We must have new forms

While my experiences as a theatre audience member encompass an eclectic range of forms, styles and themes, my personal preferences for entertainment – and the work I want to be involved in – are surprisingly traditional and mainstream.

I’ve watched a 150 minute one act Hamlet entirely in German and been enthralled. I’ve enjoyed the intense existential experience of a one man minimalist Beckett. I’ve been riveted by abstractly devised student works exploring death and romantic relationships through soundscape. And I would happily return to any of these experiences for a second taste. 

But if asked to name my perfect evening of entertainment I would likely admit to a straightforward narrative in a traditional proscenium arch theatre, probably with glitzy music and jazz hands and a romantic plot that resolves neatly into a happy ending.

In a recent conversation with a friend I mentioned playing the guitar and piano, which elicited from him a slightly patronising sigh and the comment ‘of course you do’, as if it explained everything about my artistic sensibilities that I played the most accessible instruments. And perhaps it does. 

The point being that I will often choose some easily digestible entertainment over something more difficult – a blockbuster film over something with subtitles perhaps. It’s not always true, and sometimes I reject the entire mainstream culture out of left-wing artistic guilt, but I definitely appreciate the place of a simple linear narrative in our stage culture.

With this in mind you may better understand me saying I have absolutely no idea what to think following Tuesday night’s preview of David Finnigan’s 22 Short Plays at MKA – it’s not that it doesn’t have a place in our theatrical landscape, just that I don’t personally understand what that place is. 

The format is literally 22 short plays varying in length from around twelve seconds to twelve minutes, with no common theme or narrative connecting them. Some had me choking from laughter, others just left me scratching my head for their lack of point. Some were among the worst pieces of theatre I’ve seen on the Melbourne stage.

This is not to say the acting or writing or direction was bad in any sense, but the difference between the vignettes in style and content was so great that just as I was getting into the swing of one, another would appear at random to throw me completely off balance. It’s an unsettling experience if you’re not expecting it. 

The three performers – Paul Blenheim, Conor Gallacher and Ellen Grimshaw – each tackle a range of characters of varying clarity with great invention, energy and charisma, and the intense intimacy of MKA’s new Prahran space creates an electric communication between the actors and audience that verges on invasive in the less obviously defined moments of the text.

I have to assume that Tobias Manderson-Galvin – both the director of the piece and MKA’s artistic director – had a reason for choosing this work in the first season of the ‘”Theatre of New Writing”, but I can only guess that the rationale was to present something entirely different to an audience. 

There is no thematic link, there is no greater social point, it truly seems to be about trying as many different things as possible on an audience to see what fits. Mostly I felt as though it was one big theatre experiment and I was the test subject, which is both exciting and insulting in equal measure.

It’s not easy or simple and I don’t know if it’s intended to be entirely liked or understood. I left amused, disgusted and thoroughly confused – which really isn’t a bad thing for theatre when you think about it.

**This is a REACTION to 22 Short Plays @ MKA.

**Running until June 18, 8pm Tues-Sat, Level 1, 211 Chapel St Prahran