DAY 2 of Gorge '09

The sassy songbird, Libby O'Donovan, sung us sensationally into the second night of Gorge '09, this time looking vampy and voluptuous in a figure-hugging red gown. Accompanied with great relish on the keyboard by the incomparable Matthew Carey, Matthew showed his gift with a quip by throwing in the odd provocative comment from the keyboard during Q and As.

Daisy Brown and Chris Drummond, felt a bit like it was Groundhog Day @ Space Theatre last night. About half the audience had been there the night before so knew the drill. But D and C wanted to ensure first-timers were included. So they reiterated the background to Gorge, the rules and so on. You can read it in an earlier blog.

Featured writer last night was Matthew Cormack. Matt writes for film usually - and, as he pointed out, collaboratively. So the script he wrote for Gorge '09 was not only his first theatre script but also the first he had written alone so quite a challenge.

During Daisy's writer Q and A, Matt revealed he was born in Adelaide, grew up in Adelaide and had brought his Mum along to verify this. He also revealed he was a twin - a point the audience remembered later when they heard his play, Like Brothers In A Bathtub, read by Eliza Lovell, Rory Walker and Brendan Rock, in which Matt's main character has a twin - or does he?

First interpretation of the work after interval was by media-inspired company TheimaGen (Director, Justin McGuinness, later explained the name describes them as 'of the theatre and image generation').

Using two projection screens, a shopping trolley, a banana, a fluorescent light and two actors, Jamie Harding and Kate Roxby, TheimaGen combined live performance with film and played between the two - literally.

Unreasonable Adults, who describe themselves as a hybrid-art collective, presented a non-verbal installation type interpretation with a range of props - including a banana - and the script realised with text-to-speech synthesis.

The two very contrasting interpretations divided the audience completely and resulted in some robust discussion and heated comment during the forum that followed, with a couple of people expressing their opinion that the writer's script had been dishonoured by UA's interpretation.  The writer, though, expressed admiration for both interpretations and reflected that each were equally valid.

Two in the audience who spoke strongly for the UA interpretation were brothers and actors David and Brendan Rock. When Chris Drummond pointed out to the audience that they were twins they  immediately cried out together, "But we're not in a bathtub!" Hilarious. Well, maybe you had to be there!

The heated and robust discussion continued down in the Bistro post-show with questions being raised about what is art and what is not.

The final night of GORGE '09 tonight sees Nicki Bloom's play, Footsoldiers, interpreted by Real Time Collaborators and Stone/Castro.  You'd be mad to miss it....