In Saraid Cameron’s solo show Drowning in Milk, currently at BATS after playing at the Auckland Fringe earlier this year, she tells us stories about her life, in particular how her life has been affected by racism and sexism. Her stated goal, magnificently achieved, is to create a space for the audience to varyingly understand and/or relate to the stories she tells, letting them serve as a window into or a mirror for the experience of life as a South Asian woman.

There’s no specific plot, but the sequence of anecdotes and monologues build up a bond between Cameron and her audience as she shares stories of encounters with people being racist and sexist that are as horrible as they are ridiculous, eliciting shudders and laughs with equal frequency. 

This bond is further strengthened by the setting in BATS’ tiny Studio theatre, set up as a bar tended by Cameron. With scattered stools and chairs instead of a seating block, even the most distant are little more than a couple metres away from the performer. Not only is there nowhere for anyone to hide, there is nothing but the bar, which she uses at many points to establish a visual separation between performer and audience.  

As a result, the show has a stripped-down theatrical quality, making Cameron appear both elevated above and equal to the audience. This ambiguity is mirrored in the way that the monologue is ‘theatrical’, largely scripted and planned but also ‘natural’, autobiographical, partially improvised and performed more like a serious conversation than a theatrical monologue.

It’s also played with by the cocktails that Cameron makes for the audience throughout the performance. The action of making the drinks is straightforward and unfaked, furthering the naturalism of the play. Cameron’s status as bartender gives her power, as the one making the drinks, while also creating intimacy with the audience through the action of giving the drinks to them.

This atmosphere of closeness and intimacy enables the open human communication on Cameron’s part that is the centre of the performance. In doing so, this show expresses how the experience of living with racism and with sexism gets tangled up in the rest of life; how it feels to have to deal at the same time with being a human and with not being treated like one.

For its expression of this experience, and the astonishing theatrical skill with which it does so, Drowning in Milk is a piece that Wellington is lucky to have the opportunity to see.

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