Entering the University Theatre was disconcerting. The seats
were all gone and the stage seemed to have shrunk and lurched up
towards us. The floor had been raised leaving only three of the six
tiers exposed. The sides and back of the theatre had be brought in,
and the white walls contained random slits and apertures through to
the spaces created behind them. Slides of the text, taken from
Euripides and Seneca's versions of Medea were projected in random
sequences on each wall. Through a door sized opening a stack of
three video monitors played a looping ten minute montage portraying abuse and mutilation of two plastic dolls, porn movies
and images of war. All very symbolic. The lighting was
subdued, mostly white but with some strong reds and
blues.
A bar was open in one corner. I bought a beer, and
like most of the gathering audience I sat where the seats
used to be and waited. One or two people dared to venture
onto the stage to peer through the holes.
They came at us from behind. Five masked Medeas,
dressed in black nightclubbing gear, entering ceremonially through the street door. Five Jasons followed from
onstage, also masked and in suits. As Jasons and Medeas
whispered, gasped, ennounced or cried their fractured
lines, they invaded us in slow motion, crawling and writhing between us and not giving way. Suddenly, holding a
can of beer wasn't such a good idea. It soon became clear
that these guys wanted our space. Having successfully
broken down the conventional actor/audience relationship, they proceeded with the second phase of the trilogy.
After this long a time (maybe even at that time) my recall
of the exact sequence of events remains unclear. A Medea
was ritually bound to a stretcher/torture rack and inverted.
Newspapers were read and discarded. There was an amazing degree
of physical commitment from the actors. Eventually, they disappeared.
Nothing happened. We heard voices from backstage. Gradually, we began to realise that if we wanted to see any more, we had to
follow the actors, and like sheep nervous about entering an unknown
pasture, we stood up (those of us who hadn't already decided that
sitting was not a
good way to retain
our drink intact) and
followed.
It turned out
that there was no
backstage. Every
inch of the theatre
was used as performance space - the
"side rooms" created by the set, the dressing room, beneath the raised stage, even the
toilet!
Within these spaces, and moving between them, five Jason/
Medea confrontations occurred. All followed the same text but at
their own pace and with very different interpretations, varying from
loving to questioning to violent. The audience wandered between
them, watching through apertures or standing boldly in the middle of
spaces. From some vantage points you could see up to three versions simultaneously.
One side space was set up as a domestic living room, the other
as a torture or bondage chamber (the audience could only look into
this space). In each of these spaces was
a wall of twelve video monitors. Beneath
the stage actors perched ape-like on the
scaffolding and hammered and rattled
loose bars in a primal primate challenge.
In what is usually the dressing room
was a boudoir, viewed through slits in
curtains (Did I say this felt decidedly
voyeuristic at times?). High atop the tech
store (sorry, there was one bit of the
theatre which remained sacrosanct) was
an altar accessed by a ladder, with more
video screens beneath.
The rhythm of the performance
changed slowly. Sometimes couples
separated. Later all the Medeas gathered together, and all the Jasons separately. The audience grew more
accustomed to the experience. Some
placed themselves in confrontation with
actors. Some started discussing the play
with each other or even talking to the
actors. At one point I moved from one side of a pair of actors to
another only to be missed by inches by a Jason hurtling into the wall
propelled by a kick from the Medea. When, at the conclusion, the
actors moved to dance with us, we accepted it as perfectly normal.
Technically, I don't remember much detail. Lighting was precisely controlled, and was largely dim. In several spaces video
screens were the dominant light source. I remember very little of
sound. There certainly was sound or music at times, but the actors
created such a rich soundscape themselves that it barely registered.
To me the video walls added little to the production, as I failed
to see the relevance of their content. In the "living room', for
example, the pictures consisted of Gulf War target camera footage
and botanical images. The result was just a sort of high-tech
moving wallpaper.
While I don't think I personally gained any great new insight
into the Medea myth, I found this "dramatic palimpsest" to be a
potpourri of unique theatrical experiences, such as being acted at
at 20cm range, or being directly challenged by a Medea played by
an actress one knows as to why you don't love her any more. Like
a typical kiwi bloke, I said nothing and got out of the room. * * * *