Lloyd Bradford Syke chats with Daniela Giorgi of A Thing of Beauty for UNFRINGED.
Daniela Giorgi, subtlenuance is your production company. How and why did it develop? What distinguishes it, in character and objectives, from other theatre production companies, independent or otherwise?
subtlenuance was founded in 2008 by myself and writer Paul Gilchrist, and is dedicated to the production of original Australian work that is accessible to ever more varied audiences, including those for whom theatre is a rare experience; hopefully engages these audiences on multiple levels; and is an expression of a multitude of voices.
By following this approach we hope to create theatre that resonates with the life experience of our audiences, and in doing so both recognises and enhances the subtlety and nuance that makes every life richer.
Prior to establishing subtlenuance , Paul and I were co-founding members of Thrown Together Theatre a company originally founded as an experiment in “Lounge Theatre” or “Pop-up Theatre”, that is, performance designed for non-traditional spaces. In the years 2000 – 2005 Thrown Together produced original work in over thirty eclectic venues, such as halls, clubs, car boots, shop fronts and private residences.
In establishing subtlenuance we aimed to continue the legacy of “Lounge Theatre” which we have been able to do with the “pop-up Theatre’ experiment that is A Thing of Beauty which in 2010 will have been performed in a variety of venues. The aim of subtlenuance was also to produce full length, original Australian works in more conventional, mainstream theatres as well as fringe venues around Sydney and as such we have produced work in the last two years at both the TAP Gallery, The Newtown Theatre and The Old Fitzroy Theatre and will soon be playing at The Factory Theatre.
But the main thing that distinguishes subtlenuance from other companies is that I run it!
What’s your interest in the Sydney Fringe Festival?
The Fringe is a wonderfully exciting opportunity for little companies like ourselves to be part of a vibrant artistic festival which is going to be a great event for Sydney. A Thing of Beauty was designed for just such a festival and is the kind of piece that we think a Sydney Fringe audience would relate too and think is very funny whilst resonating hopefully with their own experiences.
Your production for the Fringe is A Thing Of Beauty. Can you tell us about its genesis? To what does the title refer?
A Thing of Beauty is fundamentally a comic piece in the largest sense of the word – it is funny, positive and thought provoking. The play sits on the cusp of theatre and stand-up.
In the play Jo Richards creates half a dozen characters, but focuses on the presentation of two Australian women as they travel abroad, laid back Naomi and uptight Ruth. She retells, through mime, words and images, the story of their travels in the world’s great urban metropolises. Ruth and Naomi are old friends but the stresses of travel put strain on their relationship. Ruth’s need for order reaches absurd levels, and Naomi’s patient irony reaches its limit. So it’s a comedy about chaos and order and the one thing that keeps them apart – A Thing of Beauty. And of course the ‘thing of beauty’ that uptight Ruth finally accepts is the Other – in all of its uncontrollable multitudinous forms, whether that be another culture, or another person. The play pokes at our painfully parochial determination to see the new in terms of the known, to reduce other cultures to snow domes and other people to mannequins. And it’s also a joyful invitation to transcend self-imposed limitations and to grant otherness.
In developing this show, subtlenuance’s artistic director Paul Gilchrist, known for his linguistic based humour, worked with actor Jo Richards. A Thing of Beauty is a wonderful marriage of the physical and the linguistic and is very much a play about the complexities of urban life.
After training in Paris at the prestigious Jacques Lecoq International Theatre School and then travelling throughout Europe, Jo became intrigued by mannequins and began to photograph them. She was fascinated by the subtle differences in the presentation of the human form and how this varied from city to city and country to country.
Back in Sydney she and Paul got together to create this wonderful piece which also uses the many photos of mannequins that Jo took in Europe as a slide show backdrop for this piece.
After several weeks of development the production was sneak previewed over three nights at the Royal Oak Hotel, Double Bay, in March 2010. This preview was the perfect opportunity to test comic material before audiences and to further develop Richard’s multiple characterisations. It also enabled us to streamline the multimedia elements, and to fine-tune the fundamental dynamic that drives the production – the combination of Gilchrist’s language with Richard’s mime and movement.
We then proposed the piece for the Sydney Fringe Festival and it was also accepted for the Late Sessions at the Old Fitzroy Theatre, where it is currently playing.
The original season of A Thing Of Beauty was by way of a ‘pop-up’ theatre experiment. Can you tell us something about that? Will we be seeing more of that? Is that one of the distingusihing features, marks, scars, or tattoos of subtlenuance?
A Thing of Beauty is the first of subtlenuance’s ‘pop-up theatre’ pieces – designed to bump in and out in under an hour and be performed just about anywhere. It is something we would like to maintain as an aspect of the subtlenuance program of works in the future.
It’s great to be able to perform to a wide variety of people, in unusual little venues that aren’t necessarily recognised as formal theatres. Our aim is to attract audience members who are theatre goers and theatre practitioners but also to entice people that are out for a fun night but might be daunted by the idea of theatre. We think “pop-up” theatre is one way to do this.
