Concrete Playground

Verge is strange. That's one of the best things about it.  A silent room churns with frenetic dancers, hopping and bobbing to a common beat. Comedians push to entertain a hungry audience at four in the morning, sixteen hours of gig left to go. At the bar, they argue the virtue of sending arts money into space. A silent disco, a 24-hour comedy gig and a NASA vs. NIDA debate are definitely some of the stranger pieces of the Verge mosaic. Which is varied, like a spotty art wall of Rubiks cube is varied &#151 something they have at the festival.

Verge is also perfectly normal. They'll have a best-of Theatresports (with Chaser members and cast from Thank God You're Here) white-lit night-market, open circus-rehearsals and music. The festival has been running at Sydney University since 2003, starting as an experiment along the torn and sticky-taped graffiti tunnel and progressing down to a full-sized cultural event. Spread across the Camperdown campus and the stone-walled Sydney College of the Arts, Verge is well worth checking out, puzzling over, and joining in.

Image by University of Sydney Union.