THEATRE: HOLE IN THE WALL
You know what to expect from theatre, right? You sit down, stare at the stage, the actors perform, you clap, and leave. Not so with Hole in the Wall – a hybrid creature one part installation art, one part theatrical performance that will have you standing in moveable boxes decked out with wallpaper, skirting boards, “All the trimmings that make it a domestic space,” says Matt Prest – albeit a strange and stifling one. Prest, along with co-creator Clare Britton and a host of collaborators, are interested in plays as, “Live experiences”, the “Immediacy of having an audience there with you in a space,” that is absent in most other artforms. In their 2009 work The Tent, audience members were invited into a large, canvas Chautauqua (travelling entertainment tent), where they were fed steamy stew and then shown an imaginary vegetable garden, dusted with dew. Storytelling is key, but so also is an experiential approach to space, and a highly visual, image-based theatre. ““We start off with a couple caught up with the material aspirations of wanting a better house, always wanting better …” says Prest. “Over the course of a night – it’s very surreal – they break through to somewhere with a more essential, spiritual, philosophical sense of home.” Britton and Prest are a couple with a child in real life, and while he stresses the show is not autobiographical, Prest concedes, “I guess questions of home, what it is, what’s important, are fairly pertinent to us, as they are for a lot of people.” With house prices punching holes in the stratosphere – as well as the Australian dream – there’s an underlying, “Societal point to the work … home is something that all people should have access to, [but it] gets caught up in the capitalist system of things.” Real estate aside, “It’s a love story … it’s about them getting past all that crap and finding each other again.” So, there’s one thing you can expect – a happy ending.
Apr 21-24, Campbelltown Arts Centre, cnr Camden & Appin Rds, Campbelltown, $10-20, 4645 4100, artscentre@campbelltown.nsw.gov.au
May 26-29, Performance Space, 245 Wilson St, Eveleigh, $20-30, performancespace.com.au
