Author: Geoff Ebbs

With a SOLD sign on the Spiral Hub’s old premises in Boundary St, it’s time for Westender to catch up with co-founder Amelia Salmon and review the state of play. After all, the site has been home to Spiral Hub since 2000.

Amelia said that the move is in response to ongoing changes what social enterprises need.

“A decade ago it made sense to provide access to office space, a desk, printer, computer and phone. Nowadays we have all that sitting in a coffee shop with our phones.”

She said that infrastructure like kitchen and warehouse facilities are less readily available and more in demand. Providing that infrastructure was the major driver for rethinking the location of Spiral Hub. In the end it was a cost-benefit exercise.

“The cost of repurposing the building as we proposed was prohibitive. It just made more sense to move.”

To reach that decision, the hub organised community and stakeholder meetings over 2012 and 2013 to discuss future requirements. The notion of a Fair Food café, learning facilities and provision of support services to social enterprises all bubbled to the surface as a result. Many of these had been long term ambitions frustrated by the various limitations of the site.

“[Moving] was a really hard decision, though. There are a lot of emotional attachments and many interest groups involved.”

Amelia said there has been a shift in the business model as well. She said the group has become less dependent on government funding and is focused on learning and providing support through financial services such as loans.

She sees the shift away from a funded model as liberating.

“We had really good social outcomes for some of that funded work, but now we’re not so caught up with the funding, we can focus more on the social change.”

The Hub has exciting new plans for premises closer to “the action” that will be announced to stakeholders first, once this sale has gone through, the new premises are finalised and those plans locked in.

“The people who have been involved with the Hub over years deserve to find out first.”

The immediacy of theatre gives it the capacity to draw you into the personal space of a good actor, and the great actors make that space unbelievably rich, complex and large.

Two actors in the single act Mountain Top take us on three separate journeys with an elegant simplicity that allows the audience to laugh, squirm and shout Amen with the direct engagement of a family dinner table.

The play by Memphis writer Katori Hall, launched in London in 2009 and surprised, impressed and moved audiences so it moved from a small playhouse to West End for a sell-out season. It subsequently picked up a swag of awards and a Broadway opening in 2011. Last year saw it play across America, including Memphis, where it is set.

Candy Bowers and Pacharo Mzembe play a maid and Martin Luther King Jr, spending the last night his life together at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis. The delightful, gritty characterisation of a weary Baptist preacher on the road with a pretty, naive girl in his motel room is funny, challenging and endearing.

Bowers plays the not-so-naïve maid with stunning finesse; deftly moving between flirtation, chaste admiration and womanly admonition. They discuss politics, sex, fidelity and smelly feet. She delivers a powerful footnote to history as a monologue that Martin Luther King Jr might have given had he the benefit of our hindsight.

And then the action changes pace remarkably. It would spoil your enjoyment to give away the detail, so I will keep my observations general.

In a virtual second act, King finds himself in serious trouble and their relationship moves to an altogether different level that confronts the big issues of mortality, purpose and achievement. The dialogue continues to flit between humour and philosophical depth with both actors finding their edge, and the audience’s, at different times.

The final section connects the ill-fated night in 1968 to our present, in a surreal journey which Candy Bowers carries with a simple but powerful rant that hovers somewhere between song, monologue and rap. The delicate staging unhinges our sense of space as the script telescopes time, reminding us how recent and connected that history is.

The play is clever, powerful and enjoyable. It’s central surprise annoyed some New York critics and excited others, but it was the performances that made this show for me.

Candy Bowers has complete command of her character and can turn from vamp to angel so subtly and simply you are simply connecting with a real human being. The play gives her some of the best lines and keeps her upstage of Pacharo Mzembe’s King for a surprisingly large chunk of the action.

Pacharo renders a very human but impressive King and carries the two components of his character comfortably. He is immensely likeable and calls up strong chemistry with Bowers in all the right places.

