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Brink Productions presents Gorge ‘09
Venue: Space Theatre, Adelaide Festival Centre
Season: November 19, 20, 21 at 7.30pm
Tickets: Adult $30, concession $25 each performance night (plus booking fees) available through BASS
Bookings: BASS 131 246 or www.bass.net.au
Continues November 21 at 7.30 pm
Gorge ‘09 is a part of Brink’s FEED Programme, in association with the Festival Centre’s InSPACE programme, generously supported by a $15,000 donation from the Sidney Myer Fund. Gorge ’09, under co-directors, Chris Drummond and the founder, Daisy Brown, selected three writers to each write a play that would result in a ten minute performance. Two companies will each perform one of three plays to create a mini festival of new work. They have been allowed no more than 40 hours of rehearsal since receiving the scripts in late August.
The three playwrights are Alirio Zavarce, Matt Cormack and Nicki Bloom whilst the performance companies are independent director, Daniel Clarke, and independent choreographer, Aidan Munn, on Thursday, TheimaGen and Unreasonable Adults, on Friday, and Real Time Collaborators and Stone/Castro (Jo Stone and Paulo Castro) on Saturday.
The Thursday evening began with Love is in the Air, sung by that very popular singer, Libby O’Donovan, accompanied by that superb pianist, Matthew Carey who, together, provided a selection of songs during the evening. Daisy Brown then explained how Gorge worked and how she had started it in 1997, mentioning that this is the fifth Gorge to be held. On the first night the play was Alirio Zavarce’s Conflict Under an Australian Quilt.
Before we got to the performances, however, Daisy Brown brought Alirio Zavarce to the stage for a short interview about himself and his writing. This was followed by a reading of the play that was intended to be nothing more than that. Placing it in the hands of three terrific actors like Eliza Lovell, Brendan Rock and Rory Walker, however, resulted in the evening’s third, unplanned performance, more akin to a radio play than a flat reading. This bonus performance generated a lot of laughs, as the script is initially very funny, until a darker undertone emerged.
A nameless man and woman have met at a nightclub and ended up in her bed, which is where the play begins as they romp under her Australian Flag quilt in a dimly lit room. When the light is turned on she is shocked to find that he is ‘very dark’ and he accuses her of racism. The conflict builds and both call the police. The policeman takes him to an interrogation room and bombards him with questions, some of the more ludicrous of the questions asked of migrants wishing to become Australian citizens. He is finally released and meets her again, ending the play with a tentative reconciliation and the possibility of further encounters.
Daniel Clarke’s actors were Tamara Lee and Sahil Choujar as the couple, with Mondi Makhoba as the policeman. The design was by Cassandra Backler, with lighting by Ben Flett. Under a huge sheet, made up of numerous Australian flags, Lee and Choujar presented an hilarious interpretation of the sex scene, reducing the audience to fits of laughter, before switching to a strongly confrontational scene. These two established a great rapport and presented two believable and well rounded characters. Tamara Lee’s marvellous sense of comic timing and strong characterisation was well balanced again Choujar’s approach to the man finding himself suddenly facing what seems a racist scenario.
The entrance of Makhoba caused a huge burst of laughter, as the audience had clearly been anticipating a typically white, Anglo Saxon, Protestant Australian policeman. This juxtaposition added an extra level of surrealism to the ridiculous interrogation scene. This first performance was a terrific start to the Gorge festival for this year, but it didn’t stop there.
Aidan Munn’s dancers were Rachel Mendham and José Gonzalez as the couple, with Glen McCurley as the policeman. In a bold and innovative move Munn has sought out the natural rhythms of the text and has his dancers deliver the lines, dancing to their own words. The tango has been referred to as ‘the dance of love’ and Munn has based the choreography of the opening bedroom scene on Latin American dance steps, keeping the couple in close contact, weaving themselves sensuously around one another. We see a strong connection between Mendham and Gonzalez, moving as one in a tightly choreographed and highly polished work that belied the mere 40 hours of rehearsal.
