Samsara: March 2015

Sunday, 8 March 2015

Psychopomp & Seething review

Barking Spider Visual Theatre presented a double bill at La Mama Theatre last week. Psychopomp was developed at the Monash University Student Theatre (MUST) last year and had retained its original cast for this remount. Seething is a new short work for voice and body.

Both pieces were written by Penelope Bartlau, the Artistic Director of Barking Spider. Barking Spider was established in 2006 and focusses on creating unique platforms for the sharing and telling of stories. It is a multi-art form company and has presented in museums, galleries, and schools, as well as theatres.

Jason Lehane, the director and designer of the two pieces asked Bartlau to write them after their successful collaboration in 2013 with Bedtime for One. Lehane is a long time member of Barking Spider and is also the Technical Manager at MUST so it is no surprise that Psychopomp was developed and first performed there last year.

The first of the two performances presented was Seething. Unlike traditional theatre where the audience enters the auditorium and takes their stationary seats, in this production we were ushered onto an enclosed mobile seating bank. Rather than just the usual metaphoric journey, we were going to experience a literal one!

Once seated, the front walls closed the audience into a black box of total sensory deprivation. Held in abeyance in that state for just long enough to engender a feeling of uncertainty, we then slowly heard the sounds of lapping water and then the seating bank started to move. There was a slight instability and a natural creak in the structure which, when combined with the sounds of waves and winds, allowed us to feel as if we had been transported to a massive galleon on the high seas Narnia style.

The waves and wind became more violent and turned into a raging (seething?) storm and we were spun around and around for what seemed like forever. Then things stilled. The sound settled and so did we.

We began to hear a poem being spoken and the front wall of the seating opened to reveal a woman (O'Neill) in a room upstage which resembled a sound booth. She was reading a poem on a music stand. The whole set up made me think of a radio studio.

A dancer (Brennan) then entered and took up the open, undefined space between us and the narrator. The dance was almost like that of a puppet having its strings pulled by the spoken words.

Having the two performers in different spaces, yet obviously connected in sense and meaning, emphasized a notion of disconnect between the brain and the body. Lehane apparently wanted the sense of a dream in these pieces and Bartlau has indeed given us nightmares.

Seething is about bodies and our love and hate of them. The voice disconnected from the body highlights the disconnect of our psyches as we let the world tell us how we feel about ourselves rather than allowing us to find what is lovable. Brennan never really finishes any sequence because the repetition and jittery rhythm of the poetry (which is just magnificent and mellifluous) stops her every time. In the end the body runs away and the speaker calmly packs up and leaves. The world has won. The individual has become an unbreechable chasm of cognitive dissonance and self hate.

The doors close once more, but this time we have light for our travels on the high seas. It is a diffuse, hazy light with no distinct source. It was as if we were travelling through a deep mist. The waters were not as violent as before, but there was a lingering sense of danger and uncertainty.

Eventually we came to rest again and the front opened to gently reveal four small boxes just big enough for a human to sit in. The four boxes made one large box and it was similar to watching a split screen broadcast. Now began Psychopomp.

Psychopomp is a Greek word meaning 'guide of the soul'. Psychopomps are creatures whose job it is to escort the recently dead to the afterlife. They do not judge, they merely provide safe passage.

In Psychopomp we met four of these souls who are on their journey. There was an owl (Murray), a horse (Templeton), a pink moth (Greer), and a dog (Cerche).

We didn't really understand what was happening at first. The piece began with the owl who talks about looking after her three chickadees. The design for this character and her world were phenomenal. Murray really did embody the owl in her nest and mastered the physicalities as well as the vocal and rhythmic patterns demanded by Bartlau's superlative writing.

Everything about the owl and her story was just perfectly balanced, performed, and presented. Unfortunately the rest of the cast and design didn't live up to this amazing beginning.

The pink moth (Grear) almost reached the heights of Murray. Once it was clear who she was - and it took a long time to figure it out - the whole show became clear.

The essential thing that all the characters have in common is that they don't understand that they are in transition. They are no longer a part of the story they are telling. They are beginning a new one.

Grear tells her story well and with just the right emotional balance, but she does not embody the moth with the same integrity as Murray. Better lighting would have helped the audience. It washed out the pink in the costume rather than enhancing it. This would have been a helpful clue for us.

For me, the two men were big disappointments. You could not distinguish either of their animals from any aspect of their performances. The only hint was that Templeton wore a headband with horse ears and Cerche sported a bushy beard.

Again, I think lighting could have helped. The dog box needed to reflect more of the fire, and the horse box could have been more shadowy, like the graveyard the text talks about. It is true that all of the answers lay in Bartlau's wonderful writing, but the writing was non-linear and repetitive and not designed to be self-revealing until the last possible moment.

Whilst the design and a more dynamic direction would have helped us, the biggest disappointment lay in the performances. Neither of the men really worked to develop vocal patterns referential to their animals, instead choosing to focus on the literalness of the text and the 'human' journey rather than the disembodiment of their Psychopomp journey. It is sad but true to say that Murray's brilliance did show up the lack in the other performers.

This all sounds very negative, but it really wasn't. Both Psychopomp and Seething are remarkable pieces of writing and the entire experience was sensorial, visceral, exciting, and engaging. I knew that Bartlau was an amazing theatre maker, but I had no idea she was such a brilliant writer.