WordBuzz

Web: http://www.wordplay.org.au

Wordplay had its origins in Collingwood, late 2006, where Dr. Cameron Jones and Mr. Steve Smart came up with the idea for a monthly multi-arts gig. Steve assembled a spoken word line-up including Chicago slam poet Molly Meacham, Geoff Lemon, Ben Pobjie and Crazy Elf. The gig went ahead that December at Cam\’s bar on Smith Street, Blue Velvet. Despite the show going well, Steve promptly fled to Berlin, but asked Geoff to look after it in his absence. Over the next couple of shows, it became clear that the spoken word aspect was the strength of the gig, and it evolved into a straight spoken word night.

Very early on, though, we decided we wanted to appeal to as wide an audience as possible. We didn\’t want to end up as another niche poetry reading where fifteen people show up for a night of polite applause. As poets, those gigs are big parts of our lives. But we thought that there were enough of them already. If we were going to develop another show, it had to be something new. It had to demand to be invented. We also decided to make a hard rule that there\’d be no open mic of any kind, ever. Both of our careers started out on open mics, and they\’re an important development tool. But you can\’t regulate the quality of open mics, so you can\’t pitch them to an audience as entertainment. Open mics gigs exist for the readers; we wanted one that existed for the crowd. We didn\’t want to be developing new talents, we wanted to be exhibiting the best ones we already had.

And we wanted variety. So we tried to find as broad a mix as we could. The only criteria were being aweseome, and using words. So aside from poets and spoken word artists we went for comedians, rappers, storytellers, actors, even the odd muso. Anyone who could stand up there and command a room for fifteen minutes. We kept the sets short, kept things punctual, kept the quality high, kept the balance right, and then got out there on the streets and begged people to come.

And they did. For two straight years, we packed out Blue Velvet nearly every time. The room could only comfortably hold 40, and could take 60 if it got cosy. Some gigs we had up to 80 people jammed in there, and trailing down the stairs and out the door. The atmosphere of so many people in such a small space was electric. The line-ups kept getting better, and the crowd reactions did too. Word of mouth got around. People started turning up who we\’d never met before. (For a poetry night, this is a really big deal.) The best part was, people were really enjoying it. We\’d book poets who we knew could entertain a crowd, and they would deliver. So many people would approach us afterwards to confess that they hadn\’t been expecting to enjoy themselves, but that they\’d loved it. We were achieving the three things we really wanted to: proving that good poetry is entertaining, proving that good hip-hop is poetry, and just putting on a really good show that anyone could turn up and enjoy. Hearing a mostly 20-something crowd whooping and cheering eminent poets like Chris Wallace-Crabbe or Judith Rodriguez is hilarious and wonderful and extremely validating. Pairing Chris with MC Elf Tranzporter, or Kevin Brophy with TZU\’s Joelistics, is equally fun and rewarding. There is truly no other show where you can see anything like it.

By the end of 2007 we knew we needed a venue change. We were already operating at absolute capacity, and we were about to get a huge promotional campaign courtesy of the Australia Council. They funded 13 000 copies of a Wordplay Mini-Magazine to be distributed Australia-wide, and paid for the website you\’re standing on right now. We moved to the Dan O\’Connell, Melbourne\’s most supportive venue for poetry. The move came at just the right time. Since then we\’ve had crowds of up to 160 – twice as many as we could possibly have fitted in before. The show is just as fun as ever, the calibre of the artists involved is genuinely exciting, and these days, we don\’t know two-thirds of the people in the room. People know that Wordplay will be a good night out, and they know that every month they can trust us to deliver.