Gone

I will be reading this tonight at the Black Rider Press event at Willow Bar. It's a bit of a work in progress but what's life without a little risk? Come listen and share a drink...

The day he left, when you crumpled,

there was the phone call I sat at the wheel of my car on the other side of the city and she told me to ‘just get here quick’

He planned it.

He sold the boat that sat in the shed you never went into much

packed it all away

replaced the tough ropes the rats had eaten into and sold it to a old man who wanted to fish on weekends.

I stood there in his cavernous shed, my feet on the dusty concrete and looked at the empty space,

your hatchet marks etched into the bolted wooden cabinet he’d made where he stored his best wine— helpless swings some late night when the bottle-o must have been closed.

When it all got too much.

You couldn’t get past the lock

so you left your desperation marked into that wood:

ragged jabs, criss-crossing and splintered bits on the floor.

I drove fast down the Mitchell Freeway

found her by your bed,

the lace curtains still, the air stale and you curled on your side.

You had that freshly ironed sheet, dotted with small flowers, pulled up to your face, quality Manchester,

your hands clenched round the neat folded lip of it

and you in a heap in your stained night-gown.

She said they gave you a sedative

and I hovered

I hovered

I hovered

and I didn’t know what to do

You were so busted

and red and full with it

and I had no wisdom,

I was full of nothing—

full of nothing for you.

Left years before

watched you run down the drive telling me I couldn’t take the old dressing table,

the one you bought when I was small.

And I took it anyway,

the swinging handles, child size, rocking back and forth as I dragged it;

its reflection mocking you as I lugged it away.

And I loaded it on a trailer headed for home

the home of a man that I didn’t love—

it was the first train out of town.

First train out of town—

I didn’t know that then.

You’re in some blood-flecked night dress—

you’ve been scratching at yourself.

Your hair flat

escaped the morning curling tongs and

she and I look at each other

a small mass to a lost lamb—

bloated and thick with the blow.

He’s in some motel room half way between your place and mine in the suburb he grew up in. He’s Staring at a blank screen, wondering how he’ll start from scratch. Wondering about the photos he left behind. The ones of us as kids. He’s wondering if he should have packed a towel or something. but they they have those here right? He’s wondering how he’ll explain to me and her why he didn’t warn us. Empty for knowing we’re stood there in that suburb that he stayed in for too long.

You lay on the bed like some saturated sponge,

convincing yourself this can’t be—

that there’s still hope for the life you made

with two girls and good crockery.

You’re hoping that he’ll be back to prune the roses,

hoping that just another sip will make it pass:

fade it out, turn the volume down for a bit.

And it does. (It does.)

Your dreams are richer

the mornings easier

the solitude almost bearable

but he’s still gone.

(Image: Todd Hido)

Waterproof: interview with director Marita Fox

After reviewing Waterproof recently, an intriguing piece of theatre that was shown at the Melbourne City Baths, I spoke with director Marita Fox about what went into the work and what she's up to next...

YourMic Home

Short attention spans

So you like your literature and you don't mind being read to out loud. It sort of reminds you of being a kid but then these days you often have hard liquor in your hand.

Liquor. Yeah, you notice you tend to drink more these days at those bloody events. The chinking ice and the drink, well the several, you reason, sustain you—writers seem to figure that a three minute limit actually means ten.

You know what, to be honest you've stopped going to these things altogether. Readings nights. Yeah. You've stopped going. The booze is cheaper at home and at least you know if the show on the telly is shit then in another two minutes there'll be a commercial break to pour another. Yeah another. It's a reliable night.

But you heard whispers about 'short attention spans' and something about whiskey and you figured it has your name written all over over it. Written, yeah, writing. Thirty readers sounds a bit rich, but you figure what the fuck? You hear that they're only reading for sixty seconds each. You can deal with that you reckon. You're not picking up women in your lounge room anyhow are you now?  Women. Yeah.

So this 'Short Attention Span' thing, it's a fund raiser but you don't care. You heard those literary chicks are easy so long as you drop Bukowski into the conversation and while the blokes can prattle on a bit they appreciate a stiff drink, that's what matters. Good Liquor. Hmmm. That Whiskey girl—you heard about her. She seems to get a whole lot of girls in one place and that can't be half bad.

