Three brand new devised theatre/multimedia works that premiered at the Arts on Wednesday Wellington Student Theatre Showcase last week were united by a focus on identity challenges for young people in a digitised 24-hour-networked world.
In a confronting piece called ‘Bad Days’, students Eden Cowley (pictured left, as ‘Jessie’), Maggie Tweedie, Khawa Khoshaba, Virginia O’Connor, Nadia Stadnik, and Razvan Grigore, all from the second-year Expressive Arts paper Creative Processes, scripted a series of contrasting identities depicted on and off social media such as Facebook, to explore contemporary struggles between appearance and reality, masked and unmasked personae, pride and vulnerability. Juxtaposing stylised live action with large-scale multimedia work, their performance traced a typical ‘night out’, contrasting glamorised full-screen images of partying and friends with a more sobering reality of anxiety, self-doubt, depression and next-day regrets by the actors on stage.
The second work, called ‘Ear Ear’, took a more humorous approach yet still explored compelling issues of inclusion and exclusion, and the interaction between the human body and modern technology. Shaqaila Uelese, Kathleen Masoe, Genevieve Coleman, Leleiga Taito, Mallory Mackenzie and Rachel Templeton devised an original and highly satirical ‘self help group’ scenario, where all the participants were ears, seeking help for abuse at the hands of their head-phone-wearing, ear-piercing humans. Technically sophisticated, the piece was carefully timed so that the human actors appeared to manipulate images on the scene, creating a seamless choreography of live bodies and fantasy images, such as talking ears.
The final item of the show, ‘The Gift’, offered a film-noir-style exploration of creativity, in which two muses (Stevie Greeks and Azeem Balfoort) were followed by the camera as they explored the minds of artists and attempted to sway them into either darkness or light. Jack Biggs as The Poet, Kit Jenkins as The Musician, Kim Parkinson as The Painter, and Fraser Baker as The Sculptor gave convincing portrayals of artists struggling with issues of creativity, individuality, plagiarism, self doubt and yet often finding renewed life-force in their art. ‘The Gift’ was directed by Oscar Mein, who received an award for ‘Best Student Director’ after the show.
Jack Biggs, as ‘The Poet’, struggles with writers’ block.