Alicia Clements and Will O’Mahony are presenting Great White. Picture by Cameron Etchells
Play time in the city Arts Editor STEPHEN BEVIS previews a season of varied works ranging from aliens, sharks and robots that rule the world to a Pulitzer Prize winner
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ll theatre should aim to disturb the comfortable and comfort the disturbed, say local stage artists Will O’Mahony and Alicia Clements. The Blue Room, Perth’s incubator for new and emerging theatre makers, is the incarnation of this ethos and the venue for O’Mahony’s play Great White next month. Written and directed by O’Mahony and designed by Clements, Great White taps into the semi-mythical fascination with sharks and the existential pull of the ocean. “For all its danger the ocean hold us in its thrall and maybe
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promises something we can’t get on land,” O’Mahony says. Pitting a man and woman against the deep blue sea, Great White is one of several productions rolling through the Blue Room this winter. Already showing are Robots vs Art, Travis Cotton’s apocalyptic comedy about the perils of having robots rule the world, and the Perth premiere of Fat Pig, Neil LaBute’s black comedy dealing with blind love, obesity and social cruelty. “The characters’ humanity by the end of the play is incredibly sad and grotesquely beautiful,” director Emily McLean says. “The struggle over our
restrictive ideals of beauty and watching characters striving to be truthful when that truth is something they are deeply ashamed by, make Fat Pig fascinating.” Despite the cooler weather, the ocean looms again next month in Sea Inside, Russya Connor’s solo show, which combines aerial dance, performance art and audiovisual projections to evoke a mysterious underwater world. “My interest in gravity — both under water and in the air — and its relation to human experience and expression is what has driven me to create this show,” says Connor, who has changed the traditional theatre space to give the audience the freedom to seat themselves. The season closes out in July with Yirra Yaarnz, a Blue Room partnership with Yirra Yaakin Theatre Company to give indigenous theatre makers a forum to get their work noticed