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Checklist For An Armed Robber.
Maude Davey, artistic director for Adelaide-based national women's
theatre company Vitalstatistix (or Vitals) and director of the
new production of Vanessa Bates' 'Checklist For An Armed Robber',
says she is concerned by what she perceives to be an ongoing
regression of women's position in public life, especially theatre.
"The gains that the second wave of feminism succeeded in are being eroded, and I think that that's reflected in the way we write about ourselves and the way we think about ourselves," says an uneasy Davey. "I'm a little bit scared about that, however it can only get better."
This is a central reason why she and her theatre company devote so much time and effort to promoting and producing, as she explains it, "new, high quality, provocative and challenging live performance by Australian women."
Davey's latest directorial endeavour is Vanessa Bates' until now unstaged 'Checklist...', originally written as part of the Sydney Theatre Company's Blueprint initiative and later adapted for dramatic presentation on ABC radio. Hence, despite being originally written as a stage piece, Davey says that it has been "quite tricky" transplanting the play to the physical space of a stage.
The dualistic configuration of the narrative, which frenetically juxtaposes the experiences of hostages in the 2002 Moscow Theatre siege and a simultaneous attempted armed robbery in Newcastle, has been the main source of complication for Davey and her team.
"The actors have to play about six characters each and have to change within a moment who they are, where they are and when they are.
"You can see how it can work on the radio really easily, but to actually have to physicalise it, that's tricky."
But Davey and her cast of four and small crew have willingly and flexibly confronted the challenge. Key to their approach has been a desire to construct an immersive, involving and, in effect, more "intimate", meaningful and 'collective' experience, as opposed to simply making, as she describes it, "a straight fourth-wall piece in which the audience sits and pretends with the actors that they are other people in other places.
"So we've created a square of platforms [that] the audience sits inside, and then the actors kind of prowl around - [they] can be above you, behind you, next to you in a chair or in front of you on stage."
By bringing the audience into the story Davey is attempting to transcend what she describes "the narrowly defined confines of stage", and in turn emphasise that "the audience are here and do have an affect on what's going on.
"What I think theatre does best is create a live experience in which actors and audience acknowledge each other's presence - that's what I want to do with this."
One cannot help but notice the potential for political allegory in a play that largely concerns the violent seizure of a Moscow Theatre by Chechen rebels who are demanding the withdrawal of Russian troops from their territory. But Davey says the play avoids taking the side of either the overbearing Russians or the equally savage Chechen rebels. She says that if too much time is spent analysing "motive and politics and rhetoric, you actually divert your attention from the human tragedy" and can in turn "quite easily become immured" to the Machiavellian rationale of world politics.
Hence Davey, quoting the character of a Russian journalist and protagonist in the play, says "any allegiance you may think you have in your mind can only be to those who are suffering."
Wil McGinley
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'Checklist For An Armed Robber' runs at Vitalstatistix Theatre, Nile St Port Adelaide from Wed 19 Oct.
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