Two and a half weeks of frenetic programming, arts events and performances all over the city, Jonathan Holloway's first festival as Artistic Director - the 2016 Melbourne Festival has been a big one. I managed to get to 9 performances and events over the course of the festival, and there were plenty of things that I missed out on. Like most people, I couldn't get a ticket to Echo of the Shadow, the one-audience-member-at-a-time sensory wonderland in the bottom of ACMI, which by all accounts was utterly transformative. Les Tambours de Feu, the wild Catalan fire run through the laneways of Melbourne, was another one I missed out on, and I would have loved to have seen Paul Kelly and Camille O'Sullivan's Ancient Rain - I last saw O'Sullivan in a one-woman RSC production of The Rape of Lucrece, and thought her an exceptional performer. I did, however, get to some of the highlights of the festival, many of which I've written about here.

My last show for the 2016 Melbourne Festival was Berlin-based Gob Squad's War and Peace at the Malthouse. From the outset the show acknowledges that it can't possibly dramatise Tolstoy's epic novel, and instead uses the novel as an irreverent starting point for discussions on the nature of history, time, violence, and peace. From the novel, the show uses the concept of the aristocratic salon to structure and inform the work. Gob Squad's modus operandi is to create somewhat post-dramatic work that often features heavy involvement from audience members, and War and Peace was no exception.

As a theatre maker, when I go to the theatre I generally have a pretty good idea of how things are made. I can usually trace what happens onstage back through its processes of production, and know how sound, lights, technical design, even specific calls from the stage manager come together to create what the audience sees. This knowledge doesn't mean that theatre doesn't impress or surprise me, it just impresses me in a slightly different way. The emotional affect of what happens onstage is tempered by an intellectual knowledge of what is happening off. Last night, however, I went to Robert Lepage's 887, and seemed to me to be utterly magical.

Full disclosure: I have been wanting to see this production for two years. I lived in Scotland in 2014 while the work was in development, and have been following its progress as it has gained accolade after accolade, moving from the Edinburgh Fringe to the temporary theatre at the National Theatre London, and finally now as it travels to Melbourne for the Melbourne Festival. When this year's festival programme was announced, I was thrilled to see that Our Ladies of Perpetual Succour was on the list. Going to see the production on Friday night, I went to the theatre with very high expectations, and I was not disappointed.

One of the quirkier elements of this year's Melbourne Festival programme was Canadian company Mammalian Diving Reflex's Haircuts by Children. It's exactly what you think it is. Patrons go to a salon staffed entirely by children and get a haircut. The company aims to "bring people together in new and unusual ways", whilst also challenging the concept of empowerment - to what extent will adults give children agency to make decisions on their behalf? This morning, I went down to Razor Dolls salon in Windsor for a much-needed haircut. A delightful group of Year 5 students from West Richmond Primary welcomed me to the salon, took my booking details, relieved me of my coat and bag, and sat me down in a chair. My hairdressers were two 10 year old boys, Zac and Kon. I asked for them to cut my (quite long) hair to just above my shoulders, and off they went.

The Melbourne Festival is here! My favourite three weeks of the year have arrived, when artists, theatre makers, and provocateurs from all over the world descend on Melbourne. Artistically risky work, anathema to the financial conservatism of major Australian theatre companies, gets produced in the best venues in the city and exposed to a mainstream audience. I believe that the work shown at the Melbourne Festival (and by extension other temporary arts festivals around the world) pushes the agendas of more established companies in interesting directions, as they see that there is an audience willing and excited to see risky and challenging work. On Saturday evening I saw Triptyque, a dance-circus hybrid from Montreal-based company Les 7 Doigts de la Main. As the show's title suggests, Triptyque consists of three separate pieces, all mixing circus, contemporary dance, and theatre in interesting and sometimes surprising ways.