What a wonderful joyous funny warm experience was this!
The lights come up in one corner from a blackout to show a tightly clustered group of young performers singing - and instantly we know we are in the company of troubadour players about to make a show for us with just themselves, a few instruments and some motley scraps of cloth they will use for costumes and the many letters that feature through Shakespeare's story. This is his first play and - as with Chekhov's Ivanov - it's great to be able to see so many of the characters and ideas he will recreate again in his later plays: Julia who dresses as man - brilliantly achieved and utterly convincing as a disguise with a stretch of cloth over one eye so attention is grabbed by the disability rather than a sense of recognition - and heads off from Verona to Milan to teach her man how to love (As You Like It); there are balcony scenes (Romeo & Juliet), Julia lists her suitors for her maid to strip of their vanities with gleeful cruelty (The Merchant of Venice), and her initial dismissal of Proteus reminds of Kate and Beatrice; there's a there is even a Friar Laurence.
It is somehow an easy step to accept these young performers as the young lovers – they convey a freshness and vitality that exactly suits Shakespeare’s characters. And something i have never before seen so effectively achieved is the way all the performers step instantly in and away from their characters, so that even those playing leads manage to completely lose every hint of their characters to meld seamlessly into the ensemble. So I found I was even searching for actors who seemed to have disappeared in the chorus scenes, and conversely people I had barely noticed before would suddenly emerge as apparently unmissable large and dynamic presences when they stepped into an individual role.
The staging uses a variety of disciplined simplicity: performers bond together to make human architecture and furniture - seats, walls, doors, headless busts, a balcony, and a dangerous forest is conjured with lighting, a smoke machine and another length of cloth. We get a mimed slow motion duel or contest in the early scenes while Valentine & Proteus are all devoted and true friendship forever more that physically lays out everything the story of these two young Veronese gentlemen will unfold. And we get live music - instrumental and singing - to both move the story on, take us too new places (memorably from Verona to Milan), and to underscore or change the mood.
From start to finish this show vibrates with spirit and exuberance so you feel swept along and caught inside the performers’ zest and drive to bring their story, and yet for all their youthful energy there is nothing amateurish or unfinished and the moments of poignancy and realisation arrive with a crystalline focus that is deeply moving and utterly true. And then just as seamlessly the moment is gone, moved on and we are delighted and laughing again or surfing the story or beaming off the radiant music and movement.
And one more jewel I have to record for permanent remembrance: the performance of the dog is everything this show has encapsulated: truth, humour, discipline, spirit, delight, poignancy, immense fun and quiet understated sadness. Brilliant!
It ends with a final bright song, through which the players take their smiling bows, and then they again converge into their tight and tightly lit ensemble spot - all individuality again extinguished. Blackout and they are gone.
And i'm still glowing from the experience they made for us.
'An astonishing array of Australian musical talent telling the story of Aboriginal resistance' - The Age
‘It’s like a condensed history as well as a contemporary journey into the
Australian landscape: cultural, political and spiritual‘ – Times
sidi larbi cherkaoui ~ direction, choreography + performer
antony gormley ~ visual creation + design
szymon brzoska ~ music + piano
with monks from the shaolin temple: 
shi yanbo, shi yanchuang, shi yanci, shi yandong, shi yanhao, shi yanjiao, shi yanjie, shi yanli, shi yanmo, shi yanna, shi yanpeng, shi yanqun, shi yanting, shi yanxing, shi yanyong, shi yanyuan, shi yanzhu
"As a child, Bruce Lee was a role model; not just the characters he portrayed, but the man himself and the world-view he embodied. When he spoke about martial arts, about drawing from nature, from elemental forces, it rang true. Through him, I delved deeper into Kung-Fu, to the Shaolin school of chan Buddhism. Later in life, as a choreographer and a dancer, I was inspired by the Shaolin understanding of movement, their complete identification with the living beings around them, and that remarkable ability to become the essence of a tiger, crane or snake" Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui
By visiting the Shaolin Temple in China, and working with the Shaolin Monks over several months, Larbi follows a life-long interest by exploring the philosophy and faith behind the Shaolin tradition, its relationship with Kung-Fu, and its position within a contemporary context.
"please feel free to move around the room, look at the books & photographs, open the drawers of the small cabinet in the corner.
"please do not touch the electrical equipment or the printing press.
