tag:theconversation.com,2011:/nz/topics/back-to-back-theatre-8017/articlesBack to Back Theatre – The Conversation2019-09-30T05:04:08Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1240032019-09-30T05:04:08Z2019-09-30T05:04:08ZThe Shadow Whose Prey the Hunter Becomes review: Back to Back Theatre’s exciting reframing of disability<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/294692/original/file-20190930-185403-1i3u913.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=24%2C8%2C5327%2C3554&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Shadow Whose Prey The Hunter Becomes turns the questions back on its audience: why are you sitting in this theatre? What do you hope will happen? </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Zan Wimberley/Back to Back Theatre</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>The Shadow Whose Prey the Hunter Becomes, directed by Bruce Gladwin, Back to Back Theatre</em></p>
<p>In 2009 I wrote an email to the artistic director of <a href="https://backtobacktheatre.com/">Back to Back Theatre</a>, Bruce Gladwin, gushing about what I could only describe as a painful form of spectatorship. <a href="http://www.realtimearts.net/article/issue88/9209">Food Court</a> – the theatrical work I had just experienced – was profoundly, spectacularly unsettling. </p>
<p>The work was sumptuously visual and sonically relentless. It re-coded the audience’s gaze by focusing on theatre’s role in the brutal subjugation of neuro-diverse people. It pummelled right into the sticky classification of disabilities and their other. </p>
<p>Ten years on and public discourse, <a href="https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9781137396075">disability theatre scholarship</a>, and the Back to Back <a href="https://backtobacktheatre.com/the-book/">ensemble</a> have intensified their reach. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-back-to-back-challenges-the-way-we-see-actors-with-disabilities-23912">How Back to Back challenges the way we see actors with disabilities</a>
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<p>The Shadow Whose Prey the Hunter Becomes is the third of the company’s works to present at Sydney’s Carriageworks. A town hall meeting offers a sparse anti-aesthetic. It is decidedly unspectacular. </p>
<h2>An unexplained gathering</h2>
<p>At the centre of a cavernous space, five humble chairs are being set up. The performers are discussing masturbation. And the rules of public versus private touching. And the rules of being touched appropriately by another. Or not. </p>
<p>On the distant back wall, spoken dialogue is live captioned. Through the space sounds an alien whistling which evolves to become a lazy, rolling jazz. The audience lights remain on. We will not be relaxing in the comfort of anonymity this evening.</p>
<p>Why have we gathered in this form of assembly? Why have we been gathered as a public?</p>
<p>When theatre disguises itself as civic action, or when civic action disguises itself as theatre, spectators sit in the thorny tension of being – <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/26264793-notes-toward-a-performative-theory-of-assembly">as Judith Butler described</a> – either “the people” or “the people who are not ‘the people’.” </p>
<p>What kind of people are we? </p>
<p>Michael Chan, in a suit and thongs, enters to open the meeting. The beginning might have begun. Yet Chan’s Acknowledgement of Country is sharply upended by Scott Price who takes issue with his pronunciation and tells Michael to – as the surtitles render it – “far king step up.”</p>
<p>Simon Laherty slides off his chair to speak. He might be speaker to begin the beginning. But suddenly, he falters. The words have evacuated. He’s out.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/294694/original/file-20190930-185390-172ux2w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/294694/original/file-20190930-185390-172ux2w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/294694/original/file-20190930-185390-172ux2w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/294694/original/file-20190930-185390-172ux2w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/294694/original/file-20190930-185390-172ux2w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/294694/original/file-20190930-185390-172ux2w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/294694/original/file-20190930-185390-172ux2w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Simon Laherty ‘falters’ as the play begins, or is delayed beginning. The audience cannot tell.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Zan Wimberley/Back To Back Theatre</span></span>
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<p>The drama of misfire is central to Back to Back’s work. With each apparent failure, spectators reckon with the theatrical frame: do we consider these failures more real than in other performances, because these actors have been traditionally perceived as nonprofessional? </p>
<p>Back to Back seamlessly, ruthlessly, challenge and unsettle the ways audiences read the veracity - or virtuosity - of the performers. These actors are seasoned at playing a version of themselves. Slippages between authenticity and fabrication are masterfully delivered. The performers work the text to precision timing. Beats are rarely missed – except when that is the point.</p>
<h2>Who decides who we are?</h2>
<p>The performers out themselves as activists whose mission is to give everyone a voice – but on whose terms? For one performer, “disability” is an offensive term, another finds it useful. One finds “neuro-diverse” an effort in language avoidance. Sarah Mainwaring finds the surtitles patronising, a point re-laboured as the screens flicker these very words in temporal catch up.</p>
