Originally from Coventry, upstate New York, de Frost studied a Pro Chef Level One Certificate in the 1980s. She soon quit the course because she found the school and the culinary environment in general snobbish towards microwave cooking. In 1990, de Frost travelled to Canberra for the International Microwave Convention. It was here that she met her mentor, Sensei Ping, who also goes by the name Sensei Reheat. During her mentorship, de Frost was interviewed for a hobby video where she provided an educational and passionate discourse on the microwave. De Frost was then approached to start her own YouTube channel which she began filming in September 2015.

De Frost loves her cooking show, You Should Try…. Asked to describe the show in five words, de Frost replies: “Very informative, modern, sophisticated, very entertaining and zesty!” De Frost explains that “zest” refers to both lemon zest and her own “zestiness”.

You Should Try… is not your typical cooking show. De Frost hosts it in her own home and it includes cameos and interviews of de Frost’s friends and, even once, de Frost’s nemesis, Doreen. On the show, de Frost is always immaculate and modern with her electric blue eye shadow, beehive hairstyles and shoulder-padded jumpers.

Each episode focuses on different aspects of de Frost’s life. One episode, for example, sees de Frost start an online dating profile. While the episodes are driven by her quirky personality, de Frost is adamant that the show is not about her:

My show is special because it lacks the ego of some of the other celebrity chefs. It’s educational, not about me. It’s not about showcasing who I am. It’s really about helping people understand how they use a microwave… My personality does not run the show – the cooking does.

De Frost explains that her show focuses on making cooking accessible to her viewers. Other celebrity chefs use their shows to parade their abilities rather than connect to viewers, she says. Watching these shows is like “going onto Facebook and looking at how great other people’s lives are and feeling terrible about [your] own.” In contrast, You Should Try… shows how easy and fast it is to cook healthy meals using a microwave; these are meals that audiences can easily replicate in their own homes.

For the You Are Here festival, You Should Try… was performed in front of a live audience. The main difference that de Frost found between performing a live show to her regular show is that “things can get messy”. With her videos, de Frost can manicure and reshoot until she’s happy with the result. A live show, on the other hand, does not have this comfort.

Instead, de Frost emphasises, you need to be “comfortable with things going wrong.”  For Thursday’s show, de Frost juggled technical difficulties, contestants who couldn’t chop an onion and a judge who not only unwilling to banter with de Frost, didn’t talk at all (in the judge’s defence he was a beagle).

“With the production I work with a lot of amateurs, despite the fact that we get a big budget so a lot of things go wrong. Thursday evening: lots of things went wrong.” Yet de Frost stays positive about this experience: “The show is chaotic anyway. Amongst the chaos it all works. Be prepared for the chaos. Prepared for spontaneity”. She also adds: “People responded strongly towards the dog.”

De Frost is, however, surprised that the You Are Here festival approached her to perform. “It’s very strange that the arts community has taken me in in this way because what I do is not art. It’s a cooking show. It’s educational. It’s a serious cooking show. So I am very honoured that the arts community have shown an interest in my show and taking me on board. When the You Are Here festival approached my producer I was really blown away because I thought “Why would these hippies want me for their festival?”

De Frost enjoyed working at You Are Here with these hippies so much that she’s already keen for next year’s show. While You Are Here finished two days prior to our interview, de Frost already had several ideas that she wanted to work with for next year’s show. One idea was to combine her love of healthy microwave cooking with an aerobics class. De Frost is also thinking about doing some microwave installation art. No matter what, de Frost definitely wants to “push the show out of just a cooking show into other arenas – it’s very exciting!”

De Frost was also a contestant in You Are Here’s Inaugural Canberra Mayoral Pageant. De Frost was bitter about only coming second place to Venus Mantrap. She believes this loss is because she was “too revolutionary”. Venus Mantrap may have also sabotaged the competition. While de Frost believes that she and Venus get along, she also gets the vibe that Venus is not a “very credible as a person. I feel there was some match fixing”.

A day after our interview, it was announced that Mantrap had to step down from their duties as Mayor, and de Frost was the successor. I asked de Frost’s personal assistant, Claire Granata, for a quote. Not wanting others to talk for her, de Frost sent me the following response:

It is with heavy hearts that we learnt yesterday, Venus Mantrap has decided to step down as Mayor of Canberra only four days after victory due to personal reasons. As second in line to the position, I now accept the full responsibility of this hefty role whilst also showing full respect to my predecessor in knowing how disappointing the situation must be for him/her/them personally. I wish Venus Mantrap all the best in his/her/their political future and I extend my assurances that Canberra will be safe in my hands.

