AustLit

'Throughout the 1980s, a number of plays were produced in Melbourne which sat at the cutting edge of what was happening globally in site-specific practice at that time. Fefu and Her Friends (Maria Irene Forn, 1977) was produced in a house in Tennyson Street, Elwood, two years before Necessary Angel's celebrated house play, John Krizanc's Tamara, appeared at the Toronto Theatre Festival in 1981. Similarly, Bus, Son of Tram traversed the streets of inner Melbourne more than a decade before Forced Entertainment's much-lauded bus excursion, Nights in This City explored the suburbs of Sheffield in 1995. Described by Jack Hibberd as one of the most surreal events to animate Melbourne theatre, TheatreWorks' 'Tram Show', played to some 20,000 passengers, across 400 performances, generating (in today's figures) roughly $1 million at the box office - while trambulating a total distance that would have taken it halfway around the world. Bus, Son of Tram also became a recurring hit for the Banana Lounge's Rod Quantock and Geoff Brookes, who took their nightly audiences to police stations, private clubs, family planning clinics, the windows of expensive restaurants, and whatever city-wide events happened to be taking place at the time, which in February 1982 included the annual Moomba Festival.' (Publication abstract)