Four young visual artists have been shortlisted for a prestigious prize. They’re given adjacent studios and several months to create something original. The artwork judged the best will win $50 000 and, allegedly, bestow the status that will guarantee the artist a successful career.
Written by Isabella McDermott and directed by Bali Padda, Champions operates as an allegory for our competition-based society, one in which individuals are isolated and pitted against each other.
This reading is encouraged by the play’s form: four interwoven monologues. There is no dialogue between characters; each character simply shares with the audience their experience of the competition. One of the major benefits of this creative choice is that it facilitates dramatic irony. Characters make assertions about each other, but then we swap to a new speaker and these assertions are immediately undercut. These people know little about each other, they struggle to help each other, and nothing in the world they live in suggests they should even try.
More narrowly, you could read the piece as an interrogation of competition within the arts. (Let’s face it, that sort of competition is often like the Hoof to Hook competition at the Royal Easter Show; sure, it encourages the nurturing of healthy beef cattle, but we know what happens to the contestants. Or, as I’ve suggested elsewhere, competition and art are an odd marriage: vital art rarely follows or fulfills criteria, it’s too busy questioning and challenging them.)
This piece certainly floats the idea that competition might be counter-productive to creativity, but it also invites us to care which of the four artists ultimately wins the prize. This is a sophisticated use of the dramatic form, refusing us a pat response.
However, the piece also throws out an interesting challenge. These artist characters talk a lot about themselves. And when they’re not, they’re often talking about other artists – in order to compare those artists to themselves. Is the play really tempting us with the tired old prejudice that artists are self-obsessed?
The piece certainly reveals a fascination with personality, an interest in what particular individuals supposedly are (as against what they do or say or think or feel.) For example, two characters are initially described as charismatic (or a synonym), and they’re admired or disliked for that, the other two characters comparing their own personalities to those of their more bold competitors. This focus on a concrete personality is a sort of essentialism, one that contrasts provocatively with the dramatic form, an artform which is almost always predicated on the representation of change. In drama, any assertion like I am This or You are That can end up seeming little more than words written in the ever-shifting sands of Time.
But this essentialism is an insightful piece of characterisation. In a society in love with competition and consumerism, individuals will commodify themselves. That’s how to be valued in the marketplace. But validation is dependent on the whim of the outside world, on what others think. Several of the characters desperately want the outside world to say to them You are good. It’s a portrait of pathos-inducing powerlessness, one I suspect that resonates all too deeply in so many contemporary artistic communities.
Many people reading this review might be frustrated by my obtuse approach, my refusal to plainly give this show, say, 4 stars and move on. (Or, to expand my earlier Easter Show analogy, award a blue ribbon and then head off to the bar, oblivious to what follows.)
If this review does elicit exasperation, the reason is simple: to support the competition necessitated by capitalism, it’s expected writers about theatre will focus on evaluating performers and productions, as against discussing ideas. And so the prevailing economic structure influences everything, even trivialities like theatre criticism.
So, to avoid being superfluous as well as trivial, l’ll add this:
Padda has gathered a terrific ensemble. Bayley Prendergast’s Fraser is hilariously and pitifully arrogant. Talitha Parker’s Emmy oozes confidence until her sense of self is threatened in a most frightening way. Lincoln Vickery’s Howie is a fish-out-of-water delight, an appealing mix of certainty and bewilderment. Cat Dominguez’s Claudia is a powerful portrait of a woman seeking the strength to claim her place in the world while not abandoning the good that might be found in her complex, troubled inner life.
McDermott’s stimulating creatives choices make for an intriguing, engaging play, one with the potential to surreptitiously tease us out of a complacent acceptance of some of society’s more pernicious assumptions.
Paul Gilchrist
Champions by Isabella McDermott
At Old Fitz until 26 Oct
Image by Patrick Phillips
Theatre Red 
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