Slick Maverick
The Age
Friday July 10, 1998
A little over a year ago, Caroline Moore flicked through Melbourne's calender of events and found a desolate time, devoid of creativity, in the middle of July. She had an idea that might fill it. "Bugger it," she thought."We've got a good idea, let's get started."
Like most good ideas, this one had its origins "in a pub somewhere. It's always in a pub," says Moore, now the artistic director of Maverick Arts. In its second incarnation in Melbourne from 16 to 25 July, Maverick Arts is back in a pub, and a "lovely quirky little hotel" at that.
The festival that Moore says is not a festival has moved from the Fitzroy Town Hall (which is being renovated) to The Victoria Vista Hotel, tucked away behind the Melbourne Town Hall. It will pull together the mavericks of the performing and visual arts, of song, comedy and literature.
Comedian Lynda Gibson, instantly recognisable as the network publicist from TV's Frontline and a veteran of the Melbourne Comedy Festival, flicks through the program and gets excited. Stephen Cummings, Russell Fletcher, Phil Cleary, George Pappaellinas. "There's just a fantastic diversity of artists," she says.
There is a bit of maverick about Gibson, who will feature in a comedy performance on 23 July called The World's Best Practice Seminar, with Bill Ten Eyck as a visiting motivational speaker in the vein of Stormin' Norman Schwarzkopf. "It's a bit risky which is great, and a bit different because you've really only got one chance to get it right," she says.
To say that Maverick Arts is risky is to capture its essence. Perhaps its greatest maverick is Moore, who has quit her day job as general manager of the Melbourne International Jazz Festival to coordinate what Gibson calls "a nice, tidy little week of different shows".
In its second year, Maverick has attracted no core State Government funding, and that is the way Moore likes it. She has a vision in which, within 10 years, Maverick will be a self-sustaining company that tours acts around the country. Already, she is planning a theatre-based fortnight at the North Melbourne Town Hall in November.
But for now, she works at ensuring the only risks Maverick artists take are creative ones. "We'll pay you your artists' fees," she tells the performers. "We'll do your publicity. We'll take away all the production stress absolutely, and all you just do is your show."
"It's like going on a cruise. You don't have to put your life on the line," says Vallejo Gantner, of Horned Moon Productions. His and three other small theatre companies - Aardvark Theatre, My Own Company and Bullcat Theatre - will perform Bill's Sonnets, reworking Shakespeare's sonnets as pieces of physical and visual "bare bones theatre".
For Gantner, Maverick offers a rare opportunity to do something different with Shakespeare, without messing with the language, but breaking free of the iambic pentameter that encloses the sonnets. It is perhaps the best illustration of the Maverick Arts philosophy spelled out in the program: "entertaining and intelligent dissection of the norm".
Gibson and Gantner will be joined at the Victoria Vista by Black Sorrows frontman Joe Camilleri and a collection of jazz musicians from Camilleri's record label, Jazzhead, on 21 July. That all the acts are together under the one roof, says Moore, is part of the beauty of Maverick.
"If someone's there for a great music gig like with Stephen Cummings and all of that, then they also might walk upstairs and see the visual arts stuff, or walk into the bar and see some of the writers' stuff," she says. "We're about sharing audiences between art forms."
Cummings is one of a selection of blues and gospel artists including Vika Bull and Kerri Simpson who will fill the Vista's banquet room on 25 July.
This year, Maverick has expanded its visual arts component to include an exhibition in glass and steel - Trickery and Steel Reality - a show called The Ladder by a group of visual artists and writers, and a photographic exhibition of last year's Maverick Arts, "just to create our little sense of history".
It is a brief history which Moore thinks stands her little non-festival in good stead. "Now that we're one year old, everyone realises that we're not threatening anyone, we're not about stealing anyone's sponsors, we're not about stealing anyone's good ideas. We're about facilitating further creativity in Melbourne.
"We're essentially about inviting the artists to take the risk and go for it," she says, in true maverick style.
* For details call Caroline Moore on 9481 0077. Tickets through Ticketmaster, about $15 a show.
© 1998 The Age