The Melbourne Fringe Festival has released one of the highlights of this year’s program – a Festival-first commission of cultural deviants The Huxleys presenting The Winner Takes It All – a grand slam queer takeover of the sporting world, where Melbourne’s queer community will be able to live out their own glamorous athletic dreams.
The event will run over the first and second weekends o this year’s Fringe Festival and is described as “a large-scale participatory event come photoshoot where
The Huxleys invite ordinary citizens en masse from the LGBTQIA+ community and their allies to enter a domain that they may have long dreamed of, but may never have been comfortable participating in – the realm of competitive sports.”
Dressed head to toe in high-camp regalia, anyone who has ever felt excluded from sport – whether because of gender, sexuality, culture, background or disability – will get to live out epic sport fantasies, captured in a series of joyous and surreal photographs.
Hundreds of participants will fill the swimming pool, tennis court and cricket pitch in an epic reclaiming of the national pastime. They will also get to take home their very own limited-edition print. Entries to participate are open now at melbournefringe.com.au
Like many young queer people, the seeds of Garret Huxley’s fraught relationship with sport were sown early in life.
“Sport highlighted my differences and made me an easy target for playground bullying, and so I spent twelve years of my life trying to get out of every sporting activity possible,” he said.
“A teacher once ordered the class to triple-jump into the sandpit. I refused to do it. My inner body temperature felt like 100 degrees because I was in the unwanted spotlight.”
These are the types of experiences The Winner Takes It All is looking to subvert, by framing queer people to be at the centre of sporting fantasies.
The Winner Takes It All will take place at Prahran Aquatic Centre, Princes Gardens Tennis Court and Malvern Cricket Ground in the City of Stonnington on 6 and 12 October,
The Melbourne Fringe Festival will take place from 1-20 October with the full program to be released at a later date.