Unfortunately, de Frost’s cameraman, Larry, continued filming and caught de Frost’s off the record response: “Thank god we found a quick way to get rid of that trash. Now the future is ours Larry. …Will ya stop filming me for god’s sake!”

It’s nice to know the city is in very capable hands!

De Frost also talks about the future of her show and the future of microwave cooking. She hopes that in future videos, she’ll bring back well-loved characters guests, including her best friend Lorraine and her arch nemesis Doreen.

On microwave cooking, she believes that the microwave is underrated in society. “People have yet to embrace the microwave like they can and should. Hopefully shows like my own will educate people to embrace microwaves. People are living more busy lives and microwaves will pave the way for the cooking future.”

Image: Sarah Walker

Rose Maurice has a happy life surrounded by words. Rose graduated from the ANU with a degree in Literature and History and has worked in a bookshop and now works at the National Library of Australia. An amateur in performance poetry and short stories, Rose has a tendency to write poems on the back of receipts and in the covers of novels she is reading. She is happy to be writing reviews again for the You Are Here festival.

O’Loughlin’s performance was part of the Let’s Stay in Tonight segment of the You Are Here festival. This segment focused on the intersection between private lives and communal experience by juxtaposing theatrical pieces and residential spaces. Set in a residential home in the suburb of O’Connor, Let’s Stay in Tonight hosted various acts throughout, including in the front yard, kitchen and garage. On Saturday evening, the line-up comprised of Crepuscular, an acrobatic show, ANU Experimental Music Studio: At Home, and Broken Bone Bathtub.

Broken Bone Bathtub was inspired by O’Loughlin’s experience recovering after a bike accident in 2014. After this accident, in which she broke her hand, she mustered up the courage to ask friends if she could use their bathtubs. O’Loughlin’s piece discusses the vulnerability, sadness and gratitude that she felt during this time. Regularly performed to an audience of 6-8 people, or however many could fit into the bathroom, O’Loughlin used the space to ask audience members to help her wash and share their own experiences.

O’Loughlin’s tub was located in the backyard where audience members crouched around the bathtub on milk crates and blankets. It rained intermittently throughout the performance, resulting in audience members having to hold up umbrellas and huddle underneath tarps supplied by You Are Here volunteers. While many feared the performance would be cancelled, O’Loughlin and the audience continued on. It was only when the rain began to seep through the tarps that it was decided to relocate the performance indoors.

What the rain highlighted was the realism of O’Loughlin’s storytelling. She paused intermittently to ask about the rain and to check if everyone was okay. Between her pausing and her memoir there was no change in her demeanour. This encouraged the perception that she was being genuine in her performance rather than playing a theatrical persona. The rain emphasised O’Loughlin’s resilient, caring and charismatic personality.

O’Loughlin delivered an intimate performance. Throughout Broken Bone Bathtub, she asked audience members to help her bathe.  Her own nakedness and the honesty of her reflections inspired the audience to share their own intimate experiences. Individuals discussed their own broken bones, reflected on whom they might call if they needed help, and shared the last time they’d cried amongst other people. O’Loughlin facilitated these intimate confessions with great skill and expertly entwined them into her own story.

O’Loughlin’s courage to be naked in a bathtub, her willingness to expose herself to vulnerability and sadness was inspiring and worth getting caught in the rain for. The honest and self-reflective nature of her questions turned the piece from an individual performance into a dialogue, as if we were all naked in the bathtub together.

Image: Sarah Walker

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The day after performing Broken Bone Bathtub in Australia for the first time, Siobhan O’Loughlin is relieved that she didn’t get hypothermia. The Brooklyn-based artist is in Canberra for You Are Here, but her show has its own unique challenges due to the fact that it is performed from a bathtub. It was inspired by her experience of healing after a bicycle accident, borrowing her friends’ bathtubs and sometimes asking them for help with the process. Canberra audiences have wholeheartedly embraced her experimental theatre performance.

“I love underdog cities,” she says. “I love Baltimore and St. Louis. I’ve lived in New York for seven years, but I think sometimes in the smaller cities there’s more need for artistic community, so it’s amazing that there’s all this free art in Canberra.”

Most of O’Loughlin’s recent run of New York shows were performed in tiny bathrooms that only fit four or five people, and until now her largest audience was a bathroom in Minneapolis that fit twelve. In Canberra, however, O’Loughlin performed for an audience of thirty in a bathtub in a backyard in O’Connor.