<p>The dialogue ducks and weaves. The performers continuously upend each other and the audience from landing anywhere comfortable.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/294695/original/file-20190930-185359-1irmoyk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/294695/original/file-20190930-185359-1irmoyk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/294695/original/file-20190930-185359-1irmoyk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/294695/original/file-20190930-185359-1irmoyk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/294695/original/file-20190930-185359-1irmoyk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/294695/original/file-20190930-185359-1irmoyk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/294695/original/file-20190930-185359-1irmoyk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">The design ‘is decidedly unspectacular.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Zan Wimberley/Back to Back Theatre</span></span>
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<p>In front of Mark Deans, they debate the merits of “taking advantage of Mark.” He is “probably quite vague […] like he’s not in the room,” they say.</p>
<p>“Mark,” they ask, “are you following this?”</p>
<p>“No”, comes the rehearsed reply.</p>
<p>The play begins again. </p>
<p>A lectern is raised and Scott delivers a feverish account of the atrocities committed against people with perceived disabilities. Perhaps the audience has been summoned to witness this history, to learn from this past?</p>
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<em>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/finally-people-with-disabilities-will-have-a-chance-to-tell-their-stories-and-be-believed-113475">Finally, people with disabilities will have a chance to tell their stories – and be believed</a>
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<p>When we might feel the build of momentum, the list of atrocities is followed by a list of board games, descending the bleakly historical into farce. Apple’s Siri is called upon to verify facts and to receive confessions. The meeting spirals downhill. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/294697/original/file-20190930-185394-1su00yg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/294697/original/file-20190930-185394-1su00yg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/294697/original/file-20190930-185394-1su00yg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/294697/original/file-20190930-185394-1su00yg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/294697/original/file-20190930-185394-1su00yg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/294697/original/file-20190930-185394-1su00yg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/294697/original/file-20190930-185394-1su00yg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">The Shadow Whose Prey The Hunter Becomes Carriageworks Back to Back Theatre Image Zan Wimberley.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Zan Wimberley/Back to Back Theatre</span></span>
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<p>It is a frustrated call to arms. We are a failed audience. We are “not getting it,” our “comprehension is mild.”</p>
<p>What kind of people are we, sitting and watching the theatre being played before us? What is our role? What are the limits of our understanding?</p>
<p>We face a future, we are told, in which we will all be outstripped by AI. In this world where artificial intelligence leaves behind human intelligence, we will all have intellectual disabilities. So where will this leave us?</p>
<p>This is the purpose of the meeting: to consider what kind of public we ought to be. </p>
<p>Back to Back Theatre give us no answers. Just encounters with ourselves.</p>
<p><em>The Shadow Whose Prey the Hunter Becomes was reviewed at Carriageworks, Sydney. Season closed. Tour continues to Geelong Arts Centre, Oct 3-6; Melbourne International Arts Festival, Oct 9-20; and the USA in 2020.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/124003/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Bryoni Trezise does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Bryoni Trezise considers questions at the core of Back To Back Theatre’s new work: why are we sitting in this theatre? What do we hope will happen? And who, really, are we?Bryoni Trezise, Senior Lecturer in Theatre and Performance Studies, UNSW SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/239122014-03-10T19:53:56Z2014-03-10T19:53:56ZHow Back to Back challenges the way we see actors with disabilities<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/42893/original/sb8dztkz-1393818802.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Back to Back Theatre's award-winning Ganesh versus the Third Reich opens at Carriageworks this week.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jeff Busby/Carriageworks</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>This week, <a href="http://backtobacktheatre.com/">Back to Back Theatre</a>’s 2012 production Ganesh versus the Third Reich <a href="http://www.carriageworks.com.au/?page=Event&event=GANESH-VERSUS-THE-THIRD-REICH-18868">will open at Sydney’s Carriageworks</a>. The show has toured the world, winning awards and laudatory <a href="https://theconversation.com/review-super-discount-by-back-to-back-theatre-20203">reviews</a> in Montreal, Paris, Chicago, New York, London and Berlin. </p>
<p>Much successful work has been done by disability advocacy groups and national organisations to improve basic rights for people with disabilities, such as the right to employment, full access to transport and venues, and increasing government awareness of disability issues. Still, the status of actors with disabilities remains a work-in-progress in the often elite institution of theatre.</p>
