We arrived in Dunedin to find that not only was it the tail end of the Fringe Festival, but it was also Friday the 13th. It's funny how these things sneak up on you when you're unemployed and time and dates have no meaning as you waste your life away.
Anyway, we hooked up with our friends and they were all going to this thing called Fringe Macabre. As things happen, at the time it was supposed to start we were only just stumbling out the door and down the hill to town. When we got there we found out that it was going to cost $5, which was more than we had predicted. We grudgingly paid the man and went in.
The Athenæum is a small theatre, and it was reasonably full. As we went in, loud crazy horror movie scenes were being projected on to the screen, and so we were actually a little relieved when our friend Nathan who'd been helping with the Fringe Festival led us into a back room. Here we stood around blinking at the bright light, drinking alcohol and admiring our friend J's new baby, which was dressed as an elf for the evening.
The loudness from outside stopped, and we wondered back in and found seats. There was a guy on stage wearing nothing but pin-stripe trousers and a pillow-case over his head, disguising his identity. He was holding an animal horn which had a stick of incense burning in it, and he was moving in slow motion to some really eerie cello music.
He placed the horn on the floor, and then lay down on the floor himself. He started spasming to the music, and as the tempo increased he had his hand down his pants, and it became quite clear to everyone that this guy was masturbating on stage, prompting several people to walk out.
When he'd finally come in his pants, he lay there for a while, still convulsing to the music: and then suddenly, he whipped the pillowcase off and spat fake blood everywhere. We could now see that this junkie-thin guy who'd been wanking in front of us was in his late 20s and balding. It wasn't pretty. He went on to spend about another ten minutes stumbling around like a zombie and groaning. He even fell off the stage a couple of times to amuse the audience. A lot of people clapped when he finally finished his performance: I reserved my applause as I couldn't work out if it was a performance, or just some crazy guy getting his jollies by wanking in front of an audience.
Next up was Kim, who is a good acquaintance of ours. Straight away a few more people left, one girl saying "I hate this guy. He gives me the creeps". He was pretty drunk, and related to us how he had lost his love [I think she was in the audience, unless he was just acting]. He wanted her back. He identified himself with characters from Greek legends that he was too drunk to pronounce the names of. Eventually he climbed off the stage and started wading across the chairs, dramatically calling after his lost love. But the chairs were the sort where the seat folds up when no one's sitting on it, and he ended up with his leg stuck in a seat, too drunk to get out, and with everyone laughing. To know him the act was pretty funny, but I imagine people who didn't know him found it to be the rantings of some drunk wanker.
The next act looked to me like it was going to hold a lot of promise. This really oddly dressed guy came up with a bass guitar, and the pony-tailed guy who'd been MCing the night came out with a keyboard and a drum machine. I hoped they were going to make some amazing noise like the Auckland gods Anti-Kati. How wrong I was. The bass player started, and it wasn't distorted. And I don't know what happened with the keyboards and drum machine, but they alternated between being really low in the mix and not being there at all. Which essentially made it a long wanky bass solo. By the time they'd been at it for five minutes the theatre had pretty much cleared out. After ten minutes there were only about five people left. The sound actually came together for about 30 seconds, but it still sounded like somthing that... well, you know, the people making the music obviously dug it, so it was all cool.
I walked out too, and thus ended my experience with the most wanking you'd ever get to watch for $5.
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5 years ago
