Verge festival invites you to take part
Sydney University’s Verge Festival kicks of this month with the theme ‘come explore’.
The annual festival from the student union will bring music, comedy, theatre and art to the Inner West and its surrounds.
Tom Walker and Harriet Gillies, who are directing the festival’s 8th edition chose the theme ‘come explore’ to advertise the festival’s tradition of participation.
“We feel like so many Verge festivals in the past years have been so incredible, what we wanted to nail this year was the visibility of the festival. We went with our theme to open it up for people to feel free to explore,” Ms Gillies said.
Mr Walker highlighted the importance of participation.
“It’s so easy to go to uni and Verge without interacting. We want people to interact in a way people wouldn’t normally. We wanted to give people a present.”
Their gifts are bountiful; for a festival that lasts a fortnight they’ve certainly packed a lot into the festival’s sites in Camperdown, Darlington and Rozelle.
While a few events and artworks are student-centric the festival is open to those outside the university community.
One event not to be missed which will see nine large shipping containers brought in and left on Eastern Avenue, the main thoroughfare through the Camperdown campus.
Each one will be decorated by a different collective, representing students and artist run initiatives (ARIs) and left there for the entirety of the festival.
The festival begins next week with a fundraiser-party at Manning Bar featuring Major Raiser.
If you like you’re socialising without the raucous of a university party, take yourself to the talking heads event Blank Space.
The Verge tent will host a variety of figure heads in the Australian theatre scene speaking on what defines Australian theatre.
Ms Gillies said: “Blank Space is a SUDS (Sydney University Drama Society) initiative started by Olivia Satchell. It’s been an incredible programme. We’ve asked around and we’ve picked up 6 of the finest theatre personalities. Particularly we wanted to assess the signature of Australian theatre.”
Verge festival will run from August 31 to September 9.
By Tom Hellier
