Theatre is ephemeral. We experience it and then, once we leave, it’s gone. It remains only in our memories.
Each show of a season is different. Each season of a show is different. Different productions. Different countries.
Our different selves might experience the same show differently when we revisit.
Our experience of one show may not be the same as the person sitting next to us.
Veteran theatre
maker David Williams has collaborated with experimental collective Pony Cam to
devise, Grand Theft Theatre, to examine the memorable theatre of their
lives. While David’s experience recalls theatre across decades, the young
performers of Pony Cam tell us about life-changing theatre from this century –
shows that changed them when they were very young, when they were teenagers and
when they were starting out making theatre themselves.
The
audience enters St Ambrose Hall in Brunswick and is asked not to give
themselves a name tag, but to write down the name of one of their most
memorable theatrical experiences – and stick it to their chest. Later, during
one of the intermissions, we’d use these to strike up conversations with fellow
audience members or one of the Pony Cam performers themselves.
I wrote “Angels
in America” because the text has long been one of my favourites and though I
have seen it both at Belvoir and Fortyfive Downstairs, I still regret not
seeing the Melbourne Theatre Company production in 1993 – when I was studying
and hugely impressionable.
The plastic
chairs are scattered in the middle of the room, no form, no order, reminiscent
of Forced Entertainment’s Bloody Mess that David saw at the Malthouse in
2005. The audience has to find a chair for themselves and choose whether to
follow the rows other audience members have formed or to go rogue and push back
against the rigidity of traditional theatre seating.
Each chair
is labelled with the name of local theatre makers. I was in the “Susie Dee” chair
at one point. Later I was sitting near “Jane Montgomery Griffiths”.
Once the
show begins, though it kind of already has, David assures us that they are
stealing theatre like Spotify steals from recording artists. But what they
really are doing, even in their recreations, is reminiscing, memorialising and
remembering the theatre that shook them and changed them – as people and as
theatremakers themselves.
It was strange
to see a recreation of Thyestes, which I saw back in 2010, or to hear a
retelling of Betty Grumble’s vagina/vase double-act or to experience a PG-rated
version of Charles Horse Lays an Egg that happened at Melbourne Fringe in
2018. But it wasn’t all local theatre that opened these performer’s minds –
some of their recollections came from life-altering works in Berlin or nagging
their mums to take them two-and-a-half hours to Hobart to see the film of Chicago
when they were nine years old.
Between
acts, the performers rearrange the chairs in the space, reminding us all of how
varied and versatile theatre spaces can be. By the end, the audience is on
stage, watching Pony Cam scattered across the church hall, trying to figure out
how best to end their epic trip down memory lane – even while they have
hundreds of other memories to share.
Theatre is
an experience you cannot really recapture. Your memories of it can last years
and decades, though. And the only way some of it can live is for you to talk
about it – to people who saw it, to people who didn’t like it and to people who
have no idea what you’re talking about.
David Williams
and Pony Cam have seen a lot. They provoked memories in me that I had forgotten;
reminding me of shows that I saw deep in the past. Revived thoughts of
long-forgotten discussions of controversial shows and contrasted my own
feelings of performances I remember being overwhelmed by.
In Grand
Theft Theatre, the company has taken an experience we’ve all had and
reminded us that even if we experience it differently or remember it
differently, theatre often only lives if we talk about it. And in an era where mainstream
press is printing fewer and fewer reviews, it’s up to audiences and
theatremakers to remind us of great works of the past. So it can inspire us all
over again. Or for the first time.
Pony Cam’s
work is truly inventive, unpredictable, hilarious and moving. They might claim
to be stealing from the works of others but what I saw was them acknowledging
the foundations they are building their own theatre on. Great artists following
in the steps of other great artists.
- Keith Gow, Theatre First
Grand Theft Theatre is on next weekend for two shows only. Then it might only exist if you read a few reviews or talk to someone who experienced it.
Photos: Wild Hardt
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