This company of Gen Ys is producing the kind of theatre that speaks directly to its peers.

The actors cast a cynical eye at themselves and others, at media and greed, at humanity and inhumanity.  Their plays are saturated with imagery, sound, colour and messages and they tap into the theatres of cruelty and absurdism.

It’s a lot for an audience to take in, perhaps harder for those a generation or two removed from the Ys. I was aware of total engagement from those younger souls around me while I found myself wearying of the torrent of nastiness, cruelty and distastefulness.  

As someone who’s never been drunk, the tales of drunken escapades didn’t speak to me. But hey, I’m not the target audience. It must be said too that the unpleasantness on stage is all for a purpose and designed to make audiences feel uncomfortable.

Also to question – themselves, others, the media, greed, the future of the human race.

Animal Hour compares and contrasts human beings and the rest of the animal kingdom, making the point that we are not so different. As a send up of reality TV – Big Brother/Survivor, it’s very effective.

Even ghastlier than the real thing, which is hard to imagine possible. Drowning Bird Plummeting Fish shares a game show element with Animal Hour, but here a contestant is punished to a point where his life is in danger when he is quizzed on questions ranging from the trivial to the topical.

Binge Culture is off to a flying start with these two shows, brought back as a double bill. They are bold and original, and as a company share the off stage and on stage roles as a true ensemble. 
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Theatre and contemporary politics don’t usually mix in Auckland. But this warm and committed Wellington production demonstrates with gusto why they should be seen together more often in polite society.

In two devised, semi-experimental pieces, the young, university-based Binge Culture Collective creates some disturbing and fascinating theatrical moments which draw links between consumer society, national politics and the worst of our allies’ illegitimate acts. New Zealand isn’t isolated; it is implicated. [More]
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Audience members are lured to their seats at the beginning of Animal Hour – the first play of the two-part devised Binge Culture production, Elimination Rounds – by a talented saxophonist clad in a tiger costume. The saxophonist and director of the show, Joel Baxendale, joins his fellow animal musicians on stage where they aptly warm the boards up for the evening’s event: a reality talent show.

As the bizarre purgatorial talent show takes place, goaded on by Joker-like host Ralph Upton, the closeness between humans and animals is investigated; as is the indifference, conformity and predictability of “the contestants”: Generation Y. This is not so much a subtle significance; rather, a heavy-handed articulation: “I don’t know if it’s just your generation, but you’re derivative, you’re apathetic, you’re boring!” 

The contestants are judged on their voicemail messages, handshakes, social encounters, their ability to make fire, and their interpretation of “the altruistic act”; which amounts to offering audience members pedicures and kidney transplants. 

The uninspiring criticism of a narcissistic, self-serving culture is interspersed with some moments of clever animal impersonations and skilful musicianship; however, these sporadic harmonies and Upton’s amusing performance cannot tie together the jumbled messages and haphazard symbologies that make up the rest of the show. 

Baxendale writes in his Director’s note: “People love animals […] so much because we’re one of them. This happy relationship is, however, conditional on knowing that we are, when all is said and done, superior […] We take it on ourselves to discover new answers to the question that plagues humanity’s fragile opinion of itself”.

If the objective is to differentiate humans from animals, it is clear that the playwright (the cast and director in this instance) believe that we are no better than animals. This value judgement does not come logically to the fore after the facts and examples have been laid bare. Rather, it splatters its stubborn guts all over the floorboards with its fingers in its ears, as the winning contestant Simon (played unassumingly by Simon Haren) eats his fellow contestant (Fiona McNamara) alive.

If this value judgement itself is a demonstration of the grotesque Generation Y ‘Binge Culture’, then it may have some significance. However, the intention is doubtful. 

The second play, Drowning Bird Plummeting Fish, “talks to Animal Hour: they reflect upon each other” – says Producer-come-actor Claire O’ Loughlin.

This play amounts to a collage; beginning with actors running hysterically about the stage, calling out stock market changes: “Vodafone, make the most of now, down 2 points; Change we can believe in, down 6 points…” This episode is followed by a mundane (if rather cutesy) drinking game with the audience: “Have you ever?” Then the actors step into small boxes which have their innermost thoughts (or their most recent social media status updates) written on the sides. Scene after scene, the stage is plagued with a lack of plot. If this is a comment on the Generation Y culture, then the play needs a form more suited to a plot-less collage of scenes.

Dadaist theatre – which attempts to ridicule the meaninglessness of the modern world and break away from the constraints of theatrical norms by incorporating the randomness of life into its form – may well have brought unity to the frenzied ideas of this play. As it is, the only intent that can be made out is an investigation of the Generation Y culture, which is apparently preoccupied with one-liners and puking all over Wellington.

The one scene which follows through on this investigation is a peer-pressure/torture situation involving a naked and stressed Simon Haren. The scene builds up to the torture climax, where Simon must come up with ten ways to reduce climate change while being suffocated and drowned. The image of a Generation Y young man being tortured to reveal what he can do to prevent climate change is a striking one. But, unfortunately, it is followed by a Panda coming on stage with a leaf-blower, reciting a riddle to the audience about cannibalism; as if the image of cannibalism should be the lasting one.

Again, the decision about whether or not humans are superior to animals is made for the audience. Production Company Binge Culture wants to involve us, but they don’t.

Joel Baxendale writes conclusively: “Now it’s a question of what we do with our new perspectives… bon appetite.” But the sentiment is inappropriate, as the audience are being force-fed a perspective which is both hard to swallow and hard to spit out.
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In my more paranoid moments I have perceived the plethora of so-called ‘reality’ television shows that inexorably eliminate contestants at each episode – Survivor, Idol, Dancing, Cheffing et al – as part of a conspiracy to condition us all into accepting that eventually, in actual reality, some of us will have to go; only then will the ‘chosen ones’ get the opportunities they deserve.

