Dan Goronszy Arts. Gluttony – The Grand Caravan. 17 Feb 16
Like the famous T.A.R.D.I.S of Doctor Who television fame, the world within The Grand Caravan is much, much larger than what it’s capable of containing, viewed from the outside.
Destination Home, as a deeply intimate 13 member only audience experience, works to awaken comprehension and empathy with thousands of people seeking the safe haven of a secure home, whatever type it may be, rental or non-rental. They are people walking the same streets you do or fleeing destruction of their home and seeking safety thousands of miles away.
Dan Goronszy offers a blended text/physical theatre/puppetry production of great simplicity. Yet Destination Home is concerned with deeply complex social, political and personal issues involving the fight to defend ones right to the safe haven of home against politically and economically enforced competition; to be the ‘right’ kind of homeowner/renter/citizen.
30 slightly smaller than hand size disembodied plastic heads of all skin colour shades, manipulated by Goronszy, are key to the production’s capacity to subtly develop a spiritual sense of a lost and wandering tide of humanity. They are battered on the rocks of mundane but deeply hurtful bureaucratic machinations each individual member of the tide encounters, expressed in voice and movement.
Goronszy’s performance is remarkably wide in its emotional and physical range without seeming to overwhelm her much closed in audience. She gives emotional life, flesh and blood, and pain to silent heads as they arbitrarily move from one fruitless point of hope to another.
Destination Home is timely during a period of global uproar over refugees and domestic battles fought over affordability of housing. Here is a production that breaks down all the arguments to the essential one, do we really value the humanity of all, or are we merely allowing it to be commoditised?
David O’Brien
When: 17 Feb to 5 March
Where: Gluttony – The Grand Caravan
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