The production is seamless, with some simple but powerful effects used sparingly to drive home some of the more esoteric elements of the second part. The more dramatic effects of the final scene do a brilliant job of taken us on the journey into the mind of Preacher King. Not having seen the other productions I can only speculate on what the local production brings to the play, but that final scene has elements that resonate with other Honey Production performances and bring extra depth to that rendition of historical reality.

Given the significance and renewed relevance of King’s message, which is ultimately the plays’, it is unfortunate that it will mostly be seen by middle-class, middle-aged, white theatre goers, who are already largely sympathetic to the content and immune to its urgency.

In an attempt to redress this, QPAC is offering $40 tickets this Friday 7^th March along with a free drink with Pach and Candy the Russell St bar after the show. Tell your friends to drop the codeword #THELATESHIFT when booking tix.

The Loft has done something right – all the business associations that meet there means that Westender is bounding up those angled stairs more often than walking past.

This Tue evening Mar 11th takes its turn, kicking off 2014 with a big agenda and big plans to drive more business through your door.

Among other things the Association will discuss:

• Vacant executive positions
• Marketing opportunities for association members
• ISaveLocal mobile based loyalty program
• Newseltter and communication with members.

The mobile based, iSaveLocal will build on the Local Shop program already in place and will spearhead some of the tools of the Be a Localist Movement.

Following some challenging moments with the election of office bearers last year, the resignation of some office bearers this year and the involvement by a number of office bearers and executive members in the Griffith by-election in one capacity or another, the year has got off to a slow start.

The eminently capable Paul Hey has steered the association into the Loft for the first meeting of the year, so if you’re keen to see your local business association work in your interests, get along and make a difference.

Our promotional give-away of tickets to French Film Festival sessions has reached its logical conclusion. Eight Westender readers are off to enjoy the Festival courtesy of Alliance Francaise and Westender.

The festival runs over the course of this month and features 42 different French films from a wide array of genre. The French businesses of Brisbane are out in force, presenting their wares and appealing to that Gallic streak in all of us to let down our native reserve and indulge a little.

Highlights of the festival include

ALLIANCE FRANÇAISE PRESENTS POPULAIRE

Oui oui ! Immerse yourself in all things French with a special soirée organised by Alliance Française de Brisbane. Enjoy a glass of wine and a delicious taste of French cuisine brought to you by C’est Bon Restaurant. Includes one glass of wine and a taste of French cuisine in a themed atmosphere, and film screening

Thursday 20 March, Palace Barracks Cinema 6.30pm Reception 7pm Screening

OPENING NIGHT GALA

BRISBANE PREMIÈRE OF THE FINISHERS

The screening will be followed by an after party in a classy black and silver atmosphere with a real show by Evoke dance & theatre company and a DJ set. Enjoy savoury canapés and sweets from Mr macaron and taste our special anniversary Lillet cocktail.
Don’t miss your chance to bring back a lovely souvenir of the night by taking a photo with fun French props at the Opening night photobooth. Includes Première screening, cocktail with canapés, drinks and live entertainment.
Louise Bourgoin will attend the Festival’s Opening Night.

Thursday 6 March, Palace Centro Cinema

FRENCH TRAVEL CONNECTION AND RAIL EUROPE PRESENT TOUR DE FORCE

Get sporty!

Enjoy a glass of wine with a taste of French cuisine brought to you by Mondoports International in a cycling themed setting. Discover the beauty of French regions thanks to Assidu French body, home and ambiance products.

Tuesday 11 March, Palace Barracks Cinema

ALLIANCE FRANÇAISE PRESENTS BILLY AND BUDDY

Enjoy galettes St Michel biscuits and a refreshment brought to you by Mondoports International whilst children will be learning how to draw Billy and Buddy and entertained by professional cartoon drawer Arthur! Includes refreshments and entertainment, and film screening.

