Photo – Julie VulcanThe PACT Centre For Emerging Artists amounts to a city-fringe warehouse where almost anything can and does happen.
This is the fifteenth year of the PACT Ensemble programme, which provides professional and creative development for eight emerging artists aged 18-30. The Ensemble trains with professional artists (in this case, tutors Sam Chester & Drew Fairley) and collaborates in creative development of a new work, led by Julie Vulcan. The experience is further enriched by the opportunity for engagement with PACT’s network of artists, associates and partners.
'Harvest investigates the world we live in, through food, consumption and waste. Examining habits and the rituals that sustain us, Harvest questions the individual lens we each view our world through and asks, when is one person’s insane act another’s act of sanity?' Aha.
Created and performed by the PACT Ensemble 2013 (Bridget Betzold, Kate Cooper, Miranda Drake, Jackson Hodge, Mandela Mathia, Madelaine Nunn, Scott Parker & Khat Reid), with sound design and composition by Melissa Hunt, lighting by Emma Lockhart-Wilson and set by intern Teresa Meoli, Harvest is like a pagan ritual. We are seated at a large, U-shaped banquet table, one of the pretences to 'civilisation' we've adopted to make the tearing of seared animal flesh seem less barbaric and troglodytic than it actually is. In this era of celebrity chefdom, in which trumped-up cooks are hailed as veritable gods, to which we offer up sacrifices of income to ingest their reciprocations of slaughtered innocents served with quinoa, braised artichoke and a herb garnish, their exposition of the fetishisation of food couldn't come at a better time. And while MasterChef and MKR are vying for ratings supremacy, Jamie's turning out pucker dishes, Nigella's inviting us to experience deep, deep pleasure and we're swotting the Good Food Guide bible we're, ironically and criminally, throwing out half the food we buy. While Matt Preston attempts to conceal a prodigious double chin with a cravat, nearly half of all children under five are underweight. While our table groans under the weight of gourmet grub, much of the world groans from hunger.
Along with the nosh itself, of course, comes a suite of complex rituals exemplified in the precise way, for example, that cutlery is laid out; the tradition of starched linen tablecloths; the arcane manners that, broken, are still sometimes frowned upon; the almost prayer-like devotional that starts with study of a menu and winelist, fervent discussion as to the best options and final decisions (some people likely decide to buy cars or have children with less consideration).
Food, much like sex, thus has the power to bind us together through shared gratification and an equal and opposite potential to rent us asunder. None of these outcomes are lost on this creative cabal, which investigates profligacy, sensuality and immorality with respect to consumption, in a dark, droll pageant involving extravagant set, costume and pantomimic performance. It's, at once, a good-natured celebration and bitingly parodical critique.
While Khat Reid sits high above us (the illegitimate lovechild of Aphrodite & Dionysus, perhaps), on a heavenly throne, her long white gown flowing down to earth, she exposes her ample bosom and begins painstakingly squeezing the pink nipple. Meanwhile, below, minions splash milk around with what seems like reckless abandon. Just as there may be children who believe it comes from the supermarket, we've lost touch with the sacred nature of food and the vessels from which it derives. The point is well-made, as are others in this free-ranging, freewheeling, slightly undisciplined, but generally intriguing, innovative, thought-provoking helping of theatre. Scott Parker stands out as being a particularly promising performer.
PACT Ensemble presents
Harvest
Venue: PACT Theatre, 107 Railway Pde, Erskineville
Dates: 20 February – 9 March 2013
Tickets: $10 – $24
Bookings: http://pact.net.au
