The Marigold Hour

Is it the smell of a Lily that makes it alluring before you have even laid eyes on it? The strong scent drifting towards you on the hot summer night air, making you no more than a sensual beast , drawn dumbly forwards to sniff it's nectar moist insides, to fondle it's pollen doused stamens?

Welcome to the monstrous gorgeous gardens of desire, home of assorted hot house flowers, delicate pansies, and the hardened succulents of the lesbian and gay underworlds. You might even meet the ghost of Don Dunstan! 

In her first full-length solo performance, Catherine Fargher explores the luscious, if tentative, unfolding of a lesbian femme persona. Meet Rosebud, a sensitive bloom raised on the arid soils of the Adelaide plains, and plucked, 'Persephone like' by a 'Hades' bulldagger lookalike and taken to the underworld of steamy, sensuous, Sydney, land of the glitter Ball. Journey with her as she explores her new lesbian persona and struggles with her friends, family and the mandatory lesbian collective to arrive at a place of power and sensuality. Along the way, she can't help but pick a bunch of that favourite of all companion plants, the Marigold, until she arrives at the flower show of her dreams.

The Marigold Hour is a luscious, comic and erotic performance monologue by cabaret and performance artist Catherine Fargher, who has previously created work for cLUB bENT, Taboo Parlour, It's Queer up North (UK) and WOW Cafe (New York), Sidetrack Performance Group, Theatre of the Deaf and Death Defying Theatre. Catherine's monologues combine a comic, yet personal declaratory style, often revealing a dark underbelly.

COLLABORATOR BIOS

Maude Davey - Director, Maude Davey, came from Perth in 1983 to attend the Victorian College of Arts. After completing the acting course she moved to Geelong as an ensemble member of the Mill Theatre Company under the Artistic Directorship of Richard Murphet. She moved back to Melbourne in 1988 and co-founded Short Arms, Long Pockets with Margaret Mills, Nicol Redlich and Melissa Reeves. Their first show was The Girl I Love, which premiered at La Mama in 1988 and played four seasons in Melbourne and Sydney. In 1989 they received Creative Development funding from the Australia Council to develop a new show. Never Let Me Go was produced with Australia Council funding at Napier Street Theatre in 1992. In 1989 she joined with Anni Davey, Jane Bayly and Karen Hadfield to make a show with songs called Crying In Public Places, and subsequently became an a capella group of the same name. In 1997 Crying In Public Places toured regional Victoria and then completed a tour of the UK, and the Edinburgh Fringe Festival where it received five star reviews and sold out.

In 1991 she wrote her first solo work, Mouthing The Day, which premiered at La Mama, went on to a season in Sydney, and was recorded by ABC Radio Drama. In 1992 she began writing short pieces for performance at clubs and cabarets. In 1994 she presented Fifteen Minutes with Maude Davey at Napier Street Theatre. This piece has since been performed at the 1995 Comedy Festival and at pubs and conferences. Two of her short pieces, My Cunt and Elizabeth Taylor Sometimes have been made into short films which have received much acclaim here and at international film festivals.

Marion Moore - Photographer and installation designer, Marion Moore, works commercially and at a community level as a photographer. Her photography has a versatility and intellect that represents diversity, from "transvestites to managing directors in the corporate world, from inner city gay night life to suburbia." Some of her most successful works have been her photography for the Lovely Mother's Lesbian Visibility Poster Project (Word Of Mouth IV) and her own project Butch Baby Butch, and Centrefold exhibition and catalogue. Marion was born in Sydney in 1958. She studied for a Bachelor of Arts at the University of Tasmania, then completed a graphic design Diploma at Randwick Technical College in Sydney. Since 1993 she has lectured in photography at a tertiary level. She has worked extensively as a freelance photographer on magazines and newspapers with work reproduced in Sponge, Capital Q, Australian Family, Australian Women's Forum, HQ and Federation News.

Her solo exhibitions have included Centrefold, at Elizabeth Gallery in Newtown in 1996, and Butch Baby Butch at Lizard Lounge, Darlinghurst in 1995. Group exhibitions include: Get the Picture at Pride Centre, Darlinghurst in 1997; What is Love, Toast Gallery; Seven Moons, Alpha House gallery; Beyond the Frame at the Tin Sheds, Newtown; and Passion at Lizard Lounge.

She has featured in the following Publications: Australian Sexual Subcultures, Lesbian Art, an encounter with power, edited by Liz Ashburn; Sex In public: Lesbian Art and subculture, published by Allen and Unwin, and the Melbourne publication Crosscurrents in Contemporary Australian Art.