By
Thomas Connelly
In
my utopia,
art would be intimate. Art would compel people to think. Art would
take place in interesting venues. The
Green Room
gave me a taste of my utopian dreams.
In
this work, The
Green Room,
Jane Longhurst and Dylan Sheridan were able to create something
challenging and invigorating. They have made the overture to an
endless and communal symphony, that each of us can carry and add to
daily.
On
a sunny first day of summer I drove to a
much ignored historical part of Hobart, the Victoria Gunpowder
Magazine on the Queens Domain.
I
arrive
early, and entertain myself with a stroll along Soldiers Memorial
Avenue. A bleak and silently beautiful memorial to those sacrificed
in the Great War . Alone but for the wind on my face and the song of
the birds, this quiet futility of war moment places me in the right
frame of mind for the Green
Room
.
The
audience is led to an intimate dance floor . A woman is dressed in
black:. is she a servant or a mourner? As she endlessly sweeps the
floor with her old fashioned broom, Dylan Sheridan's modulated
rumblings signal a dreamy twilight entrance and a beginning. A
theatre of gesture and sound follows, filling the abandoned space and
transmuting the audience. Minimal lighting adds a thrilling unity.
Years
ago punks prided themselves on breaking the distance between
performer and audience. The
Green Room
extends this idea. The audience becomes the performance. The
rustling of clothing - the string section, shifting feet -
percussion, breathing - woodwind. Peristaltic motion forms the brass
section, breaks down barriers, and at the same time raises questions
and the audience becomes part of the performance. What is meant to be
heard? What is performance? What is real?
Jane
Longhurst performs
a silent dance; her movements layering questions and her very being
becomes ambiguous. A ghost of the long empty gunpowder magazine? An
echo of the forgotten Crimean War? The fear of Tsarist expansion? The
endless domestic labour of women? Or is her sweeping structure for
the soundscape?
The
performance doesn't end, rather it fades and changes location.
Walking away from the keyboard, doors open and the audience slowly
melts away, a simulated ending. Once everyone has left the room Jane
finishes her sweeping and her dance. And we are outside in the light
and the real world. Off in the distance a band plays, birds sing,
conversation flows. The performance continues without end.
In
all this
was a fabulous production; a subtle and revolutionary work. Simple
and complex, artless and polished, all at once. Equal parts theatre,
dance, installation and composition. All bundled up with questioning
strings, in a appropriate and interesting venue. A venue that not
only allows intimacy, but forces intimacy upon the audience and
performers alike.
Congratulations
to
the Salamanca Arts Centre's HyPe (Hybrid Performance) Program for
nurturing innovation and allowing this and many other vigorous
performances to be created in and around the local area.
