A.A. Sagar: There we were, front row in the Motley Bauhaus. Kartiya and I were surrounded by a delightfully eclectic audience, who were comfortable to laugh and express their reactions with the rest of us. In a modest space like the Bauhaus, any crowd reaction generated an instant buzz. The audience energy fed the performers who visibly took delight.

To immerse us into the themes of the night, we were handed a delightful booklet of art.

Kartiya Ilardo: That’s right. That booklet was a mini-zine, My Body Is Not Designed For Beauty. It was created by the talented Weiying Lu (@calm_dime). It highlighted all the ways bodies are not beautiful. It made me question, what is true beauty? I loved this mini-zine as a taster of what was to come in the plays.

BODY was a production brought to us by Eleven Eleven Theatre and contained three plays. The first play, Un-TIT-Led, was a monologue written and performed by Julia Lambert. Firstly, the play’s name was absolutely genius as it hinted to the witty humour sprinkled throughout the monologue. Lambert’s play centred around a woman named Julia who finds a cancerous lump in her breast. It took the audience on a rollercoaster journey. It was a raw and vulnerable piece. What added to this rawness was Lambert’s exceptional acting. There was continual connection with the audience. I was most captivated by the frequency of eye-contact she had with me. I felt I was prying into her most intimate thoughts about her body. The fear, the joy, the tears, the anger. But it was the eye contact that pulled me into the play. The venue was already quite intimate, but this simple gesture, that was what hooked me into the performance. It was personal, yet public. Lambert owned the floor, used every bit and even took the audience as an instrument to tell her story. The monologue was rife with moments of shock and humour, a relief to the harsh reality of what happens when our bodies betray us. At times, I felt the comedy may have been too close to the seriousness of the subject matter and it made me question if I should be laughing or not. But, mostly, the comedy acted as a reminder to laugh, because that’s all you can really do in situations as dire as these. Sagar, what did you think?

Sagar: Well, Lambert—indeed, the whole cast were funky cats. From the beginning, the tone is set to be one of instability, humour and transparency. The performance began with all five performers acting around each other, together but separate, making a mess of a messy set. They moved with excellent blocking across the central couch, around the boxes on the edge of the stage, and around each other, as if they were bad bits of air. There was no eye contact with each other, except if they came from the same play. Finally, they dispersed and Lambert was free to regale us with her breastory. On the surface, the introduction shouts chaos. The first scene lacks unity, but intentionally; each character is on unstable ground; one has a strange lump in “lefty” and “righty”. One is falling in love in a situationship with a partner who has a scoliosis fetish. One has an insecurity supported by the crutches of sex appeal and a hyper-fixation on Monster High Dolls. Meanwhile, the last two are in the death throes of an open relationship. An eclectic bunch.

After Un-TIT-led wrapped up, Scoliosis Doll Collection (SDC; written and directed by Cynda Beare) began, with Narii Hamill Salmon in the role of Narii and Bianca Galvin as Bianca. I wonder naming the characters after the actors gave each performer a useful proximity to their role.

SDC danced intermittently with the third play in the anthology, Ox (written by Filipe Filihia and directed by Michael Cooper). How did the collection of bodies look to you, Kartiya?

Kartiya: The body of plays (no pun intended) complimented each other, making each feel real. The final two plays—Ox and SDC—ran almost simultaneously, both doing what Lambert did in her play. One acted as comic relief for the other, which was turbulent and hard-hitting.

Ox starred Christie Ch’ng as Ox and Filipe Filihia as Jemma. This play centred around a couple whose relationship is in turmoil. Ox dons horns and messy hair, conveying her unstable condition. Interestingly, Jemma does not talk throughout the play; a piece of duct tape is placed over their mouth. Instead, Jemma’s lines were projected onto the back wall. Unfortunately, this clever use of lighting and technology was distorted by the actors’ movements. Changing the placement of the projector would have made it easier for the audience to read the words.

