IN REVIEW Bare Witness The Street Theatre Tue-Sat November 6–10
Each of us is faced with moral dilemmas in life; to tell the truth or not is a common one. We weigh the pros and cons, in regard not only to the effects on ourselves but the effects on the receiver of the truth or the lie. Bare Witness addresses some of these moral dilemmas in the context of reporting on war. What would seem obvious – the right of people to know what’s happening, the right of people who are suffering to be heard, what’s being perpetrated and why – is, in fact, complicated. Taking as its starting point the beginning of the career of a young Australian photojournalist, the play moves onwards over 20 years. The story is obvious in many ways – youthful enthusiasm, naiveté and capacity to be shocked are slowly replaced until she mirrors the very behaviour she’d found shocking and unacceptable in her early years. Meanwhile, life and her family in Australia pass her by, their sorrows usurped by those of the strangers on whom she is reporting.
each actor (and the cellist) gave themselves over to inhabiting the cast of characters, all playing multiple people. Each performer showed great conviction and intent and a refreshing lack of self-consciousness and reticence. Foreign accents were used throughout and were very well-executed. Clever sound effects and the music were powerful, especially the use of harmonics on the cello, which provoked an unsettling and slightly prickly feeling. At times, scenes were enhanced by the cellist’s eerie and evocative vocalisations. The lighting was very effective, and there was imaginative use of portable lights by the performers to suggest the hidden, the secretive, the exposed and the terrified. At times, snippets of film footage were projected onto the back of the stage. Almost all was of wolves running or snarling. Presumably, this was a metaphor for the media, so often likened to ‘a pack of wolves’. This seemed clichéd and could have been more meaningfully replaced by images from the war zones in which the characters were stationed. All in all, this was an excellent and thought-provoking production. MICHELE E. HAWKINS
Bare Witness is a physical production. There is a lot of contact between performers, which creates a sense of abnormally intense connection between people. The basis of that connection is the creation of some barriers and the destruction of others, and a tough camaraderie that springs from the insularity that such a profession creates. Six people bring this play to life, including the cellist who wrote and performed the music and who is, at times, integral to the scenes. Some characters appear again and again, reunited in different theatres of war as the years roll by; other characters only appear once. The performances were all excellent;
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