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Is it ok to torture a child for information? Could a ten-year-old plot mass murder? These are among the questions asked in Moving Target, writes Katrina Fox.
When German writer Marius Von Mayenburg got together with Australian director Benedict Andrews to collaborate on a show, they began with no text – just actors and a theme.
“The first decision was to cast six actors who have a strong association with my work and are some of my favourite actors,” Andrews says.
“From this we began the process of improvisation.One of the themes was the idea of disappearance. We landed fast on the game of hide and seek. I’m fascinated with the feelings as you play this game as an adult. You very quickly taste in the body all sorts of memories of childhood.You also tap into some very ancient nervous system things like fear of being hunted. We found out through playing the game the idea of community. You have a community that comes together, you disappear from the community, retreat from the world into a world of things and objects; then the community is reformed over the course of the game.This struck us as very rich material for improvisation.”
The set of the show – called Moving Target – is more or less a copy of the actors’ rehearsal room.
“We decided what objects would be in there and that became our game rule,” Andrews says. “Eventually Marius wrote a text, which actually stands completely on its own. I’d call it a characterless dramatic text, a viewpoint from the world of adults or parents. We have a community of people discussing changes in their pre-adolescent children. They are creating the story as they speak and they generate a story of children and especially of one child who becomes dangerous to the community – she becomes ‘other’ and they have to find a way of dealing with that.”
The title derives from a moment in the piece when anti-terrorist squads are called in to deal with the little girl, and the play is politically relevant in terms of the obsession with the war on terror.
“It talks about how the girl is a moving target being hunted,” Andrews explains. “It’s the notion of becoming ‘other’ to a community; to manufacture a state of anxiety, of terror, then politically they hate our civilisation; they’re bearded men in deserts and so on. The radical proposition of the piece is to shift that away from an ‘other’ and make it into the children of society. Children are meant to be precious, so what happens if they become this other?”
Moving Target, April 2-13, Studio @ Sydney Opera House, times vary, $49/$37. Bookings: (02) 9250 7777 or www.sydneyoperahouse.com.
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