Theatre Works and Before Shot
29 August 2019
Theatre Works
to 8 September
theatreworks.org.au
 |
| "The Other Place" by Theatre Works |
Disinhibition
MUST
31 August 2019
MUST Space, Monash University Clayton campus
to 7 September
msa.monash.edu/events/disinhibition/
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| "Disinhibition" by MUST. Photo by Aleks Corke |
Melbourne playwright Christopher Bryant had two new shows open last week: The Other Place at Theatre Works and Disinhibition at MUST.
This is a rare opportunity to not only see two new works by the same author but to see how different director, casts and creators approach his writing.
The Other Place, directed by Jessica Dick, is a meta theatrical imagining of the lives of two women who nudged the dullness in theatre in the 1970s by creating alternative venues for contemporary voices.
Buzz Goodbody was the first female director at The Royal Shakespeare in London and was the instigator and founding associate director of The Other Place, the RSC's black box studio theatre formed to present small-scale experimental works. Her direction was praised by audiences and critics, especially for King Lear and Hamlet. Betty Burstall formed La Mama here in Melbourne in 1967 and fought to keep the small experimental theatre space open in the 1970s. La Mama remains one of the most influential theatre spaces in Australia. And still serves free tea and coffee, like Burstall introduced.
Written like it could be performed in either venue, Bryant explores the women's imagined inner thoughts by playing with the styles of theatre they worked with, ranging from Elizabethan to Post Modern. It's filled with the theatre jokes but comes back to the importance of theatre being a safe place if your community isn't welcoming. Both women faced conservative governments and attitudes; if only their stories were something from the past.
The cast of five women all play Buzz and Betty, each with more of their own personality than that of the women they didn't know. This makes it feel intimate and helps connect with the actors – who have all found their personal connection to one or the other women – but it's not as easy to really discover the characters. The women never met despite their similar goals, but one of the most emotionally engaging scenes is when they meet at a fictionalised tv interview. Letting them interact gives the work a story that's more than just a celebration of their lives.
Goodyear died by suicided in 1975; Burstall died in 2013. I learnt a lot about both of them. Sometimes we need to remember that known names were people who never believed they'd be people who playwrights would write about.
Dishinibition, directed by Yvonne Virsik, is far more about contemporary reality as it explores the unreality of social media where a puppy pic can lead to the unimaginable.
George is Boyance is on Tumbler; he really doesn't like the persona he's become. Flick is Flick.Eats on Instagram; she gets vegan takeaway and pretends she made it. Tay is an acronym for Totally About You on Twitter; she's an imagined artificial intelligence bot programmed to interact with influencers like George and Flick. Tay is the only one who believes that her net self is real; perhaps intelligence can overcome its artifice.
I don't have as many followers as any of them.
Like The Other Place, the cast, who are all students at Monash, play multiple roles and it takes time to put the jigsaw together of how early scenes fit in. But as characters stay with the same actors in Dishinibition, it's easier to find the experiences to connect with – even if it's with the bot.
Its strength lies with a cast who can only imagine what life was like before the internet and understand the positive and negatives about communicating with people you may never really know or meet. And they instinctively understand that our social media personalities are mask and performance. Bringing this concept onto the stage feels as natural as checking Facebook (I'm showing my age).
Virsik lets them find their personal connection to the work while giving the overall structure a tighter shell that lets the ideas dance like gifs without distracting from the narrative progression.
If you have to choose which play to see during The Festival of Bryant, Dishinibition is stronger and feels so much like now that it may be written about in the future as a play that captured the period before we really understood the impact of AI. And MUST continues to be the Melbourne theatre secret that develops some of our most successful theatre makers – Bryant was at MUST – and makes theatre with students that is nothing like student theatre.
But also see The Other Place because this is Melbourne and imagining theatre here without La Mama isn't possible.