“I was super anxious because I’ve been doing the show for a whole year now in lots of cities, and it has always been in bathtubs in someone’s home. I was on the phone to my production manager in New York, and he was asking me “What are you doing? What are those Australians doing to your show?’” She laughs. “Obviously when you do something that’s experimental in nature, you have to be willing to try, so it was nice to be presented with the opportunity.”

Growing up in Maryland, O’Loughlin dreamt of singing and dancing on Broadway but later struggled to get noticed in the crowded and competitive New York acting world. Solo performance became her medium because “It’s a lot easier to discover yourself than wait for someone else to discover you,” she says. Broken Bone Bathtub is her third solo show and has become successful around the world, from Ireland to Japan.

“I live out of a suitcase. While it’s not what I expected, I feel very lucky to be able to do what I do. I didn’t realise Bathtub would be such a unique idea at the time, it was just that a lot of friends were doing living room tours, and I thought why not. I’ve hustled and I’ve worked my ass off, but it turns out all I had to do was get in a bathtub!”

O’Loughlin describes the way “people’s knees touch” at Broken Bone Bathtub. Almost accidentally, she has managed to create an inescapable sense of closeness between strangers at her performance.

“I’ve had people tell me, especially men actually, ‘I never thought my story was important, I didn’t think I was funny, I didn’t think this thing I’ve been through was anything anyone wanted to hear.’”

Another appealing aspect of solo performance for O’Loughlin is the ability to bring politics into a personal space. She has been actively involved in movements including Occupy Wall Street and campaigning for the rights of women, LGBTI groups and people of colour. She believes that climate change is the biggest struggle facing people today and emphasises the fact that it is not enough to be aware of injustice without acting to combat it.

“What I like about doing independent experimental theatre is the accessibility,” she says. “The power that theatre has is creating a space to share stories, and being able to tell your story is a radical act, especially when a woman puts herself in front of other people to speak. I want to encourage people to be brave in whatever it is they’re doing.”

It has been gratifying for O’Loughlin to discover that across cities, countries and individuals, the thematic concerns of Broken Bone Bathtub have continued to resonate. “There’s so much we have in common,” she says. “At the heart of what I’m exploring is pain, trauma, healing, intimacy and generosity, and they are things that every community struggles with.”

O’Loughlin’s brand of small-audience theatre may be an unconventional method of engaging with politics, but her own vulnerability in Broken Bone Bathtub in turn forces the audience to connect with O’Loughlin and each other. She describes her show as “a theatre of generosity.” Through both her art and her activism, O’Loughlin is taking action and she is hopeful others will too.

“I’m a total mess of a human, but when I had my injury and I was really depressed and sad, I was lucky that people were kind to me by letting me come over and use their bathtubs. People are still giving to me all over the world, giving their bathrooms or their back yards or whatever it is. I couldn’t do this performance without people being kind.”

Image: YouAreHere

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Molly McLaughlin is a freelance writer and passable Economics student from a small town in NSW. She writes for HerCanberra and has been published in Feminartsy, with work forthcoming in Demos and Woroni. She likes eavesdropping on public transport, cheese pizza and Instagram poets. She lives in Canberra, for now.

Exquisite Corpse is the name given to a collectively assembled image, commonly a person. Traditionally, one person would begin the image, for example, the head, fold the piece of paper over and pass it on to the next person. This person would then draw the next part of the image, fold the paper again and pass it on. At the end, the paper is unfolded and the image revealed, usually with a few chuckles at the ridiculous result.

Popo was inspired to run this workshop by a dinner party she attended. At this party, her and her friends reminisced about doing Exquisite Corpse when they were in primary school. Getting paper and pens out, they then spent the rest of the evening creating weird and fantastic creatures. Popo thought it would be an excellent addition to the You Are Here festival.

On Sunday, the audience was comprised mainly of families and children. While none of the events at the You Are Here festival are designed specifically for children most of them are child-friendly, as this workshop was!

The workshop was initially limited by audience participation. There were small numbers and a few of the participants were disinterested in collaborative drawing. For example, I asked one child if he would like to work on a drawing with me but he responded with an affirmative ‘no’; he preferred to work on his own landscape. I admired his honesty.

Once we got momentum and more adults and children got involved, the creative juices began to flow. The workshop saw an interesting dynamic of adults and children working together to create weird and wonderful bodies. The result was an array of rainbow hair, pineapple-shaped torsos, tentacles as feet and detailed socks. Oh, and someone smuggled glitter into the mix.

