In times of ever-increasing states of diversity and the world progressing somewhat towards globalisation, it comes at the perfect time that 'The Neighbourhood', a brand-new play about intimate storytelling which transports the audience across borders within the walls of La Boite, should be ready to share some of the stories of the people who make up the diversified culture of our communities.
With so many different themes of journeys, experience, and a sense of community, for Co-Creator Aleea Monsour and Composer Matt Hsu, the ultimate take away they hope for, for people attending 'The Neighbourhood', is a sense of humanity. “Experiences are different,” Matt begins. “We go through different things, speak different languages, have different upbringings and values, but we experience it through the lens of being human, and we all relate through that.”
“I hope also there’s an element of some kind of inspiration that the audience can take in terms of their own neighbourhood and their own communities,” Aleea adds, “both in learning from the experiences shared by the incredible storytellers we have on board for this project as well as the performance itself.”
For Aleea, the inspiration for cultivating 'The Neighbourhood' was a combination of social observation and personal experience. “I think from what Todd MacDonald, the Artistic Director at La Boite, has talked about, wanting to programme this work comes from a place of the importance of it in our current society and community.”
The insertion of this work into the performing arts is, Matt and Aleea agree, not only extremely relevant for the cultural diversity it presents but its bearing to current social discussions. “This also took inspiration from the work 'The Village', which I’m proud to have been a part of,” Aleea continues.
“We’ll keep making these works until we don’t need to anymore.”
'The Neighbourhood' collaborates different journeys from different individuals, with the members of cast involved having of course made their own journeys to eventually come together at a point of collaboration. The experiences of the cast and crew in their own lives have, Matt and Aleea say, married together in some ways to become this semi-fictional story.
“The content in the show will be not necessarily word-for-word verbatim, but it is based on real experience.”
“The way we then engage with that is of course artistic, but there’s not necessarily acting out of things that haven’t happened. The content in our show is real, but there may be music as a way of sharing that to the story, bringing it to life.”
“Each member has a diverse performative skill set,” Matt says, “and we use that to support each other. One of us uses movement or dance, while another expresses that story to sound, environmental music.”
For Matt, a multi-instrumentalist composing the soundtrack to be diversified in keeping with the scope of 'The Neighbourhood', his points of influence are incredibly varied and also stem from personal experience.
“When I was younger, I was ashamed of being Asian,” he says. “I took on some of that as internalised racism, and only through listening to world music and the cool creative stuff that comes out of Asia, Africa, etcetera, I started to realise all cultures bring a unique sensibility through their music.”
“I wanted to recreate the feeling that it’s cool to be not just Australian, but Australian plus something else. I use these instruments to create this analogy that if cultures come together it can be a beautiful thing.”