This play revealed the difficulty of cleaning up your life and extricating yourself from an ex-lover. The sadness is clearly conveyed by Filihia, whose acting is phenomenal and draws strong sympathy from the audience. This disjointed sadness hung over the character, and was exacerbated by the exclusion of an audible voice. Ox, on the other hand, was a character who I developed a closeted sympathy for: an abuser who knows they need help, who is but a puppet to their volatility. The play features a rather hard to watch scene where Ox fantasises about rampaging through a group therapy session. I felt this sudden escalation of emotions to be too quick to catch onto and ride as an audience member. Nevertheless, the red lighting really emphasised the hell which this character is trapped in, and one can only hope that things get better for her. How did these characters make you feel, Sagar?

Sagar: When I watched Ox, my eyes were more interested in studying their execution of the play’s unique twist on dialogue and speaking. Like you mentioned, the words on the wall were interesting, but sadly didn’t translate as well as it could have. The heavy burden on Ox to be the sole speaker also intensified our focus, as her voice carried the authority in the pair. But I believe that hyperfocus made it easier to see the performer’s occasional struggle to deliver on key emotional moments. Often, Jemma’s silence speaks louder than Ox’s noise. On the topic of silence, I’m going to hand it back to Kartiya and grab a coffee.

Kartiya: Okay, Sagar. As mentioned, the play which was performed alongside Ox was Scoliosis Doll Collection. Narii Hamill Salmon’s flamboyant character drove the energy through the roof and I couldn't help but be caught on his every word. Bianca Galvin was a perfect foil for Salmon, and vice versa. The duo emanated an energy of bffs-4-life and it was this closeness which allowed certain lines to be so funny. What I found particularly hilarious was the focus on Monster High Dolls, like Salmon’s character stating how it’s weird to have ceiling-high cabinets full of dolls. After the show, I made sure to show them my friend’s five ceiling-high glass cabinets full of Monster High Dolls. So—

Sagar: —Hi, I’m back, waiting on my coffee. This post-show conversation resulted in an introduction to writer-director, Cynda Beare. From this brief conversation with the writer and director of SDC, we gathered a refreshing insight into the behind-the-scenes process leading up to this production and some notes on their own creative beliefs.

When we quizzed them on the writing process and any limitations they had, Beare acknowledged that “[their] contribution had to be a foil to Ox”. As mentioned, Ox was the far more serious of the two, but Beare commented that ultimately they had the freedom to write whatever they wanted. The plot and characters of SDC were deliciously bizarre, so we dug for an explanation of that too.

“I actually drew on personal experience—I’m a believer in writing what you know. So, I have scoliosis, so I wrote that in. Then I thought, wouldn’t it be funny if that character’s partner had a scoliosis fetish!” Can’t deny, it was pretty funny. The Monster High Dolls was similarly inspired by a personal story. From that answer I deduced, and Beare confirmed, that their writing process adhered to the principle of the more specific you write, the more universal it becomes. I personally didn’t relate to any of the characters specifically, but I felt connected and could empathise with them because they had specific traits that we can all see in people we know. Hyperfixation on dolls or literally anything is pretty common! Physical uniqueness is too. So are the trauma and coping mechanisms we see exhibited in the collection. As Cynda Beare told us, “Bodies are strange. Humans are weird, gross and specific.” When we saw that on the stage, it was much easier to see people on the stage rather than performers, and that delivered the promised authenticity. Yes, at rare moments, the acting did feel like acting, but that comes with the territory, especially in an anthology of ambitious and experimental amateur theatre. But we’d better tell you what we thought of the show as a whole before our word count is up!

Kartiya: Yeah, stop waffling. The show ended and I was honestly left wanting more: not that it didn’t serve enough, but because it served so well. Speaking of endings, here’s Sagar with that fresh coffee to conclude our time at the Bauhaus.

Sagar: Ahhh, steaming hot inspiration-in-a-cup. So, anyway… Over the course of the play, each character found a handle to grasp onto in their identity freefall. The potentially titless Julia is comforted by the kindest nurses. Bianca chooses to embrace her lover and the moment, and Narii intensifies their fixation on Monster High Dolls. For Ox and Jemma, the rest of the cast provide the support they needed, and I felt that was the heart of it: being human is universal, and so our suffering, being universal, is borne better… together. Just like the struggling, lonely writer is not romantic, neither is the struggling, lonely human. So let’s struggle together, and overcome.