Then there is the voyeuristic ‘blood sport’ dimension of such ‘entertainment’, fuelled by our exhibitionist tendencies and/or the desire to claim our ’15 minutes of fame’. And basic survival remains the over-riding imperative, as it was back in Ancient Rome where it all began – or at least became formalised and popularised – at the Coliseum.

Both Animal Hour, which premiered in June last year, and Drowning Bird Plummeting Fish, which premiered in the 2009 Fringe, explore these themes, and now they return as a package under the collective title Elimination Rounds. (Given DBPF won Binge Culture accolades for‘Best Newcomers’ the NZ Fringe 2009 and ‘Most Original Concept’ in the Dunedin Fringe 2009, is there an irony there? Nah. Some forms of competition are constructive and affirming. Right?)

I had assumed we would get a blend of the two in one show but no, they play separately with a fairly long interval for re-setting. Fair enough. As the night wears on, the points are being made stronger as the action becomes more ruthless, relentless and inescapable. Given Generation Y has a reputation for having a short concentration span, it is a feat in itself to compel the attention of its target audience for more than two hours without offering them recourse to a remote, even when it is all about them.

We, the audience, are very present to the action and are constantly made aware that if it wasn’t for our insatiable appetites for such spectacle much of this would not be happening.

Animal Hour takes the form of a talent quest and/or audition (for life?). Host Ralph Upton’s challenges to the three contestants – Rose Guise, Fiona McNamara and Simon Haren – require them to capture images of human behaviour as singled, couple ot all together. And we do the thumbs up or down thing while the band, clad in animal costumes – Gareth Hobbs, Steph Cairns and Jake Baxendale – form the judging panel.

A further round involves animal behaviour. The total commitment of the contestants to getting these things ‘right’ makes them utterly compelling, no matter how trivial or fatuous the challenges may seem. And then it becomes no laughing matter ….

Assessments and judgements are made according to strict criteria, so that although Fiona appears to be dying a slow death with her entrails hanging out, her attempts to express her inner-most feeling are judged entirely on whether she has achieve the exact syllable count for a haiku. Form supersedes content.

The change in dynamic that comes with Upton announcing it’s not working, he doesn’t know what’s going in, they don’t talk to each other any more, etc, etc, perfectly captures the existential anguish of a failing relationship; so much so that I – being quite a lot older than those on stage – cannot help but wonder how come they are all so familiar with that stuff already. Then I remember, it starts in adolescence and even then – perhaps even more so – it seems like a strangely remote yet intensely personal perception of the end of the world.

The blind faith and obedience of a dog (or is she?) and the final instruction to the blindfolded contestants to consume – “When I say eat, eat. There are no other rules.” – brings us to intermission, as the blindfolded ‘victor’ (or is he?) burbles on in an undertone …  

While Animal Hour begins with a bubble-wrap ‘pathway’ unrolling, and the Host creeping down it in spooky silence save for the odd pop in his quest for the microphone that gives him power and control (a deeply compelling opening), Drowning Bird Plummeting Fish opens with a spool of magnetic tape being unravelled and a woman calling share market activity as a roaring leaf-blower blasts yellow plastic shopping bags about the cardboard carton-littered space.

The cartons are inscribed with descriptions of personality types or states of being which will be paraded by Rachel Baker, Claire O’Loughlin and Simon Haren ( freed at last from his blindfold), after they have introduced themselves according to their relationship status.

A moving – as in mobile – carton reveals Joel Baxendale, who turns out to be another game-show host with a suddenly denuded Simon the only contestant. A shopping bag of water covers his groin and as he attempts to give the ‘right’ answers for the Top Ten Screen Kisses / Ways To Catch Up with Australia / Ways To Reduce Your Carbon Footprint … any ‘wrong’ answer incurs a pin-prick to the water bag, which hangs above a tin bath (go to the toilet in the interval or this will make you wanna).

What starts as fun becomes sociopathically ruthless until the water bag is empty, suffocation is threatened and water boarding takes over. Meanwhile the walls have been chalked with apparently random words that rarely – it seems – have anything to do with Simon’s answers.

In the sorry remnants of all this, stories are told of drunken, debauched and degrading experiences in the Courtenay and Oriental sectors of our fair city, which is indicated with the topography of the cartons. All have a ring of truth about them: the inevitable rites of passage into so-called adulthood. Few in the audience will not be relating strongly as they silently recall their own similar experiences.

Eventually what seemed like amusing stories disintegrate through tawdry to tragic and the storytellers lose their fluency. The leaf-blower – which has added its menacing off-stage tone to proceedings throughout – finally makes its entrance in the hands of a giant Panda, who confounds us with a conundrum concerning Albatross Soup. And in the end, most of the chalked-up words turn out to have some meaning.

As with Animal Hour, it is crystal clear what’s happening at any given moment (although sfx and/or music sometimes obscure the words being spoken, which may or may not matter) but what it actually means is up to us to divine / invent / put into words.

It is very clear that the performers are fully present to each beat of action, riding the swells and troughs of every emotion in the process, so the ‘truth’ of it all is never in doubt. What remains is an undeniable evocation of a ruthless, selfish, all-consuming world in chaos: Generation Y’s epitaph for itself?

As we head home, we older farts cannot help but compare it to the ‘happenings’ of the 1960s and 70s. They were very judgemental of ‘conservatism’, ‘the System’ and ‘the Establishment’. We are left to ponder whether the focus Elimination Rounds brings to its own generation is an act of relative maturity or further proof of its undying obsession with itself.   
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