[csaa-forum] "Children Overboard" Inquiry Theatre Show: Sydney & Canberra Seasons

[David Williams]

CMI: "Children Overboard" Inquiry Theatre Show: Sydney & Canberra
Seasonsapologies for cross postings

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version 1.0 & Performance Space present
CMI (A Certain Maritime Incident)
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“Children Overboard” Inquiry cut short


So here’s the smash hit stage version!
Sydney return (Oct 13-17) & inaugural Canberra sitting (Oct 19-23)
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“Passionate, often humorous, & ultimately disturbing” (Mark Hopkins, SMH)
“Startling, highly kinetic, blackly comic & deeply provocative”  (Linda
Jaivin, The Bulletin)
“I’m played by Brad Pitt, apparently.”  (Senator Brett Mason, Hansard
25/3/04)
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If you missed the short-lived return of the “Children Overboard” Senate
Inquiry, at least you can catch the smash hit stage version.  CMI (A Certain
Maritime Incident is version 1.0’s acclaimed show based on the transcript of
the Inquiry into the most explosive episode in recent political history, and
it’s back for a Sydney return and inaugural Canberra sitting.

The show played to packed houses at Sydney’s Performance Space in its April
premiere.  CMI "breaks the mould of verbatim theatre's typically earnest
style”, wrote Linda Jaivin in The Bulletin, (14/4/04) describing it as “a
startling, highly kinetic, blackly comic and deeply provocative work of
theatre".   CMI is the product of one of the most exciting new companies in
Sydney, version 1.0, already hailed as “a refreshing new vision in
performance” (RealTime) for its previous shows.

“Whatever the election outcome, the scandal of the Government deliberately
lying in order to demonise asylum seekers is well and truly alive,” says
version 1.0’s producer and performer, David Williams.  “Howard showed that
by shutting down Parliament after public servants and military people came
forward to set the records straight.  But it’s a bigger story than that – it
goes to the heart of our political process, to our response to asylum
seekers, and to this climate of fear and suspicion we’re now enduring.”

“We always planned to bring CMI back, not just because of its currency, but
also because it went so well,” says Williams.  “Making theatre from a Senate
Inquiry sounds dry,  but it’s not verbatim theatre, or a dry rendering of
politician talk.   This is political theatre for the twenty-first century –
playful, surreal, absurd, gut-wrenching, tragic, all at once, and without
any easy answers. This is a story of six people wrestling with their wills,
their vocabulary, their politics and each other.  It’s an exploration of
fundamental questions at the intersection of the personal and the
 political.”

But while the text is edited from the transcript’s 2,200 pages of procedural
politician-speak, the six performers enact a demanding movement score that
cuts across the words, and across audience expectations.   Proceedings begin
sedately enough, with the senators listening attentively to witnesses from
behind their committee table, aided and abetted by live video and real time
lie detection software.  But the mood shifts from courtroom drama to
slapstick, Kafka to seduction scene, parable to office party.  Points are
scored, pizzas are eaten, guns are drawn, tables spin wildly, and the ship
of state loses its way in the fog of war.

Five of the seven inquiry senators saw CMI first time around, along with one
of the key witnesses.  “It was pretty surreal looking into the audience and
seeing the person whose words you’re speaking, although we don’t necessarily
play characters in a conventional sense,” says Williams.  “And for them
too – they made jokes about the show in the Senate, like, oh I’m played by
Brad Pitt, and I was shocked to trip over you naked as I walked into the
theatre, and thank god it was an actor and not really you.  But one Senator
also said the show really crystallised the horrible tragedy of how we
treated these people.  He talked about a particular scene, where we had him
questioning an admiral who was talking about ‘the moral values of these
people’, meaning asylum seekers, as though they were from Mars – he said it
was like hearing the full horror for the first time.”

version 1.0 is a collective of some of Sydney’s leading contemporary
performance makers.  The company claims to have seven senses of humour, and
to test the limits of bodies and of language, making performance that is
edgy yet accessible, innovative but entertaining. If you don’t trust the lie
detection software to test their claims, then judge for yourself.  Then we’
ll know who are the biggest liars – performers or politicians.
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Artists  Performer/Devisers  Danielle Antaki, Stephen Klinder, Nikki
Heywood, Deborah Pollard, Christopher Ryan & David Williams  Producer David
Williams   Dramaturgy Paul Dwyer    Lighting Simon Wise   Video & Design
Samuel James   Sound Jason Sweeney  Outside Eye Yana Taylor  Lie Detection
Software Kelli McCluskey & Steve Bull (pvi collective)
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Sydney   Performance Space, 199 Cleveland St, Redfern. 13 – 17 Oct (Wed –
Sat 8pm, Sun 5pm)
Tix $25/15.  Bookings:  02 9698 7235 or boxoffice at performancespace.com.au
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Canberra  The Street Theatre, Cnr Childers St & University Ave, Canberra.
Tue 19 – Sat 23 Oct, 8pm.
Tix $30/20.   Bookings:  02 6247 1223
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Media Info  Harley Stumm  0411 330 654  or  harley_stumm at optusnet.com.au
Print-friendly Attachment contains full reviews (SMH & Bulletin) & more info
about version 1.0 & the artists.
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