[Our Current Moment] Intense, explosive and beautiful. Our Modern Earth (Is A F*cking Mess), created by Amber Liberté and performed by an ensemble cast of 13, is another chaos-fuelled response to the climate crisis in the Basement’s main space. A fusion of dance, theatre and art installation, it immediately announces itself as an experimental work. Not least because the experience […]
[Take Action] It’s no coincidence that two works responding to the climate crisis, Heatwave and Our Modern Earth, have been programmed one after the other in Basement’s Reunited season. The effects of human-made climate change are increasingly apparent, and young people are all too aware that we are out of time. It’s election season – and this election feels more […]
[Leaning Towards the Sun] The world has changed irrevocably since the last time I reviewed a theatre show. The spaced-out chairs in the PumpHouse’s Coal Bunker – an already intimate area – are a testament to that. The apocalyptic setting of this romantic two-hander feels perfectly timed, and its tone reflects the surreality of our current moment, in which our […]
[An Open Body] Perhaps the best thing about seeing a dance piece like this is its openness to interpretation. It is visual and auditory but without any text to impose meaning on the audience, leaving us to be affected by what we see in a visceral and extremely personal way. Critiquing, by nature, is an act of interpretation – itself […]
[Relinquishing Control] Can we ever really feel like we know what we’re doing? Is what I do with my time worth something? I Know What I’m Doing is an experimental, tender and funny piece that tackles some of life’s biggest questions. Straight off the back of a season at the Sydney Fringe (2019), NZ artist Melody Rachel brings her unique […]
[Playing by Different Rules] Content Notification: Discussion of eating disorders. Honest discussions of beauty and body image – and their truly damaging consequences – are still not common enough in our culture. Talking about eating disorders remains somewhat taboo and, despite many brands attempting to reframe themselves as allied with ‘body positivity’, we are still bombarded with messages about how […]
[Playing with Plays] It’s a story we’ve heard before – Shakespeare’s works were not written by the man named William Shakespeare, but by someone else, or maybe even a group of people. The list of suspects usually ranges from Christopher Marlowe to Sir Walter Raleigh and Francis Bacon. But this show proposes something different: that the plays we all know […]
[Gender Training] A solo performance piece by New York-based clown and theatre artist Ania Upstill, Transhumance is the funny and poignant story of one clown’s exploration of gender, as they try on different genders and live through each one’s pros and cons. Clad in gender-neutral one-piece undergarments and a coat, Upstill’s clown is charming and captivating, immediately setting us at ease even […]
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