A beautiful non-narrative piece of work that demands introspection.
This Is The Land is a non-narrative abstract performance that comes to life at The Vaults Festival 2023. It fits right at home in the underground stage at the Network Theatre where it aims to explore the seasonal effects of the world onto our human bodies and minds.
Through live vocal work, spoken word, captivating dance and imagistic movement This Is The Land allowed for a multi-layered style to making immersive performance experiences that are liberal in meaning, up for interpretation but powerful in the delivery.
The performers start the piece by throwing on the floor what initially could be interpreted as dirt which immediately sets the tone for this sensorial piece.
The performance is an amalgamation of many abstract art forms such as sensational movement, voice work, animalistic sounds, and bold interactions. While it offers no easy meaning and solution to the problems it poses, it leaves a lot of space and will from the audience to follow the journey.
One of the unique and provoking elements of the show is the exploration of a loop station throughout the entire performance to create layers of sounds live. John Baggott facilitated the process as composer of This Is The Land with a soundtrack that represented perfectly the different seasons. But it was the live vocal looping that made the show feel so organic and unprompted. The performers would start by recording a sound live and then putting it on loop and then adding another one on top and so forth which lead to a creative and natural crescendo that is visibly as well as audibly growing and exploding into a spectacular climax. This beautiful vocal work with the aid of the technology helped create and set the tone of the different seasons of the play.
This is The Land was directed by Mary Steadman in collaboration with the performers Leeza Jessie, Alice Barton, Xavier de Santos, Samuel de La Torre and Sofia Velez who held together a cohesive piece that felt devised by all and has charged with so much spontaneity that even felt improvised at times.
With a clear rhythm and energy that fluctuated while the performers morphed into different elements as the energy changed. Even though the construction of the worlds was precise and shifted the tone of the whole play sometimes it lost power throughout the different scenes with the loss of intentions and repetition of movement that weren’t as sharp and clear.
There was intensity and bravery in the actions of the performers while still leaving room for creativity and natural impulses. However, the detail of the movement became generalized and it felt like it was about filling time rather than clear intentions moving the performance forward.
Theatre like any other art form is not always about the gratuity of meaning but about the chase of meaning, the search for it and sometimes the acceptance that it’s abundant and ambiguous and liberal.