While the workshop was intended to be a renaissance for primary school art classes and for a mature audience, Popo’s workshop was quirky and filled with childish sass. The corpses that were created were colourful and sweet. I would recommend an afternoon of Exquisite Corpse to anyone who says they can’t draw because, as I learnt, an artist’s worst critic is not himself or herself, it’s the six-year-old sitting next to them.

Image:  YouAreHere

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Rose Maurice has a happy life surrounded by words. Rose graduated from the ANU with a degree in Literature and History and has worked in a bookshop and now works at the National Library of Australia. An amateur in performance poetry and short stories, Rose has a tendency to write poems on the back of receipts and in the covers of novels she is reading. She is happy to be writing reviews again for the You Are Here festival.

Osman designed The Philosopher’s Walk with a straightforward structure but loose guidelines as to what the audience should contribute or take away from the event. After relocating to a shady spot under some eucalyptus trees, she divided the group into pairs who then walked together around the city with one person talking for ten minutes about anything they chose, and the other actively listening but refraining from comment or interpretation. Next, everyone wrote and reflected on the encounter and what had been said, before sharing with their partner and the group. The whole exercise was repeated so each person was able to both speak and listen.

For an audience of self-described introverts, the acts of talking and listening each for ten minutes at a time were challenging but ultimately rewarding. Due to the nature of The Philosopher’s Walk, Osman played the role of a facilitator and the audience members became integral to the event, resulting in a unique, intimate and immersive experience for each individual. The audience had conversations, for lack of a better word, that ranged from pop culture and high art to parenting and the purpose of work, and ideas evolved and were consolidated over the ten minutes that each person spoke. Both the walking and writing reinforced the physicality of philosophy, tying intangible concepts to real-world actions.

The practice of active listening was key to the success of The Philosopher’s Walk, emphasising the value of a skill that is often lacking in our modern lives. Without distractions and with the undivided attention of another person, it was interesting to learn what ideas could be possible simply by listening. Similarly, the audience rediscovered the beauty of walking for pleasure rather than to arrive at a destination, and shared stories that demonstrated a common desire for reflection. Cars and other pedestrians rushed past, but the audience of The Philosopher’s Walk became almost completely absorbed in talking and listening.

In the age-old tradition of philosophical thought, The Philosopher’s Walk raised more questions than answers and left many sentences unfinished and ideas unformed, but that was all part of the experience. Osman blurred the barriers between artist, audience, mind and body, and allowed The Philosopher’s Walk to develop organically into a thought-provoking and authentic event.

Image: YouAreHere

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Molly McLaughlin is a freelance writer and passable Economics student from a small town in NSW. She writes for HerCanberra and has been published in Feminartsy, with work forthcoming in Demos and Woroni. She likes eavesdropping on public transport, cheese pizza and Instagram poets. She lives in Canberra, for now.

Coin Operated Poetry Box was a unique interaction between the solitary pursuit of writing poetry and the collaborative medium of performance art. Filmer-Sankey dispensed poems on request from a glass and wooden box, inside which the décor resembled a 1950s office in miniature. The box initially caused some confusion but soon began running smoothly after some hand signals from the artist. The audience waited patiently in line to request a poem with the provided order form, choosing from categories including Dystopian Australian, History of Religion, Women and Work, and Lust + Love and Living.

Filmer-Sankey’s written instructions were simple: Wait for Coin Operated Poetry Box to process your order and administer to your poetry needs, Receive words, Go on with your life. Of course, this was not as easy as it sounds. After receiving an order form, Filmer-Sankey typed a short fragment of poetry onto a photo and also provided a longer prepared poem; “fickle/like eggs/that break/before water”, read one of the photos. The poems were brief but intriguing, all the more because they provoked a dialogue about the necessary but under-valued role of art in modern society. While some of the audience glanced at their poems before moving onto another performance, others remained transfixed by the words and Filmer-Sankey herself.

Coin Operated Poetry Box also featured an information panel about Hope Verity Fitzhardinge, Verity Lane’s namesake, who opened Verity Hewitt’s Bookshop in East Row on 1 April 1938. According to her biography, “from second-hand books, [Verity Hewitt’s Bookshop] expanded to sell new books, prints and artefacts, and to hold art exhibitions. Unsuccessful financially, it became a ‘pool of light’ for the book-starved community, reflecting the friendliness of its owner, who delivered library books by sulky.” This information added to the anachronistic impression of Coin Operated Poetry Box, its humble approach to art almost out of place in 2016.

It is clear from the success of You Are Here that contemporary Canberra, while no longer book-starved, is still in need of community events that provide a space for innovative and engaging art. By dispensing poetry in the midst of our everyday lives, Coin Operated Poetry Box was one small but successful contribution to this aim.

