REVIEW: Get a Grip - L'Art du Déplacement

This article was originally published here on Vibewire.

The thrill of witnessing a spectacle often lies in the moment we witness something that we are completely incapable of doing ourselves. In extreme cases it is something we thought humanly impossible. We gasp. We cheer. We fly through the air with our heroes. Olympians, acrobats and magicians fit comfortably in this category. We ought probably now add the exponents of Parkour. In Get a Grip – L’Art du Déplacement, the athletic members of Trace Elements seem to thoroughly enjoy making a spectacle of themselves as they leap around an elaborate jungle of scaffolding and platforms.

Get a Grip is an intimate, close-up look at the spectacular and relatively new movement forms of parkour and freerunning. With echoes of gymnastics, ballet and martial arts, parkour is part movement style, part extreme sport, part way of life. A lone figure performs simple stretches in dim light as the audience file into North Melbourne Town Hall. As the show progresses, the complexity and difficulty escalates. First the five performers leap repeatedly over a wooden box, demonstrating the myriad ways of doing so, each adding their own character and individuality. Then there are two boxes to clear. Then three.

While this is more of a demonstrative introduction than a fully formed art work, Get a Grip still has the potential to move you – not just through the beauty of the physical manoeuvres but also through the philosophy that is omnipresent in the actions. Dotted throughout the film footage are brief testimonials from some of the performers. They explain how parkour has helped them overcome personal fears such as heights, improved their self confidence, and provided direction for their lives. The film’s cinematography is impressive, and the image of the group scaling the arc over the Southbank footbridge whilst bewildered pedestrians pass by below is particularly striking. Their leaping and tumbling through the urban maze provokes a primal response, evoking images of the human being as graceful hunter. As these practitioners or traceurs fly between the buildings and multi-storey car parks of Melbourne, they manage to transform not only their bodies but also the environment around them. A fence is no longer a boundary but a tool used to catapult themselves forwards.

The live component is, surprisingly, the slightly less compelling of the two. After exploring breathtaking expanses and rock formations in rural Victoria, the constructed scaffolding bars seem cold and restrictive in comparison. Part of the pleasure of watching Parkour is seeing traceurs plot a path through their environment. In fact, Parkour is partly designed to help overcome obstacles whilst being pursued or in an emergency. The restrictions of performing in a theatre make the live sections seem more like a training session. But there is still an incredible array of skills on display, from climbing vertical boards to swiftly traversing scaffolding bars with perfect balance.

Get a Grip is a generous and entertaining introduction to the ‘art of displacement’. It doesn’t try too hard to exceed this simple brief, nor does it need to. The incredible skills on display, combined with its thoughtful intellectual basis, provide more than enough elements to entrance.

GET A GRIP L'ART DU DEPLACEMENT

Trace Elements

Dates: Tuesday 6 May – Thursday 8 May 2008
Times: 7:30pm
Theatre, Address: Arts House, North Melbourne Town Hall
Prices: $20 / $15
Bookings: www.easytix.com.au/artshouse

For Your Information

This hilarious but true informational sign confronted me in a toilet recently. Made my day.

Villanus News

Villanus, a piece I created with Vlad Mijic for Welcome Stranger last year, has been selected for the Under the Radar program at this year's Brisbane Festival. This is our first time touring a show interstate and we're excited to have the chance to be exposed in what looks to be a great festival, including works from Declan Donnellan, Barrie Kosky and Peter Brooks (who's doing an adaptation of The Grand Inquisitor, from one of my favourite books The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky).

For those who saw Villanus last year, we are redeveloping the show at the moment for Brisbane and are hopeful of showing the results in Melbourne at this year's Fringe Festival - we'd love to see you all there (more spruiking to come, obiously).

For those interested, you can find photos and reviews of Villanus here at the Welcome Stranger website.

REVIEW: Blazeblue Oneline

This article was originally published here on Vibewire.

Creator Antony Hamilton describes Blazeblue Oneline as an “abstract snapshot of everything he loves to see, hear and feel”. Judging by the enthusiastic response of opening night, the audience also loved what they saw, heard and felt in this exuberant and ambitious mix of dance, visual art and street culture. Hamilton, who has worked with artists such as Lucy Guerin and Chunky Move, has created a fast-paced, acid infused, visual stream-of-consciousness with an infectious sense of fun.

Hamilton’s work uses carefully selected elements to consistently surprising, inventive and engaging effect. These are the elements of urban Melbourne – cardboard boxes, trash, spray cans, graffiti, and street culture. The stark white floor and walls of the set are literally a blank canvas for Hamilton’s explosion of colourful graffiti and fluorescent costumes. After a symphonic prelude that blares out like a siren announcing the arrival of something otherworldly, the lights come up on a sole figure in the urban uniform of an oversized tracksuit. After tagging the walls with the concentration of a calligraphic artist, he transforms elusively into a whirling collection of paper and trash before our eyes. Later a dancer manipulates a disassembled cardboard box into performing a series of flowing manoeuvres and shapes.

