PRODUCTION:
The Bougainville Photoplay Project
A slideshow with fireside chat

1. An eminent Australian orthopedic surgeon makes a series of trips to Bougainville (Papua New Guinea) during the 1960s, just as the era of Australia ’s colonial mandate is drawing to a close. The doctor is presented with dozens of crippled children and lepers; his operations allow many of these people to walk for the first time. 

2. The giant Panguna copper mine is established against the wishes of Bougainville’s traditional landowners. Environmental destruction is caused by the mine, and the struggle for Bougainville to become independent of PNG leads to a brutal civil war during which roughly one in ten of the island’s inhabitants die. 

3. An Australian academic begins fieldwork study of reconciliation ceremonies on Bougainville in the current period of post-war reconstruction. He carries with him a book of photographs.

Three narrative threads are delicately interwoven in an intimate, moving, and constantly surprising monologue performance from acclaimed performance group version 1.0. Combining field notes, oral history, slides, Super-8 film, video installation and the display of various artifacts, The Bougainville Photoplay Project grapples with the ethical, epistemological and practical dilemmas of making art and conducting research in post-colonial, post-conflict settings, particularly when the artist/researcher is a citizen of the former colonial power. This is politics and performance at its most personal. 

Season: 9-11 February, The National Multicultural Festival, The Courtyard Studio, Canberra Theatre Centre

5-6 September, LiveWorks Festival, Performance Space @ CarriageWorks

PRODUCTION CREDITS:

Artists:
Devised and performed by Paul Dwyer

Directed by David Williams

Video Artist Sean Bacon

Technical assistance Russell Emerson

CREATIVE DEVELOPMENT:
Hurt and damage
A performance investigation of domestic violence and therapy

“[In therapy environments with domestic abusers, experience] has led us […] to a position which is a difficult one for a psychotherapist – put simply it is that ‘you can never trust an abuser’. This is not to say that they are insincere (although they often are) but that the denial is simply too strong and insidious to assume that you are getting the truth.”
Adam Edward Jukes, Men Who Batter Women (1999), page x

For this developmental residency version 1.0 will examine the frightening intersections of the private home and the criminal justice system. Taking as source material transcripts of interviews with domestic violence offenders and their victims, Hurt and damage relocates version 1.0’s documentary performance practice from the public realm of politics into the wreckage of domestic relationships and the institutional practices that attempt to make sense of this wreckage. In the process version 1.0 will examine through performance both the nature of the hurt inflicted and the attempts to repair the damage.

Who are the perpetrators of this violence, and who are their victims? Who are their counsellors and therapists, and what are the agendas and strategies that animate this process? What are the politics of the personal in these intimate and abusive relationships, and what are the politics of representation with regards to such relationships? And finally, what are the representational limits of performance in re-presenting documentary material such as this? What is the place of theatre in the face of this hurt and damage? During this creative development, version 1.0 will address these questions in relation to the interview transcripts, laying the groundwork for further development of the work to a fully staged production, envisaged for early 2009.

Creative development residency: April 21- May 16, Performance Space @ Carriage Works

COLLABORATING ARTISTS:

Sean Bacon, Paul Dwyer, Stephen Klinder, Jane Phegan, Deborah Pollard, Christopher Ryan, Yana Taylor, Kym Vercoe, and David Williams.

Stage Manager: Katy Green