When Lives Collide
IMAGINE THIS. You’re sitting on a shuttle bus on your way to the airport. Perhaps you’re a bit anxious about running late or maybe you’re thinking about the people you have to leave behind for a little while? Suddenly a hail of money rains down, covering the front window of the bus.
This extraordinary situation actually happened.
The tale was told to actor, director and theatre-maker Tania Lieman when she was working on a show for Darwin Fringe Festival called In My Skin. The money, it turns out, had been stolen, and the robbers – cornered at the top of a building – threw it over the balcony and onto the street as a last resort, where it collided with a passing bus.
This incredible scene etched itself on Tania’s mind and she soon started pondering what might happen if she combined it with other stories shared with her in the course of creating In My Skin. And so, she placed four characters on that fateful bus ride, and the beginning of what would become COLLIDE was born.
“All the stories in COLLIDE are real,” says Tania.
In My Skin, the project that brought many of the stories in COLLIDE to light, involved Tania collaborating with people living with mental health issues. As a result, COLLIDE also explores what it means to live with these kinds of issues.
“One character describes that she was like a ‘Tasmanian devil whirling around destroying relationships and people and places’ … through those lifestyle choices and she lost the ability to see in three dimensions, for six months, she could only see in 2D,” says Tania.
Bringing the terrors of the mind to life on stage is no mean feat. It was during a week-long creative development process, where Tania worked with actors and choreographers Joanna Noonan and Immanuel Dado, that the show’s current form began to take shape and the collaboration with SLIDE Youth Dance Theatre took off.
Using dynamic choreography and a non-naturalistic style that amplifies emotions, the dancers from SLIDE become physical manifestations of what Edgar Allan Poe called the “imp of the perverse”, that dark part of ourselves that pushes us to engage in self-destructive behaviours.
“The dancers really are the imps of the perverse in the show, and they manipulate and lift and drag and pull and sit on the actors, so it’s really dynamic and really exciting.
“It’s magic realism, where anything is possible and we take it right out of the literal.”
Featuring a lightning storm, a robbery, a hail of cash, real rain and stories that explore the extraordinary moments in ordinary lives, however you want to describe COLLIDE, it’s sure to be an unforgettable night of physical theatre.
Presented by Brown's Mart Theatre, SLIDE Youth Dance Theatre and Darwin Entertainment Centre.
Collide
WHEN FRI 19 NOV, 11AM & 7PM SAT 20 NOV, 7PM
AT DARWIN ENTERTAINMENT CENTRE
COST $35 | $25
INFO yourcentre.com.au
