High Performance Packing Tape

If you’re after high octane, heart-stopping physical feats, you’re in the right place. If you need these couched in comfortable circus conventions, you might want to think again. This is not a show that spoonfeeds its audience. High Performance Packing Tape combines circus-like innovation and spectacle with the patience and craft of Marina Abramović’s performance art. 

The producers of Helpmann Award-winning show, Whelping Box, Branch Nebula, bring this challenging work to the Sydney Opera House’s Studio. Their MO is to explore what’s considered risky for an audience. High Performance Packing Tape, a collaboration between performer Lee Wilson, Mickie Quick, Mirabelle Wouters and Phil Downing, with Antek Marciniec consulting, is risky in its aesthetic, its performance, and the fact that it’s not immediately likeable – the audience must be generous in order to reap a reward from this. 

We begin with Wilson, lying on his back, blowing up a huge balloon. The balloon is hooked up to a microphone, and the sound of his breath inflating the balloon is amplified throughout the space. The house lights are up, there is noise and chatter as Wilson inflates the balloon. The house lights go down, chatter stops, and Wilson continues to inflate the balloon. Titters ripple throughout the audience. From the quizzical comes authentic laughter, and then well-held silence. This goes on to a point where it is unbearable. Until all of a sudden – bang! The space echoes. The climax has been and gone. It is impressive yet something seems elided, left out. Wilson casually moves into the next moment.  

Throughout, Wilson will use everyday objects like cardboard boxes, packing tape, and rubber bands to navigate bizarre physical challenges. The audience’s patience is required for the time it takes to establish each challenge. The process of transforming everyday objects into dramatic experiments is an essential part of the work. Instead of a cabaret or circus, we are treated to an imagistic narrative. The narrative’s core is in turning the everyday into high drama, through Wilson's physical prowess, and the dialogue between both the audience and performer, and between the performer and the material. 

With a less innovative creative team, this would be mumbo-jumbo. Its coherency, though, is facilitated by Downing’s sound design. Many of the objects have microphones attached, picking up their smallest sounds. Throughout the show, these incidental noises are captured live and mixed together. 

Simply put, High Performance Packing Tape is unusual and slow. If you're open to it, it's a great experience, but if you're not, you might find yourself tangled in the frustrated preconceptions Branch Nebula seek to liberate us from.