The website suggests it’s “A puppetry performance examining the future of AI developed art”, but I didn’t read that before the show.
I don’t read anything before a show.
I’m a theatre reviewer, which might tell you I find reading sort of hard.
During the show, it never occurred to me that it had anything to do with artificial intelligence. That might be indicative of RI (reviewer intelligence) but I’ll blame the fact I couldn’t see at a couple of brief but crucial moments. A combination of overly dim lighting and awkward sight lines meant I had difficulty following the narrative arc.
On reflection, little puppet Rodrick was, I guess, suggestive of some sort of machine. And despite being forced to experience multiple examples of art, he struggled to create the real thing himself. So, yes, AI.
At the time, I took it all as a more generalised meditation on art. What is its value and purpose? What makes anyone an artist?
Looked at this way, it was fuel for a fiery demarcation dispute. It’s me and my reviewer friends who write about art in abstract terms. (We must be allowed some revenge on beauty.) In fact, I’ve been known to suggest that abstract ideas don’t belong in the theatre at all, that the stage is a place for the concrete, the specific, the particular.
But this is where puppets come in. Puppets are so clearly constructed, so obviously created, that they liberate us from what we call reality but is, in fact, mundanity. No one demands to know the back history of a puppet character – and so they live forward with a vitality that’s utterly refreshing. No one complains a puppet’s performance is untruthful – so they liberate us from that stifling euphemism that’s simply Narrowminded for If it’s beyond my experience it can’t be real.
Puppets are creative joy incarnate, and so are perfect for a playful poke at the big problems.
Tom Hetherington-Welch and Oliver Durbidge are company Highly Strung Puppets, and in creating this show, they create magic. Under their direction the ensemble present, with inspiring expertise, multiple forms of puppetry: marionettes, shadow figures and Bunraku-style puppets. Rodrick, who I mentioned earlier, is beautifully given life by operator Stella Klironomakis. The Curator, who collects art and hopes to teach Rodrick how to make it, is operated brilliantly by Jack Curry and the ensemble, and displays an electrifying range of emotions.
The show gains a thrilling texture from its use of projection. These projections, brimming with playful pop culture references, are the artworks from which Roderick must learn. The clips are created by Highly Strung Puppets and demonstrate both their extraordinary skill in puppet creation and their gleeful sense of mischief. Another stimulating use of projection occurs when Roderick creates his first story, and the ensemble bring it to life, there and then, filming the actions of tiny figurines, who then tower above us on the screen.
Some audience members might feel the exploration of the artistic endeavour too narrow, too inhouse, too much just talking shop. After all, we’re not all artists, or pursuing a career in the arts.
But there’s something much more universal in this. Apart from a healthy critique of careerism (that very middle class malady in which we suffer from the delusion we are our job), there’s a glorious exhortation to live.
Perhaps the concluding scene is an allusion to Voltaire’s Candide, but it’s certainly a poignant image of the joy of openness, of artlessness.
Art for the End Times is part of ARTSLAB, a twice yearly event, where Shopfront’s resident artists showcase new works in a festival setting. In its support of young creators, Shopfront once again proves itself an invaluable element of Sydney’s theatre scene.
Paul Gilchrist
Art for the End Times by Tom Hetherington-Welch and Oliver Durbidge
at 107 Projects until 24 March
shopfront.org.au/artslab-2024/
Image by Clare Hawley
Theatre Red 