When the conflict arises and they separate, much of the argumentative section has the dancers mirroring their movements indicating that there is still an underlying attraction. Munn also delves into police brutality when the man is interrogated by the police officer in a very martial set of moves, physically abusing him as well as mentally assaulting him with the questioning. McCurley brings out a very sinister edge during this powerful section, in a fine interpretation of the role.
The dancer/actors have taken on the challenge and, in moving well outside their comfort zones, have created something very special. This was a well-considered, intelligent and beautifully executed piece and it would be a tremendous shame if this is the only time that it is seen.
The format for the second night was the same but, this time, the writer was Matthew Cormack. Cormack is a screen writer and, although supposedly writing for the stage, he has produced a screenplay. A ten minute script, with two diverse locations, a supermarket and a bathroom, and with around a half dozen scenes, screams ‘movie’. Not surprisingly, we almost got one. Like Brothers in a Bathtub introduces George, an artist, Anna, his agent, model and casual sexual partner, and Bernard, his twin brother.
Anna meets George in the supermarket and offers him a commission, to portray God for a book cover, and he agonises over it. She meets Bernard, sitting in an empty bath posing for George. Â In the next scene George has asked her to pose for him and they are now in the bath together after some time spent painting her. He tells her a story of his youth when he and his twin brother shared bath times. He tells how they played at being a couple on a date, Bernard playing the woman. He goes on to tell how they kissed and he became sexually aroused, changing this relationship with Anna in a moment. Another scene, and she confronts him over his revelation. He cannot understand her adverse reaction. The scene changes again and George reminds Bernard of the incident, by Bernard denies remembering it. George tries to get Bernard to kiss him so that he can see what it is like to kiss himself. Bernard refuses, strongly, and fights George off when he attempts to force Bernard to kiss him. The final scene finds that George has completed the book cover, a flower, representing God, and Anna is congratulating him, but their relationship has irrevocably changed.
Cormack’s script was interpreted first by TheimaGen, featuring Kate Roxby and Jamie Harding. This version was directed by Justin McGuinness with lighting by Nic Mollison and sound by Peter Nielsen. This group overcame the unwieldy script by the clever use of two large screens onto which they back-projected images and film, representing the locations and allowing for a fast transition between the numerous scenes. A supermarket trolley played itself and also doubled as the bath. Harding performed as both brothers, playing George on stage while his twin brother, Bernard, appeared on film and Roxby appeared both on stage and film.
Strong performances from both performers, along with the striking visuals, made the most of this brooding work that delved into the darker side of the piece, highlighting the naivety of George’s understanding that the alleged encounter with his brother was innocent and meaningless, his deviant desire for completion by something approaching a merger with his twin, the denial of any knowledge of the events by Bernard and George’s bewilderment at the sudden revulsion of Anna. Roxby and Harding are ideal casting and generate some superb interactions as their relationship shifts.
Unreasonable Adults were next with an interpretation that was seen as self-indulgent, pretentious nonsense that had little, if anything, to do with the script or the narrative. To begin with, Kerryn Rowlands laboriously placed assorted cans of food and drink, two at a time, around the stage then increased the tedium by, one at a time, leaning cards, with one or two words from the script written on them against each can. Meanwhile, Jason Sweeney was upstage left holding a blackboard with the word ‘God’ written on it, to which he later prefixed the word ‘Oh’. This he later erased and replaced with ‘Kiss Me’, sitting on a chair and holding it before him.
For the rest of the time Rowlands sat upstage right, motionless, and Sweeney shuffled his chair slowly downstage, a few centimetres at a time, whilst a much abbreviated version of the script was read by often difficult to comprehend computer generated voices, the stage instructions also being read aloud by a voice sounding like a telemarketer from Bombay. This was, in fact, an installation/performance art piece, possibly very vaguely inspired by the script but bearing no real relationship to it. It was not an interpretation of the script, and, as such, was all about the egos of creators of the work, devaluing the writer and the play. Had we not had the reading of the play, or seen the fine first productionperformance, it would have been impossible to know what it was all supposed to be about.
The final night will feature a script by established playwright Nikki Bloom, Footsoldiers, interpreted by Real Time Collaborators and Stone/Castro. This is experimental theatre that challenges and excites, a credit to the foresight and insight of Brink Productions an everybody else involved in making this happen.
