Program
Support
Information
The Scrying Room (working title)
Marcus McKenzie
Showing
DATE & TIME
Friday 27 February, 7pm
LOCATION
Temperance Hall, Main Hall/Upstairs Studio
199 Napier Street
South Melbourne
ACCESSIBILITY
Temperance Hall's Main Hall is wheelchair accessible, there will be limited seating and audience movement throughout the showing.
CONTENT
Haze, adult themes
TICKETS
Pay what you can.
Register to attend here
Marcus is not making another sequel to The Crying Room.
Marcus has been living out of a suitcase for six months, but luckily he has had this studio residency to help him stay grounded.
He’s been attempting to work through two high-flung concepts (that he made up): parasemics and perforganisation. What are they, and what consequences might they produce?
This will be a showing. Or maybe it will be a show. Will from Temperance Hall says “no pressure”. But Anna from Temperance Hall says “the bar is very high”.
Can Marcus step up to the high bar already set by previous residents, or will the spectres of past works continue to assert themselves, over and over?
This public outcome offers an intimate opportunity to enter a live experiment: a practice caught mid-thought.
CREATED AND PERFORMED by Marcus McKenzie
Marcus McKenzie is a Temperance Hall Front Studio Resident for 2026.
Temperance Hall's Front Studio Residency offers six independent artists an artist stipend and two months of exclusive, unrestricted access to the Front Studio at Temperance Hall. At the conclusion of their residencies, artists present a public showing of their work in development, and receive professional photographic documentation.
The 2026 Front Studio Residency has been supported by the Neilson Foundation, the City of Port Phillip, and private donors.
Marcus Mceknzie’s work uses the relationship between audience and performer as a site for weird sensory encounters, often incorporating schisms in language, parafictional wor(l)d-building, meme-adjacent media and questionable dancing. His works take place in theatres, galleries, supermarkets, nightclubs and churches.
Australia: Rising. Mona. Mona Foma. Dark Mofo. Arts Centre Melbourne. Liveworks. Substation. Kaldor. Miscellania. Soft Centre. Le Fag. Lucid. Aphids. Pony Cam. Pony Express. Deep Soulful Sweats. Gertrude Contemporary. Kings ARI. Blindside. Wheeler Centre. Art Gallery of NSW. NGV. RMIT Gallery. Malthouse. Belvoir. Terrapin. Cantos. House of Vnholy. Un Projects. Aesthetic Calculations. Joel Stern. Shian Law. Georgia Banks. Mike Hewson. Zoe Bastin. Geoffrey Watson. Tamara Saulwick.
Internationally, Marcus has worked with Michael Portnoy for Steirischerherbst; Tim Crouch for Unicorn Theatre); and has recently toured Japan and Singapore with Terrapin and performed in Ireland with Pan Pan. Other international engagements include Xavier Le Roy, Hermann Nitsch and Lynsey Peisinger.