The Six Best Things to See at MELT Festival

After critical accolades at the Next Wave festival in 2014, James Welsby’s evocative dance production Hex is making its way north for MELT. Partly inspired by this controversial HIV/AIDS awareness ad from 1987, Welsby’s show uses movement, music and allegorical imagery to chronicle the gay community’s relationship with the devastating disease. To the tunes of Queen, Liberace and Michael Jackson, three dancers move fluidly through the gay scene of the early ’80s, the onset of the AIDs crisis, all the way up to present day. In doing so, the hour-long show pays tribute to the countless lives lost to illness, while exploring its impact on young gay men today.

If walking and looking rather than sitting and watching is more your thing, don’t worry, there’s still something at MELT festival for you. As part of the accompanying visual art exhibition, three artists will transform the interior walls of the venue in the MELT group show. Hillary Green’s Black by Popular Demand examines where the performance ends and the ‘real’ person starts via a selection of hyperreal portrait photographs; Dan Webb’s Boys of Summer draws upon beach iconography and the beauty of boys in (and out of) Speedos; and Jennifer Leonforte’s Middle Sex explores the grey area of the gender spectrum. In more good news, it’s free, and keeps running for a week after the rest of the festival comes to a close.

Everyone is swiping right and searching their screens for love — or lust — including Felix. His fondness for finding fleeting companionship through an app has meant that connections of the old-fashioned type have become rare, and when he finds himself set for a regular date, he’s a bit flustered. Felix is the alter ego of writer and performer Gavin Roach, with Confessions of a Grindr Addict telling his comical tale. After seasons in Sydney, Melbourne, Newcastle, Edinburgh, Perth, Adelaide and Tasmania, the show finally makes its way to Queensland to provide an amusing, intimate and even awkward journey through the on- and offline trials and tribulations of modern gay dating.

Over the past few years, it seems like Brendan Maclean has been everywhere: on Triple J, popping up in Baz Luhrmann’s Sydney-shot The Great Gatsby, making music and sharing his 140-character thoughts all over Twitter. Now he comes to Brisbane fresh from performing in Italy, France and New York, in a rare and intimate solo show. In A Fancy Evening with Brendan Maclean, expect his infamous covers of Leonard Cohen, Fleetwood Mac and Lady Gaga, as well as his original solo works. There’s a reason he’s been lauded and applauded by Amanda Palmer and Solange — and if you don’t already know why, here’s your chance to find out.

No, you’re not mistaken in thinking it’s not usually time for the Brisbane Queer Film Festival yet. The festival has come around a little earlier this year, and that’s not the only change. Normally, the long-running event livens up makeshift Brisbane Powerhouse screens in late March and early April, but now it runs alongside MELT, and has moved to nearby Palace Centro. The program kicks off with 2014 Berlinale Teddy Award winner The Way He Looks, before working through a wealth of other queer-focused films. The delightful Appropriate Behaviour is a certain highlight, but wait — there’s more! Also in the 16-session schedule, Lyle plays tribute to Rosemary’s Baby, Xenia takes teens on a Greek odyssey, and Gerontophilia explores an attraction to the elderly. Then there’s The Foxy Merkins, owner of the best title since — and hailing from the director of — the cult hit Codependent Lesbian Space Alien Seeks Same.

That title caught your attention, didn’t it? Of course it did — it is designed to. There’s more to Imprint Theatricals’ staging of this off-Broadway smash than the name, however. The set-up of 5 Lesbians Eating a Quiche earns a chuckle by itself: the charming widows of the Susan B Anthony Society for the Sisters Of Gertrude Stein gather for their annual Quiche Breakfast, circa 1956, as the Cold War is in full swing. This is 75 minutes spent watching what just might be the most outrageous community meeting you’ve ever seen.