Hotel De Haven
RAG Theatre
5 April 2019
101 Engagement Hub, St Kilda Drop in
to 6 April Facebook page
Photo by Nicolette Forte
Photo by Nicolette Forte
I just found an awesome pair of retro white cat-eye sunnies in my bag. It took me a minute to remember why I have them.
Sometime in the middle of the comedy festival, I traded a balloon flower for them at an op shop at RAG Theatre's Hotel De Haven. RAG Theatre are supported by the City of Port Phillip. The ensemble is formed by people who experience barriers to participating in the arts, including people who live with mental illness. They create original work based on their diverse experiences.
The result is authentic storytelling from the hearts of its makers, and theatre experiences that welcome all audiences. Hotel De Haven is their new work presented at the 101 Engagement Hub in St Kilda, a place where everyone is treated with kindness and respect. Maybe some of our professional theatre companies could learn a thing or two from RAG about respecting and welcoming all voices.
Arriving at the "hotel", guests are quickly tested and let into the communal space. There are no chairs, but there is a gorilla with a clip board and a sherif on a hobby horse welcoming everyone. This is an interactive immersive experience. In an imagined near-future, nature has had enough and is taking over. There's no electricity and, with no banks, money is useless. Trade and bartering is the only way to get stuff and the only new things have to be made by hand.
Hotel De Haven is also a place where the community can safely meet and share their knowledge. As new comers, we learn the history of how survivors only have what they could fit in a suitcase. And as we meet, listen and trade our way around the hotel's many spaces, we learn how their skills and experience are more useful than their saved stuff.
With director Scott Gooding and artistic associate Trudy Radburn, the performance was created in workshops. As well as writing the overall story together, each performer (Carla Mitterlehner, David Carlisle, Rhonda Purczeld, Di Pattison, Sarah Berry, David Baker, Raphael Kaleb, Vicki Coates, Zufa Nezirovic and support artists Marjetka McMahon-Krizanic and Nicolette Forte) developed a character and an experience for a small group or one-on-one encounter. These include an op shop, survival classes, meditation advice, story telling and a knitting circle.
RAG make theatre where we have conversations with performers and get to know the rest of the audience. It's a place where the theatre rituals are about breaking down barriers and all shows are created knowing that everyone has a story to tell.
The Greek Mythological Boat Show SPARC Theatre
21 February 2018
Christ Church, St Kilda
to 23 February portphillip.vic.gov.au
If you had to leave your home, what would you take with you?
The members of SPARC Theatre asked this of themselves and their audiences as they reimagined the Ancient Greek comedy The Birds. The Greek Mythological Boat Show is a reflection of their own experiences and those of their families, many who came to Melbourne from Greece in the 1950s and 60s. What did they bring with them? What parts of their culture, beliefs, hopes and fears do their children and grandchildren still keep.
SPARC Theatre is a company of diverse performers supported by the Port Phillip council. Many members experience barriers to social and cultural participation, including long-term psychiatric disability and/or acquired brain impairment.
This story started by imagining what would happen if St Kilda were destroyed by Timmy, a bore of a bully fuelled by toxic masculinity, and they had to leave their homes. With birds, songs, personal memories and imagined stories, this new epic tale felt at home in Christ Church in St Kilda – even more so as the church's stained glass and ornate everything were decorated to feel like a family backyard with clotheslines and everyone being welcomed with a Greek biscuit and a cup of tea. Everyone's stories are as important and meaningful as those made into plays or celebrated in stained glass.
Sure, Harry Potter was brilliant, but it didn't come near to the joy of being part of an experience where SPARC members got to tell their stories to family, friends and strangers.
And, like some of the members, I'd also take my pets and extra water.
MELBOURNE FESTIVAL 2018 Song For A Weary Throat Rawcus
Presented with Arts Centre Melbourne
13 October 2018
Fairfax Studio, Arts Centre Melbourne
to 14 October www.festival.melbourne rawcus.org.au
"Song For a Weary Throat". Rawcus
Rawcus Theatre’s Song For A Weary Throat was missed by too many of us last year and it's wonderful to have indie theatre like this brought back for us by Arts Centre Melbourne and Melbourne Festival. Too many amazing indie shows are never seen again after short runs.
People gather in what looks like the post-apocalyptic remains of a country-town community hall that was once set up for a dance (design, Emily Barrie; lighting, Richard Vabre). The chairs are breaking and the room is filled with dust and crunchy dead leaves, but everyone still comes. It’s what people do.
There’s noise (sound designer Jethro Woodward) but rarely voices, except for the remarkable Invenio Singers (Gian Slater, Josh Kyle and Louisa Rankin). The three voices create a live soundtrack that feels like pure emotion. Like the weary throats that can’t speak anymore because no one listened, their singing isn’t what we expect from songs of joy or despair, but are sounds that are trying anything to be heard again.
