ArtsLab: Have we been here before? review

12.02.2022

After the last two years, experiencing a collective loss, this year’s ArtsLab cohort will explore individual responses to big issues – connection to gender, connection to culture and identity, experiences of the day-to-day, questions for our nation’s leaders and questions of death. In a time when we have experienced so much uncertainty now is the time to answer the big questions and be certain in our responses. Have we been here before? is a two-week immersive festival of works from 8 emerging artists, exploring film, visual art, theatre, performance, poetry and soundscapes.

PackRat
by Robbie Wardhaugh

Queer, real, and powerfully unapologetic. PackRat by Robbie Wardhaugh is a visual art exhibition that explores gender and how people experience it.

A TV screen plays a video of people dressing up, dancing, and drawing, to better understand and celebrate their gender identity. Next to the TV are three pieces of paper, filled with questions and answers from six different people.

I really loved reading these. In response to the question, “How do you feel about gender?” one person said “I feel very fish swimming in water with this. Only feeling what the water is, that it exists, etc”

I think some people found this piece very confronting yet comforting, and I presume for some, it was a completely new idea, a new way to view gender that they’ve never come across. Which shows how important it is to have such truthfully queer conversations open to the public. Because everyone deserves the chance to think and explore such gorgeously introspective ideas and questions.

Astra, 16 (She/Her)

The place before the place
by Kobi Taylor-Forder

Florence, a young woman, struggling with substance abuse, existential questions, and life in general, spends a night out partying and getting drunk. After a not so accidental accident, Florence falls unconscious and awakens in a strange, liminal space in between death and life.

Awaiting her are three people. Her emotionally distant dad, her overly religious highschool teacher, and her own self critic. With these three Florence revisits her most embarrassing, upsetting and traumatic memories. And wonders why she would ever want to go back to living.

The Place Before The Place explores existential questions and thoughts in an upbeat and uplifting manner, that leaves you feeling oddly hopeful and empowered. Supporting the script’s playful and fun nature are the energy filled actors and gorgeous lighting design, making it a very fun and touching show.

Astra, 16 (She/Her)

Paris Nights
by Tom Crotty

Tom Crotty’s Paris Nights is an exceptional piece of theatre that deserves to be seen. I have always believed that the mark of a good performance is in the audience reaction and when a collective laugh, gasp and “awwww” can be heard, you know the actor has done their job.

The story (based on DM Crawford’s autobiographical novel) is set in the early 80s and follows Mark, a man in his early 20s from Wollongong who, craving freedom and self exploration, decides to venture up to Sydney’s own sin city, Oxford Street.

This show however isn’t just a story of living for the weekend, of Mark’s Paris Nights as he likes to call them, but is also an exploration of love and loss and of learning. Of danger and how one night can change your life- for better or for worse.

Performing solo is one of the hardest things an actor can do; keeping the attention of an audience for a whopping 70 minutes, yet Crotty delivers a powerhouse performance. This is aided by the incredible lighting and sound design which makes us feel like we are indeed on the ride with Mark experiencing his Paris Nights.

I’ve said it once and I will say it again, this piece deserves to be seen so do not miss out! Crotty’s Paris Nights is in its last week of performances at 107 Projects in Redfern as part of Shopfront’s ArtsLab, a two-week immersive festival of works and I highly recommend you go along. Maybe even check out some of the other shows as part of the season.

Tahlia, 21 (She/Her)

Of Stars and Streetlights
by Albert Lin

Of Stars and Streetlights by Albert Lin is a spoken-word poetry performance that is not to be missed!

I’m not going to lie, walking into the space at 107 Projects I did not know what to expect. I had read the Director’s note and therefore was expecting poetry readings of some sort. What I wasn’t expecting, however, was to be in stitches laughing at a man pouring a glass of water or putting up a projector and that my friends, is the beauty of this performance.

Albert Lin is a spoken-word poet who has written 18,000 poems. Yep you heard me. 18,000. He begins his show by talking about himself, his love for poetry and the decision he made in 2017 to end every day by writing a poem. Yep. Every single day. And how this has helped to shape not only himself as a person but his view on the world around him.

Lin sees the little things in life. The things that we seem to take for granted every single day. Quite a lot of his poetry is centred around nature and the beauty that surrounds us. Beauty that we seem to miss everyday.

Lin is quite a charismatic individual, though he doesn’t believe it; and that is what is so magnetising about him. His commitment to honesty, vulnerability and his truth is inspiring and it’s refreshing to see an individual who is just so himself.

I knew this wasn’t going to be a normal poetry performance the minute I saw a graph pop up on the projector. A graph not only detailing ‘poem ratings over time’ but also Lin’s monthly bedtime. In my opinion, it’s this match between humour and honesty that makes this show so engaging and one that should not be missed.

So do not miss out! Of Stars and Streetlights is in its last week at 107 Projects as part of Shopfronts ArtsLab Festival although I’m sure this is not the last we have seen of Lin’s work.

Tahlia, 21 (She/Her)

Everything working as intended, dad
by Sophie Florence Ward

Everything working as intended, dad follows a lawyer and his client, Witness K, who are prosecuted for revealing the use of spies by the Australian Government to gain an advantage in the Timor-Leste oil and gas negotiations.

I walked into the theatre feeling slightly embarrassed by my own ignorance to the Australian Governments part in Timor-Leste. I walked out realising that this ignorance was caressed by a system whose jargon is fundamentally designed to distance us.

Throughout the show a literal translation was made by the actors between the legal proceedings and as Sophie Florence Ward would have it “plain man’s English”. Which got me to questioning why a system created to implement the needs of the general public is so convoluted that we can’t understand it without it being decoded. How a society’s complacency is induced to conceal the corruption of a self-serving system?

This is the question that Ward so beautifully helped answer, through injecting this sterile language with the vulnerability of a lawyer whose paranoia counts the dots in a light. To the attorney general with daddy issues and the Witness with no way to start again. She removes the untouchability of these real people grounding politics to its own accountability.

Kate, 21 (She/Her)

Fearless Identities
by Sylvia Xin Zi

Sylvia Xin Zi’s work Fearless Identity, is a beautiful piece which captures people, and their journey of immigrating to Australia. Xin Zi explores this distinction between “obeying and disobeying”, “inherent or abandoning”, “Chinese or Australian” through creating a gap between definitions of identity. It is this space that becomes evident when you walk underneath and around her pieces. At times you look across the lines of thin fabric and see nothing but thin white strips. At others you are forced to stand looking up at layers of almost opaque fabric, too thick to decipher the portrait underneath. I think it is these layers of identity that we are asked to confront. As audiences, what can we see when we look at these portraits for a little longer, when we squint a little higher to see a wrinkle of an eye glance through the fabric.

Kate, 21 (She/Her)

Please note: Due to COVID-19, we were not able to review Frank Dwyer’s Locomotion and Pratha Nagpal’s माँ की रसोई (Maa Ki Rasoi – My Mother’s Kitchen).

ArtsLab: Have we been here before? is at 107 Redfern until February 20. Book your tickets here.