At times, the constant flow of ideas can almost be too much. One of the early sequences involves a heartbreaking duet danced by two large cardboard boxes. Later we are confronted by a life-size reanimated toy robot constructed from cardboard. Two dancers engage it by generating makeshift weapons from discarded aluminium foil. This narrative thread of an abstract sci-fi battle is suggested throughout the work, using Japanese anime and ‘80s culture as reference points. The piece moves at break-neck pace, its complexity snowballing with each new idea. These ideas feed off and inform one another well, but are not quite successful in supporting the overall structure and ending.

Perhaps the most successful and satisfying aspect of Blazeblue Oneline is its blurring of the line between dance and visual art. The set and lighting by Bluebottle continually demand we view the entire stage as one complete visual image. The set itself resembles the stark white environment of an art exhibition. Under strobe lighting, performance sequences such as the ‘dancing boxes’ resemble stop-motion animation of visual art installations. The two art forms blend seamlessly, with the choreography always responding to (and often helping to create) its visual environment. The act of graffiti art is of particular interest to Hamilton. Dances mimicking the way a graffiti artist moves when working work particularly well when set amongst the intricate images created earlier in the show. The ingenuity of some of the set devices – a jacket that magically slides up a wall; graffiti that is revealed as if being written by an invisible artist – is sometimes so technically fascinating that it almost detracts from the images themselves.

Blazeblue Oneline is, above all else, a celebration. It is chaotic and brash but always grounded by a sense of playfulness. At times it moves too fast for its own good – visual art often requires time and consideration for a viewer to get the most out of it, and the style of this performance constantly shifts our attention. Hamilton’s passion permeates throughout the work, and it is a performance that skilfully engages our own sense of wonder, asking us to review and reassess the everyday images around us.

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Antony Hamilton presents BLAZEBLUE ONELINE

Dates: Wednesday 30 April – Sunday 4 May 2008
Times: Wed-Sat 7:30, Sun 6pm
Theatre, Address: Arts House, Meat Market
Prices: $25 / $18
Bookings: www.easytix.com.au/artshouse

REVIEW: Kristen Schaal – As You Have Probably Never Seen Her Before (from 25.3.08)

This article was originally published here on Vibewire.

With her cherub features and timid voice, Kristen Schaal instantly endeared herself to an enthusiastic crowd under the Melbourne Town Hall. Best known for her role as super-fan Mel on the popular television show Flight of the Conchords, Schaal has garnered a growing reputation for her “quirky” humour, winning awards including the Andy Kaufman Award for Creativity in Comedy. Her quirky creativity is certainly present in As You Have Probably Never Seen Her Before – a show that pleases as much as it confounds and intrigues.

Schaal’s performance is a mish-mash of styles and threads that often tends to work in spite of itself. There is no overriding structure to the material save for wherever Shaal’s often stream-of-consciousness logic takes us. One moment we are in familiar stand-up territory with Schaal riffing on iPhones and life on the comedy tour, the next we are in a comedic sketch with her partner Kurt, and later we are treated to a ‘sneak peek’ of her of her one-woman theatre piece on Anne Boleyn. She often treats the stage as some sort of therapeutic confessional - sharing intimate details of her dreams, as well as inviting us to critique her audition for an upcoming role on Law & Order: SVU. There are few traditional ‘jokes’ – the humour is largely drawn from Schaal’s persona, a character whose fragility, timidity and naïveté masks the vicious wit and brilliant force of ideas lurking beneath the surface.

While it is billed as a solo show, just under half the material is performed with her partner Kurt Braunohler – including some of the show’s more successful endeavours. Their interplay and sketches all show off Schaal’s persona to its greatest effect. This is largely due to Braunohler’s performance, which is also character driven, and the devotion and adoration his persona displays for Schaal.

The show is intentionally amateurish and anarchic in its execution. At times this style works wonderfully – Schaal hilariously transforms into Anne Boleyn simply by donning a black cloak and a woeful accent, and becomes Pocahontas by putting on an ‘authentic’ Indian headdress. Not everything hits its mark, however, and there is a thin line between anarchic comedy and anarchy. The emergence of her ‘boyfriend’ and later Winston Churchill from within the audience seemed to be more trouble than the effect warranted.

In many ways it is a credit to Kristen Schaal that she leaves the audience wanting more. Like comedians such as Demetri Martin she displays a truly unique and brilliant imagination that engages a well as entertains. However the material, as entertaining as it was, suffered from being stretched a little thin over the 60 minute performance. The pacing of the show often laboured slightly, with some material going on longer than needed. That said, Schaal’s performance is consistently funny, imaginative, playful and, above all, unique.

