Our Desire To Remain Connected With Loved Ones Who Have Died

That which begins must end. For performance maker Tamara Saulwick this relentless cycle of beginnings and endings was merely the start point. Her latest offering, Endings, is the outcome of that investigation. However, rather than a sweeping narrative about life cycles, she has focused her attention on the key cycle of life; namely, that we and the ones we love die. “Yeah, I’m just a laugh a minute,” she jokes. “It’s the big question mark, the one we all grapple with in one way or another, whether it’s by denial or otherwise. I don’t think this is about the fear of death though. Maybe there’s an element of that, but though I say it’s about death, really it’s as much about life and our desire to remain connected with loved ones who have died.”

"It’s the big question mark, the one we all grapple with in one way or another."

Saulwick, whose Green Room-awarded work Pin Drop centred on the theme of fear, is clearly not averse to tackling the big issues. Indeed, Endings is classic Saulwick: a universal theme, some really clever theatrical devices and multiple perspectives. Just as in Pin Drop, she uses voices recorded in interviews to add texture and scope to the piece. “I’m very interested in recorded voices. There is something about ‘real’ voices and ‘real’ stories that have a resonance. I’m fascinated by multi-perspectives. Y’know, it becomes a kinda collective voicing around a theme rather than just a singular voice. It kinda feels like a community.”

The real quirk here though is that Saulwick and her on-stage collaborator, Grand Salvo lead singer Paddy Mann, are playing the voices ‘live’ using portable turntables and reel-to-reel players from the 1960s. According to Saulwick, “There’s a sense that this technology is dead and it’s like we’re exhuming it almost. It immediately has nostalgic resonances for people who grew up with those technologies. But also, they’re so fragile and unpredictable. It’s like there’s already ghosts inhabiting them.”

That it’s even possible to cut voice recordings onto bespoke vinyl records is something of a surprise. Having conceived of the notion, Saulwick found a “man in Richmond” who created the records she and Mann “DJ with” on stage. “Yeah, he cut them on this German-built lathe.”

Kind of a hybrid piece, there’s even a line in the Endings presser that says ‘part chamber concert, part performance work’. “Yeah well, we use that term fairly loosely,” Saulwick chuckles. “What I’m doing is taking the intimate setting of a chamber concert because with Endings sound is really pivotal. In the end it sits somewhere between theatre and a concert because just about all the sound is generated live. The two things we didn’t want the piece to be were morbid and overly sentimental. In fact, when we showed it up at the Sydney Festival earlier this year the adjective people used was ‘life-affirming’.”