A profound interactive challenge for an unsuspecting audience

She Vanishes in the Air is set up as an open rehearsal; the audience are greeted by the actors who direct them to seats and ensure they scan the barcode that sits on their seat and enter their full name into the voting system. Already, there was an atmosphere of uncertainty. Still, I went ahead and filled out the form. There was an introduction, a Brechtian questioning of the audience and a couple of humourous interactions between the cast. The Old Fire Station’s stage was almost bare, with a row of three chairs in a bench centre stage. The cast stayed on stage for the entirety of the single-act play, and a musician (Mark Taylor) in the rehearsal room, stage left, skilfully providing the live drums and sound effects throughout.

The idea begins with a woman’s disappearance, and the task is to choose the reason. The first recreation of events, performed by writer and director Lorena Briscoe, was a physical theatre dog walk with an imaginary dog. This was a fittingly confusing watch, thankfully interrupted by the rest of the cast (Jenny Johns and Steve Hay), watching from the sidelines. A long discussion on sexism, racism and political correctness ensued, leading to an audience vote. There was a lot of discussion and plenty of confusing language used to describe the cast’s dilemmas. I wasn’t sure if Briscoe was genuinely asking the audience to contemplate cancel culture or deliberately confusing us to make a point. This format continued.

I enjoyed the open rehearsal setup, and the cast were brilliant when addressing us and each other. There were funny moments, and sad ones, and I had real sympathy for each character/person at various points. The cast had audience members shouting out and even joining them on stage. I appreciated the discussion of underrepresented ideas, such as intersectionality and Latinx representation in the arts. The issues discussed were important, current and approached with sensitivity, but there were so many of them that it felt rushed and circular. Then again, perhaps this is Briscoe’s desired effect. The audience involvement was a great idea, I felt accountable for my voting choices and was interested in the final results. As it turned out, the vote had no impact on the performance; the results were announced at the end and the actors exited. This was underwhelming.

Briscoe has a good idea here. It is a new and effective way of making the audience take responsibility for their online behaviours. The performance could benefit from varying in style, to distinguish the acting from the discussion, but with some clarification of its question to the audience, this could be a really effective political piece.