Day 2: Legs on the Wall: Home Land

Critique of the Legs on the Wall performance 'Home Land' to which those attending the conference had been invited to on the previous night.

Facilitator: Thor Blomfield

Panel: Joanne Thompkins, Nigel Jamieson, Bill Blaikie

Thor Blomfield - Introduction

Home Land has been 10 years in the making, as the company has been climbing and abseiling down walls since its inception. After many years of development, Legs approached the City of Sydney Council with the idea for funding, and Nigel Jamieson for direction. Thor agreed that the craft includes preparing an appropriate application that meets the guidelines of the funding body, designing the counter-weight system, negotiating the use of the AMP building, rigging safely and rehearsing.

Joanne Thompkins - University of Queensland - lecturer in post colonial theatre

Thompkins not a physical theatre practitioner or critic, so will talk from Multicultural theatre perspective. Definitions: Physical theatre is a physical performance that tells a story. Originally multiculturalism a social experiment to incorporate different nations under one umbrella nation. Now pertains to people of all cultures living together, which results in the mixing cultures and ideas. Thompkins commented on the importance of Home Land during a time when there is such a backlash to multiculturalism, with the likes of Pauline Hanson's party, and the Prime Minister's inability or refusal to use the word sorry . Politically, multiculturalism is reduced to food, dance and art but not the people, their ideas, backgrounds and religion. Theatre tends to engage with multiculturalism more seriously than politics. Politicians are always trying to remove differences in society. The range of cultures that make up the content of Australia's homeland are comprised of immediate post war migration. The incorporation of music and choir in Homelands highlights a non-Anglo-Saxon base.

The idea of home

Thompkins talked of the idea of home, what home means to people. Home is not just a building but a state of mind - a background of people and history. People who have two homes can often feel that neither of them is home. Home Land depicted this well. The suitcase in the piece represented the home the characters left and the home they are going to. The weight of the suitcase represents the weight of their past, the despair and agony that many have left behind. The photos in the suitcase depicted joy, sadness and despair of a life.

Similar to William Yang performances, which deal with cultural identity. Yang explores the productive ambiguity between two homes but he cannot achieve the physicality like Legs on the Wall.

The Stage - Unworldly

Home Land is performed on the side of a building a very physical and unconventional form of stage. Projections of faces on the wall make a backdrop for the actors. These are the faces of those left behind, their pair and isolation. The shadows that the actors create (very elongated) indicate larger than life figures of the past. The rope the actors are suspended from represents the rope that ties them to their past and connects them to their future home. The danger of the show depicts the danger many immigrants faced when trying to escape a country rife with war and suffering and tight governmental controls.

Home Land concludes in social collectivity - a statement about community and gives a face to multiculturalism. It seeks to reconstruct a vision of self in Australian (as community), through melting cultural diversity into genres. Homeland is not just a physical place but a state of mind.

Bill Blaikie - Charles Sturt University

Analysis of Joanna Thompkins critique - an informed interpretation of narrative. Blaikie's critique concerned with the art and craft of the performance. We experience problems each time we perform. The word "theatre" means "seeing place" and is related to word "theorize". In Ancient Greece it meant to go back and think about performance and life, today - what are we made to think?

Dialogue is what enriches us making it a better world to live in.

Blaikie's personal reaction to Home Land

Amazing spectacle - blue wall, great space, people spinning, delightful and terrifying, skillful, risk, control, exploration. Abseiling as performance/art - intended audience - to aerial circus - bungee jumping.

What are possibilities that move it beyond use in a tent or for sport? How does it step us from ordinary to extraordinary according to the society in which it is created?

Home Land uses a certain amount of what Blaikie calls Brecht formalism. We will make what we know look strange and that which is strange look familiar. Do that by looking for the cutting edge and transgressing expectations to new awareness. Legs did that by taking a building and making it a vertical stage. The use of a vertical stage shows danger. Look at Romeo and Juliet the balcony, King Lear - on the edge of a precipice. Vertical space also does other things. It plays with distance, the notion of a falling, Biblical references - from far away to close, north to south.

The blue gave a sense of sea, - vast spaces - sensually satisfying. The sound and lightshow together with adrenaline provides a vicarious thrill. Home Land is a marvel in its construction of a story out of images related to music, projections and performers.

Blaikie acknowledges that Home Land depicts a perilous journey of separation, danger and despair. It also ties in with the idea of chain migration. Blaikie pointed out that the theatre for him was also in watching a stressed stage manager telling people where to stand and go.

Objective assessment of technique and content:

• Text trying to be read.
• Theatre - about relationships rather than plot, communications rather than self expression.
• Relationship to rope, wall, audience, singers, music, journey on rope.
• The Heroes journey of learning, loss, yearning - journey of migrant - difficult - requires separation.
• To return home is to feel different.
• 1st person followed by 2nd - chain migration, 1st person made it easier.
• Quest for partner, belonging.
• Documents of journey, passing, old and new.
• As a fall - Eden, paradise, youth, adventure, place to leave, exetice - having to leave, forced out.
• For audience - does it work as a performance.
• Imaginatively recreate voyage, journey, flight If we can see it - start to applaud sacrifice Important to continue to raise issues.
• Draw from personal experience - performance should tap these personal experiences.
• Connection between form and content and audience - not clear.

