Our Own Little Mess is an ambitious and curiously compelling theatre of the dream state intersecting with the busy mind chatter of consciousness.
Theatre company A Slighty Isolated Dog (Jekyll and Hyde, Don Juan) present this visual and mental mind-meld as part of Q theatre’s Matchbox series.
If theatre is about being played to, then we are also going to be played with.
Entering the Loft and we each have a pair of headphones on our seats.
In the preamble there are a couple and a trio standing on either side of the stage in minimal lighting. As we don the headphones, we hear these actors chatting and commenting on the audience members as they arrive.
Slightly cheeky and irreverent in the way the Alternative Commentary is.
The separation of left and right channels and central sound panning is important.
Own Little Mess is also informed by the work of cognitive neuroscientists Gina Grimshaw and David Carmel from Victoria University.
A scientific sub-discipline of neurology researching the link between the structural architecture of the brain and how it correlates to thought processes. Which is essentially consciousness.
The interface of the cosmic or spiritual coming up against the chemical and physical. How neurons and transmitters are the hardware and software of the operating system that William Burroughs succinctly described as The Soft Machine.
In some ways Our Own Little Mess is a theatrical attempt to emulate what David Cronenberg did with his movie of Naked Lunch.
Punch a hole in time and space. Burroughs does stand in linear time with James Joyce and Samuel Beckett.
The program does mention the direct influence of Haruki Murakami’s Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (magical realism, science fiction, war horrors), Olivia Laing’s The Lonely City, Adventures in the Art of Being Alone (artist portraits including Andy Warhol, Klaus Nomi) and the Academy Award-winning Best Picture Everything Everywhere All at Once.
The left and right channel separations on the headphones emulate the multiple voices in your head. They are both soothing and relaxing, quite playful and designed to mitigate any anxiety we may feel later as more fraught images are conjured.
Five recognisable and typical character types.
Maaka Potahu (The Modern Māori Quartet) is an academic with rejection anxiety.
Jack Buchanan (Family Lockdown Boogie) is a ventriloquist making a strange journey into the New Mexico wilderness to confront a mysterious, white-hatted cowboy. A nod to David Lynch style edgy weirdness
Andrew Paterson (Travellers Guide to Turkish Dogs), a gallery attendant wandering the gay scene in New York City.
Isla Mayo (Live Live Night of the Living Dead) is travelling to Berlin and grieving for her mother.
Laurel Devenie (Shortland Street), a stressed-out mother missing her partner.
Under the direction of Jane Yonge, and Leo Gene Peters (Slightly Isolated Dog), these five character threads weave their tales which all blossom out into dream states. And back out again.
This must be held together by the sound construction, which is a playful-yet-serious manipulator of neural brain connections flashing on and off.
Sound engineer and show operator Sam Clavis gets a special mention by the players at the end.
The play features some crucial songs by Talking Heads. Specifically, Once in a Lifetime (river-running crystal synthesiser drone), I Zimbra (tribal chanting in tongues) and This Must Be The Place/ Naive Melody. Legend has it that Joseph Smith founded the Mormon Church in Utah with this soundbite.
Songs come with an obsessive musical analysis, attempting to decode the mystery and physics of sound as Art.
Neural links and consciousness. Music is the critical interface which proves scientifically that we all have a soul.
There is an original score composed by Dr Jeremy Mayall.
Our Own Little Mess plays at Q Theatre until August 3, 2024. Tickets are available HERE.
Rev. Orange Peel
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