Crowd Control

Experiential theatre is always risky: what if the audience, or perhaps more accurately, the participants don't like the experience being thrust upon them? What if they're reticent in participating? Thrashing Without Looking, a theatrical, live cinema project from artist-led organisation Aphids, is a multi-disciplinary work involving video goggles, champagne and dancing which largely mitigates this potential pitfall by giving participants control, or at least agency over the experience as they're directed through.

The show starts with 12 participants; eight are fitted with video goggles, four are left without. Those essentially blindfolded are seeing live footage, albeit selective live footage, of the events taking place around them; the four left with all their senses intact choose how the show progresses. “It's definitely very experiential,” explains Aphids' artistic associate and co-creator of Thrashing Without Looking, Lara Thoms. “Once we begin the show, we are recording everything that happens in the room with a single camera and that is also playing back in real time, so you watch a piece of cinema unfold before your eyes, as it's happening. It's a combination of performance happening in the space which [are] actually scenes for a cinematic experience.

“There is a large range of responses that people have within that technology. And [with] having screens up so close against their eyes, it can generate quite a sense of [transformation] and feeling of being very out of body, while other people find it more natural and are ready for things to happen.”

Thoms, who has worked with video goggles and live cinema in her own art, explains that she was drawn to using the technology, usually used for simple playback, in a live context. “I thought it would be interesting to put an audience in a performance environment to watch a performance through this mediated screen,” she says. “I think it's an interesting way of thinking about screen culture more generally and our reliance on technology and the distance and intimacy that that can create. It's the potential to think about live-ness and performativity and what screen culture can be with this technology so it works on a number of different layers. It's a technology that brings those elements together.”

While the show is scripted to a degree, with Thoms and her fellow collaborators appearing as performers to ensure the cinema plays out, it's the four audience members without video goggles who are in control of what kind of show is made. It's a different show every night with audience reactions being concomitantly varied. “It's [a] really big cross-range,” says Thoms of responses thus far, “and we're constantly surprised and that's why we like it to not feel too comfortable in the performance; it's always going to feel fresh.”

Participatory theatre is notoriously difficult to pull off, audiences sometimes reluctant to be involved in the action, but Thoms assures Thrashing Without Looking is not intimidating theatre. “I think sometimes when people think of participation they think of it as being quite scary,” she says. “But it's pretty easy; you don't have to do anything you don't want to do. There are invitations to have a drink with us or have a dance but it's really up to you how the show pans out.” And with participants in control she says, the show is a nightly surprise for all involved.

Thrashing Without Looking is on from tonight until Saturday 28 July, Turbine Studio, Brisbane Powerhouse.