<h2>Disability live onstage</h2>
<p>Over two decades, Back to Back’s work has broken ground in Australia by challenging the perception that theatre made by people with disabilities belongs to some lowly strata of community arts. As artistic director Bruce Gladwin <a href="http://backtobacktheatre.com/about/artistic-rationale">comments</a>, “within Australian society people with disabilities continue to be placed within the category of ‘the other’.”</p>
<p>Characters with disabilities appear frequently on film, with actors such as Tom Hanks in Forrest Gump, Dustin Hoffman in Rainman, Sean Penn in I Am Sam, and Sigourney Weaver in Snow Cake portraying characters with various disabilities. </p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/JdsMqRaz2WY?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Trailer for Forrest Gump (1994).</span></figcaption>
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<p>Such films have tended to favour a narrative whereby the disabled protagonist can achieve the status of a “normal” person via some heroic achievement or overcoming of odds – but cinema and live theatre are very different mediums. </p>
<p>Companies and solo performers working with disabilities challenge the viewer to engage with their work in a way that encourages a different perception, one that avoids confusing disability with deficiency.</p>
<p>Whether they desire it or not, people with disabilities are frequently the objects of stares – yet they are not represented in most images about daily life. </p>
<p>Historically, disabled people involved in live public display were humiliatingly exhibited as freaks, or cast as the fool or village idiot – figures most of us are familiar with from childhood fairytales. </p>
<p>Cultural theorist <a href="http://womenstudies.duke.edu/people/women-s-studies-welcomes-elizabeth-grosz-to-duke">Elizabeth Grosz</a> writes that the “freak” pertains to “an ambiguous being whose existence imperils categories and oppositions dominant in social life”. This ambiguity that attracts a conflicted gaze, that, “amounts to both willingness and shame” on the part of the spectator. </p>
<p>Back to Back has not sought to steer its work away from this conflict, but has instead, steered right into it.</p>
<p>Ganesh and the Third Reich, in particular, conjures images of the pathologising gaze of Nazi eugenicist Joseph Mengeles, notorious for his horrific experiments on those people considered “abnormal” in the Third Reich. </p>
<p>In Back to Back’s theatre, the doctor’s obsession with a perceived abnormality is now transposed to the spectator – who is perhaps looking for deficiency. The spectator may seek to diagnose and categorise the particular disability the individual actors may have – rather than acknowledging the performers as co-creators of the production. Such efforts to diagnose disability suggest that it is what constitutes the totality of a person and their abilities.</p>
<h2>Whose neutral body are you looking at?</h2>
<p>The spectatorly unease that Back to Back’s productions induce ruptures the theatrical experience for audiences accustomed to the established orthodoxies of western theatre. Traditional methods of actor training and conventional casting have placed disabled people at the margins of the theatre – not at the centre. </p>
<p>In western countries, actor training is predominantly focused around the concept of “the neutral body”. This neutral body is the ideal state upon which to build a character whose inner life is revealed by the actor’s emphasis upon physical features such as posture, gesture and gait. Via the body, the emotions, and even the moral core, of their character can apparently be read.</p>
<p>Theatre and performance are tools for a useful and therapeutic form of self-expression that focuses on the internal process of the performer – rather than her ability to transmit the themes of an artistic work to an audience via her skills as an actor or performer.</p>
<p>But, as performance and disability studies scholar <a href="http://www.disstudies.org/bios/Petra-Kuppers">Petra Kuppers</a> incisively observes, “when disabled people perform, they are not primarily seen as performers, but as disabled people”. This in turn can lead to the conclusion that the disabled body – and, I would add, the mind labeled as such – is naturally about disability.</p>
<h2>The rise of theatre with disabled actors</h2>
<p>Back to Back’s work offers a vital challenge to such perceptions. The company has a high profile in the international arena – but it is not operating in isolation. </p>
<p>There are many companies – not to mention numerous solo performers – such as; <a href="http://www.thikwa.de/theater/index.html">Theater Thikwa</a> and <a href="http://www.theater-rambazamba.org/Aboutus/index.php?PHPSESSID=4rcm0u7kajdghts6uplb9f5m63">Theater RambaZamba</a>, both in Berlin, <a href="http://www.mind-the-gap.org.uk/">Mind the Gap</a>, <a href="http://www.graeae.org/">Graeae</a>, and <a href="http://www.candoco.co.uk/">Candoco Dance Company</a>, all in the UK, <a href="http://rawcus.org.au/about-us/the-company/">Rawcus</a> in Melbourne, <a href="http://restlessdance.org/">Restless Dance Theatre</a> in Adelaide and <a href="http://www.hora.ch/2013/index.php?s=2&l1=495">Theater Hora</a> in Zürich who recently commissioned choreographer Jerome Bel [to create a work](http://hyperallergic.com/93723/no-easy-answers-jerome-bels-disabled-theater/](http://hyperallergic.com/93723/no-easy-answers-jerome-bels-disabled-theater/) with them that has since been shown at <a href="http://d13.documenta.de/#/programs/the-kassel-programs/some-artworks-and-programs-initiated-by-documenta-13-participants/disabled-theater/">Documenta 13</a>, the major European festivals and in New York. </p>
