A piece that celebrates the unique power of theatre: to give complete strangers permission to tuck each other into bed, to joyfully exchange deeply personal fragments of loneliness, and to find those who are more than happy to listen when you are finally ready to talk
When there is only one seat in the audience and it’s for your butt, certain things happen that wouldn’t normally in traditional theatre. Your sense of presence, of your own body, is shocked into a heightened awareness that can be deeply unnerving.
It can also be the most connected you feel to another human being in a long time.
When I walked up to Australian artist Oliver Ayres’s one-on-one production I’m Ready To Talk Now in a room off the lobby of the Traverse Theatre, I was nervous. Even before I stepped inside, I felt something start to crane its neck and fix its silent gaze on me. What I didn’t expect was how that attention would, in short shrift, transform into an exchange so warm, accessible, and intimate, I didn’t want to leave.
After a warm welcome chat about life and access needs, Ayres tucked me into a hospital bed, where I watched him recount – through movement, music, and projection – receiving a whiplash diagnosis of a rare autoimmune disease in his first year of gender-affirming hormone therapy. In forty-five minutes, Ayres pulled the curtain on his experience navigating multiple monumental transitions, all at the mercy of a transphobic medical system struggling to diagnose him.
When audience and artist converge like this – in such radical intimacy with each other – everything becomes a dialogue about the body: how we’re similar or different; how we care for and listen to each other; how, despite being total strangers, we’ve both chosen to be here together. As soon as Ayres tucked me in (under a handmade blanket embroidered with every date he’d been admitted to hospital), I became hyper-aware of my body, only to watch Ayres dissociate from his own right in front of me. Some of the loneliest and most heartful theatre I have ever witnessed, it was a privilege to meet an artist who was not only so intentional with his craft but also with having me there alongside him while he shared his story. Long after our hug goodbye, I still miss him.
There’s a lot of theatre out there that lets us get away with consuming it the same way we consume social media – entering and exiting without a trace. But something else happens when your literal body is required to help someone tell their story. I’m Ready To Talk Now is not about getting you to understand or witness someone else’s trauma. It is a piece that celebrates the unique power of theatre: to give complete strangers permission to tuck each other into bed, to joyfully exchange deeply personal fragments of loneliness, and to find those who are more than happy to listen when you are finally ready to talk.
I’m Ready To Talk Now was a part of the 2025 Edinburgh Festival Fringe and played until 24 August. More info can be found here: http://www.oliverayres.com.au/im-ready-to-talk-now