We like to think of ‘pop-up’ theatre as continuing the tradition of the medieval travelling troupes or theatre out of the back of a Ute – accessible, inexpensive and informal. Your average piece of theatre needs many things. Good theatre needs very little. Great theatre needs only an actor and an audience. Maybe only an audience. It’s hard to create theatre that inspires openness and creativity when it has to happen in a particular place in a particular way. You can be pretty certain the greatest spiritual epiphanies didn’t happen in churches. St Francis found God in the fields of Assisi but then we went and built a cathedral on top of him.
Is A Thing Of Beauty a comedy? Drama? Is it throwaway, or does it seek to leave us with something?
Definitely A Thing Of Beauty is a comedy. But it does seek to leave the audience with something to think about. It’s funny and deep – an exhortation to openness and tolerance. It is a play that invites us to transcend our self-imposed limitations, and to listen to other voices. This erasing of boundaries and barriers is a long-term artistic goal of subtlenuance. It is an experience we aim to offer audiences, and it also informs our own artistic practice. I believe A Thing of Beauty is the only show that can make you change your life and change your undies.
I understand it’s a solo performance? Who have you cast and why?
We’ve cast Jo Richards for this one woman show. Actually she cast herself as she travelled around Europe photographing mannequins and then sat around Sydney bars with us talking about her travels and showing us pictures of mannequins. That’s how the idea was born and Paul then wrote the script for Jo to play. She is a wonderful actor. We worked with her at the Newtown Theatre in 2009 and she has also acted in Scotland as well as Sydney. She is an exceptional movement and mime artist and this comes so naturally to her and then has been beautifully enhanced by her Lecoq training.
The play was written by your life and theatrical partner, Paul Gilchrist. He’s also directed and you’ve produced, yeah? Does the intimacy of your relationship make things easier? More difficult? Or both?
Production meetings are easy to organise but they last too long. The current one has lasted 18 years. Seriously though we share similar philosophical and political views and I think that is essential and we also bring very different skills to the company Paul is a born director and loves being in the rehearsal room. I’m the one that likes to be in charge of the keys and the budget and boss everyone around. So I’m the producer.
Given your actor is a young woman, it speaks volume’s for Paul’s writing skills that he’s been able to get under the skin of a female, at large, overseas. How is it he’s been able to do it so effectively?
I think Paul is a very good listener. All our friends know that you have to be very careful what you say around him because it will probably end up in a play! He is very happy to spend hours sitting around with a good (or bad) bottle of wine as part of his research.
There seems to be some unforgiving lampooning of the Aussie tourist? Is this intentional? Did you have any qualms about this? Do you think your countrymen are even more embarrassing to encounter abroad than, say Americans? At the risk of political incorrectness, on balance, who are the world’s most insensitive tourists? And are they identifiable in advance? Are Hawaiian shirts the calling-card?
The play is satire of course so if any member of the audience wants to identify themselves with uptight Ruth they should feel free to. But most people I think would prefer to see themselves as the open and interested Naomi who is out to explore all the opportunities that the world has to offer.
At the risk of ruining a good holiday it is worth thinking about global issues such as poverty and climate change both when travelling and when at home! And trying to do what one can to minimise our impact on the planet and help others survive. If that takes a Hawaiian shirt (free trade and organic cotton of course) then so be it.
Do you think, for some of us, it’s come down to an invidious choice: mortgage or travel? Is the nexus between ‘homeland security’ and broadening our horizons a case of the grass always being greener: if we have one, we inevitably want the other? Are we just spoilt?
Perhaps neither a mortgage or travel are in the end satisfying. Perhaps it’s only when we connect with others and the world that we can really feel we’ve had a life worth living and everybody has to work out their own way to do that.
Do you think we sometimes travel without seeing? Do we just go to tick boxes, so we can compare notes with our friends? Is it just a status symbol? Do we return with new insights? Are we necessarily sophisticated by travel? Or do our prejudices cleave more stubbornly? Do we only see what we want to, through pre-existing, fixed filters?
I suppose that could be the reason why we call it ‘taking a trip’. It is I suppose a way of getting away from the ordinary and experiencing the exotic and if you can then take from that and create the extraordinary out of your own life then the trip will have been very worthwhile.
When and where will the work be on show this time ’round?
It’s currently playing the Sunday and Monday late sessions at the Old Fitzroy Theatre until September 6 and then will move to the Boiler Room at The Factory Theatre, 105 Victoria Rd, Marrickville – September 10, 11, 12, 16 & 18, as part of The Sydney Fringe Festival.
Last time, all profits were donated to the Lifehouse at RPA Chris O’Brien Capital Appeal. Same-same?
We were really pleased to have been able to be generous last time and donate the sneak preview proceeds to Lifehouse at RPA. This was because the venue and all equipment were donated to us. However this time round we will need to cover our costs so unfortunately not. However it is one our policies to try to do a charity night for each production. We supported Mahboba’s Promise who look after orphans in Afghanistan with a charity theatre night for our ‘talc’ & ‘Two Gates’ production in July, and hope to do so again with our next production, ‘Life is Impossible’ which will play at the Newtown Theatre from September 27.
Thank you!
