I Heart Racism - Duckboard House, Melbourne - 03/05/06- by epod

The first time I heard about Tommy Dassalo and Dave Bushell was when they pulled a well intentioned, but rather misguided stunt on the Mosh discussion board. This began with an announcement that was made by Dave, who said that after upsetting the natives at a comedy gig, Tommy Dasallo had been detained in Hutt River, an independant province in the Australian state of Western Australia.

Although most people who firstly responded to Dave's post indicated that this was most probably a hoax, as the stunt continued, an air of uncertainty, confusion, and a growing anger began to appear in their posts. Some very high profile comedians also backed up the fact in an around about way that Dassalo may have indeed been in trouble. This included Wil Anderson, who wore a "Free Dassalo" shirt, for an entire televised episode of his TV show, "The Glasshouse". Publicity does not get any better than that.

After it was finally revealed that Dassalo was quite alright, a furore ensured - well...continued, as people were starting to get pretty pissed off about the length of this stunt. There were threats of people blacklisting their Comedy Festival show, and all manner of abuse was hurled at the comedians involved. Yes, personally, I think that the stunt went on a little too long, but hey I love it when people fire up the kids at Mosh. After watching all this unfold and come crashing to a dramatic conclusion, I really wanted to see their show.

The show was, "beLIEve", which was said to "ponder the questions of what we believe, what we put up with, and why (lord, why?!)." This stunt, as stupid as it was, surely proved a point. Unfortunately, I did not get to Melbourne last year to see the "beLIEve" show, but this year, I was very much looking forward to seeing their play, "I heart Racism".

To ensure that I would not miss seeing the show, I left during the intermission of a rather pricey Lano and Woodley gig which went longer than expected. This was a rather heartbreaking thing to do, so as a consequence, I was hoping that Dave Bushell and Tommy Dassalo's show would live up to, or even better - exceed my expectations.

I made my way somewhat uneasily to the venue, which was located at the end of the alleyway, behind Duckboard House. I was very thankful that I was not beaten and mugged along the way. As I was waiting in line to get into the show, I was amused to see that as the line continued to expand, I was only one of the few white people in it. The majority of the 30 or so audience was made up of Asian people - interesting considering the content of this show.

This play features hippy, left wing, student, Cameron (Dave Bushell), who has been forced to reside with his cantankerous, extremely racist, Grandpa Broadbent (Tommy Dassalo). The show is a mixture of narrative between the two characters, as well as various multi-media presentations. I was very impressed with all aspects of this show, including the direction, humour, acting, research and dialogue. I particularly liked the addition of the various media that was showed on the projection screen onstage.

There was a slide show which showed how Cameron got into the prediciment of living with his Grandpa, as well as various election videos of Grandpa Broadbent, which were unreal. I loved the i-pod Grandpa Broadbent ad - awesome! Grandpa Broadbent also shared some of his racist cartoons with the audience, much to Cameron's disgust. Dave and Tommy broke out of character on a few occasions to talk more about racism, which I also enjoyed.

I was captivated and amused through the entire performance, and I left the venue very impressed and with a "Racist People Are People Too" badge, handed to me by Tommy on my way out. Seeing this show was definately worth the sacrifice I made of not seeing the second half of Lano and Woodley for (who had almost put me to sleep during the first part of their show).