It’s never clear – and doesn’t matter – when or where we are; what matters is that this group of people are together after a traumatic even. Some don’t want to be there, some don’t know what to do and some keep hoping because, even if no one will dance with you, when people are together, there’s always a way forward and dancing alone isn’t so bad.
Led by artistic director Kate Sulan, Song For A Weary Throat was developed and performed by an ensemble of 15 performers with and without disabilities. Its exploration of trauma is personal without ever being specific, which makes it easy to put our experiences onto the stage and to feel the effects of trauma and to ultimately find hope and joy among the chaos.
Rawcas were formed in 2001 and continue to be supported by the Port Phillip Council – never forget how much local councils fund and support the creation of art.
The Classic Tale of Faust RAG Theatre and the City of Port Phillip
16 December
Latvian House, 3 Dickens St, St Kilda
to 17 December (1.30 and 7.30) Facebook page
No more reviews for 2011, but you don't need a review to be convinced to see RAG Theatre's The Classic Tale of Faust.
RAG Theatre is supported by the City of Port Phillip and creates opportunities for people who experience barriers to arts participation. In other words, this is theatre created by folk who aren't stuffy theatre people – and they want to have fun.
So drop all arty pretentiousness and get ready to enjoy yourself. And you get to play in the too-wonderful Latvian House in St Kilda with its mosaics, hand-carved wooden chandeliers and brown 70s decor (it's cooler than the Lithuanian Club).
Here, you're greeted by the suave and serious members of the company (who accepted me even though I'd worn orange Crocs) and you're free to chat about art and writing and sophisticated cultural shit before the main show.
But there are troubles backstage and the actor playing Mephistopheles has sent a replacement who doesn't know his lines. Luckily, there's a cafe where we can wait, the cast and crew can be convinced to share their festive acts and the Lativan Women's Group have left fresh pirags and vodka.
With acts including a maths quiz (finally!), poetry and delightfully atrocious Christmas sketches, each performer hints at the Faustian theme of soul bearing by letting us see the bits of their selves that they want to share.
Director Scott Gooding helped the RAG cast create their Faust in workshops and each have developed characters that are true to their skills, confidence and personalities. Everyone's performance starts with their heart, hints at secrets and shows us just how redemptive a wicked sense of humour really is.
And just when you think you know what's going on, there's twists that surprise and remind us that there's more to everyone's stories than what we think we know.
There's only three shows left, so if you can't go tonight, there's 1.30 or 7.30 tomorrow.
How could I not with such critical critical reviews and the deeply hurt response of some of the creators.
Supported by the City of Port Phillip and local groups that support marginalised residents, the MIAF production of Site Unseen is only one result of a Community Cultural Development (CCD) program that's been running for months.
I was hoping to talk about CCD and the importance of having your voice heard. I was hoping to compare it to the stunning documentary theatre of Aftermath, to the exquisite honesty and confrontation of Ganesh and The Third Reich and to other wonderful CCD shows I've seen developed and supported by the Port Phillip Council. I was hoping to talk about how it spoke to me.
It's possibly best to read the website, support the program, scoff at the reviews and leave the show unseen.
I can't remember feeling so uncomfortable watching a piece of theatre – and my discomfort had nothing to do with the subject matter.
What I liked
The beautiful photo exhibition in the soupless kitchen of the Theatre Works foyer. Black and white photos of people with an object of importance.
The recorded voices of the people who helped make it.
The elephant, until it was explained. Oh, so the elephant in the room is the elephant in the room.
The piece of Chocolate Kugelhopf I had in Acland St after the show.
Knowing that people who have written about this show and the people who have spoken to me about it are not heartless arseholes for criticising that which deserves praise and large slices of Chocolate Kugelhopf.
I may have also liked Chris B's performance, but he wasn't on.
Whose story is it telling?
Very superficially, CCD uses the arts to enrich lives and communities by letting people share their stories. From intention to process and product, a CCD project always has its community participants at its core. Site Unseen is no exception, with a participant training and employment program as part of the project. All we are seeing is the developed performance.
However, unlike the Site Unseen project (and the above video), the live experience lacks the stories of real people. A very clean bloke pretending to be a bogan and saying "It's hard on the streets" isn't a story; it's a confirmation of a stereotype.
Of course the presented experiences of homelessness are true, but they are scraped off the surface of the real stories. Without detail, without context and without humanity, there's nothing to share that every person seeing Site Unseen doesn't know and see every day.
For me, the most moving story was the old woman being evicted with her cat, Rosie. This woman had a name (that I've forgotten) and her situation is so real to anyone who doesn't own their house. It really could be me. She was also a cardboard cutout in case our imaginations are so dead that we can't imagine what an old woman looks like.
