In a week where an AI company is touting an all-digital “actor”, Tilly Norwood, as the next big thing, instructions by UK theatremakers SUBJECT OBJECT is on the pulse of things. Though Hollywood has been stealing people’s likenesses for a long time, digital special effects are making it harder and harder to discern reality from fantasy.
instructions makes use of a different
unrehearsed actor stepping on stage every night to discover the script as it’s
projected to them on a screen they see. The audience watches the actors’
performance projected onto a screen behind them. Ostensibly, they are in an audition
for a new romantic comedy where they must act out the final emotional scene at
the top of the Eiffel Tower.
On opening
night, John Marc Desengano was the brave performer under the spotlight and his
charm shone through as he’s run through his paces by the unseen director of the
film he is trying out for. As with ECHO at Malthouse this year, every
actor on stage throughout the run of instructions will bring a different
energy. John Marc is the kind of actor who can make an audience laugh with his
ebullience and a wry smile. (Later in the run you can see Vidya Rajan, Ash
Flanders or Christie Whelan Browne taking the stage.)
I felt
quite at a distance by the staging and while the premise is interesting – an
actor’s likeness from an audition is used to create the final work – it's a hook
that doesn’t really go anywhere. The show is humorous at times, because of the set-up
and the tension of an actor who doesn’t know what they’ve got themselves into.
But as work of live art, it’s an experience wholly dependent on how well the
actor on the night acquits themselves.
John Marc
did a great job, but I would have liked the creators to dig more deeply – into
what they were saying and how it’s presented theatrically. Using digital
replicas without someone’s permission is dystopian stuff, but instructions
only gently nudges toward the horror of it.
- Keith Gow, Theatre First
Instructions runs at Trades Hall as part of Melbourne Fringe until October 12
Photo: Liv Morrison
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