The Dead Sea - Seed 2 in Rainsford's The Nightgardener series. Chapel of Change at The Street Theatre, February 14-16. 2002 National Multicultural Festival.
What a fascinating failure! What a mesmerising mess of slow-mo imagery which we are allowed to interpret in any way we like. "As with all Chapel of Change work, the intuitive calling in the performer takes precedence over any attempt to manufacture meaning or content." They said it: it's printed in their program.
And they achieved exactly what they set out to do: a tremendous sense of achievement for the performers, whose concentration never wavered for two hours; an enormous black hole of boredom for the audience, who were excellently polite on opening night of this 'world premier' until the final scene when it became obvious that the "ritual planting of 33 seeds" was going to take at least 15 minutes. The only excitement was that the globe blew in one, so that "seed" remained infertile; and everyone hoped that surely one of these water-filled plastic inverted cones would burst and cause some really dramatic chaos. But no - some dripped rather forlornly, making a mess in the salt (of the Dead Sea, you see).
The program does give a narrative rundown, about the daytime Motherfish and the night time Nightgardener, the Draki twins of the sea who become Adam and Eve .... If you don't read the program first, you will have no idea what the series of images are supposed to represent: but the company is so coy, writing "This story, the 'suggested' linear plot, has not been part of the process of development, it is written only for these program notes. There are many other levels and interpretations. So be brave, and choose not to read on ...."
I'll be accused, I suppose, of being insensitive, old-fashioned, unappreciative of theatrical imagery, unimaginative, certainly without a spiritual dimension. But I worked out all by myself that the 33 seeds represent the 33 years of the life of Christ (it didn't say this in the program) - though I couldn't for the life of me fathom what that had to do with anything else that I saw. So I tried, and was obviously found wanting.
Wanting clarity, connectedness, dramatic development, meaning. Not wanting self-indulgence, however beautifully presented.
© Frank McKone, Canberra
