Two lonely and painfully desperate individuals – portrayed absolutely breathtakingly by Andrea Gibbs and Steve Rodgers – meet online. They aren't particularly invested in one another but are looking for something (anything) to cling to. What he really wants is a smooth-skinned, tight-bodied teenage porn star and what she wants is a strong man to protect her from physical harm and financial burden.
Staying true to the new wave of Australian theatre, Eight Gigabytes Of Hardcore Pornography is a no holds barred, gritty representation of a concept to consider rather than a passive storyline to follow. Declan Greene's confronting dialogue explores the pressures on men and women to reach unattainable perfection and the skewed way we're conditioned into believing it will bring happiness. Sure, it's human nature to want to rise above the pack – it serves a biological and evolutionary purpose – but in reality, most of us (bar the cult of celebrity) sit somewhere in the middle and we're conditioned to see that as tragic. But the actual tragedy lies in the self-loathing and inability to see beauty in 'flaws' and happiness in so-called 'mediocrity'. Eight Gigabytes Of Hardcore Pornography is a provocative, uncomfortable and hilarious look at where we sit in matters of love, life and confidence while posing the rhetorical question we should constantly ask ourselves: is happiness really an outside-in concept?
