WHAT IS BINGO UNIT?

Team MESS love two things - everyone and television. For their new major work they combine the two by shooting a new television crime drama in public places where everyone can play a part. As part of the 2012 Next Wave Festival, Team MESS invites audiences to play the game and create the narrative of a television crime drama titled, BINGO Unit.

Over ten days in the lead up to the festival, Team MESS will be taking to the streets of Melbourne to film the pilot episode. Audiences are invited to don a jacket, a badge, a gun and a holster and play their part in BINGO Unit. Following the shooting, Team MESS will open their doors at the Team MESS Studio’s at The Meat Market at Arts House to take audiences on Warner Bros style back-lot tour to watch the footage, uncover the magic and machinations of the filming process and to piece together the missing pieces of the puzzle.

BINGO Unit continues Team Mess’ exploration into contemporary modes of narrative production and audience engagement through a unique form of participation. Fresh from their previous work This Is It, which sold out at Arts House in August last year, BINGO Unit promises to excite and entice even the most suspicious characters of this genre.

WHO ARE TEAM MESS?

Team MESS is the collaborative output of a group of five young artists who work across the performing and visual arts. As a collective we use the conventions, rituals and spectacles of everyday life to stage theatre events that close the critical distance between the work and the viewer and open up a shared space of experience, exchange and possibility. We then use this space to explore contemporary modes of narrative production and audience agency.

Team MESS are: Dara Gill, Sime Knezevic, Frank Mainoo, Natalie Randall, Malcolm Whittaker.

Founded in 2008 from their studies together at University of Wollongong's Faculty of Creative Arts, Team MESS are a group of young Sydney based artists. They have become synonymous with Live-Art, producing interactive theatre that dissolves the barrier between audience and performer, creating a shared space of experience, exchange and possibility.

Our work together includes: This Is It (Brisbane Powerhouse, 2012; PICA & Arts House, 2011; Performance Space, 2010), a performed press conference for a non-existent new film; I Think I Can Dance (Peats Ridge Festival, 2009), a Cartesian choreography dance competition; Killing Don: Evolution of a Memory (Performance Space, 2009), a party in celebration and lamentation of memory and nostalgia; You and Me and a Very Large Bottle (Performance Space 2008), a game of spin the bottle to fill a void in a young woman’s life.

'Team MESS… are crafting an intriguing interrogative role in the performance world as fearless, funny and clever interpreters of our contemporary culture.' (Chris Mead, Playwriting Australia)

“…an energetic and interdisciplinary collective of emerging artists (mostly graduates from Wollongong University) who are worth keeping an eye on.” (Real Time)

"...a celebration of the boundlessness of imagination, a clever swipe at our celeb fixation - but most of all, it instills the feeling we had in the playground as we feverishly spun shared fantasies out of thin air with our playmates. That's the heart of the piece - it joyfully reminds you of the reason this peculiar ritual of ours is called a 'play'." (Courier Mail on This Is It)

WHAT WE WILL DO WITH YOUR SUPPORT

Funds raised from this campaign will be used towards:

- Hire of cameras and lights for the duration of the filming process.

- Production management for the Next Wave Festival period.

- Video/photographic documentation of the project and the creation of a BINGO Unit DVD and website.

- Donuts! Donuts! Donuts! (catering for all of the participants during the filming process)