Blaikie questioned whether Home Land worked as a performance. A question that he could not answer. However he believed people were enthralled and recreated the heroes journey, the sense of loss, change and discovery.

Nigel Jamieson - Director of Home Land

Response to critique

As a director, Jamieson feels that when one creates a piece of work, one needs to confront the shocking aspects of where one lives. He refers to the shocking condition of political asylum seekers imprisoned in the Australian desert. How this refugee camp is being run like a business and people are making money from the misfortune of others.

Jamieson believes that it is important to keep digging away at a sense of compassion with our fellow human being. We must continually try to put ourselves in the other person's shoes and understand their story or strife. Home Land started around the Pauline Hansen time. Wanted to dig away at idea of compassion and the degree of ignorance in politics. This production was an attempt to focus on strife of journey. Jamieson mentioned that they had intended to end the show with pictures of the Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, Mr Ruddock but it was not possible due to time constraints. In this show, there is no question that theatre is political.

Nigel talked of the way that Home Land is such a dynamic and dangerous show due to it s location. The show was designed to create the physical sensation one experiences when standing and looking up. It was designed for an audience to be beneath it and packed together, so that there chest is opened up and physically exposes their hearts.

Comparisons

Comparisons between the Sydney and Brisbane versions were made. The buildings were different; the space where the audience stood was different. The emotional experience dissipated with laid back audience in Brisbane. Jamieson felt it did not work as well as it had in Sydney where the show had been designed specifically for the AMP building in Circular Quay. This has implications for touring the show internationally. Each new location creates a completely different show. If the show doesn t work as well in different locations should it tour internationally? These are questions that the Company will be answering in the near future.

Directing

Jamieson briefly talked about directing the show. His starting point for the creative development was to watch the dynamic of the movement in its purest form. The next step is to understand and develop the emotion that comes from the movement and then develop a frame or narrative. The story comes from the movement not the other way around. Thus Nigel scripts the work based on the physicality. The pain and discomfort experienced by the performers lends itself to the form and dialogue of the show.

The company gave itself time to look closely at the form and technique to tell the story. This time allowed the performers the ability to discover and create a language. A dramaturge was brought in to script the show. Lastly, the music was a key driving force of the show.

Q & A

Q. (Mike Finch) In Keith Johnson's book - Don't ever blame the artist for a bad carving, it is in the tusk, and is up to the artist to find it. How do you deal with finding the art in the piece of walrus tusk?

A. (Jamieson) Enjoys looking for the interest where person and political meet. Thread/rope holding back to where you're from. Watch the dynamic of movement and find the framework from that.

(Mike Finch) Lots of it is observing - staying open emotionally

(Jamieson) And then the script quickly got re-organised.

(Deb Batton - Performer with Legs) Traveled to the UK observing their craft with using different pulley and abseiling techniques and systems. De la Guarda used as an intermediate craft step went and saw shows that provided another perspective.

Q. (Antonella Casella) A lot of performers try to find the perfect metaphor. Do all metaphors have to be able to be clearly understood?

A. (Bill Blaikie) The bulk of the audience are not refugees - so they are being asked to sympathise.

Anthea, Bill, Joanne and Nigel discussed refugees, connecting with audiences, and personal experiences.

Observation: (Adrian Kiernander) Problem with venue - seen on video - was exploring space - what you can do in leap away from wall. Exhilaration was lost with distance. Nuances lost as well. Sense of distance, conjunction and separation was highlighted -quite extraordinary. Curtain call - separation from the performers shadows and reconnecting with them - when all of a sudden the performers were there in real size, from another world.

Q. (Mike Finch) How far are you willing to compromise space and imprint/swap new performers?

A. (Deb Batton) 1st time transferred show to new building - ideal forum to get feedback. Didn't know details prior to using a different space.Concerned about Cirque du Soleil's interest in idea and the possibility that Soleil as a high profile company could appropriate idea. Have to get in and tour internationally before Cirque du Soleil takes show.

Response: (Gavin Wild) Wild explained how they adapted the show from Sydney to Brisbane. Problem with new rigging - not what was part of show. Have to be creative in adapting to each show and venue. In process of exploring questions from audience you are creating environmental responses.

Architecture is not just about the building but also the space created. An eco-system which consists of and is reactive to many elements is the same as a performers life, who's function is to exchange energy. So that the building is not just about a flat wall - but about the urban space being created by/through it. It is a new space emerging in physical theatre.

Response: (Deb Batton) In not being close - lose physicality of work. Not comfortable in harness - problem with form and content. Wall is difficult space to work on. What are new process and cutting edges.

Observation: (Godfrey Sim) Found himself intellectually trying to follow narrative and emotionally appreciated performers but there was a lack of congruence between the two.

Response: (Jamieson) Compositionally there were frustrations Ideally - series of images. Problems - projectors and very expensive. Love to develop landscape on wall and develop it better.

Q. (Jeff Turpin) Came to see/hear music - why did you pick that type of music?

A. (Jamieson) Good music, fantastic for physical theatre. Music contains stories of journeys etc. Not often get voluntary choir and musicians.

* Mike Finch wrapped up the session and pointed out Angela de Castro's book. Commented that it would only take 10 years to incorporate into your life and then you will be "in the moment".

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This project has been assisted by the Federal Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.