"as this performance-installation lasts four hours, why not return later to see how the material has developed."
this is the show we saw last night - from nz as you will see.
and interestingly we were a split jury on this one:
i loved it and martyn hated it (amended this to a more neutral response after hearing them talk about the making and performing of it in the post show talk).
they take the model of a band performing a set of 'songs', except that in this case the 'songs' are written dialogues and monologues of an array of characters trying to get through a long night of sleeplessness to the morning, written and performed by duncan sarkies with live music made and performed by nic mcgowan. they made the show very much together in a series of 'jam sessions' -impro-ing the words alongside the music.
the piece is very laid back, lethargic, melancholic, amorphic (add further nightime slowmoving adjectives of your choice - martyn's might be laconic. soporiphic. deadly...) - very nz in in this deliberately unhurried atmosphere and one of our criticisms is that all the effects added together into this one same affect - music, lighting, words performance, images - there was nothing acting in counterpoint. so what you got was a stage full of tech kit - sound gear & musical instruments (keyboards, vodophone, weird electronic thingy - therefone we think it's called - you play it with your hands seemingly thru thin air), microphone, music stand that duncan used to work thru and discard his scripts from, video camera, old fashioned record player with a sarah vaughn l.p. on it. and behind them a large screen that images were played on and that we saw thru the layer of them and their equipment. they wanted us to see them physically making the show as it happened and to know that all the sound and many of the video images were live. so you get this very trance like music being set up in a series of layered loops building up on top of and over each other: keyboard, synth orchestral sounds, voice, etc etc etc. behind this different night time images suggesting the scene of the story.
and we get story after story - always from the 1st person - so either monoloque or dialogue. all performed thru a microphone so the change in voices and sounds that duncan was able to give us was phenomenal.
we start with...
...a house at night with it's lights on until we see a shadowey person come thru into the front room and then leave turning out the lights:
"we haven't told wendy about the ghost that lives in her room. wendy is our new flatmate and we want her to stay for a bit. so we haven't told her about the ghost. but the ghost seems to like wendy. it is always there in her room when she comes home from work. and again when she goes up to bed..."
"it's 3am and i'm here at radio whatever waiting to take your calls. whatever your problems give me a call and let's talk. well i see the board is clear so i'm standing by and ready for your call. we all have problems. and let's face it anyone who is awake and listening to this show at this time in the morning has certainly got a problem or two. so the board is still showing clear so i'm ready to talk to you. well perhaps i should get the ball rolling. i had a troubled childhood. like a lot of people. not a happy little child...."
"...i'm on my way home. and i know that i'm not going to like what i find when i get there. i know my wife will be home. but i also know she won't be very happy to see me. chances are she'll be in bed already, pretending to be asleep when i walk in. there'll be nothing for dinner i shouldn't think..."
"...so what if we could rewind the tape of our lives. where would you like to go back to? back to that time you were young and out partying every night? back to being at school and never getting picked for the cool teams? back to being a young kid and...."
"...huston this is friendship, over"
" friendship this is huston. receiving you loud and clear, over"
"roger that huston. nothing to report. all isgood here. over"
" copy that friendship."
"actually, when i say all is good here there that's not quite the truth. actually, i'm not so good with words, but well how to say, i guess it's just that i'm really bored. over"
"huston? please confirm you are receiving. over"
"oh. this is huston. yes. copy that friendship. just can't think of how to help really. over.""this is friendship. yes roger that huston. i guess this is one i'll just have to work through by myself"
"actually frienship, i'm pretty bored myself as it happens. over"
"oh. well i've got a power nap scheduled so i'll sign out huston"
"there's nothing to do here. and i haven't even got a window. what do you see through your window friendship? over""well huston. you know the pictures of the earth you see quite often on the covers of those atlases?"
"yeah"
"well the view from my windon pretty much looks like that."
"oh. copy that friendship"
(bass voice) "did you hear about the brazillian?"
(pipey voice) "that's a landing strip isn't it?"
"no. i mean the people. from brazil. the brazillian the police shot in london in the tube station?"
"oh. yeah"
"it's not right that. it's just because he was of the wrong colour."
"yeah.you've got to be right colour these days"
"especially over there you do. since 9/11 they've got police everywhere."
"wasn't 9/11 america?"
"well you know what i mean. they've toughened all the security up and you can't move anywhere over there now"
"really? sounds like a terrible place to be"
"are you enjoying this?"
"yes i am. it's interesting."
"oh. do you think so."
"yes i do. why? what do you want to watch?"
"no no this is fine."
"if you want to watch something else just say so."
"no this is fine."
"we could turn it off."
"and do what?"
"and have a conversation. we never talk."
"allright then."
"what do you want to talk about?"
"you start. it was your idea."
"ok... this is a really nice cup of tea"
" on no no no. that's not a conversation. you cannot have a conversation about a cup of tea"
"...how did i get so lucky. i'd resigned myself to spending the rest of my love life lover-less. and then you came along. what did i do to deserve you? ..."
wow this is so exciting and what a brilliant model for a way to make a show and how great to be given all this space to have my own thoughts and dreams in and maybe these aren't the stories i would want to be telling but as a jumping off point for imagining and experiencing something how rish and wonderful and how cool that i'm gonna get the chance to be learning some of this technology at g'smiths and yes yes yes ...
"wasn't that so great. what did you think?"
"i hated it!"
"oh god i recognise all these no-hoper losers all too well and i am so not interested in their stories and god this is self-indulgent and slow and who cares and this is soooo nz not in a good way and all right all right i get the message move on already ..."