To the creators and participants who are hurt by the response to this show, please tell us your stories because we want to hear them and they are what is unseen in Site Unseen.
Who is Site Unseen talking to?
Poor Felicity. Felicity is our guide and the chair of fictional WIMS (Walk In My Shoes). She's also living in fear of being stabbed by angry critics. If I were the kind of person who took a rhetorical knife to the theatre, she'd have been safe – because I would have self-harmed to get away.
Who is this woman meant to be? Is she the section of our society that this show wants to reach?
I get that it's meant to be satire, that's she's meant to represent the worst of silly rich middle-class ladies who take on charities to feel good about themselves and have no idea about who or what they are supporting. I've never met anyone like her though.
So Site Unseen isn't talking to us and we can happily sleep knowing that we've done our bit by turning up and politely clapping at the end.
Good satire makes us cringe at our own hypocritical ridiculousness. Felicity isn't any part of me or anyone I know, and I wonder if she's any part of anyone who chooses to see a show about homelessness as part of a respected arts festival. Does anyone really think that the people who want to see and support this show believe that the homeless are having a picnic and slumming it by buying non-vintage Moet with their food vouchers?
The tone of Site Unseen is that the audience are so ignorant and selfish that they need to be told the obvious.
Why doesn't this show confront me? Me, who lives in the Port Phillip (St Kilda) council and avoids walking down certain streets. Me, who has lied to Big Issue vendors saying that I already have a copy. Me, who writes about pretentious theatre and pretends to understand how homeless participants in a CCD project feel.
Homelessness in Rippon Lea
Last year during the storms, I wanted to put my car in my shed. My shed is filthy, falling apart and it leaks; it's not somewhere you'd want to spend more than a few seconds. It was late at night and opening the door I was confronted with a smell that I will never forget. I was terrified of finding a dead animal.
There was a body, but he was alive and in a sleeping bag in the one dry spot. He was also passed out. I shut the door. My car was fine. I had no idea what to do and was horrified at myself for being scared of someone who was so cold that my crappy shed was a good find. I didn't call the police like my neighbours suggested.
With a bit of googling and asking on facey, I put together a supermarket list and in the morning I filled an old backpack with museli bars, Milo, fruit cups, cheese sticks, Panadol, band aids, wet wipes, tissues and some chocolate. I left it in the shed, but he never came back. I know that I'd be humiliated if I'd been discovered sleeping in a run-down shed.
He left used tissues, rollie papers, some empty wine casks, a pair of boots, a pair of sandals and a rug that I wouldn't let my cats sleep on. He'd even managed a fire. I used thick rubber gloves to clean it all up. The smell took days to go.
(Dude, if your reading this. The food and stuff is still there and your shoes are in another bag in the corner of the shed.)
The homelessness of Site Unseen doesn't smell or confront or question. It may be based on real stories, but the final product is spotlessly clean and feels as authentic as a performance of "We're a couple of swells".
As such, it insults my intelligence, my empathy, my knowledge and my actions.
MELBOURNE FRINGE 2009
Occupied RAG Theatre
(supported by the City of Port Phillip)
10 October 2009
Theatre Works
It's a strange feeling to see a stage that looks too much like how my brain feels, and love a show that made me laugh so honestly at my own life.
RAG Theatre’s Occupied is for everyone who has ever endured a day in an office.
Cheap desks, IKEA bins, old computers (with holographic smiley face stickers), coffee cups, attempts at recycling, folders, and chairs that spin create a design that makes the clutter look almost beautiful; if it wasn’t for the clutter.
Starting slowly and ritualistically, five ‘workers’ (Carla Mitterlehner, Marjetka McMahon, Jo Sloggett, Melissa Tauber and Fur Wale) remind us that our worship of money is what makes us enter offices – places that thrive on unnecessary chaos, but ultimately chip away at our souls though boredom.
Under the steady direction of Scott Gooding, Occupied was devised by the current RAG Theatre ensemble (RAG was formed in 1993) though workshops. The resulting series of vignettes about the ‘madness’ of offices, strip away the pretence of these environments and let us laugh at their absurdity.
There’s little dialogue, because work conversations are all the same and don’t say much anyway. The official ones are filled with ‘buts’ that blame other people (with some of the best outrageous excuses ever), while the casual chats are filled with untruths and a touch of crudity.
Occupied’s honest and hilariously accurate depiction of boredom sent me back to every job where I stamped my fingernails, wore an envelope as a hat, looked around the room through a postal tube telescope, built a folder house for my desk toy (that was there to cheer me up), wondered what those bitches were talking about behind my back or just wanted to climb under my desk and cry.
RAG Theatre, you are my type of people – thank you for reminding me why I never want to work in an office again.
