| Curtain calls |
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| Written by Richard Watts |
| Friday, 12 June 2009 00:52 |
 Richard Watts casts an eye over two exciting stage events.“This play is incredibly difficult to describe and yet very simple,” says director Daniel Schlusser of Poet # 7 (pictured), the second play to be staged as part of the winter season of FULL TILT!, an Arts Centre initiative dedicated to presenting the best in independent theatre at Melbourne’s home of the performing arts. “It is first and foremost a murder mystery. There’s a body. What happened to her? Threading through that is a question of who loved her, and who among the four characters on stage was responsible for her happiness, as well as her demise. So it’s got an Agatha Christie touch to it, an unwrapping of mystery; but then there’s also an element of futurism – like a sci-fi kind of overlay, where Melbourne is having the crap bombed out of it by American forces. And why this has come about is a fascinating tale of genetic manipulation of crops for weapons…” Written by Schlusser’s regular collaborator Tom Ellis, the play tells its story from four different perspectives, and four different time periods. “I think Ben is always looking for a genuinely theatrical frame to put things in; something that doesn’t just illustrate his themes, but actually imbeds it somehow. So he’s taken that beautiful observation that when you’re looking at a night sky you think you’re in the present, but really you’re watching light from thousands of years ago. He’s taken that essentially scientific observation and he’s constructed a poetic narrative that works the same way. “These characters are all sitting in different spaces in time, and you have to work out who’s in the past, who’s in the future, who’s in the present. Of course you think they’re all talking about each other right here and right now because they’re all sitting on stage, but part of the murder mystery is that you start to realise that they’re dispersed across time and across space.” Full Tilt presents Poet # 7 at The Arts Centre, Black Box, June 11 - 20. Book at www.ticketmaster.com.au or 1300 136 166. Rachel Berger needs no introduction to the gay community, but given that she is best known as a comedian it might take some audiences a few moments to get their heads around the fact that her latest show is a serious drama about her life, her parents’ lives, and the external forces which have shaped her. “It’s a series of monologues, so it’s not stand-up, but it’s still me just talking,” Berger says. “What’s different is that it’s not funny a lot of the time … and I do characters, which I hadn’t done before.” Hold the Pickle, which premiered at La Mama Theatre in June last year, is a story of heartbreak and loss, alienation and belonging, based on her parents’ flight from war-torn Europe to Melbourne, where they eventually settled. “It’s a 75 minute journey … based on stories they told me about what had happened to them during the war, and on my experiences of being an immigrant child.” A key part of the show is Berger’s performance as her mother. Surely Freud would have had something to say about that? “It’s very strange. I have to get into her psychology and be her as a younger woman; but there’s been a lot written about children of survivors of torture and trauma … that there is a sort of metaphysical remnant of it in your DNA. I grew up with so much of it being a part of my childhood, so it’s almost as if bits of her are so much a part of me. Not necessarily good bits, either.” Rachel Berger in Hold the Pickle at Chapel off Chapel, June 9 - 21. Book on 8290 7000 or www.chapeloffchapel.com.au |