<p>These companies work with disabled actors and dancers in ways that disrupt received notions of the “normal” body and its privileged status. While their approaches and aesthetics are very different, what they collectively share is a repudiation of the medical model – the term employed by disability scholars to identify a framework that sees people with disabilities as patients, who in fact, want to be “normal”.</p>
<p>The apparently disabled actors and dancers in these companies are not concerned with ideals of normal but display a sense of ease in their own bodies and confidence in the abilities they have. </p>
<p>They do not see themselves as deficient or inferior to “real” actors. The kind of work Back to Back and their contemporaries make, challenges theatre to extend its repertoires beyond the classics that are still routinely scheduled in most venues and engage more fully with the people it has championed actors to represent, but who, until quite recently, have been prevented from representing themselves.</p>
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<p><em><a href="http://www.carriageworks.com.au/?page=Event&event=GANESH-VERSUS-THE-THIRD-REICH-18868">Ganesh versus the Third Reich</a> plays at Sydney’s Carriageworks until 15 March.</em></p>
<p><strong>Further reading</strong>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/review-super-discount-by-back-to-back-theatre-20203">Review: Super Discount by Back to Back Theatre</a></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/23912/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Anna Teresa Scheer does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>This week, Back to Back Theatre’s 2012 production Ganesh versus the Third Reich will open at Sydney’s Carriageworks. The show has toured the world, winning awards and laudatory reviews in Montreal, Paris…Anna Teresa Scheer, PhD Candidate and Tutor, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/202032013-11-18T19:21:02Z2013-11-18T19:21:02ZReview: Super Discount by Back to Back Theatre<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/35475/original/9fc39dw8-1384749063.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Super Discount reminds us theatre should seek to do more than merely entertain.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jeff Busby</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="http://backtobacktheatre.com/projects/show/super-discount/">Super Discount</a> – currently playing at Melbourne’s Malthouse Theatre – is the latest work by Geelong-based <a href="http://backtobacktheatre.com/">Back to Back Theatre</a> company. The project launched to great critical acclaim at the Sydney Theatre Company in September.</p>
<p>Back to Back creates “new forms of contemporary theatre imagined from the minds and experiences of a unique ensemble of actors with disabilities”. The company makes projects that work like conversations; conversations with audiences, with previous shows, and about the vital need to make theatre. </p>
<p>Shows by the company include <a href="http://backtobacktheatre.com/projects/show/small-metal-objects/">small metal objects</a>, <a href="http://backtobacktheatre.com/projects/show/food-court/">Food Court</a> and <a href="http://backtobacktheatre.com/projects/show/ganesh-versus-the-third-reich/">Ganesh versus the Third Reich</a>, all of which have received plaudits worldwide. </p>
<p>And so, to Super Discount, a show the <a href="http://backtobacktheatre.com/projects/show/super-discount/">company describes</a> as following “the classic narrative of a hero fighting back from early setbacks to a new position of insight and strength”.</p>
<p>It begins with an atmospheric vortex of smoke that looks like a tornado. </p>
<p>Actors <a href="http://backtobacktheatre.com/people/ensemble/bio/mark-deans/">Mark Deans</a> and <a href="http://backtobacktheatre.com/people/ensemble/bio/sarah-mainwaring/">Sarah Mainwaring</a> arrive on stage and struggle to speak over the fans used to maintain this vortex. Deans – as befits the superhero theme of the work – is dressed resplendently as a superhero in a yellow cape and mask. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/35491/original/yqmdrtdv-1384753011.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/35491/original/yqmdrtdv-1384753011.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/35491/original/yqmdrtdv-1384753011.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/35491/original/yqmdrtdv-1384753011.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/35491/original/yqmdrtdv-1384753011.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/35491/original/yqmdrtdv-1384753011.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/35491/original/yqmdrtdv-1384753011.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jeff Busby</span></span>
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<p>For the rest of the play a range of actors audition for the chance to play Mark – who is nominally unable to do so, given his particular disability – as the Super Discount “superhero”. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, a timer counts down and keeps score of the victories and losses in the superhero world where evil does battle against good.</p>
<h2>Actors and superheroes</h2>
<p>This is a play about superheroes – but it is also a play about actors and what it means to perform. It is a work that invites us to consider new ideas in performance: people play themselves, they play others, they talk about how theatre gets made, and they show scenes from theatre that they have rehearsed. </p>
<p>At the end there is no dramatic resolution. Instead, the work leaves us with feelings of awe, where certainties of the world are no longer clear. </p>
