Emma Valente, Explorations Season, In Cogito, La Mama, Liz Jones, Mary Helen Sassman, Special, The Rabble
In examen, spark on October 29, 2009 at 5:49 pm
Special: In Cogito Volume IV, by Emma Valente and Mary Helen Sassman
Rabble @ Explorations @ La Mama
Wed. 21 Oct. to Fri. 23 Oct.
More explorations. This time The Rabble with volume four of their In Cogito series. Directed by Emma Valente, conceived by Valente and Mary Helen Sassman and devised by Valente, Sassman and Liz Jones.
Sassman is big with child. She plays Special, also big with child. She spends a lot of time with her mother, Goldie, played by a bolstered Liz Jones. Goldie harasses Special for not achieving Goldie’s ideal of bronzed gravidity: What are you doing, Special? … You’re a dead weight … I surfed into my third trimester … &c. Special is nauseated by her mother’s nagging; Goldie is exasperated by her daughter’s slovenliness. But they get along okay, mostly … until the birth, at which point Goldie attacks the umbilical cord with an electric breadknife and electrocutes Special. At least, I think that’s what happened.
Apparently they’re up a tree and apparently Goldie has castrated the father of Special’s unborn child, though you wouldn’t necessarily know these things unless you’d read the flyer. There was a novelty tree-ish thing on stage, but, you know, there was a lot of other novelty stuff too—so it was hard to know. What’s clear enough, however, is that Special and Goldie are stuck with one another.
The manner and disposition are given the kind of shambolic treatment one expects from The Rabble, although, as an exploration, the chaos is less than spectacular.
Elnaz Sheshgelani, Explorations Season, La Mama, Lloyd Jones, Majid Shokor, Mammad Aidani, Robert Musil, Shahin Shafaei
In examen, spark on October 28, 2009 at 1:38 am
IF, as…, Stranger in the Corridor, two plays by Mammad Aidani
Explorations @ La Mama
Mon. 12 Oct. to Wed. 14 Oct.
La Mama’s Explorations Season is on again and explorations are exactly what are wanted after the intellectual bludge that was the MIAF (of which complaint more to follow later this week along with more dispatches from La Mama).
Two short plays by Mammad Aidani opened the season: IF, as …, with Elnaz Sheshgelani and Shahin Shafaei; and Stranger in the Corridor, with Majid Shokor and Shahin Shafaei. Both directed by Lloyd Jones.
I attended the sold-out final performance (each exploration has a run of three nights only) with my friend Muzil, and, via the waiting list, we were lucky to get in at all. Not everyone did.
The experience was heavy—at times gloomy, at times abrasive, at times protracted, at times sublime—and, afterward, as we took small circles in the La Mama car park, both Muzil and I dithered on where to start. Twice Muzil opened his mouth as if to begin, and twice he finished only with a deep drag on his Djarum Black, he being the sort of crusty cosmopolitan who smokes Djarum Black. So it was Aidani himself, through Sheshgelani’s character, who eventually got us underway:
This is a very profound thing you are saying.
Brigid Gallacher, Carlos Parraga, Family of Strangers, Hannah Cuthbertson, Isabel Zbukvic, Jasmine Marchesi, Kerith Manderson-Galvin, Matthew Lorenzon, Melbourne Fringe Festival, Sample Theatre, Simon Rashleigh, St Martins Theatre, Tessa Pit, The Hat Box
In review, spark on October 9, 2009 at 3:58 pm
The Hat Box, by Kerith Manderson-Galvin
Family of Strangers @ St. Martins Youth Theatre
Wed. 06 Oct. to Sat. 10 Oct.
Fringe Festival session details
Another highly original though at times bemusing work on gender, violence, power and fantasy written by Keirth Manderson-Galvin and directed by Brigid Gallacher.
Those who caught Sample Theatre’s Sunny Side Up, also a Manderson-Galvin/Gallacher play, will recognise many of the same concerns in the work of this new company, Family of Strangers. There is the same bold attention to form; there is the same ingenuous and ingenious contextualisation of contemporary issues in an unpretentious but fantastical plot; there is the same old-school theatrical interest in stage, prop, costume and lighting design; and finally, the same wonderful integration of live music into the structure of the work.
This collective has a great visual feeling and demonstrate a real confidence in their chosen aesthetic, a kind of perfectionist DIY-type look. In this show they completely embrace their environment, a youth theatre, opening with a carefully crafted seascape that brings all the ruffled extravagances you’d expect of, say, a primary school production of The Owl and the Pussy Cat by that school down the road (you know the one). According to the bold design of the play, this gets completely stripped back as a new and grimmer aesthetic is introduced, albeit one that exhibits the same attention to detail.