Announcements & Apologies

Hello again. Of late I have been inexcusably distracted from conributing to this troublesome but well meaning blog. To the half dozen or so of you out there who do check in every now and then, I apologise and hope to be a little more regular in 2008.

To start with, I am aiming to post a few thoughts on the theatre I saw in '07 in the next week or so.

What have I been up to? Much musical rehearsing with Baby Driver #2 - expect some performance dates in mid February.

Villanus took up much of my time last year, with some encouraging success. More to add later.

This minute, I am rehearsing Welcome Stranger's brand new production This Is Good Advice, opening January 30. I am acting (for the first time in quite a while) as well as tackling set design with Mr Mijic of Villanus. The show is a double bill of short plays by two of my favourite playwrights, Caryl Churchill and Martin Crimp. I am including the press release below for your viewing pleasure. You can also find more information as well as booking details on our fancy new website at www.welcomestranger.org . If you're interested in keeping up to date with Welcome Stranger's theatrical goings-on, please join our mailing list through the site.

The show has a lot of exciting elements - Lauren Barnes (fresh from the UK) directing, original music by Reuben Stanton from Because of Ghosts, two exciting playwrights, and a whole bunch of very talented performers including Michael Finney, Kristy Barnes-Cullen, Kim Swalwell, John Latham and Tania Lentini to name just a few.

We're kicking things off with a WS fundraiser on Wednesday 23rd - Melbourne bands Hot Little Hands and Sly Hats will be playing at Gertrude's in Fitzroy from 8pm, entry $8.

Hopefully this will be WS's biggest year yet. I hope to see you at the show...

More blogs to come - just bare with me.

Welcome Stranger presents
THIS IS GOOD ADVICE
This is a Chair by Caryl Churchill
Advice to Iraqi Women by Martin Crimp (Aus. Premiere)

Directed by Lauren Barnes
Music by Reuben Stanton (Because of Ghosts)
Featuring Michael Finney (History Boys, MTC), Kristy Barnes-Cullen (Summer Heights High, ABC TV), Rhys Auteri, Raphael Hammond, John Latham, Tania Lentini, Vlad Mijic, Ben Mitchell, Harriet O'Donnell and Kim Swalwell

SEASON DETAILS
Dates: 30/1 – 10/2 Wed – Sun 8pm
Venue: New Ballroom, Trades Hall
(cnr Lygon & Victoria St)
Times: Wed – Sun 8pm
Tickets: $17 full, $12 concession
Bookings: 9782 2625 or http://www.welcomestranger.org/

MEDIA ENQUIRIES to Avi Lipski at avi.lipski [at] gmail [dot] com


THIS IS GOOD ADVICE

The protection of children is a priority.
Your house is a potential war zone for a child: the corners of tables, chip pans, and the stairs – particularly the stairs – are all potential sources of harm.
A car, just like a home, just like an orchard, just like a zip, is a minefield for a child.
Don’t let your child burn. Even on a hazy day it might still burn.
- Advice to Iraqi Women, Martin Crimp

After the success of their 2007 season of Villanus (‘…a profoundly intriguing work’ RealTime), daring new theatre company Welcome Stranger returns to Trades Hall with a compelling double bill of short works. Along for the ride is Because of Ghosts’ Reuben Stanton (‘This is beautiful, rewarding stuff’ The Age) to create an unmissable night of theatre.

One of Caryl Churchill’s most stylistically challenging texts, This is a Chair defies the traditional boundaries of theatre. Churchill looks at the political through the eyes of the personal, awakening the audience to the deeply intimate nature of political tension. This is a Chair is a series of surreal scenarios, named after the political headline they seek to excavate; for example, the UK and China’s diplomatic position on Hong Kong is unpicked through an argument about fidelity between Tom and Leo. Churchill’s scenarios theatricalise French surrealist René Magritte’s artistic conceit Ceci n'est pas une pipe (This is not a pipe), at once contradicting and demanding comparison to the reality they label.

The work is paired with Martin Crimp’s powerful and engaging Advice to Iraqi Women. A scathing satirical attack on modern society, Advice to Iraqi Women asks an important question: how can we begin to extol advice upon a society in which we have created terror and danger?

Who would worry about the UV rays in their backyard over the potential threat of their child dying in an ambushed bus? Advice to Iraqi Women is a short play of massive impact. More than an agit-prop comment on the Iraqi war, Crimp’s play is sharp satire of our own society.

Praise for This is A Chair
‘Churchill, who constantly reinvents dramatic form, has come up with something compelling and strange, an intimate revue about the increasing surreality of modern life.’ - The Guardian

Praise for Advice to Iraqi Women
‘… A perfect example of how resonance is achieved by indirection and metaphor.’ - Aleks Sierz, Performing Arts Journal

Welcome Stranger
Welcome Stranger have been quietly beavering away at theatre since their debut work The End of Civil Twilight drew acclaim in 2002. The work won the Development Award at the inaugural Malthouse Theatre 3D Fest, leading to a successful stand alone season. They followed this with two seasons of Martin Crimp’s Attempts on Her Life (2004) and an adaptation of an Ursula LeGuin story in Towards Omelas (2006). More recently, in 2007, they raised eyebrows and critics' pens with the self-devised work Villanus.

