ARTWORK: Real Sydney-Siders
Image: Salve Wilson, Photo: Chris Peken

Imagine answering an online advertisement for casual work, then find yourself being asked to step on stage in front of an audience with no rehearsal and limited direction. Would you accept the challenge?

That is exactly what some real Sydney-siders are being tasked with this weekend by theatre and performance company Branch Nebula. The experimental artwork follows and builds upon the companies previous work, Sweat, which was performed in 2010 and explored the intimate working relationship between customers and those that work in the service industry.

Since their inception the team at Branch Nebula have often worked with “non-conventional performers” ranging from BMX riders, parkour athletes and B-Boy dancers. When reflecting on their time working with these artists, Branch Nebular co-founder and director Lee Wilson explained how the seedling for the upcoming show was planted: “These artists [from previous productions] were all highly trained and virtuosic in what they do despite never being trained as [traditional] performers working within the conventions of theatre and dance, so we started to become curios what it would be like to really challenge ourselves and work with… untrained and non-virtuosic performers.”

With this philosophy in mind the team began development of a show that could explore this new challenging dynamic by collaborating with artists from a variety of fields and mediums to forge everything from audio to video, lighting and the structuring of settings and scenes.

Once Branch Nebula and their team of collaborating artists had an outline to the performance development, it was time to begin sourcing participants and finely tuning the show. To source their participants, online ads we placed for short-term casual work that were specifically designed to capture an extremely diverse cross section of the community. “We try to get as extreme as we can in terms of age, if there is someone that’s 70 then that’s great and if someone else is 18 that’s also interesting,” said Wilson.

Obviously the manner by which participants were sourced for the shows raises some ethical concerns, to which Wilson was quick to point out that “we don’t trick anybody, we would never do that. We’re very transparent with the workers and we considered the ethics very carefully.” It is also important to note that nobody is being forced to step on stage if they don’t feel comfortable.

Due to the manner of the performance and dynamics that both the performers and the audience are exploring, it was also important for Branch Nebula to be very systematic and calculated with the people chosen for the shows. “We can’t run the risk of telling someone they are showing up to a job interview then telling them they are going on stage in 30 minutes, because many simply wouldn’t do it and that’s a risk we can’t take,” said Wilson.

Thankfully, through their series of pre-production workshops where the show was polished, Branch Nebula have had very few drop-outs. “We must have had about 300 workers by now, and we do have people that don’t turn up for whatever reason, but we’ve only ever had one person get all the way to arriving and about to sign the contract then leaving,” Wilson explained.

With an entirely new cast of untrained performers taking the stage, the dynamic and performance changes each time. To balance this and ensure a smooth flow (whilst still getting all of the major themes built into the show) Branch Nebula have had to develop a highly detailed structure. “The structure is quite finely tuned and complex to slot the workers into…the workers are given tasks but how they respond to those tasks is with their own agency, how they choose to respond to those provocations that we give them is entirely up to them,” said Wilson.

The easiest way for Wilson to describe the performance and how they have to immediately react to the unexpected is to have people think of the performance as “like live TV – where you monitor what’s going on and how it’s working then react, so it’s got a real sense of spontaneity.”

Given that this show employs regular citizens off the street, it is an exciting entryway into the theatre scene, which has long been rather exclusionary to many sectors of the community for multiple reasons – ranging from cultural to economic and social. Wilson is extremely proud and excited to be providing this opportunity: “The way that we’re kind of forcing a situation where we’re bringing people into the theatre that otherwise would never go is definitely an important part of the show and making it happen.”

Aug 5-8. Carriageworks, 245 Wilson St, Eveleigh. $35. Tickets & info: carriageworks.com.au

You May Also Like

Comments are closed.