MYRA: (sharp intake of breath, declamatory) To …
Somewhat like Gregorian chant, Too is premised on the richness of austerity.
An unspecified future finds Myra in a windowless room, salvaging domestic goods gathered from a contaminated landscape: bowls, clothing, flowers, books. Inscrutable, her gestures thoroughly deliberate, Myra stands resilient at the centre of history’s unstoppable flow. Is the heartbeat’s audible electric charge her own, or that of the globe’s economic relations?
Too wonders about the paradoxically hectic standstill of repetition, and the silence that swirls at the centre of the dream. There is a market for everything; there may be no words.
Collaboratively created as part of La Mama Theatre’s 2012 Explorations series, Too is based on two implied narratives. It brings into polyphonic relationship a radio chronicle of the stock market and the embodied experience of a woman’s work. Structurally and metaphorically each of these elements—each ‘melodic line’—is a condition for the other. Experienced as counterpoint they can become, of course, something else: beyond words, ineffable. As an encore, Carolyn Connors also performed the poem Not, with percussive accompaniment involving crushed paper, cymbal, a bowl and a wire brush.
Creative Team
- Writer Cynthia Troup
- Performer Carolyn Connors
- Composition & Sound Design Ben Byrne
Performance History
- 2012
- 12–14 November: Melbourne, La Mama Theatre, part of La Mama’s annual Explorations series of new work in progress
Further Reading
Too program, La Mama Theatre (2012); read here