<p>The organisation of the theatrical space gives the audience the first clues that this is something different. It is an open stage with a few chairs, much like a rehearsal studio. The things that the show needs – props, storytelling aids – come into existence before our eyes. Then the acting reveals the expressive power of the interrelationships between ensemble members. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/35492/original/hcq7hpzn-1384753027.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/35492/original/hcq7hpzn-1384753027.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/35492/original/hcq7hpzn-1384753027.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/35492/original/hcq7hpzn-1384753027.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/35492/original/hcq7hpzn-1384753027.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/35492/original/hcq7hpzn-1384753027.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/35492/original/hcq7hpzn-1384753027.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/35492/original/hcq7hpzn-1384753027.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jeff Busby</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>In an arresting scene that challenges audiences to think about the ways in which they judge others, performer David Woods reminds the ensemble that, after an earlier show, each of the performers was praised for their “beautiful, exquisite and raw” work. For Woods – the one actor on stage without an intellectual disability – this was an affront. As he puts it, the praise for the others made him feel like:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>the dismissible actor … who’s not got the intellectual disability, and therefore isn’t as praiseworthy as the other actors … </p>
</blockquote>
<p>He proposes to use this experience as motivation for playing the role of Mark. This scene raises the question of what it means to act, of who can act and of where the motivation for acting might come from. </p>
<p>It also generates a series of provocations to the audience about what it means to respond to an actor – and exposes how easy it is to slide into stereotypes in certain situations.</p>
<h2>The edge of the stage?</h2>
<p>Having so provocatively complicated the business of acting, we are on the verge of questioning the limitations of theatre itself. It is at this moment that the show then gives us theatre in all its glory, by staging the confrontation between “bad-guy” and “superhero”. The bad guy is Woods, now dressed in black lycra, with a skull on his chest. </p>
<p>He is fighting it out with superhero Mark in a permafrost snow storm. This is a moment resplendent with theatricality and drama. Like all scenes of this kind, the good guy looks to be losing but at the very point of cataclysm his strength is restored and he prevails. </p>
<p>The Super Discount superhero is left standing on a table astride the vanquished bad guy. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/35495/original/tqptqkd7-1384753144.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/35495/original/tqptqkd7-1384753144.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/35495/original/tqptqkd7-1384753144.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/35495/original/tqptqkd7-1384753144.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/35495/original/tqptqkd7-1384753144.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/35495/original/tqptqkd7-1384753144.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/35495/original/tqptqkd7-1384753144.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/35495/original/tqptqkd7-1384753144.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jeff Busby</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As the other actors begin to strike the set around him, Mark, our superhero, can’t get down from the table. He calls to another of the cast – <a href="http://backtobacktheatre.com/people/ensemble/bio/sarah-mainwaring/">Sarah Mainwaring</a> – for help. The fragility of our existence is captured in these closing moments. </p>
<p>The juxtapositions between dark and light, vulnerability and superpower, and acting and performance remind us that it is not the epic encounter that is of significance. Instead, as the artifice of acting is banished from this work, we are left with moments of human kindness and a series of questions about where we go from here.</p>
<p>Super Discount reminds us that theatre, following French playwright and theatre theorist <a href="http://dlibrary.acu.edu.au/staffhome/siryan/academy/theatres/..%5Ctheatres%5Cartaud,%20antonin.htm">Antonin Artaud</a>, should seek to do more than merely entertain. Theatre, for Artaud, should make us better than we are. This is a responsibility that Back to Back Theatre takes seriously – and so should the audience.</p>
<p><br>
<em>Super Discount is showing at Melbourne’s <a href="http://www.malthousetheatre.com.au/">Malthouse Theatre</a> until December 1.</em></p>
<p><em>Are you an academic or researcher? Would you like to write reviews for The Conversation? Contact the <a href="mailto:paul.dalgarno@theconversation.edu.au">Arts + Culture editor</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/20203/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Helena Grehan receives funding from the ARC.
</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter Eckersall receives funding from the Australian Research Council.</span></em></p>Super Discount – currently playing at Melbourne’s Malthouse Theatre – is the latest work by Geelong-based Back to Back Theatre company. The project launched to great critical acclaim at the Sydney Theatre…Helena Grehan, Associate Professor in English and Creative Arts, Murdoch UniversityPeter Eckersall, Associate Professor, Theatre studies, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.