Author: thevoiceinmyhands

sun

Posted on by thevoiceinmyhands in words

Several events have run into each other, vein-like, in the past handful of days. There is no way to sieve them into a comprehensible pattern.

1. My uncle was in a car accident last Tuesday night and his chest collapsed. He’d been bitten by a tiger-snake but was immune to the anti-venom (having been bitten so many times. He was one of those men who truly make sense in the Australian outback.) He died on Wednesday afternoon. I cannot yet understand such sudden absence. It’s like someone did the trick of whisking the tablecloth away but they took any sense of stability instead.

2. I found out I can fly. Or, rather, I found out I can fly down a single flight of stairs. On Friday night, in Kings Cross Hotel, my shoe got caught on a stair-lip. It serves me right as I had just been smiling at a highly inebriated man trying to walk past me up the staircase. Rather deftly, I managed to break my fall not with my hands or arms but with the right side of my face. My Dad, who used to be a doctor, has been making jokes about me not being a paraplegic right now (which worries me, as he is always serious about potential catastrophes, in a hyperbolic sort of way, which makes me think that I may well have come off much worse than I did). Luckily, X-rays show that my skull is intact. The skin covering it is just a bit purple/yellow right now.

3. A very dear friend from school came over on the weekend and we started brainstorming for a collaborative project. We’ve always wanted to work together and whilst throwing ideas around I felt like I was being swept up within the vortex of something that’s going to continue spinning for far longer than I can either anticipate or predict.

These three moments stand out to me like braille. I don’t know what they mean beside each other. I’m sure nothing. But I’m also sure that I’ll be unable, inevitably, to accept the rule of random events, of arbitrariness, and my mind will make these moments porous, will make their individual significance, or lack thereof, leak into each other.

superhuman

Posted on by thevoiceinmyhands in theatre
Image
Sometimes the internet is a blessed thing. Of course a Tumblr blog entitled Cats That Look Like Pin Up Girls exists.

Yesterday I saw two shows at Carriageworks as part of Sydney Festival: It’s Dark Outside and Othello C‘est Qui.

Othello C’est Qui‘s blurb:

“Of all the roles for black actors in the western world, Othello is by far the most powerful and legendary. Yet Shakespeare’s famous Moor is barely known in Africa.

Across this cultural divide, Ivory Coast-born performer Franck Edmond Yao and German actress Cornelia Dörr unite to interrogate the confrontational world of Othello and Desdemona. Sharp, political and sensual, Othello c’est qui (Othello who’s that) is a liberating exploration of cultural clichés and boundaries.

The actors reveal their distinctly expressive playing styles as they parody traditional Othello performances with candour. Together they pull apart themes of colonialism, migration, religion and politics in an urgent, seemingly improvised way.

This award-winning production creates a tough yet moving portrait of prejudice and the theatre itself.”

The moment that crystallised this production (aside from the stunning performance itself) were the two women sitting in front of us in the audience. Theatre etiquette should be pretty easy to follow – minimise auxiliary sound production, engage with the performers, etc. Not only did these women bring hot chips (one in tupperware, the other in extra-crinkly foil), they also brought extra gassy soft drink, which sighed quite loudly every time they opened the bottle, and turned their phones on to check they were on silent (ensuring that nice warm Nokia welcome note rang out).

This, however, was only a prelude. At the end of the show they both got up to leave and one of the women turned to the other, leant over, and said:

“I think Othello must be about jealousy. Yes, that must be why they referenced it so much.”

When I recounted this vignette to my Dad, rather than being amused he turned to me and said something along the lines of the following. He said that he’s never understood how Mum, Amy, and I can go and see so much theatre, and not be superhumans. I was gobsmacked.

Just take the two shows we saw yesterday: one was intensely moving and the other provoked ideas about performativity and race that had never occurred to me. Why am I still this same person? Surely they pushed my mind and stretched my heart out by its ventricles? Why am I not better today than I was yesterday?

it’s dark outside

Posted on by thevoiceinmyhands in theatre

ImageThis evening I saw It’s Dark Outside, which is currently showing at Carriageworks as part of Sydney Festival.

“From the creators of multi-award winning production The Adventures of Alvin Sputnik: Deep Sea Explorer comes this heartfelt adventure of an old man wandering into the wild.

As the sun sets he is swept up in a surreal western, on the run from a mysterious tracker hell-bent on hunting him down. The world around him crumbles, revealing that he cannot hide from everything.

Created and performed by Tim Watts, Arielle Gray and Chris Isaacs, this exploration  of dementia is told through puppetry, mask, animation  and live performance with  a haunting score from Rachael Dease.”

The effect of the puppetry was sublime. Dementia is an illness that hollows out many families – the people I was with had all had a grandparent who suffered from it and the tears from those around us well attested to its pervasiveness. But the presence of the puppets meant the agony of direct confrontation was suspended. We did not have to sink under the weight of recognition – there were no ‘humans’ onstage for which we could substitute our own grandparents/loved ones, whose minds have become cotton wool.

Lesson learnt: never underestimate the power of cotton wool. As the old man slowly lost his grip on the world, the puppeteers, dressed in black, would pull out small cotton-shaped clouds from behind his head, which would then waft across the stage as he desperately fought to catch them back. With the black background, the puppeteers all but disappeared, leaving these soft white clouds floating across the stage as this old man lost his mind.

The lack of language in this show was intensely inspiring. I suspect it could be watched almost anywhere in the world and much the same reaction would be suckerpunched from the audience. The only words came from Rachael Dease’s stunning score. The rest was movement and image, plain and simple (I’m sure it was incredibly complex but it felt like it had been concentrated for the audience from a frenzy of possible gestures down to a quiet exactness, wringing pathos out of each moment without soliciting sympathy or risking alienation).

I saw more grown men crying after this show than I think I have ever seen before. It’s on for a couple more days. Don’t miss it.

sky-soft

Posted on by thevoiceinmyhands in books

I am currently working my way through the oeuvre of Toni Morrison, an American author who I am thinking of writing my English thesis about. In her first novel, The Bluest Eye, she writes most of the story from the eyes of an eleven year old black girl called Percola Breedlove. In one chapter, Percola visits three whores, Miss Marie, Poland, and China, who live on the floor above her. Poland only talks when she’s drunk and only sings when she’s sober, “her voice sweet and hard, like new strawberries.”

The chapter ends with one of her songs, which split me open like a walnut shell.

I know a boy who is sky-soft brown

I know a boy who is sky-soft brown

The dirt leaps for joy when his feet touch the ground.

His strut is a peacock

His eye is burning brass

His smile is sorghum syrup drippin’ slow-sweet to the last

I know a boy who is sky-soft brown

rendezvous

Posted on by thevoiceinmyhands in books

I have a rendezvous with Death
At some disputed barricade,
When Spring comes back with rustling shade
And apple-blossoms fill the air –
I have a rendezvous with Death
When Spring brings back blue days and fair.

It may be he shall take my hand
And lead me into his dark land
And close my eyes and quench my breath –
It may be I shall pass him still.
I have a rendezvous with Death
On some scarred slope of battered hill,
When Spring comes round again this year
And the first meadow-flowers appear.

God knows ’twere better to be deep
Pillowed in silk and scented down,
Where love throbs out in blissful sleep,
Pulse nigh to pulse, and breath to breath,
Where hushed awakenings are dear…
But I’ve a rendezvous with Death
At midnight in some flaming town,
When Spring trips north again this year,
And I to my pledged word am true,
I shall not fail that rendezvous.

Alan Seeger. 1888–1916