This Kind Of Ruckus (version 1.0 and Performance Space)

S: I was really excited for this show. As in, the week before it opened I had a dream that I went and saw it. Sadly I don’t remember much about the dream except that the show included the cast climbing on a wall using magnets. Basically the wall was a massive sheet of metal and the cast held magnets in their hands and feet (in dreams people can hold things with their feet) and climbed on the wall. It was an awesome effect that sadly wasn’t in the real show.

M: Disappointing

S: I do remember after the show, in my dream, someone asked me what I thought, and all I had to say was “well it was no Deeply Offensive… but it was quite good”.

M: Are you sticking by that assessment?

S: Yes I am. When I saw Deeply Offensive in 2007, I was a first year theatre student with a better knowledge of west end musicals than the Sydney theatre scene, and it completely changed my concept of how theatre could be put together and what it could do; so I guess my expectations were kind of high for this show. Anyone who has read my Deeply Offensive… review (see archive) knows how much I loved their previous work. What about you?

M: I think it’s a pretty hard line you’re taking in comparing it with Deeply Offensive. This work struck me as being totally different, both formally and in terms of its content.

S: Absolutely, and if these two shows weren’t made under the same banner, I would never have thought to compare them. But I guess I had somewhat naively, considering I’d only seen one show, come to an understanding of what to expect from Version 1.0 and this was something different from what I had wanted. That being said, it was something else that I wanted.

M: After all Deeply Offensive was so clear in what it was doing that maybe it was hard not to see it as a company defining production. Essentially, This Kind Of Ruckus is an exploration of violence in contemporary Australia, or rather, as I saw it, attitudes to violence. Entrenched in a landscape of club beats, bubble wrap and sporting exercises spanning the depth of Bay 20; the work uses recent high profile sexual assault cases emerging from the football community as a catalyst in their work. We piece together this view from the personal stories of the cast, press conferences and possibly other media sources, as in this work, unlike Deeply Offensive, their research remain unnamed.

S: Which I was surprised to think was a good decision in this case. The sometimes bodiless voices made the piece more haunting than it would have been if every story was academically referenced.

M: Yeah, it wasn’t about lampooning certain individuals; that would have been too easy, stand up comedy material, even footy show material. Like I suggested earlier, this work was about attitudes towards violence not just who did what and to whom.



S: The play essentially was split into two halves, of similar action, bookended by some cheerleader moves in front of a brightly lit curtain. The sporting theme informed the piece throughout, from the cast doing warm-ups to the half-time oranges.

M: Magic

S: Each half began with a personal story from a cast member which was then either interrupted or interrogated by the other members of the cast.

M: These moments were where I could most clearly identify these attitudes I’m talking about. When, after Danielle Antaki recounts a harrowing night with an ex boyfriend, Jane Phegan asks “What were you wearing?”

S: That was fucked.

M: For me this encapsulated something of both the Media’s attitude to victims of sexual violence and said something about club culture. A kind of disdain, an accusation that they’re asking for it, an easy shift of blame.

S: A similar moment was when Arky adorned Jane with a black eye (a simple make-up effect) then tried to justify it as an accident, “what do you want me to do? Do you want to spank me?”. His response just didn’t let up, until his questioning shoulders were almost above his head.

M: That was also, really fucked.

S: So much so the audience was split between gagging and laughing. But these small personal moments acted more as transitions for the major sections of the show which took place behind the curtain.

M: These sections were made up of repeated motifs and movements, gradually getting more and more brutal and uncontrolled. Each drawing of the curtain revealed David Williams on a chair staring directly at a prostrate, possibly unconscious Kim Vercoe. I want to say staring straight at her cunt. His face, along with other gorgeously time lapsed, delayed and live fed footage was projected onto two large white screens hanging over the front half of the stage.

S: Let’s talk vision for a moment. Sean Bacon makes video in theatre work. Projections can be really tacky and unnecessary but Version 1.0 use them perfectly. Throughout the piece a combination of live feed and recorded videos are seamlessly mixed to give us not only a different perspective on the work, but insight into the stage action that would otherwise be lost.

