BEGUILED

Beguiled, PACT Theatre’s end of year ensemble production, is a performance installation and experience based on the notion that we, “share a universal drive to believe in the potential of magic”. Cat Jones, the co-director of the piece, further explains that the audience members actually walk through the installation, and are guided by the performances, sound and lighting.

“We’re not really looking at magic in the traditional sense or in terms of the practice of illusion but more about the ideas of parallel universes, choice, destiny, lies and perception,” she says.

Selected from an audition process held in April, the ensemble of ten have worked together to build this original work through a series of collaborative exercises. “[Co-director Julie Vulcan and I] set them creative tasks, drawing out materials from them, giving them provocations and offering them research and points of reference to bring material back to the rehearsal space… Then we’ve worked from the material that they came up with,” Jones said.

The ensemble members – that include Taryn Brine, Cameron Ellis, Sam Koh and Lucille Lehr – have combined their diverse artistic backgrounds to create a multidisciplinary work and Beguiled draws on many aspects of literature, music, visual art, theatre and new media.

Jones says, “I hope people come away with having had an interlude in their lives that takes them to another place and that they come away with a feeling that they’ve experienced an intimate moment together.”

Nov 23-Dec 10, PACT Theatre, 107 Railway Pde, Erskineville, $10-26, 9550 2744, pact.net.au