Eat Your Young. Arena Theatre Company directed by Rosemary Myers. The Playhouse September 25-29.
Post post-modern multimedia theatre for young people (15-19). Non-linear narrative. Techno decibel enlargement paralleling visual blasts on multichannel screens and speakers. Amazing stuff - but is it enuff?
Interesting that the printed program separates the live actors from the filmed actors, and again from the writer and technical production people - because Myers before the show explained how all the sound, imagery, lighting and design engineers were integrated into the workshops with actors and writer from the beginning to create a new theatrical form.
She also connected multimedia theatre to Howard Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences, which has recently developed to include "spiritual intelligence" - the human ability to experience the wonder of the universe (and usually invent a religion to explain it).
This spirit is the core of great art - when I become engrossed in the theatrical fiction which reflects on and helps me encompass the universe - but Eat Your Young did not do it for me. Perhaps teenagers are used to disjointed images coming at them from all directions at once and so do not seek any clear resolution - maybe all they need is stacks of questions - but I found the techno gadgetry becoming too fascinating to focus on the live characters' personal experiences.
The issues surrounding children placed in "care" which alienates them and compromises the adults charged with responsibility for them are certainly raised loudly in this production, and I imagine would stimulate a great deal of discussion in schools and youth groups - but loudly is not necessarily clearly, at least in this case.
Maybe I'm just old-fashioned, but I fear that the non-sequitur imagery of the video clip is the modern popular development of the theatrical absurdism which became established after the terrible experience of World War II. Absurdist plays like Waiting for Godot said to a small coterie of adult theatre goers 40 years ago that there is no meaning in life. Now Eat Your Young takes the message to the young, and I am not sure they are resilient enough. Will they see through the techno imagery of September 11 in New York? Will this show help them do that? Amazing stuff - raising dust (like Ionesco's Rhinoceros) - but for me it's not enuff.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
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