Michael Allen. 22 Feb 16
To ‘chase the feeling’ means being on the coat tails of many feelings and sensations. It’s a perfectly normal quite automatic part of human experience. With one exception, that’s not automatic on the emotional scale of understanding, autism.
Michael Allen’s Chase The Feeling was borne out of meeting and experiencing the work of Adelaide’s Company AT, an all-autistic theatre company in existence since 2007. His experiences influenced and inspired his thinking on the subjects of anthropology and theatre, which Allen’s current Masters of Philosophy is focused on.
So, as Allen’s program notes observe; anthropology operates on a kind of material objectivity. Theatre is all ideas and subjectivity. Actors are skilled communicators of social constructs and verbal language, which autistic people struggle with.
How can this mix work? Simply by getting on the stage, with whatever material there is at hand in a social or otherwise context, immediately allows relationships and ideas to be reconsidered, seen anew.
The brilliance of Chase The Feeling is its focus on the difficult ‘question and answer process of exploration’ required by an autistic person to establish what is what, in an emotional and social context. The explorative and improvisational process the actors embark on becomes a brilliantly theatrical, nonetheless investigative, anthropological journey. It is all thanks to Allen’s superb script constructed of characters, events and discussions he experienced with Company AT.
The performance is executed brilliantly by ensemble of three, Tahlia (Leeanne Marshall), Actor 1 (Julian Jaensch) and Actor 2 (Nicole ‘Nikki’ Allen).
With ease the ensemble follows the lead of Tahlia as she tries to work out what she should know, should feel, should understand about this theatre business, and everything else, as she’s prompted by an offstage voice.
Around all the questions, Actor 1 and Actor 2 bring to life any number of vignettes. From directly welcoming the audience and asking if they understand what’s going on, to throwing Tahlia into surreal scenes questioning if theatre is merely an out there form of community television, to role playing the bone crushing experience of dealing with a social worker.
The idea of actually chasing, defining, knowing, then expressing a feeling in a theatrical context is so subtly done. Marshall, Jaensch and Allen so successfully play up the theatricality and humour of their material you almost lose sight of the core social impetus to the work the drama merely services. You begin to see what many might not consider; the process of establishing social and emotional norms is in itself a remarkable theatrical act offering a new range of possibilities.
David O’Brien
When: 22 to 27 Feb
Where: The Bakehouse Theatre - Studio
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
