Thingamy Whatsits

Penelope Bartlau loves a good op shop, so much so that her latest show, The Memorandium, is set in one. It's more than just a love of vintage fashion that the writer, director and puppeteer is trying to evoke in her audience, however. The unusual setting is part of an interactive performance which uses found objects, improvisation and puppetry to explore memory in its many forms. The props on stage are used to inspire the audience to share their own memories, which are then incorporated into the show's narrative. “Through the everyday we are endeavouring to elicit the familiar, to draw stuff out from people,” Bartlau explains.

Percussionist Leah Scholes elaborates: “It's a celebration of normality, in a way. It uses what we think of as run of the mill, boring stories from our childhoods. [These are transformed] when you have the opportunity to share them.” It's all about finding the resonance in overlooked items – in some cases literally. Scholes says, “I'll actually be playing a lot of pieces of the set, and the sounds I'll be getting from them may be what you're expecting.” Bartlau has curated the objects on stage to bring out the unexpected. “We could have a stuffed goat's head on stage that does absolutely nothing. But then we could have a plastic bag that produces harmonies.”

Which objects elicit the most memories from audience members? In a run of the show last year there was an old fashioned jar of 'hundreds and thousands' cake decorations, Bartlau grows animated describing the response it had. “That jar was the most provocative thing for so many people. People still talk about it.” Sharing childhood stories, even ones inspired by such innocuous items, can be surprisingly powerful. “People come out of this space feeling so much, feeling almost euphoric… I can only think of words that feel really wanky, but there's a kind of a sense of communion or togetherness, that you've shared something with this group of people.”

Bartlau was inspired to create the show by a life-long fascination with objects and the personal stories they hold. “I grew up working in deceased estates with my parents,” she says. “Someone had died and you'd go into their house, and you'd open up a drawer, and inside there would be a shoelace, someone's teeth sitting on a bedside cabinet, a collection of letters, tissues scrunched up in a ball, neat hankies in a pile, lavender in a bag. It was fascinating, as a child. It's a very rich terrain, how we live, the traces of our lives. Our deepest secrets are positioned in how we leave things.”

In an age of mass production, Bartlau sees found objects as more important than ever. “There is just this 'Ikea-ness' of everything, there's a kind of genericness to everything these days.” She contrasts this to the eclectic props surrounding her in her studio. “There's a mannequin, a 1940s weirdly-shaped fishbowl, and a stuffed pheasant. These objects bring with them some sense of otherness that things from Ikea just won't. It puts us into a relationship with stories, and with humanity.”

The Memorandium runs from Thursday until Saturday 1 September, Theatre Works.