Image: Sarah Walker

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Molly McLaughlin is a freelance writer and passable Economics student from a small town in NSW. She writes for HerCanberra and has been published in Feminartsy, with work forthcoming in Demos and Woroni. She likes eavesdropping on public transport, cheese pizza and Instagram poets. She lives in Canberra, for now. 

Happy Axe X Ghost Noises performed in The Club, this year’s main venue. Situated on Northbourne Avenue, The Club is a well-lit space filled with milk crates and the comfortable chairs and couches that your grandma used to own (you know, the ones you were actually allowed to sit on). The environment was overall welcoming. White and Kelly heightened the environment’s warmth by greeting audience members at the door as if welcoming each person into their own home for a private, intimate gig.

Their staging was also intimate and somewhat informal. Rather than facing the audience, the two performers faced one another. This created a sense of the two artists performing with and to each other. Friendly banter between songs not only demonstrated their awareness of the audience but also invited the audience to share the experience with them. Their continual looking up and smiling displayed a sweet satisfaction in performing with one another.

The two young musicians performed an excellent set that blended bittersweet lyrics and a strong beat with a harmony of vocals and violin. While White claimed that his only contribution was adding “beats to everything” the two musicians worked extremely well together. Kelly’s violin and handsaw was expertly looped as were White’s drumbeats and piano melodies. Their vocal harmony was also exceedingly strong and complimented the beautiful lyrics.

The sizeable audience shared Kelly and White’s enthusiasm for the eclectic music. The audience produced a strong acclamation after each song and their only reservation was that the set was not long enough. Yet this was easily forgiven because of the collaboration’s newness. The audience were happy to share this wonderful experience.

Happy Axe X Ghost Noises’ collaboration thankfully won’t be their last. Their performance highlighted one of the key strengths of the You Are Here’s festival: promoting and supporting emerging artists. Kelly and White are eager to write more songs, perform more gigs and even release an EP together.

Until then, catch them on Sunday for their second performance at Smiths, 8pm-9pm. Also check out their recording of ‘Sad Rise’ on soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/youbli.

*This has now become my new favourite genre of music.

Image: Happy Axe and Ghost Noises

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Rose Maurice has a happy life surrounded by words. Rose graduated from the ANU with a degree in Literature and History and has worked in a bookshop and now works at the National Library of Australia. An amateur in performance poetry and short stories, Rose has a tendency to write poems on the back of receipts and in the covers of novels she is reading. She is happy to be writing reviews again for the You Are Here festival.

You Should Try… is part of a microwave cooking series hosted by Amelia de Frost on YouTube with occasional live tapings like this one, and the security guards are there to prevent any dangerous weapons or overenthusiastic fans getting too close. De Frost is clearly a celebrity in the microwave cooking community and You Should Try… was a comedy performance that took itself very seriously. De Frost encouraged the audience to do the same, resulting in an atmosphere of absurdity that was a joy to be a part of.

De Frost herself is a modern woman with a penchant for gold lamé and blue eye shadow who knows how to work the crowd. By assuming the audience was already infatuated with her she made it so, largely due to her unique stage persona. If not for the pun in her name, de Frost would have been utterly convincing; glamorous, brash and unapologetically obsessed with microwaves.

The Club, You Are Here’s temporary home, was decorated for the occasion and filled with so many of de Frost’s fans that the crowd was forced to spill out onto the street. The performance was Auslan interpreted and drew a diverse audience, from families with kids and pets to students and festival regulars. You Should Try… even featured a live band and camera crew, adding to the impression that the audience had stumbled into a low-budget game show or a badly planned infomercial.

As the performance progressed, de Frost interviewed a dog from the audience, chose two volunteers to compete in an onion-cooking contest, and presented the winner with a pair of underpants with her face on them. This was all completely in character. She also berated her crew, showed educational videos about onions and had a guest on the show declare his love for her. Technical difficulties only added to her chaotic charm and by the time the final confetti was falling, the audience was completely immersed in her fantasy.

On the rare occasions when the premise of You Should Try… seemed to be wearing thin, de Frost was so thoroughly likeable that the audience forgave her. Her infectious enthusiasm and her passion for microwave cooking made a case for the pure enjoyment of the unconventional and uncool, elevating an everyday activity into an art form. She was alternately inspiring, rude, narcissistic and mesmerising. In de Frost’s own words, “It was so exciting and so boring at the same time,” and the audience couldn’t look away.

Image: Amelia de Frost

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