I got to speak with Yana Taylor yesterday afternoon just after she had emerged from a tech session. As one of the performers (with Irving Gregory) Yana is also part of the team of collaborator-creators for version 1.0 (Version One Point Zero’s) production of The Disappearances Project which opens tonight in its Queensland premiere at the Judith Wright Centre of Contemporary Arts. The company’s website acknowledges its ‘innovative political performance’ and (in a footnote) its work as ‘a cultural gift to the nation … .’
The company has been working on various ‘social-issue’ projects since its formation by David Williams in 1998. As to the form of their work Yana describes it as ‘socially-engaged documentary theatre. We create forms to reveal our relationship as artists with the spectators. It’s immersive for everyone involved.’
The Disappearances Project treats the topic of those left behind when someone goes missing. As we chat I learn that 35,000 people are reported as missing every year in Australia and, although the vast majority of these are found within a month or so, up to 2,000 are not located. It’s quite a staggering figure, one larger than the national road-toll. Yana notes, ‘Time is the thing that is at stake for everyone left behind. Lives have been transformed by that time – the moment of vanishing. The million close bonds and attachments to that moment often mean that those left behind have a sense of being frozen, of being in an ambiguous state. There was a perception that they should move on with their lives which, whilst they retain ‘an external social shape … are, nevertheless, transformed. There is a cascade of things that draw them back.’
The project was born out of a commissioned residency by the Bathurst Memorial Entertainment Centre. Project 1.0 were asked to work with local artists in the creation of a topic that had relevance to the city. There had been high-profile cases of missing persons, and the received wisdom seemed to be that these high-profiles typified Bathurst. The company wanted to find out if that was true. Continue reading “Yana Taylor (Interview 29)”