Saturday 15 March, Palace Barracks Cinema 2pm Reception 2.45pm Screening

For more information head over to the French Film Festival Website

When Michael Shurman spoke at Delicious Sustainability last year, he presented one slide that showed small business generating the same percentage of the total GDP over the last century, despite continous bailing out of large business by governments, endless subsidies to have major corporations “invest” in the local area.

Small business owners are continuously frustrated by the failure of govenments to protect their interests. Most business lobby groups take membership fees from all comers but then focus on the activities that will most benefit their largest members. The impact of supermaket monopolies has been referred to in two separate Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) but the buying practices used by the supermarkets to gouge their smaller suppliers continue.

One of the articles in this month’s print edition of Westender, due out Thursday, deals with this in some detail. Here is a short excerpt.

Scales of Economy & viability

The Roman Senate fixed the price of grain “low enough to prevent the people rioting and high enough to keep the farmer on the land”. The fall of Rome is often attributed to the impossible nature of this task in a sprawling empire.

Where-as the Romans simply used the government’s coffers to buy grain, or its armies to take over Egypt and navies to secure the supply routes, the modern military industrial complex is a bit more subtle. Campaigns like a dollar-a-litre-milk set the retail price of food so low that only multinational businesses with subsidies from governments and major supermarkets can afford to supply them.

The increasing presence of Coles and Woolworths branded food on the shelves is an indication of the stranglehold these companies have on the supply chain.

When Coles executive Peter Scott was sacked in November 2006 for misconduct it was revealed that he had a 20 percent stake in a major beef supply company Tasman Group Holdings. At the time the media concentrated on the secret deals he had done to enrich himself while earning a large salary at the same time.

For those who care about food sovereignty, though, the real crime was that he bought beef from the market at less than the production cost and then paid a bonus to a small number of suppliers who met certain criteria. Those suppliers, one of which was Tasman Group, could then afford to buy the struggling, unprofitable farmers who were not getting the bonuses. This practice continues today.

So it is that corporate agribusiness has virtually eliminated the “enthusiastic rustic” from the agricultural landscape.

In a post-modern version of William Burroughs poetry fragments 19 year old student Malinda Kathleen Reese has shot to fame with over a million views of her singing a version of Disney’s Frozen massaged through 15 iterations of Google Translate and liberally massaged and crafted by her creatively fertile mind.

She credits two of her high school friends with the brilliant idea of putting famous works of literature through several layers of Google Translate and putting it back into English and then dramatically reading it out loud.

“Hilarity always ensued,” she tells us in the YouTube video which is briliantly executed and worth watching for the performance alone.

Here are the full lyrics, courtesy of Lybio.

Lit white snow on the mountain tonight
No visible legs,
Discrimination law
Lit white snow on the mountain tonight

No visible legs
Discrimination law
Is probably the queen

Rotating the wind is howling storm
They cannot do that
God knows I’ve tried

Do not let them, do not let them see
It is always a good girl
Hide, do not feel
Do not know
Well now you know

Give up
Give up
You cannot do it back in
Give up
Give up
Tune in, and slam the door

You do not care
What you’re saying
Let us very angry
Cold never bothered me

It’s funny how certain distance
How small is everything
And the fear is that once guided me
They do not know me at all

Now is the time to do
Limitations and improvements
Challenge
Well okay
I have no power
I am

Give up
Give up
I am the wind and the weather
Give up
Give up
Will never see me cry

For it
We will stay here
The storm is raging

Flurries of my ability in the air into the ground
My large circle fractal freezing
Explosive idea is crystalized ice
I never will go back
The past is the past

Give up
Give up
On the rise for radiation
Give up
Give up
It runs perfect woman

I’m here
The light of day
Let us very angry
Cold never bothered me anyway

The thing has gotten so big there is no a YouTube channel called Google Translate Sings. You can follow Malinda Kathleen Reese on social media using the following handles:

Instagram @missmalindakathleen
Twitter @missmalindakat
facebook: malindakathleenreese