Review: The Human Voice

The Human Voice
Periscope Productions and Choral Edge

4 March 2020
Meat Market Stables
to 13 March

meatmarket.org.au
www.periscopeprod.com

The writers of 'The Human Voice'. Photo by Sarah Walker
Jean Tong, Georgia Symons, Thomas De Angelis, Lewis Treston, Ang Collins, Fiona Spitzkowsky

Periscope Productions developed the idea of a multi-writer production based around the theme of telephone conversations before 2020. So, while The Human Voice's relevance of using technology to communicate rings loud and clear, the work never loses its initial intent or feels like a reaction to lockdown.

The company, who began at Melbourne University student theatre in 2012, were inspired by a 1930 play by Jean Cocteatu and wanted to explore how we talk to each other on telephones. Voice-to-voice; intimacy without without video or emojis.  Are we more honest when all we have are our voices or does it make it easier to hide what we should say or want to say?

Director Benjamin Sheen invited six of Australia's most-exciting emerging writers – Ang Collins, Fiona Spitzkowsky, Georgia Symons, Jean Tong, Lewis Treston and Thomas De Angelis – to write around the theme. 

The six works are performed by an ensemble of equally-as-exciting performers – Amarachi Okorom, Alex Hines, Chris Wallace, Felicity Steel, Cait Spiker, Mason Phoumirath, Ross Dwyer, Senuri Wagaarachchi – and supported by a live choir – Choral Edge (musical director and composer: Juliana Kay; composer David Keefe; movement director Jessica Dick, who also directed two of the pieces). 

Its disparate elements could feel mismatched, but its unexpected synergy is invigorating, engaging and exciting. 

The audience are initially split into two groups who are divided by a curtain. It's clear that there is a stage and performers on each side. The first short works are phone conversions. Everyone can can hear both sides of the conversation, but can only see one side, as the speaker eye rolls, chair stretches or goes on doing the dishes. As there are laughs from the audience watching the other person, it's easy to imagine that their actions might also not mesh with their words.

Each has written a work that could easily stand alone but is supported by and made stronger by those surrounding it. There's the awkward and comfortable love of talking to family, the "are they really?" of phone sex, the "what-if?" ease that not being physically seen, the freedom of confessing to a stranger, the jealousy of someone calling your person too often, to a sci-fi tension-filled thriller with tins and strings, and the inevitable questions of what happens when people are in the same space again.

Themes of communication easily connect the works, but the theatricality of having a live choir brings more layers of connection. At first the choie can only be heard, but the gut-felt power of humans singing together builds as they get closer and are eventually an integral part of the performance.

Hearing human voices can get us through the worst of times and make life feel normal, but being in the same room as other people is how we make theatre. The Human Voice incorporates many independent theatre voices and by exploring one way that we communicate, it finds many ways to connect with all the humans who see it.

Reviews: The Festival of Bryant (The Other Place & Disinhibition)

The Other Place
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/

"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.