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Well, where to start? I cannot begin to describe the craft behind Robert Reid’s three-year collaboration
The Well with
Monash University theatre students. Before walking through La Mama’s
doors, you are warned you are stepping into a mobile experience where
narrative continuity is overrated. Your concept of causality and purpose
having weight in life will be challenged. However if you still choose
to remain mainstream, to believe that there is a story, then it is
definitely delivered with episodic dream-like logic. Chaos and confusion
reigns centre stage, being set in a time where science explains that
the earth’s magnetic poles have flipped, rendering time and space being
essentially…
fiction.
The Well presents interactive semi-interconnected incidents at
impact when a man named Gareth sees and lives through a vision of
himself hitting a girl with his car in the near future, only to later be
buried neck deep in the desert. In the present day he is physically
blinded whilst desperately seeking avenues to prevent the tragedy from
unfolding. However, he is failing to convince friends and is simply
searching for answers that don’t exist. As the Earth is spinning out of
orbit anything can happen, and even stumbling into an unlikely companion
of a man in a Pink Panther costume suddenly becomes completely
reasonable. To orchestrate the collapse of causality on stage whilst
physically involving the audience is a complicated task.
It is Reid’s ability to engage the audience, inviting their
participation to contribute to the energy of the play that is integral
to suspending audiences’ disbelief. You may stand, sit, lean on whatever
you like, wherever you like. If you are in the way of actors or a
manoeuvre they will gentle guide you to a safer vantage point or simply
remind you, “It is not what you think”.
Have your eyes wide open and bodies ready for motion.
Stretch your mind, lose your time!
The Well, daringly invites you to be involved in the end of the world.
The Well is on at La Mama Theatre, Faraday St Carlton from Thursday September 13 – Sunday September 30.
Wed, Fri, Sun 8.30pm | Thu, Sat 6.30pm
Running time: 70 minutes
Labels: feature, theatre