Just so you know what to expect from House of Sand’s 'Manage Your Expectations': it’s likely the most visually and verbally innovative show you’ll see all Fringe, but language is an inadequate tool for preparing you for where Eliza Sanders and Charley Allanah’s imaginations will take yours.
New Zealand/Aotearoa-based dancer Eliza Sanders begins by meticulously and pedantically explaining what 'Manage Your Expectations' will be about: heartbreak, abortion, ancestors and colonialism, love. Her lengthy, puzzling and often very funny description of the show’s second half serves many purposes: it causes reflection on the subjectivity of art and reality, the challenges of ensuring informed consent when language is an imperfect method of conveying meaning, the advantages and disadvantages of trigger warnings, and the tendency for the traumatised to walk on eggshells to avoid causing or experiencing further pain, conflict or abuse.
Despite the precision of Eliza’s words, the descriptions do not make you feel the emotions that her subsequent movements do. Yes, she says there will be an abortion scene, where she will strip naked. Based on this description, or warning, you could respond by not wanting to see it; it sounds too distressing. When you do witness it though, you do feel the aching pain of it, but also a kind of beauty; one born of deepening understanding and connection, of a shared humanity with the performer. When we don’t connect with each other, when our perceptions of reality do not align with others, is when we can cause the greatest harm. When nations possessing differing worldviews collide, it has led to colonialism; the imposing of one will upon another.
Another central meaning of the work is that pain is unavoidable, even necessary, contradictory but also transitory; even the deepest pains. Eliza’s sibling, Director Charley Allanah, uses every visual technique imaginable to give shape to Eliza’s mind-exploding narrative: family home videos, viral memes, and live and pre-recorded videos of Eliza projected on the screen behind her. The result is a work of such intimacy and vulnerability that you are drawn to give Eliza a hug by the end.
★★★★★
