Politely Savage


Katrina Gill, of interstate theatre-ish company My Darling Patricia, thinks her and her colleagues' work on such productions as their new-to-Adelaide play 'Politely Savage' earns more 'auteuristic' classifications than 'writing' or 'directing'.

"Sometimes we say 'core artists'," she says in humour. "And lately we've also been using the tem 'animateur', which I think means 'theatre-maker'. There's a course at the Melbourne VCA (Victorian Centre for the Arts) that's called 'Animateuring'. It means 'bringing something to life', I'm guessing."

'Animateur' does indeed sound a lot cooler than the comparatively mundane and merely functional terms 'director' or 'writer', but their adoption of it is not simply about amplifying face. Instead, Gill explains, the term provides a clearer picture of the unusual and original manner in which they create art.

"It sort of explains what we do a bit better - making theatre, rather than being an actor or a director or a writer. It's making or creating the whole piece, rather than just one element of it. The design is integral to the performance, which is integral to the look or the idea of the show - all of those things inform each other, so it's not as though someone writes the script, and then we build the set, and then we rehearse. It's more like an evolutionary process with all these different elements that develop alongside each other. We wouldn't just do the design, and then get the performers and just work out the performance - these things are inseparable."

What, then, have they managed to produce with such wonderfully dynamic-sounding artistic ethics? If the critics and award-givers of other states are to be trusted, works of superior quality. Their most recent creation, 'Politely Savage', played respective sell-out seasons in Sydney and received various awards. Of its story, which its publicity claims involves "feminine decay and regret with a disturbing suburban underbelly", Gill is vague. Its form is of far more interest.

"The first scene is a cocktail party, and then from there the audience travel inside the set - it's a set that you actually walk inside. It feels a little bit like a maze that they travel through."

This is perfect, she explains, for facilitating the company's interest in exploring "dual existences".

"We've tended to choose characters that have... something going on inside that's very different to what's going on outside. And that's a key to 'Politely Savage'. These characters are natural and contained on the outside, while very controlled about the image they project. I guess the journey of the performance is getting underneath that faŤade and seeing it crumble away and finding what's underneath. The audience is physically travelling into or behind that faŤade, and it becomes a world that is crumbling around them."

As if all this wasn't alluring enough, a 'Gothic' quality has also been attributed to the project.

"We've had a lot of people describe the show as suggesting an Australian Gothic. I guess it sort of refers to other Australian artists like Peter Weir with 'Picnic At Hanging Rock' and this sort of idea of a bush-gothic, often emphasising the landscape and with something slightly sinister lurking underneath. We didn't set out to make it 'Gothic', but I guess maybe at the same time as exploring female characters we're exploring Australian images too, and the natural landscape has been present in everything that we've made. I really like the description 'Australian-Gothic'. There's certainly no vampires or black eyeliner, but I think it suits!"

William McGinley

'Politely Savage' runs at Vitalstatistix (Nile St, Port Adelaide) from Wed 21 March as part of the Fringe