Verdict: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (reviewed Wednesday 4 September).
Opening night of Made in Sydney Hub featured a double billing of two outstanding shows on the Sydney Fringe Festival program: Hillsong Boy and Voices of Joan.
Both shows explore religion from unique perspectives.
Hillsong Boy
Hillsong Boy, created and performed by Scott Parker, is a semi-autobiographical account of his journey as a member of the controversial church, from his grooming at age 13 to exile at age 32. During those 19 years, Parker endured the now banned practice of conversion therapy and other extreme rituals.
Parker leads us into the evangelical pull of the church with an opening song, noting that ‘music has the power to enter without permission.’ For a good duration of the performance, we believe he is genuinely happy, with a charismatic persona as he fields hard-hitting questions from a TV journalist. But there is an undeniable self-consciousness in his mannerisms, masking his conflicted state of mind about being a closeted queer in an environment obsessed with masking its own obsession with seduction, sin and abuse.
Parker goes beyond the overarching theme of institutional abuse / corruption to look deeper at how the experience left its scars on his psyche and mental health, and what it means to finally have the words to express the underlying toxic environment he was in: a cult.
Hillsong Boy is playing at Made in Sydney – PACT Centre for Emerging Artists till 14 September. For tickets and showtimes click here.
Credits:
- Scott Parker – Creator/Performer
- Felicity Nicol – Creator/Director
- Robbi James – Producer
- Kathryn Roberts Parker – Composer and Sound Designer
- Saint Clair – Lighting Designer
Voices of Joan
Voices of Joan created and performed by Newcastle local Janie Gibson is an exploration of the life, persecution and trial of St Joan of Arc, a radical feminist in her day, with a legacy that still resonates against the backdrop of misogyny and violence against women.
The show is a reiteration of its ongoing evolution in various theatre spaces; the performance she gave at Brand X / Flying Nun left us in tears.
PACT Theatre in Erskineville allows the show to take on grander proportions; there’s more disturbing video projections, strobe lighting, sound effects and more to captivate the audience’s attention.
A lot of the historical detail that was in the Flying Nun production is now enshrouded in the crackly audio hissing from the retro boombox, leaving Gibson free to fully immerse herself in the characters with emphatic satirical force.
The overarching judge presiding over Joan’s case is presented as a hunchback figure wobbling in high heels, barely making it up and down the stairs without tripping on his robe and breaking his neck. Gibson uses elevated seating and robotic audio distortion to evoke the sense of terror and pure evil that existed in the hearts of men who purported themselves to be serving under the ‘Church of God.’
Heinrich Kramer who wrote Hammer of the Witches, a rant about witchcraft which led to the burning of hundreds of thousands of innocent women, is satirised with a Trump-esque red baseball cap and a bit of padding in his leopard print panties. Gibson emasculates Kramer’s ridiculous and radical anti-women ideology such as ‘women are responsible for making it go up and down’, and that ‘if it goes missing – and many are missing! – blame a woman’. A wobbly giant penis is then brought out reverently from an illuminated suitcase and handed to its rightful owner.
Behind these sight gags Gibson strips bare to reveal that Joan of Arc was ultimately an innocent teenage girl following her calling, persecuted for her actions, and sacrificed to the enemy in the most shockingly brutal of ways. We’re not in the 1400s anymore, but violence, vitriol, abuse and institutional gaslighting continues in all parts of the world as a means of punishment and control.
Gibson creates powerful, immersive theatre with audience engagement, such as swapping shirts with audience members and an invitation to re-create the bonfire of Joan’s final, agonising moments. We cannot sit back comfortably and watch, we must participate.
Highly recommend seeing this show more than once; each viewing is a new revelation.
Voices of Joan is playing at Made in Sydney – PACT Centre for Emerging Artists till 14 September. For tickets and showtimes click here.
Credits:
- Performer & Creator – Janie Gibson
- Director and Co-Creator – Anu Almagro
- Composer – Liesl Pieterse
- Lighting Design – Fausto Brusamolino
- Dramaturgy – Emilie Collyer
- Additional Composers – Xani Kolac and Toecutter