Venue: Sydney Opera House (Sydney NSW), Sep 18 – 22, 2019
Collaborating Artists: Phil Downing, Mickie Quick, Lee Wilson, Mirabelle Wouters
Cast: Lee Wilson
Images by Daniel Boud
Theatre review
The man assembles a whole lot of household and industrial items, including plastic chairs, oversized balloons, rubber bands, cardboard boxes, and an endless supply of packaging tape. Using them like big boys toys, he performs a series of daredevil type stunts, usually with gravity as his opposition, almost like a circus act. Except Lee Wilson is dealing entirely with physics in High Performance Packaging Tape, leaving nothing to chance, and therefore unlike the circus, we are not fearful of things going wrong. No one is at risk of plunging to their deaths, and certainly no lions are hanging around waiting to maul him to death.
In the absence of danger, our attention is then free to shift towards intellectual aspects of this physical work. We wonder what it is that compels man to place obstacles before himself, as Wilson does incessantly in his show. Questions about gender, ethnicity and therefore social advantages, begin to arise. We wonder if privilege means that a person would tend to create challenges for the self, if challenges are not already present. In 2019, if we are no longer interested in what a white man has to say about the way Australian life is experienced, it appears that we leave him to his own devices, and he goes to prove his worth by exploring his existence in spaces that seem devoid of politics, in cultural frameworks he is able to determine for himself, that can disregard all the urgent discussions being had in the real world.
It is arguable if audiences can be as easily persuaded. Some might be able to invest in the statements being made about the body, as entirely apolitical objects, scientific and subject only to natural laws of matter and energy. The rest of us will struggle to extricate our corporeality from the implications of daily stresses, unable to relate to this ethereal vacuum, where suffering and injustice are so conveniently shut out.
Within this world of childlike play, where the creators make up their own rules, the production is faultless, and very sleek, with what it sets out to achieve. The humour is sophisticated, and the stunts are original. Wilson’s nonchalant composure is a cool juxtaposition against the dramatic intensity of the visual presentations. Auditory effects are remarkably inventive, involving digital manipulations of live sounds that heighten tensions in the auditorium. High Performance Packaging Tape is quite unlike anything one has seen before, an escape from realities that not all can bear.
Suzy Goes See 