So fuck it. Saturday you'll go. It's an early start. Seven yeah. You can always head to that strip joint all those well dressed hipster-boys were banging on about. You could go there after. And you figure that if Brunswick Street Gallery has kebab joint either side of the place it can't be half bad.

A penchant for theatre and the perverse (IRAA:part 2; The Persistance of Dreams)

Yesterday's post shed a bit of background on theatre company IRAA's work, a company I've watched for some years now—the why of which I have explained in the said post.

This week I wrote a short review for The Enthusiast about their recent work The Persistence of Dreams: The Sandman. With limited words and a lot to say I felt compelled to plonk a more extensive critique in this quaint space that refers to their previous works as explained in 'part one'. Enjoy...

IRAA's The Persistence of Dreams: The Sandman

“I am an actor and I play myself,” Roberta Bosetti tells us. She has told audiences the same thing in many shows and The Persistence of Dreams does not stray far from the IRAA formula. There is always a mention slipped in there somewhere; a warning of sorts that we’ll not be quite sure of what’s real and what’s theatre. When is Roberta the actor confessing and when is Roberta herself sharing secrets and stories? It’s this blurring of lines that has become a constant in IRAA’s work, the company being composted of Bosetti and her husband Renato Cuocolo.

‘What is your greatest fear?” you’re asked soon after the show begins. In Private Eye your might have been questioned about your fantasies and desires (you will have been watched without at first realising). In The Diary Project (2004) and The Secret Room (first performed in 2000) your attention would have been drawn to memory and confession. Both these things feature in The Persistence of Dreams but this time the tables are turned. Rather than be invited into the couple’s personal living space they come and invade yours.

We wait, an audience of ten, for 9pm. There is a knock on the door and the ‘couple’ enters, though this time we see their relationship change—tonight they play brother and sister. “Is this the house?” Cuocolo asks her, “Is this the house you dreamt of?” She is not sure and she wants to be shown through my home.

The evening will unfold in the way a seasoned IRAA audience member might expect though The Persistence of Dreams does not push as hard for the same level of disconsertion and discomfort that their previous shows have incited. Bound and blindfolded you’ll be privy to arguments but will still feel relatively safe. There will talk of home invasion and robbery. Cuocolo will mention Sharon Tate. “What do you expect when you invite strangers into your home?” he asks then he wonders out loud if I have eggs in the fridge. I tell him I do and he’s pleased. This reference is made clearer as he further quotes the film Funny Games (about a sadistic home invasion).

Cuocolo isn’t usually a performer in the IRAA experience. This time he is, but soon enough the focus of the show is on Bosetti. After the opening preamble she moves into a monologue about memory and shares stories from her childhood. She relays

E T A Hoffman's short story The Sandman as her mother told it to her as a child. The Sandman is a dark character that would throw sand into the eyes of children who would not go to bed. The sand would make their eyeballs pop out and he would feed the eyeballs to his own children. This character becomes a symbol of Bosetti’s greatest fear, which we later learn has been realised.

Bosetti describes her and her brother’s fear of The Sandman. The stories she tells focus on bedtime and something far darker is being alluded to but is always left unsaid. She often trails off leaving sentences unfinished. This has not always been the case in IRAA’s work where themes of loss and violation are described graphically and creep up frequently: The Persistence of Dreams is gentler on its audience than previous shows have been. Allusions to darker themes are certainly present in what is not said and there is a sense that something sinister has happened in Bosetti’s youth but it’s nearly lost in the mix.

Bosetti maintains a degree of tension in the room as she threatens to leave many times over (and I find myself fearful that she will). Cuocolo who rarely features as a performer in the shows keeps her in check and while playing her brother in this story he still maintains his usual role of director. At one point he accuses her of veering away from the script. She is just reciting something from Emily Dickinson, she explains. She is reprimanded; the script is presented to her and she resumes. In The Secret Room this device was necessary in order to let the audience off the hook a little. Bosetti’s confessions were raw, real and brutal. And so the script was referred to, shown to the audience—a way of saying ‘It’s ok it’s not real’, although with IRAA chances are that much of what you’re hearing has been drawn from their personal lives.