M: Here they contributed to the works swirling visceral nature, flesh on flesh, breathing. Bringing a liveness and weight to the action onstage. Yes I agree.

S: Visceral is exactly it, and I think this was largely to do with Gail Priest’s completely violent club inspired soundtrack.

M: Maybe not largely, I think it had more to do with the bodies of the performers. Whether it be dancing (aggressively) at each other or sprinting the length of the space or downing beer and fluoro coloured muck in plastic cups or punching each other in face as Jane and Kim did by the beer table late in the work.

S: For me though it was often the music that brought that feeling from the stage into the audience, the bass entwining itself in your stomach, as you watched the sometimes gross, but always bodily, action.

M: It’s interesting then, that we’ve already spoken about possibly the most visceral reaction in the audience, which was unaccompanied by music, just Arky’s shrugging shoulders.

S: True.

M: Point one Mark. Chalk it up.

S: Alright mate, well said. Alright, let’s get on with the show. (That’s a Ruckus joke for those playing at home). We haven’t talked about our favourite bit yet.

M: Oh yeah that was also fucked up. After David’s menacing stare at Kim, Jane facilitated a kind of reconciliation between them. Constantly interrupting a role playing conversation between the two of them. Asking, how they think it’s going. Pulling David up for doing the wrong thing.

S: But getting him to put it in positive turns, like a primary school teacher saying “let’s not have a rules list, let’s have a hopes list”.

M: Kim is frustrated to be in the same light as David and she hates it when he does that walking thing when he pretends he’s not walking. It’s very threatening.

S: He totally does that by the way, she’s not making it up.

M: You did see Deeply Offensive three times right?

S: Yeah but I’m not being a fan boy anymore because I didn’t think this show was perfect.

M: What was wrong with it Simon?

S: For a start I felt like there was a lot of wasted time. There were lengthy movements between images that I didn’t think helped build anything.

M: I appreciated the time to catch myself, and found that the break meant that diving back into the same kinds of issues/images made the work even more present. I picked up a paper the other day and reading the sports section, they actually had a cute little graphic saying “scandal free zone” next to an article on the footy.

S: I guess the other problem I had was with the content, and I that I felt it didn’t blow out the issue, so much as recap the attitudes towards it. Maybe it’s just because I’m at a university and in a course where we talk about gender politics all the time, but I just came out feeling like I hadn’t really heard or seen anything that I hadn’t thought about before. It seemed to me like the material was made for an audience that wouldn’t ever attend a Version 1.0 show. I didn’t see any football colours in the crowd.

M: Yeah maybe

S: But I guess it’s also important for this issue to not go away. I may be happy with my own attitudes and be willing to put the issues to rest in my mind, but there is still a lot of cultural change that needs to occur.

M: And that’s what I held onto as the most important statement the work was making. That a cultural attitude to sexual violence exists in Australia that means we expect to open the paper and see a scandal, and that these situations can be swept away with a few mumbled words. Embarrassing for all concerned.

S: But I wanted more engagement with why that culture exists and how we can move forward from it, or even how it is treated in the media, or how it affects the individuals who fight against it, rather than simply a portrayal of how horrible the culture itself is. I feel there was meat in the issues that they never got onto the stage.

M: You wanted documentary theatre, not a real exploration of the culture’s impact on bodies.

S: That’s because I’m Brecht and you’re Artaud.

M: (silence)

S: Simon evens it up, chalk it up.

M: …Fair call.

S: I did love a lot of the elements. I couldn’t stop talking about the video, and there were times when they made me feel absolutely horrible, some of which we’ve already discussed. David Williams and Jane Phegan have two of the most beautiful voices you’ll ever hear and I could listen to them talk in official tones for hours. But most of what I will take away from this production is theatrical, and with Version 1.0 I had hoped I would leave more affected by their politics.

M: Hmmmm. Maybe. I still think they nailed a cultural treatment of violence, and they nailed that through the theatrical elements, not despite them.

