Performance Artist Marcus Ian McKenzie’s New Show Explores Crying Rooms
Image: Crying Room:Exhumed by Amelia J Dowd
Melbourne performance artist Marcus Ian McKenzie is exploring a little known space that can be found in churches, cinemas and theatres called crying rooms in his multi-award winning piece titled The Crying Room: Exhumed, in the Liveworks Festival 2024 at Carriageworks.
“If you haven’t heard of a crying room then you are in a majority of people, which is a big part of why they are interesting to me,” McKenzie said.
“The name crying room might suggest that you are crying a bit, but it is also a place to go if you have a crying child so that you don’t disturb everyday else.”
What are crying rooms?
Crying rooms, also called cry room or infant care rooms were a soundproof space often equipped with a speaker system so that users could still hear the church service or performance.
They were built into spaces between 1950s and began to disappear from new constructions around the 1970s when multiplex cinemas became popular.
For McKenzie, the discovery of crying rooms came about due to a personal connection.
“In Melbourne about 10 years ago I was at the Melbourne Theatre Company with a friend at a matinee, and she was feeling sick and left in the middle of the show, and didn’t come back,” McKenzie said.
“At interval I went looking for her and the usher said “She’s in the crying room”.
“She took me there and I sat with my friend and we watched the rest of the show, and ever since that day I thought there was something in this concept in that it is is a secret thing.”
A fateful day meant crying rooms very personal for McKenzie
The idea festered with McKenzie for quite a while until one fateful day.
“I went to see a production of Puccini’s Turnadot, which I had never seen before,”McKenzie said.
“During the second interval I got a phone call saying that my brother was dead.”
Not long after that phone call the pandemic hit.
“At the beginning of 2020 the Arts Centre did a call out for site responsive works and I immediately thought of this show,” McKenzie said.
The Crying Room:Exhumed went on to garner four major Fringe and Greenroom awards including Melbourne Fringe “Best Experimental Work”.
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Takes a village: the team behind the solo show
Describing his approach to the work, McKenzie said “It’s me performing, and for a lot of my shows I call a solo show. It has the form of a solo performance but it takes a team.”
The creative team for the Liveworks Festival shows include Anna Nalpantidis as creative director, Romanie Harper set design, Chloe Kim musician, technical stage manager Justice Georgopoulos and Richard Vabre lighting designer.
Seventeen shows feature across various Carriageworks locations in the Liveworks Festival 2024 from Wednesday 23 October to Sunday 23 October.
The Crying Room: Exhumed
Dates: Wed 23 Oct – Sun 27 Oct
Venue: Bay 20, Carriageworks
Address: 245 Wilson Street, Eveleigh
More information can be found here.
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