Praise for Welcome Stranger :
‘…well worth a look for anyone interested in the livelier edges of Melbourne theatre.’ - Alison Croggon, Theatre Notes

‘… this one-man show doesn’t so much explore evil as creep up on it from behind, dagger in hand.’ - Cameron Woodhead, The Age

‘…a profoundly intriguing work.’ - John Bailey, RealTime

‘[A] refreshing approach to staging and direction … excellent performances... An innovative production.’ - Stage Left

Where In The World Is Rhys Sandiego?

Rhys lives! Yes, it's true.
Where on earth have he been? I've been trying out various undercover identities, including a stint as an aspiring social work student, but have been found out and had to 'break cover' (spy-speak). As the dust settles, I have been keeping honest in a law firm typing out letters and words. I have been keeping busy working with Cowboy Mouth on a new piece that will be on around early September (the plugs blackmailing you all to come won't begin just yet... but soon!). I've taken a bit of time off from my tunes, but I am set to start playing a few dates later in the month.

But enough about me. Let's talk about my blog! I've been pretty neglectful of late, and would love to have written more on the things I've been seeing lately - I will try and remedy this in the days to come. For those curious, this is a very, very truncated set of thoughts on some recent expeditions (unfortunately a lot of this will only make sense to those who also saw these pieces)...

24.3 Black at the Malthouse
Not knowing much about the piece's subject (the murder of Betty Short), I really enjoyed this intriguing work. The central performance was hypnotic. The set of windows/mirrors in the middle, the real whispers (as opposed to stage whispers), the 'looped' nature of the show... it all certainly emphasised the mystery of the Black Dahlia. It was a great exercise in deconstructing evidence that was not static, but unchanging, incomplete and indecipherable. I also really liked the books cased in melting blocks of ice and the working mechanism that led to the water activating a terrifying alarm of cutlery (that's my best attempt at a description of it!). I enjoyed the freedom of roaming around the performers, to work more autonomously as an audience member. It was, however, a very dense work and I almost wish there were even more objects and 'artifacts' as part of the installation - more 'clues' to help illustrate the story.

24.3 180 Seconds in Heaven or Hell at NMTH
What a party! This gathering of artists to deliver a barrage of 3 minute performances had a carnival, almost (adult) rave feel to it - like a bachaanal even. Some of my favs were Lucy Guerin's vaccum man piece, Ingrid Weisfelt's mad nun, Angus Cerini and Chris Kohn's piece, and CW Stoneking - who was a bit of a revelation to me. Lawrence Leun was a fine host, and I particularly liked the last minute, informal feel of it. Hope it becomes an annual event.

29.3 Marcel and Albertine: Proust on Love at The Stork
My first initiation to Proust. The performances were great (particularly Nicola Gunn) and it the venue complemented the work perfectly - the intimacy and austere nature of the space particularly. It's examination of social class, scandal and sexuality has aged particularly well, and I was surprised at how contemporary and relevant it felt. Full of playfulness and melodrama, as well as authentic emotion.

9.4 The Ghost Writer at The Arts Centre
I was really looking forward to this as I had loved Contruction of a Human Heart by the same playwright. The piece was solid enough, as were the performances (particularly Belinda McClory). However, the space was far too big for the work, and director Julian Meyrick squandered alot of the play's life with his too-slow pacing. I sqiurmed at a couple of 'MTC moments' - for example when the mother of a dead daughter does a small monologue on the loss of her daughter - cue 'serious' music, lighting change... puke (apologies, I will try and clean up my language). Still, some fine writing and a nice set too.

15.4 The Pitch at the Malthouse
This was a real crowd pleaser from Peter Houghton. It was an energetic and sincere performance - Houghton has a great knack for conjuring up images and is a fine story teller. It was a well paced satire of Hollywood, as well as (a little less satisfactorally) a sympathetic look at a writer struggling for success and for love. The central character's back-story seemed a tiny bit underdone, and the set was great but revealed itself to be very versatile in the final scene (and as such I think Houghton could have benefitted from using it more. I really enjoyed myself and laughed alot, but was always a little aware of the 'strings' or the 'craft' - perhaps this too would have benefitted from a smaller space (it was initially staged at La Mama i believe - and you can't get much smaller than that!).

- End Part One
- Part Two (later this week) will include Exit The King, Tense Dave and OT.

Farewell friends, feel free to drop a message telling me what you're up to. Also I'd love to hear what others have thought of these shows.

Later all.