie LaDuce is all things attractive about a never-ending good-time – where no-one gets hurt and there is no such thing as a hangover.
Vinnie LaDuce will get all you movers and shakers moving and shaking! Friday 3 November, 5.30pm–late. Thom Gallery, 6 Fern Place, Byron Bay industrial estate. Tickets from www.poppedcreative.com
Her to Hymn
Join Caitlin Reilly in conversation with Andrew McDonald (Lone Goat Gallery) at 2pm on Saturday at Lone Goat Gallery as they discuss Caitlin’s art practice, with a particular focus on her extensive experience working in Shanghai, collaborative workshops, art-therapy programs, and strategies for emerging artists.
Caitlin’s exhibition Hymn to the Horizon is now showing at Lone Goat Gallery until 8 November. Hymn to the Horizon is a series of works rendered in oil paint, bitumen, dust and debris. Investigating abstract means and the simplicity of the horizontal line to explore surface rendering to access and communicate psychological states connected to lived and imagined terrains.
Her works have been exhibited at the Shanghai Museum of Art, the Xuhui Art Museum, the 1933 Historical Slaughterhouse in Shanghai, Asia Contemporary Art Hong Kong 2014/15/16, Singapore Art Fair, and Faces & Traces retrospective at The Swatch Art Peace Hotel in Shanghai, Taikang Community Gallery Songjiang, China. In 2014/15 Caitlin undertook the Shokay Residency, travelling to Qinghai on the Tibetan Plateau and to Chongming Island nearby Shanghai, working with the yak-herding community, spinners and knitters.
Caitlin’s arts practice involves working in a broad range of media creating layering and textural history, with an extensive body of work exploring the development of surface rendering. Caitlin’s visual arts practice spans international platforms and is represented in collections throughout Australia, Europe, America, and China.
Hymn to the Horizon – Caitlin Reilly in Conversation with Andrew McDonald. Free Entry. 2pm Saturday at the Lone Goat Gallery, 28 Lawson St, Byron Bay.
Swivel for PM
Last night I was fortunate to be invited to a lounge-room preview of Mark Swivel’s new show. A work in progress, Swivel has cleverly crafted a one-man show about who would be prime minister. Somewhere lurking within this Hugo Boss suit-wearing lawyer who joined Young Labor back in the day was the temptation to sit at the head of our nation. But really? Who would really want to drink their kale smoothie from that poisoned chalice? Swivel takes us through a nostalgic political romp through the country that what was and holds up a mirror to reflect what we are now. But what are we? Could we live without a flag? Should there be a tax to display one? Swivel’s PM speech heralds a brave new world of not giving a shit and basically being nice people. We all know that would never work.
Mark Swivel: Alternative Prime Minister – another slightly drunk Ted Talk like Who Among Us would be PM? Catch the preview at Federal Hall on Thursday 2 Nov at 7pm (fundraiser for Federal Loves Refugees) and then premiering at Mullum Music Festival on Sun 19 Nov at 3pm.
Fame!
Bright Lights Performance School students will be ‘on top of the charts’ when they offer a joyous performance of Fame! Jr, on Saturday at 2pm and 6.30pm. The show is directed by Rebecca Balfour and choreographed by Lee Purdie.
Fame! Jr is based on the hit motion picture. The musical follows the bittersweet but inspiring story of a diverse group of students as they commit to four years of gruelling artistic and academic work in order to achieve their dream of ‘hitting the heights’ and putting their ‘name in lights’. With insight and humour, the show explores the issues that confront many young people today, including prejudice, identity, self-worth, literacy and perseverance.
Remember… Remember… Remember… Fame! Jr will be presented by Bright Lights Performance School Senior Musical Theatre students on Saturday at 2pm and 6.30pm, at the Byron Theatre. Tickets cost $25 adults/$15 students U16/ $70 family ticket (2 adults, 2 students) and may be purchased online www.byroncentre.com.au.
Space Cowboy: Where the Wild Things Are
The Space Cowboy, aka Chayne Hultgren, highlights the incredible power of the human mind and the physical body. Some of his feats are simply hard to believe: The most swords swallowed by a male – a whopping 24 swords, the longest stream of electricity to strike a swallowed sword, and the underwater sword-swallowing world record – four swords swallowed under water at the same time. These are only some of his records (he currently has 53 official Guinness World Records). His shows include such feats as spoon bending, mind reading, arrow catching, chainsaw juggling and sword swallowing. The son of a gymnast and a painter, he was always encouraged to express himself. And let me tell you, you don’t get to be the Space Cowboy playing with felt. You have to be allowed to do dangerous stuff.
‘My dad taught me to juggle when I was eight years old, and my sister had a little unicycle so I learned to ride that,’ he said. ‘I started swallowing swords when I was 16 years old.’
He is passionate about trying new things and pushing limits. With a 4-year-old daughter, Space Cowboy feels that our children are all losing the chance to play dangerously. Not that he expects every child to be a sword swallower, but they should be able to take safe, calculated risks, working out how far things can be pushed in a safe environment.
The Space Cowboy returns to the Byron Theatre with a new updated show and a few new surprises and twists. Tix: Adult $25 | concession $20 | child (3–15) $15 | family and earlybird discount tickets available. Sunday at the Byron Theatre at 3pm and 5.30pm or from th website at www.byroncentre.com.au.
