The Chat

There’s a certain anticipation as you enter Track 8 of Sydney’s Carriageworks and are greeted by a former prisoner or parole officer. You are here for a unique performance, where they will test your preconceptions of rehabilitation and the capacity of ex-offenders to reintegrate with society. The audience is asked to act as parole board and judge if one former prisoner - John Tjepkema at our performance - deserves freedom.

Devised by JR Brennan, a former parole officer at Sydney’s Long Bay jail, together with actor and performer David Woods, The Chat is full of fascinating ideas. Early in the piece, the audience is asked to discard any prejudices as you consider these men, rarely seen like this in our privileged lives. 

The staging in brilliant. The audience sits on both sides of the performance space, where the small group of performers are put through their workshop. There are screens at both ends and on one of them Tjepkema is projected as he reads a plea to the board. It’s powerful - offenders are often judged on screens these days, either via video link in courts or perhaps in a video of their offence on the television news. In this case, Tjepkema’s expressive face is caught on camera, towering above his real self, seated and slumped over a desk. 

After some trust and other exercises for the group of ex-offenders, Tjepkema is asked by Woods to take on the role of a parole officer interviewing a version of himself. How he performs this will help the audience decide if he should be released or sent back to jail.

So many fascinating ideas but the way they’re executed is too slow. The parole interview is often interesting but goes off piste and fails to keep the audience engaged. If only the momentum was maintained as it is at the start and end of the work, when the performances are at their best and the dialogue is cutting. At one crucial point, Tjepkema asks the audience how much his fate has meant to them: “If it didn’t mean a lot to you, God help us.”

It certainly means a lot but The Chat meanders too much and loses its impact. The audience is never really made to feel as uncomfortable as we could be over such difficult moral questions.

To have ex-offenders on stage confessing what they’ve done and pleading for understanding is very powerful. Their performances are wonderful. But this work needs to be tightened and the prejudices of the audience put even more cruelly to the test. Then it would leave us reeling - a potential it does not fulfil.

Peter Gotting

Photographer: Prudence Upton.