"Our subjects we keep low and entertained"

Last Saturday, while I was enjoying a moment's peaceful respite from the battle of two footy teams, I met English actor, playwright and director Ryan J-W. Smith. He was out doing the footwork to promote his one man play 'New World Order' on at the Melbourne Fringe Festival and he handed me a leaflet. It was a similar but much nicer fated encounter, to the Save the Children crowd. Back then I had been looking for a charity to support when out they stepped nabbing me in the street. On this particular Saturday it was the Fringe Festival for which I was clutching a programme and thinking – I wanna go to something but where do I begin? Save the Children turned out to be the wrong charity for me but “New World Order” was definitely the right Fringe Festival performance to earn my limited theatrical performance dollars.

Ryan and I ended up chatting for a while and I fear that I kept him too long from his leaflet trail but in my defense I did go to his performance. And I learned a little bit about the talent that I would be supporting. Ryan made the brave move from England to live in New York taking his Shakepearian roots to a post-9-11 America. Audiences there have received his message of peace and awakening to state mind control well but then preaching to the converted theatre-going audience, while heartening, is much easier than converting the preachers.

Ryan told me that the hard-nosed Sex in the City world of New York was not to his liking. He witnessed from the inside the seductive illusion of national superiority being fed to the American people. Consumerism, fear, power, greed, invincibility, honour, duty, all tools being used to control the masses. And when you are immersed in its grasp, Ryan told me, it is very hypnotic. Fortunately he returned home for Christmas last year and I expect that the descent from the clouds landing back in reality would have been like waking from an illusionist's dream. He was invited to bring 'New World Order' to Adelaide and took the opportunity to line up performances in Melbourne as well. I suggested that next time he treat New Zealand audiences to his show we would relate well to its message.

His monologue in Shakespearian verse, was delivered through three characters. The war veteran as the narrator of hard lessons learned at great expense, reveals the King's hidden agenda to the Fool of the population. It was cleverly written and passionately delivered and I recommend it if Ryan does come to NZ.

I enjoyed the show although the change to daylight savings here in Melbourne almost caught me on the hop as my day got off to a later than planned start. I transferred yesterday from my budget hotel private sanctuary back to a dorm at Victoria Hall up by the RMIT and University. So far my changes of accommodation to various parts of town have provided me with a wealth of character inspiration and greater depth of insight into the different communities within this city. Elwood and St Kilda were the comfortable suburbs where it was easy to slot into the role of desperate housewife. Carlton and Fitzroy are full of zany artistic bohemian types – and oh boy were some of them zany. The hotel in the CBD came with the seduction of eating out and spending money and with my sister visiting, shops. Now I'm in student land living amongst often exploited overseas students.

I watched a dreadful news report last week on the accommodation shortage in Melbourne. It was about the greed of some landlords who are cramming unhealthy, unsafe numbers of mostly foreign students into apartments at inflated rents. Illegal partitions are erected to make one bedroom into two, bunk beds are used to pack more people in and when those are full, mattresses are moved to the floor space in between or out onto balconies at night. In one reported case nine people were sleeping in a two room apartment.

These are students who come from countries where they are used to overcrowding and are more tolerant of these conditions. They come to Australia to study, theoretically to better their lives but when their study is complete their stay here is over and by that time of course they have settled and are less inclined to move. They live in a state of fear that they can and will be sent home at any moment and so it is easy for mercenary landlords to exploit them and get away with it. Keep the masses low and living in fear so that they do not know that life doesn't have to be so hard. I have seen and talked to some of these student. The are working too hard at poor jobs to earn enough money to live here in this expensive city while they study even harder to try and make their future better. There is no new order to the world, only more of the old.