The Independents Festival of New Works. Week
2.
The Fool (or Francesca Giselle)
Creator and director:
Chenoeh Miller Choreographer and performer: Alicia Melonie Jones Music
arrangement and performer: Monica Engel Choreographer and performer: Noa
Rotem Music and Sound: Reuben Ingall Lighting Design: Theo
Carroll. Photos by Andrew Sikorski
Landed by Frumpus. Artistic
Director, Performer, Creator: Cheryle Moore Performer, Creator, Costume
Design: Stephanie Hart Performer, Creator, Projections: Lenny Ann
Low Audio Production: Guy Freer.
The Courtyard Studio
Canberra Theatre Centre. October 14-16 2026. 62752700.
Reviewed by Peter Wilkins
The Independents Festival
of New Works Week 2 continues the Canberra Theatre Centre’s initiative to provide
opportunities for theatre makers to create original and innovative theatre. In
Chenoeh Miller’s The Fool and Frumpus’s Landed one could not
experience two more contrasting works. Inspired by the Tarot card The Fool,
Miller’s work is powerfully visceral, electrifying in its raging pulsation of
action, motion and intellectual provocation. The work is a spellbinding
exposure of the fateful struggle by women to survive and ultimately run the
gauntlet of their fate. Landed could not be more contrasting. Frumpus
turns the Courtyard Studio into a rumpus room of riotous frivolity. Both works,
though poles apart are performed by three women. In The Fool, the
performers pursue resilience of the spirit in their quest to drive through the
aching oppression and expectation of their imposed destiny. In Landed
three hilarious comediennes romp through the hilarity of clever parody in an
irreverent look at nineteenth century solitary domesticity, B Grade Movies,
Chekov and the horror genre. The Kransky Sisters meet the Frumpus Follies.
I left the Courtyard
Studio transfixed by the images of
The Fool. There is the image of the
Fool (Monica Engel), dimly lit in Theo Carroll’s ghostly blue wash, dressed in
the richly brocaded costume and intoning Heilung’s
Afhomon, a
haunting
prophesy of transformation. The
images endure, holding the moment, mesmerizing and inviting contemplation. In
another sequence Engel begins to run, ceaseless and repetitive and joined by
Jones and Rotem in a repetitive and continuous pursuit of escape and discovery.
The three women, sculpted in agony utter the voiceless scream of Butoh’s
darkness between the flesh and the bone. Jones stands aloof on a rostrum repeating
the erotic gesture of the nightclub dancer while Engel repeatedly carries out
the routine monotony of her everyday life. Both are victims of their
conditioning
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Childhood memory feeds
the fear of being trapped in a deep pit by cruel siblings. The voiceover recollection
of a gang rape and the perpetual danger that accompanies abuse towards women
provide a chilling reminder of ever present fear. And yet in a performance so
visceral in its imagery and powerful in its impact we are reminded that The
Fool survives because of the promise of a new tomorrow, a lightbulb realization
and the courage to move forward. Like The Fool Miller and her cast offer hope
and the capacity of women to move through the memory, the constant repetition
and exhaustion and the abuse to stand together. At the keyboard, Engel sings
the song of resolve as she utters the words “Do or Die. We are invincible.”
And yet it is not only
women who must do or die. This is a collective responsibility for all to strive
for The Fool’s positive future. There is pain, but there is also hope in Miller’s
triumphant work.
Before the show the audience is invited to
dance freely and joyously with the performers until the lights fade and Jones
utters a welcome to country and a salute to the creative spirit that has given us
the land, the waterways and the sustenance. It is a welcome worthy of being
given at every public occasion. For all humankind woman is that creative spirit
and
The Fool is Little Dove Theatre Art’s tribute to all women. It is a
symbol of endurance and hope. I hope that it may return for a longer season.
In red tracksuits
emblazoned with Frumpus the three visiting performers arrive on the Courtyard
Studio stage.
Landed may be a relatively new work, but like Little Dove
Theatre Arts they have been a legendary item on the experimental underground Sydney
scene since 1999. Their tradition is carried over in their guest inclusion in
Independents
– Festival of New Works.
In a series of vignettes, performers Cheryle
Moore, Stephanie Hart and Lenny Ann Low explode about the stage with a fierce
energy, chaotic theatricality and anarchic sense of humour. Nothing escapes
their manic irreverence. Anachronism rings on a telephone in their spoof on
Jane Austen maidens. Everything is upside down and roundabout in their yo-yo
spinning madness. Elizabethan maids set a banquet table that ends across the
floor in a carpet of artificial fruit , food and flowers. Blood oozes from the
lips of the Hollywood actresses. A locked door becomes the arbiter of doom as
an imaginary monster approaches and disappears with a dropout of character. It
is all ridiculous and if it tickles your humour, like one member of the
audience you won’t be able to stop laughing.
Landed is parody on
steroids. Every genre, every literary work, every silent horror movie, every
theatrical style is up for ridicule as the performers blast their way through absurdity
in one hour of laughter and idiocy. Like every happy ending there is a moral as
Moore, Hart and Low crawl, slide or lumber off the stage to Alive from
the musical Applause. Landed bursts with life, lands a heap of
laughter and leaves to the sound of wild applause.
Independents – Festival
of New Works is a bold initiative by the Canberra Theatre Centre and the
works included in this festival are quality performances. I would like to see
more work by local artists included in the festival. There is enormous talent
in Canberra and the Courtyard Studio with the auspices of the Canberra Theatre
Centre is the ideal venue to showcase works that are new, experimental and
developmental. I look forward to next year’s season.
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