SCENE Wellington - Issue 12 January 2019

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I SSUE 12 | J A NUA RY 2019 Rants in the Dark | 6 Degrees Festival | Refusing Performance: The Attitudes

WGTN

ISSUE 12 JANUARY 2019

She covers many aspects of the parenthood experience, with hilarious and heartfelt anecdotes and opinions.

From a drunken rave over a Tarzan movie to her recent ferociously eloquent response to abuse she received for speaking out about violence against women, Emily's is a voice that resonates with modern parents.

Bevin Linkhorn and Lyndee-Jane Rutherford discovered the blog and pitched the idea to Mel Dodge who read the book - now a bestseller - basically in one sitting.

“We all knew it could become a hilarious and heartwrenching theatre production,” says Bevin.

So what did Emily think of the idea?

RANTS IN THE DARK GOOD TIMES COMPANY Based on the book by Emily Writes www.emilywrites.co.nz Adapted for the stage by Mel Dodge, Lyndee-Jane Rutherford & Bevin Linkhorn Directed by Lyndee-Jane Rutherford.

Circa Theatre Sat 19th Jan - Sat 16th Feb 2019 8pm TICKETS: $52/$42/$38 Babes in Arms performances $39 Wed 23rd Jan & Wed 30th Jan 10.30am BOOKINGS: www.circa.co.nz Emily Writes became famous in 2015 when a rant on her blog received one million hits overnight. She has since written two books and can be read regularly online in several places. Her website offers her for hire as a writer or speaker. And now there's a play.

6 DEGREES FESTIVAL:

“We were incredibly nervous. As it turned out, she loved the idea of telling her story in a live setting and getting it out to a wider audience, while it was also an event that she didn’t have to appear in! Live theatre is where we can create a connection between people in a physical space we wouldn’t create this wonderful feeling in the same way if it was just a screen story. The audience is an important part of this show.”

And the challenge to transform the anecdotal style of the book into a theatrical experience?

Co-writer Mel: “Emily as a character is immediately likeable. She is an every-woman. The people in her life and the situations that she finds herself in are very funny.

But we also have access to some of the more intimate and darker elements of her life. Emily has allowed us to write about some of her personal journey as a writer, and influential moments in her career.

“The challenge was to bring the book to life. We broke it down into small scenes and tried to find the heart of what Emily was saying. This in itself was a huge challenge, as all the material is fantastic, but the play would be seven hours long if it was all in there!”

They had a development season in 2018 at Circa Theatre.

At the end of each show, Bevin got up on stage and explained, asking for feedback. There was a phenomenal response.

“We learnt a lot about the rhythm and structure of the story and where the audience's empathy was. We’d say 85-90% of the audience were women, which wasn’t really a surprise, although we’d say the show appeals to women and men equally, especially if they’ve been a parent!

“We did get a lot of young parents coming along. But we also had parents of older children, who are able to look back on their time with young children and reflect. We had one young guy come to the show and afterwards the first thing he wanted to do was to phone his mum!”

Co-writer and director Lyndee-Jane tells me there are eleven children under seven years old whose parents are working on the show. In fact, they rehearsed for the development season in Carterton to make it possible for mother of twins Renee Lyons to take part. And cowriter Mel had her second baby last year. So, plenty of experience of the topic...

But does the play makes any comment on the status of motherhood in our society, or is the focus more individual?

Mel thinks both.

“We tell the story of one woman's journey through motherhood and the way she has used her creativity to navigate her path. But Rants in the Dark is actually about finding your community. Emily has created a following through telling the brutal truth about motherhood. Women (and men) have responded to this honesty and there is evidence of this through the millions of hits she gets on her blog. She's also pretty hilarious, which helps a lot!”

How often do we see motherhood in the spotlight? Not often enough, I reckon. So let's celebrate it.

THE DREAM PROJECT. Photo by Janet Holborow

Six Victoria University students presenting work created for their Masters of Fine Arts (Creative Practice). The first three shows open in the first week of February – I ask their makers how it all came about...

CIRCLE OF FIFTHS

A thrilling, disorienting, multi-sensory journey through a dream. Grappling with existence, grief and love, and asking the question - how do our dreams relate to our reality and who we are as people?

Shona Jaunas has been fascinated by dreams for a long time “because my dream life is so vivid”.

The idea emerged in 2003 while touring the world for a year playing Titania in A Midsummer Night's Dream.

“My life became so surreal that my dream world began to feel more real than my reality. And I wondered what could you tell about a person just from their dreams.”

Creating the piece as part of a Masters year at university gave her opportunities for the multi-sensory approach. “I have access to projectors, editing equipment, an eight-speaker diffusion system - and the mentorship of the staff and other students.

“Eleanor Bishop is my mentor for this project and she has been particularly helpful in the projection side of things. Projection in theatre when used well can be incredibly magical, but it can also be disastrous if it goes badly, so I have been experimenting with different fabrics and projectors.”