S: Indeed.

M: I guess we leave it at one all.

Simon Binns and Mark Rogers

Review: Deeply Offensive & Utterly Untrue (Version 1.0)

Deeply Offensive & Utterly Untrue is Version 1.0’s inquiry into the Cole inquiry. Distilling an 8500-page document into an engaging hour and a half of theatre can’t have been easy, but that is what this unique company has achieved. The play was first performed in the depths of Carriage Works’ Bay 20 in Sydney, and what we see here with the touring production is an expansion of that work. I saw the show twice in its original production, and was very excited when I heard it was coming to Wollongong, not least of all because it is a shining example of hard work in the independent theatre scene paying off. Version 1.0 have been recognised, as of last year, as a key arts organization and receive triennial funding. They make one realise that all the mock grant applications we do at uni are perhaps significantly more important than our other assessments.

The events discussed are astounding. At the same time as John Howard was declaring that a war with Iraq was necessary to dethrone a cruel and harsh dictator, AWB was paying up to $300 million in kickbacks to the Iraqi government. Aside from analysing the inquiry itself, the first point that this play is trying to make by its very existence, is that these are massive events which have been swept under the carpet very quickly. Bill Clinton was impeached for lying about an affair. Here we are talking about hypocrisy on a much larger scale going unpunished.

Version 1.0’s handling of the material of the inquiry is deft. Stagings of many interviews and speeches from the inquiry and surrounding media are combined with direct discussion of the issues by the cast, which together bring lucidity to the proceedings. Clarity is a key point in this production. At all times, the details of those being interviewed are available on screens either side of the stage (this is quite amusing when the performers are talking as themselves), the images are all clear and crisp, and even when a scene is accompanied by large scale AV one is never put off balance. What I find interesting about the form of the work, especially as I am currently working on a piece of verbatim theatre, is that although Version 1.0 use much of the exact text of the inquiry document, as we enter the theatre we are reminded by messages on the video screens that “every word in this performance is true”, the words are so obviously interpreted that one could never define it as a verbatim work. The example that sticks out in my mind is the interview with John Howard that is accompanied by those playing the interviewers stroking him and offering him wine. The company makes no claims to objectivity, yet I think those who label their style as “documentary theatre” should be wary of the connotations of the term.

With the exception of a few moments that have lost their impact, such as the reference to Mohamed Haneef’s SIM card, the work still feels quite fresh in spite of its age. The newly added material, including speeches from Kevin Rudd and quotes from David Marr’s recent assessment of the events assist in achieving this relevancy. Unfortunately, I think that some of the beauty of the piece was lost by placing it in a more traditional proscenium arch theatre, which lacked the depth of the Carriage Works space. Not only did it mean that moments of the piece which had previously been separated merged together in the centre of the stage, it also meant that the mechanical elements of the theatre were hidden in the fly gallery and side stage, rather than laid bare for all to see which took away from the impact of the clever use of space. Whereas in Carriage Works, you could see all the elements from start, which made it more startling when they surprised you with a sandbag you hadn’t expected, or a light that appeared out of seemingly nowhere, here these moment felt like traditional theatre tricks. The venue also created some practical problems in terms of visibility. I was quite far back in the theatre and found it quite difficult to read the smaller screens either side of the stage, which at times contained important information. However, these are the problems one faces with a touring production, and for anyone who hadn’t seen the original I am sure that these would not have factored into one’s engagement with the work.


I could not finish this review without mentioning my favourite moment of the play, that being the live feed of a mouse attempting to eat cheese off a mouse trap being projected from two different angles from the two massive screens which dominated the set. The superb video elements are the work of Sean Bacon who has seamlessly integrated the visuals into the production through these two large screens, the two smaller screens already mentioned, and the more subtle television screen at the back of the stage showing footage of the trial of Saddam Hussein. Version 1.0 have a knack for using vision to offer fresh perspectives, as they do for breaking down complex documents into digestible theatre.

