There are changes afoot at South Melbourne venue The Butterfly Club. Well known as a cabaret venue The Butterfly Club gave Tim Minchin some of his earliest Melbourne gigs and has seen the likes of Sammy J, Karin Muiznieks, Geraldine Quinn and Wes Snelling come through their doors. Along with this they have also hosted many nights of straight stand up comedy.
As of July The Butterfly Club will be opening seven nights a week. I asked David from The Butterfly Club what prompted this change. Insatiable demand! he says. Since the economy tanked our ticket sales are up almost 30% and we’ve been presenting many more shows than we did last year, with many season sell-outs and extensions. We think this is due to our ability to offer a unique night out at affordable prices, so audiences are coming to us instead of some of the larger, pricier shows around town. Plus our little Alice in Wonderland type venue enables them to escape from reality and the doom and gloom for a while.
With the advent of this new expansive calendar, The Butterfly Club are now looking for people to come forward with a variety of new ideas of how to how to use their showroom and venue. We don’t want to limit the possibilities by outlining a strict criteria says David. Some of our greatest success stories, like Dr Sketchy’s (an irreverent art sketching night), have surprised us by working so well. ‘South of the river’ has its own unique audience catchment so we could even replicate an existing successful event held elsewehere. The Butterfly Club is well known for being cabaret specialist. I asked David if this will continue to be the case. With its perfect aucoustics, intimate atmosphere and quality piano, the space is perfect for cabaret and over the past ten years we’ve developed what is probably Australia’s best database of cabaret enthusiests he says. Our cabaret performances will therefore continue in our headline timeslots (Thurs to Sat at 7.00 pm and 9.00 pm). Outside of these times we’re looking for people with new ideas of how to use our showroom and venue.
David say that The Butterfly Club are looking for events run by independent parties and are also you planning to launch their own in house productions. We’ve got a couple of house shows in development he says, but we want to complement these with other excellent events brought to us by others.
In coming coming weeks The Butterfly Club will see a whole host of events. We’ve got a swag of award winning shows in June, including World War Wonderful (which won the Groggy Squirrel’s Readers Choice Award in the Melbourne International Comedy Festival) says David, Dolly Diamond from the UK, Kim Smith from New York (he just won a Backstage Bistro Award alongside Liza Minnelli) and Jacob Diefenbach from Brisbane whose last show won Best Cabaret in Melbourne Fringe and a Green Room Award. Aside from the shows we’ve got some wicked parties coming up in our upstairs function space – we regularly combine the artistic talents of our performers with the eclectic atmosphere of the venue to create some memorable party themes!
If you have an idea that you want to bring to fruition, please email info@thebutterflyclub.com or pop in one night to see the multi award winning space and its potential. For more info check out The Butterfly Club website
Thanks to David from The Butterfly Club.