OUT OF ORDER
BATS Theatre, The Heyday Dome, 1 Kent Tce, Wellington
03/03/2015 - 07/03/2015
Production Details
Don’t panic, but it’s quite possible that your laptop hates you.
From vindictive computers, to vacuum cleaners with asthma, Out of Order is a brand new theatre piece that brings to life the untold stories of the apparatus’s and appliance that live quietly among us.
A one woman show, the play is presented by Alice Pearce, a Wellingtonian and Victoria University Theatre and Film graduate who now resides in Auckland. She teams up with director Caitlin McNaughton, childhood bestie, and co-founder and director of the award winning female comedy collective Discharge (Benedict Cumberbatch must die, Mary’s Christmas, Taking off the Bird Suit, 28 Days).
After countless years of putting on shows in camp grounds over Christmas, and performing together throughout high school, the two are excited to be working together again as part of their growing professional careers.
The premise for Out of Order originated from an overwhelming sense of guilt Pearce felt at constantly ignoring the instructions given to her by the self check out machines in Countdown. Already interested in the idea of objects with souls, she developed the piece to give them a voice.
It comprises a mix of monologues, packed with dance, song and poems, from the perspectives of various different objects. As we discover their very personable qualities however, Out of Order also takes us on an exploration of human behaviour. Your toaster is not the only thing being ignored in society, and the piece is designed to get us thinking about much more than just machines.
A response to constant calls from the industry and peers for more female voices and playwrights, the piece explores what it is to feel like your story isn’t been told. Out of Order is Pearce’s first solo written piece, and as a staunch Wellingtonian, with a big affinity to BATs and the city, she couldn’t think of a better venue for the show’s debut.
Pearce’s credits include Hubbub, which she co-wrote and produced for Auckland’s Basement Theatre, After Juliet at Circa Theatre, and Viola in the 2012 Victoria University production of Twelfth Night. Previous fringe shows include RageFace, and the award winning 2b or nt 2b – in which McNaughton also performed, and she has appeared at BATS several times before in the Angie Farrow Showcase Dancing Til We Drop, the 2012 Young and Hungry show Deadlines, and the Hungry Mile Theatre show There’s so Much to live for.
The design team is headed by fellow Victoria University grad Penny Lawrence (Home, There’s so Much To Live For). Out of Order opens on the second of March at BATS Theatre and runs to the fifth.
Out of Order is on from
02nd – 05th March at 9pm
in the Grand Hall (The Dome) at BATS Theatre, 1 Kent Terrace.
Tickets cost $18, with Concession $14, and Fringe artists and addicts $12
Book online at www.bats.co.nz or call 04 802 4175
Set designed by Alice Pearce, Caitlin McNaughton and Helen MacKenzie
Lighting designed and operated by Penny Lawrence
Sound designed by Amber Molloy
Stage Manager: Helen MacKenzie
Theatre , Solo ,
All-consuming fun
Review by John Smythe 03rd Mar 2015
Is it out of order for a young woman – a university graduate with a degree in environmental science, no less – to empathise with various appliances which have been discarded because they themselves have been judged ‘out of order’?
That it may be a racket is indicated when the prologue is delivered by a highly-strung inmate of the warehouse she and other discards have been assigned to. While she is gracious with an authoritarian streak and given to sudden volleys of verbal violence, other objects exhibit very different personalities based on their own histories.
Because writer and performer Alice Pearce favours the slow-reveal of exactly what most of the appliances are, as she shares their stories, I have to avoid being too explicit. But I can say – because it’s in her publicity – that the starting point was her own dysfunctional relationship with a self-checkout machine at the supermarket. And taking on the role of the now out-of-order machine, then imagining herself into the points-of-view of umpteen other supposedly inanimate objects, is the creative juice that makes Out Of Order work a treat.
Abetted by director Caitlin McNaughton, Pearce manages her welter of words with aplomb, varying the tone and pace with character switches, poetry and interpretative dance. It has clearly been fun to make this work and they share the joy of it with us.
The Dome space at Bats Theatre is strewn with boxes secreting supposed junk and extension cords snake about the floor seeking connection. Lighting designer and operator Penny Lawrence is highly responsive to the onstage action, adding to the visual dynamics.
Underlying the inspired absurdism of it all is some commentary on our ‘disposable society’ which could be developed further, although having that critique lurking just below the more overt entertainment is effective in its own way. It is worth contemplating, in the aftermath, just what exactly is Out Of Order in our all-consuming lives.
Copyright © in the review belongs to the reviewer
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