the curtain drops (the jig is up) is a live performance and film co-created with Louie Rachael and commissioned by The University of Melbourne through their First Commissions program.
“the curtain drops (the jig is up)” is an attempt to escape its self-induced performative situation. Not by not performing, or performing non performance, but by shifting the methods of presentation laterally to a space where the performer is in enforced complicity to serve the tasks of the work. We have created a twelve minute script that is streamed to and repeated by the performers whilst completing a series of tasks and challenges in constructing the space with curtains and frames. The system leaves no space for rebellious thoughts, or attempts to justify the process, liberating the consciousness from the performance and leaving only a physical embodiment of the tasks.
The curtains and frames act as a metaphor for the process of concealing and revealing that fluctuates between performers and audience. We propose the performative body is fictional because it is not a singularity, it is a multiplicity that exists across platforms, times, and realms. It is a deconstruction of the constructed: a variable that cannot be fixed in time and space – not only to be unrepeatable, but to be impossibly captured through theatrical representation. Historically, the curtain has been a universal trigger to symbolise performance in theatrical spaces. Similarly a body seen in space is often a voyeuristic trigger. Our attempt is in dressing the space with layers of bodies: humans, curtains, and frames in a position of unhierarchical dissension. This enables us to traverse and comb the actuality of the multiple that always exists in the performative space, but is made invisible through its illusion.
Performances:
28 July 2019: Martin Myer Arena, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne
Nasim Patel 