Co-commissioned by Canberra Theatre Centre at The Playhouse, July 24-26, 2025.
Possible Actors:
Fayssal Bazzi – seen on July 24
Benjamin Law, Nathalie Morris, or Paula Arundell on other occasions.
Other creatives, designers and technicians – no information apparently provided.
Because I could not understand what was going on in Canberra Theatre Playhouse last night, I asked Google AI if Echo is genuine. It appeared to me that the person on stage wasn’t acting, but was simply responding as himself to instructions and questions being put to him by someone apparently in Berlin, who had migrated there from Iran, on a 90 minute video call.
Here’s the question I put, and the beginning part of the AI answer:
Is the theatre production Echo genuine? Are the actors live on the internet in Berlin and Canberra?
Yes, the theatre production "Echo" is genuine, and it does feature actors performing live on stage in Canberra while interacting with the playwright, Nassim Soleimanpour, who appears to be live via the internet from Berlin. The show intentionally blurs the lines between reality and performance, using live video feeds, pre-recorded footage, and live interaction to create a unique and unpredictable theatrical experience.
AI then gives more details under headings:
Live, Unrehearsed Performance
Real-Time Connection with the Playwright
Blending Live and Pre-Recorded
Uncertainty and Authenticity
Thematic Exploration
And ends with “While the show plays with the audience's perception of reality, the live interaction between the actor and the playwright, as well as the unrehearsed nature of the performance, are genuine aspects of the production.”
So, in fact, I have no play to review. The early part, when the “actor” was given an envelope and took out a long document which he read out loud about the writer’s process of writing, is monumentally uninteresting. You couldn’t call this a ‘performance’.
Then when the connection settles down with Berlin (apparently) it is more interesting when it seems that our ‘actor’ is also middle eastern and migrated to Australia to escape the warfare conditions, and so the two of them discuss the migration experience, very much in terms of emotionally remaining Iranian or Lebanese and so never quite accepting themselves as, or not being accepted as, German or Australian.
Though there is no acting going on, since there’s no script for our actor to perform, it’s obvious that at the Berlin end there is a stack of prepared material about the experience of leaving Iran, apparently including some pre-recorded video and what may be live interactions between Nassim and other people. The time difference between evening here and morning in Berlin doesn't seem to matter.
Of course the migrant experience and issues around refugees and the possibility of returning home is of interest, but this conversation has no direction, no dramatic structure, and ends nowhere in particular.
Since a different ‘actor’ takes part at each presentation, the conversation will be different each night, So to really see Echo, you would have to go every night throughout the run in Canberra. Then you should travel to the next venue, wherever it may be in the world, to keep up.
In fact, what Echo is really about is an abstract – and therefore necessarily untheatrical – highly intellectual exposition of a philosophy, which seems to say that human life only exists as a mental construct which each of our brains put together from the remains of memories of our individual pasts.
When I taught Years 11/12 Philosophy, coming up with such ideas was a feature of working out who you were and what you really believed, but philosophising is nothing like creating a drama for an audience to become emotionally engaged in, which is what theatre art is all about.
Perhaps I can imagine writing a song called “Echoes in My Mind”. Then you can imagine what it might say and sound like, and sing it to yourself. And write your own review!
©Frank McKone, Canberra
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