Month: July 2012

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Review: He’s Seeing Other People Now – Metro Arts | The Independents at Sue Benner Theatre

Image: Katy Curtain and Norman Doyle – Photography: Amelia Dowd

In a city that looks remarkably like Brisbane, cameras are watching your every move. Riots are escalating beyond control. More and more people are disobeying curfew. In an unremarkable cinema, a political (or pornographic?) film is shown to an ideologically divided crowd. It’s the beginning of an evening that will spin out of control.

This is the world of He’s Seeing Other People Now, written by theatrical rising (and shooting) star and actress Anna McGahan. This is Ms McGahan’s first work as a playwright, and it’s directed by well-known local emerging director Melanie Wild.

Overall, the play is dangerously under-developed. The ideas and characters that are presented here seem half-formed and often superficial. Navigating the expositional landscape is difficult. I think the central premise of the play is that the citizens aren’t allowed to touch, but I’m still uncertain.

Unfortunately, Ms Wild’s direction does little to help the audience out. The two performers are asked to play a variety of characters. Some are recurring, others don’t appear more than once. Figuring out who is who is a confusing process. In addition, the staging means a small and two-dimensional performance space. What should be a physically tense hour ends up not packing a punch.

But all of that out of the way, this is a play you should see. I need to admit a bias here: I’m very good friends with optikal bloc, the team behind the projection design. This bias unfortunately means that you may interpret my following comments as disingenuous. I promise I’m being sincere when I say that this is one of the slickest audio visual designs a Brisbane stage has seen in years, let alone for an independent theatre program. The transitions between scenes are sublime and are the hi-light of the production.

The lighting design from Daniel Anderson is beautifully under-stated and intelligent. Phil Slade’s compositions are predictably accomplished and lush. Jessica Ross’ design binds these elements together into a seamless technical package that is simply outstanding.

Norman Doyle and Katy Curtain, the two performers, do their best with what is given to them. Katy Curtain does particularly well to find fantastically comic moments for her characters that give life and badly needed energy to scenes. Barbara Lowing and Lucas Stibbard provide well-performed, funny voice-overs.

There’s a strong theme of meta-theatricality running through the play that I can’t really comment on without spoiling wonderfully surprising elements of the show. The show’s attempts to didactically link its themes to reality lack a clear direction and purpose. I will say this: the final five minutes of this show are worth the ticket price alone. It’s ambitious. Successful or not, it’s sure to be a conversational landmark within the theatre industry for years to come. He’s Seeing Other People Now is sure to start an interesting debate about the limits and purpose of meta-theatre.

Go and see this show if you like to be surprised and you’re part of the Brisbane theatrical community. Being theatre-literate isn’t compulsory, but it certainly helps. If you’re a theatre student, you should absolutely see this piece for its important and unique contribution to new Queensland works. The play’s deficiencies are compensated with a short run time and exquisite technical design. He’s Seeing Other People Now will certainly be talked about.

He’s Seeing Other People Now by Anna McGahan plays at Metro Arts Sue Benner Theatre till 21 July. Details on website.

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Review: Chasing the Lollyman – Debase Productions with Artour Queensland – Empire Studio (Toowoomba)

As I sat in the near full Studio at the Empire a couple of nights ago, I was conscious of the fact that there were Murri audience members all around. Now, that doesn’t happen very often in Toowoomba. Why not is another question.

Why such a mixed audience was there on a cold night on a Thursday was because deBase’s production of Chasing the Lollyman was in town. The play, which had its first production in Brisbane in 2010, is currently on tour through the auspices of Artour Queensland. It was NAIDOC week and the only opportunity locals would get to see a play whose reputation has preceded it. It was, in fact, a perfect time to come together and spend an evening with Mark Sheppard one of the funniest stand-up comedians working today. Chasing the Lollyman is a very personal one-man show about identity, and grounded in the idea and power of family. Mr Sheppard’s story as a gay, Aboriginal man – a Muluridgi man from Mareeba, a small country town in far-north Queensland – unfolds over  75 minutes in a space framed by a perfectly-designed touring set – a series of poles decorated with indigenous-style motifs. They are actually boxes that contain items to accompany the stories he tells, either as symbols or costume pieces and props.

Mr Sheppard traces his background in a series of yarns, terrific contemporary-traditional dance pieces, song, and audience interaction – for once, the interaction part isn’t embarrassing. He kicks over a lot of barriers along the way, all without a trace of bitterness. He talks to us, with us – now a part of his ‘family’ – and, for me at least, gave permission to lose the guilt for a bit and laugh along with him at the really, really funny stories about his own family and the patronising liberal attitudes to indigenous Australians. Chasing the Lollyman‘s laughter and gentle approach mask generations of hurt and sadness, but they are never far from the surface, and why should they be?

I was unprepared for the powerful way the play’s humour, biting satire, and the personality of Mr Sheppard himself was able to work on us. God knows, many in the audience would have been aware of the cloud of white guilt that invariably hangs around any gathering dealing with the treatment of indigenous Australians present and past. It is a tribute to the writers (Sheppard co-devised with Liz Skitch) that these issues are never skirted but met head on. They are dealt with in that most powerful of ways – laughter. ‘Sit beside a Murri,’ he suggested at the show’s start, ‘and you’ll know when to laugh.’ Satire is deadly!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z00tny9JF1g&feature=player_embedded

The most powerful part of the evening is reserved for the final 10 minutes where, for this very short time indeed, Mr Sheppard assumes the role of the first indigenous Prime Minister of Australia, and calls us into a collective dreaming of reconciled unity – as family. He invites us to imagine the potential this would have for every Australian. It is stunning in its theatrical power to imagine and rehearse an as-yet unfulfilled idea. You could have heard a pin drop.

Chasing the Lollyman is currently on tour throughout south-east Queensland. Check the website for details on where it is heading. If it plays in your town, see it.

It is also the second in the new Homegrown Series of independent works being produced and/or presented by the Empire Theatre Projects Company. The first was the Australian play Blackrock which played last month. Greenroom will be following and reviewing the remainder of these independent productions in the Studio Series.

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Yana Taylor (Interview 29)

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)”