Melbourne-based Japanese storyteller, theatre maker and performance poet Hideto Ambiguous is a skilled mime and vocal artist. In Frames of The Chaos – filmed by Jason Cavanagh of MotleyGo and screened in the Te Auaha Cinema – he manifests multiple characters and their actions against a black background within an almost static frame. Initially it seems that he seeks to use these skills as a means to an end, rather than simply to show them off.

In 10 systematically announced and dated scenes, we follow videographer Shinzo O’Hara’s trip to his Tokyo employer’s HQ in California’s Silicone Valley, where he thinks he’s going to attend a conference before visiting his grandmother and having a holiday.  

Conscientiously video-recording his entire experience, Shinzo observes that a peaceful protest about immigration is under way, outside the neighbouring Omnidirection Tech Company … Spookily the attentive and ageing receptionist, Mr Watson, makes him a sandwich exactly like the one Shinzo prepares for himself back home, as demonstrated on his YouTube channel.

He encounters a printed journal that compares and contrasts different media coverage of stories involving their company, then goes upstairs – cue stair-climbing miming – where he is subjected to rigorous one-on-one “Warfare!!” training from the militaristic General Taylor who has Machiavellian tendencies. There is no sign of a conference. It is unclear what level of ‘reality’ we are in.

An eruption takes them into Hamilton Avenue where people of colour are holding banners reading ‘Keep families Together’ and ‘Stop Deportations’ – until White Power provocateurs try to turn the protest violent. The Latinos answer with dancing, their leader addresses the counter-protesters with eloquent oratory, the Police fire rubber bullets, Shinto spends 6 hours in prison until Watson takes care of everything including retrieving his smartphone and video camera.

Back in the office, the Executive Director reframes what happened, his interest being in how the media reports it to the ‘persuadeables’, although quite what he is getting at is rather obscure.

At his Grandmother’s place, Shinzo is soothed by green tea and treated to her story of how she and her parents were treated in 1941 – a beautifully recalled salutary experience that for me is the most engaging part of the show in both substance and its simple, poignant presentation.

Scene 9 is a flashback to two months before Shinzo arrives in Silicone Valley, where the Executive Director is enrolling the General and Watson in a project that will bring Shinzo – chosen by algorithms – in as an independent videographer. And so it transpires that Shinzo has been a pawn in a much bigger game of corporate-state collusion aimed at persuading ‘the people’ that undocumented people of colour should be deported.

Potentially this is the stuff of potent political theatre. But for all the vocal and physical performance skills Hideto Ambiguous employs, it’s strangely undramatic. I don’t feel we are sharing Shinzo’s experience. There is no ‘get it’ moment; we don’t get the impact of a ‘WTF!?!’ shock. And – assuming he still has the video evidence in his camera (i.e. it wasn’t deleted while he was under arrest) – we don’t get to share Shinto’s moral dilemma about what to do with it, given his employment prospects may be at stake. In fact I only realise this is the question by referring back to the promotional material for the show.

If the medium is his message, it’s not enough – except for the Grandmother’s story. 

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