Back to work (play)
In her first TalkWrite blog for 2012, Renee Liang tries to explain her uncharacteristic lack of action during summer, and looks forward to a busy year in Auckland theatre.
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Yes, I’ve been uncharacteristically quiet over the last few months. I’ve been hibernating (or less euphemistically, sleeping lots and watching quality… er trash TV). The part of me that cares about filing funding reports, meeting writing deadlines etc has felt apologetic about this at times, but it’s not long before the instant gratification bug is back.
It’s summer after all, traditionally a time when the creative brain switches off and we all wallow in glorious sun or whatever floods La Nina brings us. But then I’m the one who blithely tells people ‘oh I work 24/7… because everything I do, I love.” I get snobbishly patronising about people entrapped by TV every evening instead of playing in the great creative pig pen. My husband, my friends and my family all tell me to slow down, but I’m a cloud of relentless energy. Could it be that I occasionally need time off like a normal person?
Whatever the cause, I’m back now and starting to kick again. The theatre scene in Auckland has likewise emerged from its holiday slumber and a brand new festival is offering theatregoers an alternative to jealously reading the Wellington Fringe program or lusting after the offerings in the NZ International Arts Festival. Auckland’s own New Performance Festival opened last Friday, and for eight glorious days we’ll be sampling the delirious imaginings of a number of out-there theatremakers, musicians, dancers and people whose work defies any type of categorization. It’s the result of an unholy alliance between STAMP (part of city performing arts organisation The EDGE, tasked with encouraging new and exciting work from Auckland-based artists) and Stephen Bain, who’s spent his whole career pushing theatrical boundaries and who has curated the programme.
I was lucky enough to be a ‘preview tester’ for one of the international acts, Call Cutta in a Box. This is a piece that leans heavily on modern technology (Skype and remote computer connections) to link an ‘audience member’ in Auckland with a call centre operator in Calcutta, India. It’s not so much a theatre piece as a collaborative experience between two people. I think it was this realization that made me much more honest than I normally am when faced with a caller from a call centre. Nothing could shake my vague sense of unease through the hour-long conversation though. In theatre, we accept that nothing is real and therefore all disbelief is suspended; in this ‘experience of the real world’, I couldn’t really distinguish what was lies and what was truth, and therefore I couldn’t relax. It was an unsettling and rather interesting encounter.
Another show, The Two Dimensional Life of Her, isn’t so much theatre as an immersive cinema experience. The normally bland conference room spaces on Level 1 and 2 of the Aotea Centre have been transformed into mysterious caverns, filled with installations (a giant wall of pink balloons; a web of electrical cables; spotlit blackboards trying to explain it all.) Entering the space of The Two Dimensional Life of Her, it’s as if a giant blizzard has scattered paper debris throughout the room; projectors turn objects into canvases. Like the character in the piece, we use all our senses to make sense of what is happening; directional sound is a big part of it. It’s definitely not a two dimensional experience.
There’s a lot else happening elsewhere in the city, too. The Basement continues its innovative programming this year (currently on: a disturbing, intense set of six short plays riffing on the theme Love is a Street Fight); Q hosts the Wellington Ukelele Orchestra before its first serious theatrical offering, Silo Theatre’s Top Girls. And as for me, I’m opening my own play in Hamilton this week, The First Asian AB, on at the Hamilton Gardens Arts Festival. So I’d better bid adieu and get my butt to rehearsal. The creative year has well and truly started.