REFUSING PERFORMANCE : THE ATTITUDES Created and performed by Madeline McNamara Co-created and directed by Jade Eriksen Bats Theatre Tues 29th Jan - Sat 2nd Feb 6:30pm TICKETS: $20/$15/$14 BOOKINGS: www.bats.co.nz The title reflects the two main inspirations for this work. Grasping this took a bit of research.

“Performance”, as referred to in the title references an article by Sarah Ahmed, a British-Australian scholar who works at the intersection of feminist, queer and critical race theory and post-colonialism. The article is called Declarations of Whiteness: The NonPeformativity of Anti-Racism: it suggests an utterance is “performative” when it does what it says.

Ahmed argues that admissions of being racist made in “white” public, government and academic spaces are non-performative in the sense that “they do not do what they say”. Admitting to “bad practice” can be miraculously reinterpreted as a “sign of good practice” - saying you are racist can somehow prove that you're not, as a racist doesn't know that they are racist.

THE DREAM PROJECT Writer/Director Shona Jaunas Bats Theatre Tues 5th Feb - Sat 9th Feb 7:00pm TICKETS: $18/$10 BOOKINGS: www.bats.co.nz

Photo by Philip Merry

And “The Attitudes” was the title given to the work of 18th century voguer Emma Lyon - a voguer is apparently someone who strikes imitation poses of fashion models. Static, non-speaking , a form of mime, a cross between postures, dance and acting. A glut of images that make up a whole image. Often in those days it was Greek gods and goddesses.

LOW LEVEL PANIC

WHY ARE WE STILL HERE?

ARAMINTA PRODUCTIONS

TEMPEST PRODUCTIONS

Writer Clare McIntyre Director Harriette Barker Tues 5th Feb – Sat 9th Feb 8:30pm TICKETS: $18/$10 BOOKINGS: www.bats.co.nz

Writer/Director Emma Maguire Bats Theatre Tues 5th Feb - Sat 9th Feb 6:30 TICKETS: $18/$10 BOOKINGS: www.bats.co.nz

A dark comedy set around one evening as three flatmates get ready for a party. A play about female body image, pornography and societal pressure on females.

The theme? A tale of desperation, grief, found families and how hard it is to truly “move on” from life. It's a ghost story - except the ghosts are mostly more lost than threatening

A publicity sentence defines the concept as “I explore in my body and voice different modes of white resistance to challenges about power and privilege”.

The story? Four lost women find shelter in a desolate old building during a violent storm. To their surprise, the building isn't actually abandoned, and the two previous occupants are thoroughly taken by their new guests...

Madeline and co-creator Jade are interested in how their work can contribute most effectively to courageous conversations about racism, whiteness, power and colonial fallout.

I ask writer/director Emily if this was where she expected her Master's year to end up.

“I want to engage with these ideas through a performance presentation that calls both myself and other white audience members to account,” Madeline continues. “One thing that is critical to the work is that audiences recognise that I, as maker and performer, am completely implicated in any critique the work might make.”

I ask director Harriette Barker what I quickly realise is a dumb question - did she do much research for this?

Research? Of course, she has lived with these issues all her life.

“Body image, societal pressures, and the way in which women are seen in society are topics that have always been so prominent in my life. Whether it's friends or family, I have always seen women struggling with the way in which they are viewed, and the way in which they view themselves.”

Low Level Panic was originally written in 1988. An acclaimed and award-winning feminist classic in England, described as still relevant in 2017. Though Harriette thinks this will be it's New Zealand premiere.

The piece has a thread of narrative but it is surreal and full of surprises: after all, “we don’t really know for sure why we dream or what our dreams are about, but we do know that they aren’t replicable, so in the future they may be the only thing that differentiates human from machine”.

“Choosing a script back in January was incredibly stressful. To me, these characters speak so many usually unspoken truths. While the themes are dark, the play itself is witty and the characters are hilarious.

Since the middle of the year I have been lucky to explore, with my cast, the different characters - their backgrounds and mannerisms. It's a journey of learning and growth for both myself and my team.”

Well there's a thought...

And hopefully, no major panic involved.

“Not at all. This project came about in our devising process about two months ago. I pitched two entirely different shows in April and July this year. The only similarity this show has with those was the setting (an abandoned theatre), and the number of characters.

“I was very inspired by abandoned buildings, and the stories they tell. The two ghosts in this play have been stuck together for a very long time - and they're not super happy about it. While they're ghostly, they're certainly still real beings with real feelings and emotions.”

The characters? She wrote this script gender-blind, but has cast five women and one man, so it's turned “a bit into a feminist piece, and certainly into a queer piece”.

Six weeks devising. Eight official drafts. And things still changing in the rehearsal room.

Just how it should be.

So why put the two together?

Performer and creator Madeline McNamara: “I was looking for a choreographic mode to express the inexpressible, both through the body and the voice. A way to physically express complex and hard-to-talkabout ideas.”

Yep, sounds like a courageous conversation. And one we definitely need to have.

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