There are some big jumps for the audience to make during the hour-long performance in order to keep up. The show moves from an argument about the merit of fruit-and-nut-chocolate into Cuocolo dispensing a block of the stuff communion style. We are then quickly shifted into a dense monologue delivered by Bosetti where she removes her shirt and later, with blindfolds removed, we find her this way. Naked, we are told, you have only your fears and memories to carry.

Is one’s own home safe? Even if no one is there to cause threat we are still haunted by our own fears. The Persistence of Dreams tacks references, moments and stories together with ragged thread to pose a plethora of questions without any comfort of resolve or answers.

Once the duo had left, rigorous discussion began: this is one part of the IRAA experience that’s not part of the performance as such but always seems to be present—an epilogue of sorts, for the audience are performers in the work after all. The response was mixed: many confessed they’d tuned out at points where the feeling of risk was lulled; there was a desire to be more scared, to feel that something perverse or dangerous was about to happen. ‘What do you expect when you invite strangers into your home?’ we had been asked. ‘What is your greatest fear?’ Long into the evening we were still seated, among ourselves, searching for these answers.

A penchant for theatre and the perverse (IRAA:part 1)

Over the years now I’ve seen several of theatre company IRAA’s* shows. (The company is composted of husband and wife Robert Bosetti and Renato Cuocolo.) Having always had a fascination with risk and implication of oneself in my own work, in blurring lines and in confession, their work seems to resonate in a perverse yet familiar way. Watching this couple play with the uncanny and the uncomfortable as though it were natural has always left me awed and stumped at the same time. The work is drawn from their personal lives but as an audience member you’re never sure of what is real or how much of their own lives is steeped in what you’re witness to. This week I had a taste of what I relish closer to home, well actually in my home. Their latest show The Persistence of Dreams: The Sandman is performed at your house.

But more about that later…

Back in 2004, in Perth, I was a dinner guest for The Secret Room. Between seven and twelve guests/audience arrive for a meal at the couple’s home. Visitors are greeted and are seated, dinner is served and group conversation begins but not until after Bosetti has quietly muttered, “You will hear what you usually hear, you will see no play, there will be no playing here tonight”.

In dinner conversation, Bosetti, who ‘plays’ herself, tells stories from her childhood. There is a point in the performance where she dumps a wad of paper onto the table mid-way through a dense monologue that depicts explicit sexual abuse. Bosetti has just given graphic detail about the past and now she casually slaps the paper down and states, “it’s all there in the script”. We're left confused. Unsure if this is theatre. But we were warned, “there will be no playing”.

Later in 2004, I spoke with the couple after seeing The Diary Project. The show was situated in the Melbourne Arts Centre where they had set up home for two weeks. For the fortnight they were watched by audience members through windows in their makeshift abode (situated in the centre’s gallery space). Bosetti, at scheduled intervals, would read from her diary.

In one diary reading Bosetti lays on the bed in the middle of the gallery-come-residence as she recounts the beginning of a pregnancy, one that was never to come full-term. She explains that on this day she had a curette to remove the child “whose heart stopped beating”. She stands, clearly emotional, and walks to the back of the room to a dressing table where she undoes the front of her dress. She draws a circle in red lipstick onto her flat belly and looks at herself in the full-length mirror. She cries visibly.

The audience leaves soon after ushered out by Cuocolo who then moves to comfort her. I am still standing there—due to speak with them about the work. It is clear that this is not scripted. This is not part of the performance. But then which parts are? This is always the question. And I don’t believe they wouldn’t have it any other way.

Standing there in the gallery space I became a performer of sorts—being watched through the windows I am in limbo, neither audience now nor performer, but both. Being offered wine and a seat in their ‘home’ I begin to tune out to the voyeurs peering in.

“We had to stop a performance the other night, I was too emotional,” Bosetti explains. And I ask how she manages to get through the intensity of this work she chooses. She says simply, “I just do.”

Part two, a review of IRAA’s recent work, The Persistence of Dreams: The Sandman, tomorrow.

*Institute of Research for the Art of the Actor