Two's Company For The Melbourne Festival's Most Intimate Theatre Shows

Two souls can hold an audience captive, breath caught in the space between them, captured by a dance of ideas. Some of the most powerful theatre is found in the intensity of this duality.

Jonathan Holloway's second program as artistic director of the Melbourne Festival captures this magic in a handful of magical two-handers, three of which are driven by that most dramatic subject of all, family.

Gideon Obarzanek and Brian Lipson's Two Jews Walk Into A Theatre... imagines an explosive meeting between their highly opinionated fathers. Nicci Wilks and Susie Dee inhabit the roles of mother and daughter, smothered in the claustrophobic space of their Caravan, while TZU's Joel Ma - aka Joelistics - and James Mangohig's In Between Two explores their childhoods set against the backdrop of race relations in Australia.

Obarzanek, known predominantly for his impressive work in the field of dance, leaps out of his comfort zone in the dialogue-driven Two Jews. Springing from an improvised imagining of what it would be like if their fathers came to see their show, Lipson (whose father is sadly no longer with us) and Obarzanek instead stepped into their skins.

"So my father," begins Obarzanek, "we have very different views on Jewish identity, on Zionism, on immigration. On a whole lot of things, and so this argument erupted in an incredible screaming match basically, to the point where people came in and intervened, not realising that we were actually acting."

That explosive initiation allowed the pair to tackle, through the binary nature of the work, big picture stuff about family and also the fraught political situation in the Middle East, a theme also explored in Malthouse stable-mate We Love Arabs, another two-hander featuring Jewish choreographer Hillel Kogan and Arabic dancer Adi Boutrou.

Two Jews allowed Obarzanek and Lipson to interrogate those ideas from viewpoints quite different to their own. "Both of our fathers are quite extreme, colourful personalities in that sense, so they don't have much nuance," Obarzanek offers. "That makes it a much easier way to navigate what is actually a whole series of shades of complexity."

As the argument unravels, the piece morphs into something closer to Obarzanek's dance background. "What begins as something quite straightforward becomes more nuanced and abstract as they begin to discuss aspects about themselves and their regrets, and about being a parent."

Parenthood is prime fodder for fraught theatre. Taking over the Malthouse forecourt in the shadow of ACCA, Caravan once more unites Wilks with regular collaborator Dee, who last directed Wilks in the Patricia Cornelius-written, award-winning SHIT.

"If you can find that rhythm with your fellow performers on stage, that's so pleasurable, to be able to bounce off each other."

Cornelius has a writing credit here too, with Susie Dee and Nicci Wilks parlaying the frustrated clash of forgotten dreams unravelling in a trailer park. "It's such a particular relationship, a mother and daughter," Wilks says. "It's so specific. That inherent bond that can be shit, but it's still always linked."

Drawing on that complexity and her own lived experience, Wilks has found in Dee someone with whom she can venture into difficult spaces through a mutual bond of trust. "We have a very similar sense of humour, so we have a similar rhythm," Wilks says. "If you can find that rhythm with your fellow performers on stage, that's so pleasurable, to be able to bounce off each other. You don't have to find your feet with each other, because it's already there."

Wilks hopes that the intensity of familial drama playing out in Caravan, which has been in development for almost two years now, will suck audiences into their characters' strained symbiotic relationship. "You're going to get this real slice of life between these two people that need each other to survive. You see the good, the bad, and the ugly, I suppose. It's quite in your face."

There's wry humour in Joel Ma's voice when the half-Chinese musician reveals he was regularly mistaken for James Mangohig, who is half-Filipino, while the pair toured the country with TZU. "You know, that Australian inability to recognise any faces that aren't white really kicked in while we were on tour," he chuckles.

In Between Two tackles their war stories about growing up during the '90s era of Hanson and Howard, which the duo shared on the road.

The two-man show fuses family photos with their trademark hip hop in the amphitheatre of Arts Centre Melbourne's Fairfax studio, mapping out fascinating family histories, including Ma's nightclub-owning, Sinatra and Bassey-knowing, mob-connected grandma's open marriage. "If anyone in gets a chance to research their lineage, I guarantee, every single person will find something that is just mind-blowing," he laughs.

Describing In Between Two as "taking our family secrets and lobbing them like hand grenades at the crowd", Ma sees a lot of similarity with TZU.  "When you hear someone rap, they're trying to give it to you as straight up as possible. One of the reasons James and I were attracted to hip hop is that the art of sampling is like the art of storytelling in that you are taking old records and using them to make new music. In a grander sense, we are taking our family stories and using them to tell our stories."

As Ma sees it, he and Mangohig are telling an Australian story, not an immigrant one. "Most of my friends have connections to another homeland, although they would call themselves 100% Australian and you know, unless you are Indigenous Australian, really that's what's up."

Melbourne Festival presents Two Jews Walk Into A Theatre… 18 - 22 Oct, Malthouse Theatre, We Love Arabs 18 - 22 Oct, Malthouse Theatre, In Between Two 11 - 15 Oct, Arts Centre Melbourne, and Caravan 5 - 22 Oct, Malthouse Theatre Forecourt.