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Compagnie Philippe Genty.
 Having
seen a performance by the Compagnie Philippe Genty some years
ago, ('Stowaways'), the last time this French company toured
the Antipodes, I can tell you that Genty's illusion is all about
the art of altering, or seducing, thought patterns. It is no
mere puppet show or magic act; the secret to Genty's works seem
to be drawing the audience into seeing what it wishes to see.
It is a subterfuge based upon scope and movement, and brilliantly
realised characterisation. So it is with the latest show from
the company, 'Vanishing Point'.
"The hardest thing is that you have to remember you're part of an image - a part of - an element of a show. If you do something a little different it can fuck up everything in the show," laughs Meredith Kitchen, the Adelaide born member of the Compagnie (CPG).
"You cannot imagine how insane it gets behind the stage sometimes. You don't see the dramas and the problems out the front of course, but there's so much going on you do get the most amazing stuff ups. The audience will never know, hopefully, when a character is on stage three minutes longer than they're meant to be because of a simple costume accident or whatever.
For Kitchen, who was relaxing in "beautiful sunny Bondi" when we spoke, this tour was her first visit back in about two years - testament to a solid schedule with CPG, which on this Australian tour has already taken in Canberra and Sydney. It is, she says, allowing nothing, "going well. It's nice".
"After here we're off to Japan and Korea, and just touring in Europe."
She hooked up with the Compagnie in Adelaide during that last visit, through the assistance of arts entrepeneur Rob Brookman, who promotes WOMADelaide, among other events. "I'd seen a few Genty shows, before that, and Rob Brookman wanted him to come to Australia and use Australian artists and performers in his show, and it was on that occasion I met Philippe."
"Really, before I knew it I was working on 'Stowaways' and I was in Lisbon, and it was all tremendously exciting, but I remember being scared most of all when we started working on a new piece," she recalls.
Now, and Kitchen has been with the CPG for some years, it all seems to operate like an extended family.
"I was in a studio and everyone was speaking in French and I didn't understand a word, and by lunchtime I was absolutely exhausted. Trying to keep up, and understand."
Later, as we discuss the getting of family and settling down (she currently calls Lisbon home, along with her German born husband and young daughter), she speaks less passionately about time spent on tour, and points out the long hours spent in ubiquitous hotel rooms... and other troupe members predilection for a drink or two to while away the hours in strange cities...
Kitchen was initially a dancer, but as she points out, Genty creates the work with many disciplines in mind, rather than just one style of expression... it's true multi-tasking.
"The good thing about his work is there's very little text involved; but it's all movement based and there's the huge illusion involved in making things work for an audience.
"... he's very interested in the relationship between the conscious and the sub conscious and how never the twain shall meet. In this performance - this one - the facet he's been working on is of us being our own destroyer, of being our own worst enemies."
In 'Vanishing Point' the action revolves around a woman in red - every time she appears on stage a murder is committed. I double check. Is this suitable fare for children, a good number of whom love Genty works? "In the end it's all quite funny," she laughs. "His shows are extraordinary on a visual level, he sets up something from the beginning, and it takes you in so that you're prepared to believe..." Such as the changes of scale and of things transforming before your eyes.
I'll say no more; tell you no more about the story, and neither will Meredith Kitchen. Trust me, this is theatre with a difference.
Alex Wheaton
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Phillippe Genty's 'Vanishing Point' opens on Wed 4 Aug at Her Majesty's Theatre.
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