By Garry Maddox
The booking instructions for Tilda Cobham-Hervey’s upcoming show are firm: “Do not book with a friend”.
The actor, best known for the film I Am Woman and the TV series The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart, has created an audio-guided tour of Barangaroo that is aimed at forming connections between strangers. The more different, as in the case of an 80-year-old woman being teamed with a teenage girl at a previous season, the better.
“The 80-year-old woman and the teenager ended up crying and hugging,” Cobham-Hervey says. “We’ve had people who go through the show together then sit down for an hour or two together and chat. We’ve had dates and numbers exchanged. Every experience is so different.”
“We’ve had people who go through the show together then sit down for an hour or two together and chat”: Tilda Cobham-HerveyCredit: Dion Georgopoulos
The tour, Two Strangers Walk into a Bar, will take place during the Sydney Fringe Festival, which on Monday night launched a program of more than 400 shows and events that will take place in September.
After meeting a performer at a designated spot, patrons will be given a headset, a booklet and a bag of objects. Cobham-Hervey then guides them through what are described as “playful and introspective exchanges and activities” – both on the streets of Barangaroo and in a restaurant.
Along the way, they meet a stranger who has been going through their own activities.
Cobham-Hervey came up with the idea after spending eight months locked down in Los Angeles during the pandemic.
“I was feeling so lonely,” she says. “It wasn’t just lonely for friends and family in Australia but for strangers. Those connections that you have all day, every day, with people you’ve never met – how sometimes with a stranger you can be more honest, or they can impact your life in such big ways.”
Back home in Adelaide, Cobham-Hervey appreciated the small moments of human contact that were possible again.
“I wanted to make something that celebrated that connection,” she says.
The festival includes theatre, music, comedy, dance, visual art, circus and cabaret in venues across the city, including festival gardens at the Entertainment Quarter and Darling Harbour, a Queer Hub at Qtopia Sydney, a First Nations Hub in Erskineville and a Dance Hub at Walsh Bay.
“It’s about new work and also about experiencing places in a different way”: Sydney Fringe Festival director Kerri Glasscock with Tilda Cobham-Hervey.Credit: Dion Georgopoulos
The line-up includes the Grammy-winning Soweto Gospel Choir performing freedom songs, R&B and future soul singer Ngaiire collaborating with pastry chef Anna Polyviou for a night of music and dessert, the Hunger Games spoof Definitely Not a Hungry Game: A Parody Musical, and Aboriginal rock band Coloured Stone.
While the Fringe is not yet back to the pre-COVID level of more than 500 shows, festival director Kerri Glasscock says it will feature 2000 artists from first-time performers to touring stars.
“It’s about new work and also about experiencing places in a different way,” she says. “We build a lot of spaces in empty buildings and we pop up across the city.”
New venues include a terrace house in the Rocks, a car park in North Sydney and an office building foyer in the Sydney CBD.