If your backyard is good enough to have been considered for inclusion in the Open Garden Scheme then I’m sorry to tell you, that’s not what Belvoir was looking for. Belvoir wanted backyards that are ‘friendly and welcoming’, more authentic really. Yours probably fails on all those counts being too artistic, too tidy. Belvoir wanted backyards in which to stage a revival of The Tribe, a one-man show by Michael Mohammed Ahmad, adapted from his novella of the same name. Three Surry Hills backyards will each accommodate about 80 people at a handful of performances. The presentation is part of the Sydney Festival and is probably no more fatuous than any number of other Festival shows.

This backyard blitz may be a form of self-expression and a nice bonding exercise for the 80 souls gathered together but it isn’t theatre and probably isn’t art. The actor presenting the monologue is Hazem Shammas, who has been seen in Mother Courage and Scorched. Of course alternative theatre groups, in this case Urban Theatre Projects via Belvoir, are always looking for somewhere ‘different’ to present things, almost anywhere but a theatre or even a hall. There’s nothing new in that, but for theatre companies it’s really a dead end. Those sitting on milk crates in the backyards may well be charmed by their propinquity to the actor and nourished by their Backyard Dinner Box from the Bourke St Bakery but it can’t be the way of the future.