Peter Pan sure knows how to party, and The Suicide Ensemble are the perfect hosts to show The Lost Boys a good time.
After a series of confronting and shocking shows, producer Daniel Gough and lead facilitator Sampson Smith have created a veritable performance playground, ‘Awful/Big Adventure’, adding a whole new meaning to J.M. Barrie’s classic tale of Neverland.
“The 'Awful/Big Adventure' has been in my head for quite some time,” says Sampson. “I think it was really born from the idea of our generation's attachment to nostalgia, and especially to Disney... Even though we’re moving into adulthood we still have that dream of running away to Neverland. [We wanted to] allow people to contextualise Neverland as an adult, and be able to interact and live out that desire to run away to Neverland.
“The show plays on the ideology of the joy of tragedy and the tragedy of joy, and the way both conceptions cannot exist without one another. It’s interactive and immersive... which we really hope will allow people to literally live within the story. I’m really excited for our audience to literally live in Neverland for a few hours.“We definitely want our audience to have a joyful experience, but there is a reality to that as well, which the story of Peter Pan and the lost boys of Neverland really do bring out inherently.”
Sampson says the participatory aspect of the show allows theatre makers to establish a link between audience and performer. “We are seeking to illicit certain behaviours from our audiences. The majority of theatre that we’re seeing and that’s coming out of Brisbane is the kind of stuff that keeps audiences in the spectators’ chair. And we believe that that is a choice that audience members make, not one that we make for them.“We feel so much more connected to something that we are contributing to. When we go and see a film and we realise it was filmed in Brisbane, or on the Gold Coast, we feel so much more connected to that. If we can make the audience an intrinsic part of the show, they can claim ownership of it. And that’s going to cultivate something special in Brisbane, and something that keeps people coming to the theatre.
“By removing the barrier it becomes a kind of community, and for the few hours we're all together, we make it so the audience participation is the final ingredient that activates everything. So if we don't get an audience, the show can’t happen.”Daniel says The Suicide Ensemble is “excited to make a change in the attitude towards theatre in Brisbane. There are a lot of moments throughout the show that asks the audience to express themselves. And that's in writing, that's in drawing... that's in changing the furniture.
“We’re also laying into the tropes of human behaviours, drinking, drug-taking, becoming destructive, becoming excitable or any number of things, and that's all something the audience can do.
“We want to break expectations, but we want to set expectations as well. We want the audience to know that they, and the art, are not separate entities. They are one and the same and can come together and have a joint ownership over a moment, over an event, over a sensation.“I think Peter Pan represents this part of us that we know we can’t have, and I think all people-it doesn’t matter how old you are, or who you are-are entrapped within the idea of maintaining their youth, and being that one person who, in spirit, never has to grow up.”
'Awful/Big Adventure' performs ACPA 13-21 May as part of Anywhere Festival which runs 5-21 May.
