Excerpted in THE PRESS on 27 November 2009: Recently nominated for Most Original Production at the Chapman Tripp Awards for Faust Chroma, Free Theatre's follow-up production is Distraction Camp.
BDSM and the SS. If letters published in the Press are anything to go by, these are two of the most controversial subjects of the year. Could it be considered foolhardy, then, to have both feature prominently in one theatre production?
Distraction Camp, Free Theatre Christchurch's major new work for 2009, features both. Were the production to be performed on the proposed site of the National Conservatorium of Music, Free Theatre might be said to have scored the trifecta. Why take on such potentially aggravating and controversial subject material?
Free Theatre has, over its 30-year history in Christchurch, been equally slated and celebrated for getting under the skin of Christchurch audiences with its unusual, provocative theatre. However, those who have seen the company's work - a recent example being the award-winning Faust Chroma - will testify to the fact that if there are shocks, they come from the way Free Theatre holds, as Hamlet instructs, "the mirror up to nature". Indeed this latest production takes further the company's exploration of acting in the theatre and everyday life, inspired by meta-theatrical texts such as Hamlet and Genet's The Balcony.
And if we hold the mirror up to Christchurch, we can see people acting up and acting out in dungeons and fancy dress parties. In Christchurch, considered by many to be the most conservative town in New Zealand, there exists both a thriving sadomasochism community and a fascination with Nazi symbolism evident at student parties. Free Theatre has spent a year workshopping and devising an original work that explores why this fascination seems so prevalent now: not merely with the aim to shock, but to engage with and confront preoccupations and concerns of our community that sometimes remain hidden.
Perhaps BDSM and the fascination with Nazi symbolism are a response to the restrictive, conformist and repressive nature of this consumer society. Induced constantly to consume entertainments that revolve endlessly around distractions and commodities, we have become like the Muselman - as the walking dead were known in the Nazi concentration camp - resigned to a way of living without meaning, obese yet starved of real nourishment.
Maybe the role-play theatre of BDSM or playing Nazi's and prisoners at a costume party may be seen as an attempt to escape the 'distraction camp' of consumer society and search for something more authentic, more alive, less nice and safe. Less known.
In her essay 'Fascinating Fascism', Susan Sontag suggests the rigid role-play of Nazi sadomasochistic fetishism appeals to a society where there is too much 'freedom'. She says, "The fad for Nazi regalia indicates something quite different: a response to an oppressive freedom of choice in sex (and in other matters), to an unbearable degree of individuality; the rehearsal of enslavement rather than its reenactment".
Sontag's article was written in 1974, yet given the Max Mosley controversy this year, and ongoing Nazi fetishism in this and other western countries, her argument is just as relevant to today's consumer culture with its endless choices.
But is it possible to escape the distraction camp? Is there an alternative? Is a revolution possible, or have we lost even the ability to imagine what it might look like? Are we now simply resigned to playing (out) the same destructive roles? Free Theatre's Distraction Camp grapples with these questions in a very playful, indirect manner: not by preaching to the audience, but by engaging them in the games that are played in a House of Illusions. Is it a brothel? A camp? A theatre? Or just a tango dance floor and another distraction from what really matters?
-George Parker
Close
BDSM and the SS. If letters published in the Press are anything to go by, these are two of the most controversial subjects of the year. Could it be considered foolhardy, then, to have both feature prominently in one theatre production?
Distraction Camp, Free Theatre Christchurch's major new work for 2009, features both. Were the production to be performed on the proposed site of the National Conservatorium of Music, Free Theatre might be said to have scored the trifecta. Why take on such potentially aggravating and controversial subject material?
Free Theatre has, over its 30-year history in Christchurch, been equally slated and celebrated for getting under the skin of Christchurch audiences with its unusual, provocative theatre. However, those who have seen the company's work - a recent example being the award-winning Faust Chroma - will testify to the fact that if there are shocks, they come from the way Free Theatre holds, as Hamlet instructs, "the mirror up to nature". Indeed this latest production takes further the company's exploration of acting in the theatre and everyday life, inspired by meta-theatrical texts such as Hamlet and Genet's The Balcony.
And if we hold the mirror up to Christchurch, we can see people acting up and acting out in dungeons and fancy dress parties. In Christchurch, considered by many to be the most conservative town in New Zealand, there exists both a thriving sadomasochism community and a fascination with Nazi symbolism evident at student parties. Free Theatre has spent a year workshopping and devising an original work that explores why this fascination seems so prevalent now: not merely with the aim to shock, but to engage with and confront preoccupations and concerns of our community that sometimes remain hidden.
Perhaps BDSM and the fascination with Nazi symbolism are a response to the restrictive, conformist and repressive nature of this consumer society. Induced constantly to consume entertainments that revolve endlessly around distractions and commodities, we have become like the Muselman - as the walking dead were known in the Nazi concentration camp - resigned to a way of living without meaning, obese yet starved of real nourishment.
Maybe the role-play theatre of BDSM or playing Nazi's and prisoners at a costume party may be seen as an attempt to escape the 'distraction camp' of consumer society and search for something more authentic, more alive, less nice and safe. Less known.
In her essay 'Fascinating Fascism', Susan Sontag suggests the rigid role-play of Nazi sadomasochistic fetishism appeals to a society where there is too much 'freedom'. She says, "The fad for Nazi regalia indicates something quite different: a response to an oppressive freedom of choice in sex (and in other matters), to an unbearable degree of individuality; the rehearsal of enslavement rather than its reenactment".
Sontag's article was written in 1974, yet given the Max Mosley controversy this year, and ongoing Nazi fetishism in this and other western countries, her argument is just as relevant to today's consumer culture with its endless choices.
But is it possible to escape the distraction camp? Is there an alternative? Is a revolution possible, or have we lost even the ability to imagine what it might look like? Are we now simply resigned to playing (out) the same destructive roles? Free Theatre's Distraction Camp grapples with these questions in a very playful, indirect manner: not by preaching to the audience, but by engaging them in the games that are played in a House of Illusions. Is it a brothel? A camp? A theatre? Or just a tango dance floor and another distraction from what really matters?
-George Parker
Close
