Flying Blind

There are probably few situations potentially as disastrous as the blind date. The cringingly awkward attempts at conversation and pressure to perform coupled with a practically mandatory consumption of regret-inducing quantities of alcohol; it's testament to our overriding need for human connection that we put ourselves through it at all. There'd be few amongst us prepared to allow an audience come along for the ride but this is precisely the premise of Ride On Theatre's The Blind Date Project.

Each night Anna (Bojana Novakovic) sits in a half empty karaoke bar waiting for her date. Each night a different, mystery performer turns up; Novakovic is as much in the dark as we are as to who that performer may be. What follows is an hour of improvisation, directed from backstage by Tanya Goldberg via SMS and phone calls. Aside from a loose structure nobody knows how the date is going to go.

Goldberg, who founded Ride On Theatre with Novakovic, the two having met at NIDA, explains that aside from briefly orientating the mystery performer how the date ends is a matter for the actors. “What the two actors say and do inside the date is only determined in the moment,” she says “I know kind of what to expect but it's a complete surprise to Bojana and she's a total surprise to them.”

Nobody, Goldberg says, has any preconception as to how the date's going to go. “I am the outside eye of the improvisation; I'm there to throw some things out there that might shake some things up a little bit, but mostly to support them in a general direction. It's a scary thing for me because I don't know where it's going to go and I don't know what either of the actors is going to do.”

It's a risky endeavour for an actor, but despite that, Goldberg says, they're yet to invite someone who balks at the prospect. “We have a particular [type of] performer in mind,” she says, “Someone who is extraordinarily brave and extraordinarily open minded and willing to go for this kind of ride… we haven't had anyone [refuse].”

While not based on any particular traumatic dating experience, Goldberg says, “There's personal experience that comes to bear in finding yourself in a contrived situation that's got a romantic agenda to it.” But, she says, “I think it was more just a great opportunity to have two strangers forced into interaction and I know that Bojana [who created the piece] was really curious about a performance piece that was really risky, that had a lot of uncertainty to it.”

Does that uncertainty ever get the best of Novakovic; is she ever compelled by curiosity to get a heads up on the mystery performer? “No! She's very good,” Goldberg laughs, “it's her invention… so she, more than anyone, knows that what matters is that surprise. We don't want to be prepared, we want to be authentic to the idea that these two people know each other only by their online dating profiles and they have to find their way through an hour or two of connection and getting to know each other, doing things that are painful and delightful and awkward and humiliating and all of those things that a blind date is,” she continues. “It could go any way: they could end up together, they could go home together, one of them could leave, who knows?”

The Blind Date Projects runs from Tuesday 22 May to Saturday 26, 8pm, Brisbane Powerhouse Turbine Studio