From the Heart

Is this ‘theatre’?  It is and it isn’t.  It is deceptively simple yet moving and  purposeful in every detail.  Three women from the Boroondara Community Outreach program tell their stories on tape in a calm and matter-of-fact way.  The women themselves do not appear.  Three recorded stories of depression, suicide attempts, trauma, abuse, horrific nightmare delusions, mental illness, exclusion and loneliness come from speakers.  Their stories are stories we don’t generally hear and we would prefer not to hear.  We turn away from them.  But here, we have no choice but to listen.  On stage, beautiful Kaira Hachefa, all in black, moves in detailed, poignant counterpoint to the voices.

Yet again, artistic director of Barking Spider, Penelope Bartlau, produces something highly original, deeply metaphoric and emotionally powerful.  Kaira Hachefa uses movement to suggest that the body is so easily vulnerable to attack and intrusion.  She performs a stilted dance-like walk, her eyes wide and wary.  She is a woman on guard, her balance precarious, her every step requiring an effort of will, advancing into a hostile world – but advancing nevertheless. 

The stage is littered with random stacks of plastic milk crates – common objects so often associated with street life – or life on the street.  Some of the crates contain multi-coloured crochet blankets.  Over the course of a mere twenty-five minutes, Ms Hachefa also folds and unfolds these bright, cosy, homey blankets, the product of hours of domestic care.  She builds the milk crates into structures - a bed, a huge armchair – and drapes them with the blankets, rendering the sharp, hard plastic warm and welcoming.  The metaphor is strikingly clear.  One example of counterpoint.  As Ms Hachefa so carefully drapes the ‘bed’ with the blankets and folds one into a pillow, the voice of one of the women tells of her body being infested with insects and reptiles.  But every move is choreographed - from the halting steps to a posture of attention and a simple crossing of the legs as another voice talks of a psychiatrist.

If I have one reservation, it is that the voices – but not the stories – tend to merge.  It’s a human impulse to try to string each of the stories into three separate narratives, but as the voices alternate, it’s possible to get confused as to which grab goes with which.

From the Heart is a work in progress and this one performance was, in a way, a bit of audience testing.  The show may never appear in a regular theatre near you.  It has another purpose: it is for such women as this and for those who do not ignore them, who try to give comfort – such as the Reverend Natalie Dixon-Monu.  She runs Boroondara Outreach and she joined the Q&A after the performance.  The Q&A is of a piece with the performance and Reverend Dixon-Monu is a warm, big-hearted wonder of a human being.  She says what needs to be said, one example of which is that sometimes the best ‘help’ is a cuddle. 

If all this sounds ‘worthy’, too bad.  If it’s not your idea of theatre entertainment, you’re probably right.  It’s a pointed ‘discussion starter’, an affirmation, a morale booster and reassurance, an acknowledgement of the unacknowledged.  But if it’s all those things or not, what Ms Bartlau, her collaborator and music director Darius Kedros, and Ms Hachefa bring to it makes it art and makes it theatre.  All this in ‘leafy’ Boroondara, a bunch of upmarket eastern suburbs of Melbourne.  Back on the street after the show, with the SUVs and Beemers flashing by, we are aware the invisible has been made visible.

Michael Brindley   

Photographer: Sarah Walker