Robyn Orlin is managing to convince European audiences that she knows what she’s up to – but can she do the same at home?
Matthew Krouse After years of pussyfooting around the smaller venues of the Market Theatre complex, Robyn Orlin has finally arrived on the main stage of the place where she launched herself almost two decades ago. This week, her cast began previewing the Johannesburg run of her touring production called daddy, I’ve seen this piece six times before and I still don’t know why they’re hurting each other. Oh yes, Orlin makes up long titles for her performance pieces that don’t necessarily relate to anything specific, least of all to what she depicts. But that’s part of her mystique, spurring on continual debate about the meaning of what it is she does. If anything, she’s consistent in her claim that she’s whittling away the trappings that make of theatre an illusion. For this reason she exposes the audience to activity in the wings, has free-flowing conversations between performers and backstage workers and has her actors doing crude, special effects with hand-held lights.
“I’ve taken every single curtain down, I’ve completely stripped the space,” she says proudly, perched petitely on the mammoth, bare stage of the Market Theatre. In the background her troupe and technicians are enduring a harrowing first set-up. “I’m not sure if what I want to do is going to work,” she continues, “from a point of view of time and infrastructure … I’m not interested in mystery. I’m interested in showing everything being what it is. So I’m not that intimidated anymore by situations, because I know exactly how I’m working.” She’s trying to convince herself. With Orlin, you’ve got to read between the lines. The time and infrastructure she’s concerned about are those of the Market Theatre, recovering from its recent, sweeping staff retrenchments. As far as her aesthetic goes she claims she’s not interested in mystery, which is why she bares the uncouth corners of the theatre to all. But, of course, Orlin’s work is relentlessly self-mystifying. As the title of her latest work suggests, there’s more to everything she does than meets the eye. Perhaps the worst approach to the work, for those who may not have seen it or for those who may battle to understand it, is to list the acts of borderline outrage or atrocity that it is comprised of. It’s no use simply saying that household objects get chucked around while the performers carry on like hooligans for no apparent reason. That merely plays into Orlin’s pleasure at the fact that her work causes “conflict” and “controversy”, her two favourite responses. “There’s something very specific that interests me,” she confesses, “and that is showing the mechanisms of why things work – and people don’t want to see that.” Not true. It is precisely the bare-all moments, when Orlin’s characters start exposing their true selves, and the methods of their madness, that inevitably cause the biggest hoots.
In her latest work it’s the unexpected arrival of an outrageous character that literally overruns the entire play, that gets the audience fired up about the close proximity between theatre and the real world.
The entire premise of the work is based on a single hypothesis, described by Orlin as “what happens when the choreographer doesn’t arrive? “The show still goes on but how does it go on? How important is the choreographer? How important is it to work with real and unreal situations?” As usual, Orlin is spot on. On the surface, her new play (actually, a reworking of an old play) is only about the play itself. It appears to only be about a moment of confusion, when a troupe of performers arrive on stage to find that their choreographer has deserted them. A variation of the proverbial actors’ nightmare.
On a higher level, Orlin says that she, “really wanted to do a piece about Johannesburg. I was interested in how different people were trying to survive as artists in Johannesburg, and I posed a whole lot of problems to my group, which is the way I work.” The solution to the problems – namely the play itself – is taking Orlin and her Busby Berkeley troupe on a grand tour that has included some of the most challenging stages of the European performance scene. But for Orlin, no comfort zone is ever enough.
She could probably make a career elsewhere, but this week she’s brought live video, hundreds of metres of blank paper, dozens of disposable plates, mix-and-match underwear and garish coloured lights to one of the biggest theatres in town. All she needs now is the Johannesburg audience: the people the play is really all about.
daddy, I’ve seen this piece six times before and I still don’t know why they’re hurting each other runs at the Market Theatre on the Newtown Cultural Precinct until September 16. Tel: (011) 832 1641