A FEAT INCOMPLETE

In a world where film and television dominates it’s no wonder that compared to TV, theatre can seem so limited. The same old techniques are used to get the audience to believe that the staged world in front of them is real. Unless absolute masters of the art do it and you pay big bucks to see it, it is all too often unbelievable.

Theatre keeps producing those cringe moments. Where an actor’s performance isn’t quite pulled off. The theatre-cringe is usually due to the fact that said actor is too busy thinking about the futility of what he is doing and wishing he were in an Underbelly miniseries instead.

It’s sad to admit, but these days the nerve receptors in our brains have been so battered around that, as an audience, we need to be completely immersed in our entertainment to get any kind of enjoyment out of it.

Erica Brennan is an actor/playwright with a new show that is a work of theatrical surrealism and presents a solution.

“I think it will be a cracker,” she says.

“I haven’t seen anything like it for a long time.”

Brennan continues, “My favourite thing about this piece is the fantastical element. At one point I’m wearing giant bullhorns and then I’m having conversations with mushrooms. We go into a full mythological place, one of the lead characters being not quite human. That’s the kind of fun I like to have.”

Essentially Brennan solves the problem of theatre being unbelievable, by making it completely unbelievable. Genius.

Brennan is someone who is honest enough to accept the constraints she is up against. After all, what is the point of being a prima donna and whinging about the dumbing down of society and the declining interest in true ‘cultyah’, when you could be giving the people what they want?

Honestly, people are willing to pay a lot more than 25 dollars to watch some weird redheaded chick with bullhorns on her head talk to mushrooms.

If watching said weird redhead got awkward because you were supposed to pretend that you weren’t there? Well, this could be a cause of theatre-cringe. A problem that Brennan has dealt with.

“I was really interested in looking at a piece that dealt with the presence of an audience. So right at the top of the piece the main character actually acknowledges that there is an audience in the room. She ends up serving them tea to try and make them part of her world,” she says.

Brennan also deals with the very theatre-cringe worthy concept of the monologue in similar fashion.

“So there’s monologues, but you never get the sense that she’s [the main character] talking to herself. She’s very much either talking with you or to, no, I would actually argue, most of the stuff she does is kind of a duologue between her and some other things [mushrooms]. I’m really interested in that. It was never going to be a solo show,” she says.

The reason this show works is because the dominant style of entertainment these days is realism. Television and film tend to take a person, place them in an everyday normal environment and reveal their inner workings as the drama unfolds.

However, Brennan’s theatrical work harkens back to early twentieth century modernism. She uses the stage to blend reality with her psyche and create a show that is abstract, surreal and absurd.

It is her nuanced approach to story telling that will really give audiences something to sink their teeth into. For example, in the TV sit-com, the general idea is that a group of oddballs do strange things and then at the end of the show find acceptance with their social group. Brennan adds a new level of subtlety to this.

“When I first started writing the piece it was just about story telling and the broad idea of why we did it,” she explains.

“The conclusion I came to was the idea of dispelling loneliness, that there is a real outward push by people to the world around, even if other people aren’t there, we’re all trying to get a sense of connection.

“What I’m working with in the piece is kind of something between celebrating story telling as a really profound tool for human connection, but somehow trying to acknowledge that ultimately there is an extreme loneliness. It’s full of longing.”

At the end of the day, after everything that this play has going for it, Brennan proves herself to be a true artist. It will ultimately be this show’s complexity and depth of character that will make the audience immerse their selves in theatre again. (LC)

Aug 21-25, Venue 505, 280 Cleveland St, Surry Hills, $25, venue505.com

BY LUKE COX