"We are not afraid to step into the cold, dark side. At first
we're scared, but afterwards we feel good. We are witty, emotional,
we go deep into the work, we go places you can't go in real
life."
This is a statement from the remarkable ensemble of Back to Back
Theatre. How to describe Back to Back? The Geelong-based theatre
company, which is working with STC on the exciting new production
Super Discount, was founded 26 years ago, has become one
of Australia's most popular creative exports internationally. It
has toured to 49 cities in the past five years and inspired gushing
admiration from people such as the New York Times' revered
theatre critic Ben Brantley, who recently described Back to Back's
production Ganesh Versus the Third Reichas "a vital,
senses-sharpening tonic for theatergoers who feel they've seen it
all".
He said "It's not often that you go to the theater these days and
find yourself excitedly questioning and rethinking your reactions.
Self-examining art, after all, has become such a cozy genre in
itself that it rarely startles…This production never lets us escape
unconditionally into illusions; it keeps undermining them, and
forces us into fresh considerations of how we consume theater and
what expectations we bring to it. That includes what we expect
actors to be. Ganeshis by no means a feel-good
celebration of theater; it is instead an exploration of theater as
an indefinitely renewable quest".On the company website, it
says that Back to Back Theatre "creates new forms of contemporary
theatre imagined from the minds and experiences of a unique
ensemble of actors with disabilities, giving voice to social and
political issues that speak to all people".
Dealing with politics, philosophy, sociology and morality with
intelligence and humour, the experience of seeing a Back to Back
show is not quickly forgotten. The company works in an organic way,
creating new work over a long period of time through a series of
developments. Working with Artistic Director Bruce Gladwin, who has
been with company since 1999, the ensemble of six actors (Mark
Deans, Nicki Holland, Simon Laherty, Scott Price, Sarah Mainwaring
and Brian Tilley) work with guest actors to create insightful,
inventive, entertaining new work.
Back to Back's describes the ensemble as being made up of actors
perceived to have intellectual disabilities, a group of people who,
in a culture obsessed with perfection and surgically enhanced
'beauty', are the real outsiders, and explains that this position
of marginality provides them with a unique and at time subversive
view of the world. The stories they create explore "the cold, dark
side" of our times, be it sexuality of people with disabilities,
the uses of artificial intelligence and genetic screening,
unfulfilled desire, the inevitability of death, and what the
fixation with economic rationality and utilitarianism means for
people excluded from the 'norm'.
The company works to a manifesto from the Artistic Director that
states: "Back to Back Theatre rejoices in the notion of original
thought. We aim to discover the likeness between two things which
were thought unlike, to create meaningful data from complex
patterns, to discover a new underlying order. Theatre should engage
all senses, visual, tactile and olfactory image. Our vehicle is all
known and unknown mediums. We endeavour to allow form to define
itself, to deliver dynamic and enhanced performance that exists in
endless suspension and oscillation. We acknowledge that
individuality manifests itself in form made independently of
conceptual analysis or the marketplace. We aim to challenge and
enrich the audience, to liberate from conditioned response and from
the familiar. We aim to transform experience, to go beyond what is
known".
Judging from the many awards that have been won by Back to Back,
and the enthusiastic response they have received from their
audience members, the company is fully achieving these goals. In
2012 they were awarded the Helpmann award for Ganesh,
which has already picked up numerous other awards including three
Green Rooms. The last show they presented in Sydney was Food
Court, which played at the Sydney Opera House in 2009, and
Small Metal Objects, which was part of the 2007 Sydney
Festival and has since toured widely to cities including Paris,
Zurich, New York City and Seoul.
Super
Discount, Wharf 1 Theatre, 20 September - 19
October, 2013.
Feature: Back to Back
Date posted: 30 Jan 2013Author: STC