- Simon

project:ALICE | Review

project:ALICE was a mixed bag combining club culture, fashion, spoken word art and audiovisual elements to re make Lewis Carroll’s novel for Generation Y, using their (read our/my) experiences to reinterpret this classic work. Under the direction of Mark Haslam, performance poets Bravo Child and Cook ‘n’ Kitch embody in verse, monologue and hip hop an explosion of Alice’s character, searching for contemporary resonances with the “over stimulated generation”. This Alice is a club hopper, a pill popper, a traveler not a tourist, a myspace junkie and pretty fucked up as well.

The technical elements were superb, Toby Knyvett’s lighting design consisting of a semicircle of large poles with evenly spaced lights filling up the space, as if plucked directly from the Big Day Out, which functioned not just to light the performers but also as a constant counterpart to the pulsing rhythm of the sound design. The AV was (shock) brilliantly interwoven into the work as a multifaceted interface of televisions and computer monitors, vision was streamed live to it from mobile phones, the performers interacted with each other on the screens, a butterfly of light flitted across them and their unhealthy blue glow lit much of the action onstage. It was exciting to see the technology working inseparably from the work, instead of being a lazy tack on (see Ladybird review).

The performers were obviously more in their comfort zones when delivering poetry and relying simply on the pattern of words in their mouths without labouring them with actorly intention, which was a pity since it made the more personal moments of Alice’s monologues seem melodramatic. At these moments where I could have related to her experiences I balked. This was perhaps why I took such an issue with this work in the end.

I have a major problems with a work trying to define me, the blanket term Generation Y sits uncomfortably on my shoulders. By trying to tap into a zeitgeist the work ultimately became quite alienating and I left thinking that it just wasn’t made for me, but then maybe I need to club on pills more often. The closing moments offered not much more than the feeling of ‘we’re all individuals and it’s ok to be you’, which I found slightly naïve. It touched on contemporary malaise, listlessness and boredom, but I wanted to see this notion held up and examined, not put aside for Facebook jokes and more things that rhyme with clitoris. I don’t think the solution is that easy.

Mark

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I didn’t feel as affronted by the content of this show. I felt the piece presented a mash-up of what the artists involved consider to be “Gen Y Experience” but at no point did it attempt to convince me that these were my experiences, although at times I found myself in them. A message of individualism emerged in the final scenes, however I engaged more with the striking word play it was embedded in, and came away from the piece with a sense of the stories and experiences, rather than the ideals, that were presented.

That being said, I dropped in and out of this performance and I think this was due mainly to the performances. In the beginning I was alienated by both performers. I found Bravo Child’s voice to be harsh and grating to the ear, whilst Cook ‘n’ Kitch seemed simply, for want of a better word, loud. I got the feeling I was being yelled at but wasn’t quite sure what I’d done to deserve it. As the show progressed, it became apparent that for Bravo, this had been a choice as he explored pretty much the entire range of his voice over the course of the performance, but for Cook ‘n’ Kitch, the volume continued. However, due to her complete dedication this became less of an issue. I found it fascinating watching two performers who completely owned what they were presenting. Cook ‘n’ Kitch’s "throw myself at every moment" style was often engaging, but it seemed to hinder the more nuanced moments of the show as Mark has already pointed out. When the performance and text matched the show was gripping. However, there were many times when the performers’ over the top style seemed to jar with the text and as a result I was immediately alienated.

A special mention needs to be made of the beautiful scene when Alice, unable to piece herself back together, climbs to the top of the jungle gym and lashes out at a TV resulting in a downpour of tiny crystals. It was a stunning image.

What is exciting about this work as an emerging artist however is the process. The play was devised by director Mark Haslam and the performers themselves. There are no actors in this work, you are often watching the writers themselves deliver the text, and all this is performed on an ethereal set which at times seemed as small as a TV screen and at others as large as a warehouse. The result was a raw work full of energy, which created some truly beautiful and some truly awkward moments but this is the nature of brave concepts. I enjoyed the risk.

Simon