Disaster

Hannah Playhouse, Cnr Courtenay Place & Cambridge Terrace, Wellington

02/10/2024 - 06/10/2024

Production Details


MACHINA EX - ORIGINAL CREATORS
Text and Game Design: Clara Ehrenwerth
Direction and Set Design: Anan Fries
BINGE CULTURE - NZ REALISATION
Direction: Joel Baxendale
Production Design: Meg Rollandi

Created by machina eX
NZ version realised by Binge Culture


A theatre game about game theatre. Delusions of grandeur, anguish, and an invisible rat all play a part in this fully-participatory performance.

You are invited to explore interactive spaces, solve puzzles, and navigate your way through a story together. But this time something is amiss. The game is broken. The game is unfinished. The game’s designer is desperate. This was supposed to be her big break: Immersive, participatory, narrative, subversive— a meta monstrosity!

But however you look at it, the game is a disaster.

In DISASTER, go behind the scenes in the creation of a large-scale game and high-stakes story that questions how we deal with systems of control.

Binge Culture presents the international premiere of Berlin-based game theatre collective machina eX’s deftly-designed DISASTER. An exclusive immersive experience for up to 12 people at a time – book early to secure your time.

Disaster is made possible in Te Whanganui-a-Tara with the support of Creative New Zealand, and Goethe-Institut and the International Coproduction Fund.

Hannah Playhouse
2 – 6 October 2024
6pm + 7:30pm Wednesday – Saturday
3pm + 4:30pm Sunday


MACHINA EX - ORIGINAL CREATORS
Text and Game Design: Clara Ehrenwerth
Direction and Set Design: Anan Fries
Technical Direction and Programming: Lasse Marburg
Dramaturgy and Game Design: Yves Regenass
Music and Sound Design: Malu Peeters
Electronics and Programming: Sebastian Arnd
Lighting Consultation: Eva G. Alonso

BINGE CULTURE - NZ REALISATION
Direction: Joel Baxendale
Production Design: Meg Rollandi
Technical Recreation and Operation: Oliver Devlin
Dramaturgy: Ralph Upton
Sound Design and Technical Operation: Oliver Devlin
Programming: Digl Dixon
Light Design: Tom Smith
Producer: Eleanor Strathern
Production Manager: Sharon Wang
Cast: Karin McCracken and Arlo Gibson


Promenade , Theatre ,


60 minutes

Is it profound or just a game? Either way it’s absorbing.

Review by John Smythe 03rd Oct 2024

Since the Hannah Playhouse became a flexible performance space again, I have been eager to experience a show there that makes the most of it – and Binge Culture’s Disaster delivers.

It reminds me of the BATS STAB seasons we used to get at this time of year, before the time of Covid. Directed by Joel Baxendale, it’s vintage Binge Culture in concept, albeit imported and adapted for NZ (Dramaturgy by Ralph Upton) from Berlin’s machina eX, who premiered it in 2018.

“A theatre game about game theatre,” the promotion material tells us. “Delusions of grandeur, anguish, and an invisible rat all play a part in this fully-participatory performance.”

Only 12 audience members attend each … well, not sitting, because we are on our feet and moving about throughout, except for the penultimate ‘round table’ interlude. We explore, discover and, most importantly, solve problems as a slowly bonding team. Audience participation works best when something ‘real’ is at stake, and so it is with Disaster. Without our input, the ‘story’ cannot progress.

The Production Designer, Meg Rollandi, has gutted the auditorium and created an evocative series of discrete spaces through which we travel as the central story – and the unresolved story of its making – evolve. Tom Smith’s lighting and Oliver Devlin’s sound design ensure each space is dynamic. Devlin is also credited with Technical Recreation and Operation, and Technical Operation: a task that is more interactive than usual.

Our first encounter with Hugo Hovel (Arlo Gibson) is a time-sensitive life-and-death situation in a dark and dingy storeroom. To save him, we need to find the crucial clues amid a clutter of books, boxes, files and vials on metal shelves, a cluster of cuttings on a notice board … A modern computer keyboard and a retro continuous stationary printer, colour-coded electrical cords and a mysterious double-helix may or may not help … A spooky voice from the ether (Karin McCracken) may or may not be on our side. Only by bringing light to the darkness will we foil a dastardly plan for world domination.

Mission accomplished, we find ourselves in the brightly coloured bedroom of 8 year-old Hugo – a science enthusiast. He needs help with an experiment and seeks help from Paula the invisible rat. Despite being able to help him, we are also invisible to Hugo.

Here’s where matters get meta, with Karen intervening in a directorial role to circumvent a long monologue and deal with Arlo’s ‘actor processing’ issues by adopting the role of Hugo’s father. The game being played here is that the production itself is a disaster, but of course this flip to the underside adds a new dimension of entertainment.

Karen/Dad’s response to young Hugo’s claim that he’s tided his things away, recurs more than once and gives us pause for thought: “Away just means somewhere else. Nothing really goes away.”

A leap over 25 years finds Hugo wracked with anxiety over the fate of his secret discovery, and the problem to solve here is whether it’s paranoia in the wake of endless harassment or a real and present danger. Are the “delusions of grandeur” Hugo’s or those seeking world domination by whatever means necessary? We take to the round table and work in pairs to respond to phoned-in messages and instructions …

And ancient Hugo’s final journey is to a forest where we help to liberate Paula the invisible rat. And here’s where I see more disasters looming: the forest is pine trees – wilding pines? – and surely Paula will be a predator! The story may be finished but nothing really comes to an end.

The Green Room notice board offers insights into the provenance of Disaster, suggesting a dysfunctional process that may or may not be an allegory for … whatever we choose it to be. Have we experienced something profound or is it just a game? Either way it’s absorbing.

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