There’s big barbecues and then there’s big barbecues. Presented with artistic food practice Long Prawn, Cooked is part performance, part participation and a helluva lot of grilling on one glorious stage at Fed Square, where an epic, custom-designed barbecue becomes the centerpiece for two weeks’ worth of wonderful and wild acts.
Participation is encouraged at Open Grill, a celebration of the public barbecue. What’s on the menu at this open-invite BYO cook-up? Snags, vegetables, last night’s leftovers, whatever you damn well please. All you need to do is follow the instructions “apply heat and eat”. It runs every day that Cooked does, and if you’ve not packed your own mixed meats, there’ll be free sausage and vegetable skewers on the hour so that you can get in on the grillin’, too.
Hot Nights – Democracy Sausage will see Australian theatre artist David Williams interrogate the ideas and ideals of democracy in a unique, one-night-only performance developed from conversations, questions and vox pops throughout the first week of the festival. Alongside the show, your free ticket comes with democracy snacks – because just like democracy, snacks should be for everyone, too.
Hot Nights – Indecisive Cinema, meanwhile, brings together Korean and Australian cinema over red-hot salty snacks. For this one, Long Prawn has called in Steak Film, a movable underground cinema collective from Seoul, who’ll be prepping and plating prime cuts from the archives of Korea’s B-film scene at this free event.
Melbourne Fringe is on now until Sunday 20 October. For the full Cooked program, head this way.