Aleister Crowley, occultist supreme, has a follower in Nisha Madhan in her guise as the high priestess of theatrical cultism and the darker arts and practices of cosmic enlightenment, ritual purification and audience manipulation.

We give our personal details at the door to an officious assistant who never breaks a smile. Form-filling takes a bit of time. The questions are diverse. But we are used to passing personal information across cyber-space. This form-filling is just more of the same, but without a keyboard. Actually, it’s a bit like customs and bio-security questionnaires we fill out when travelling. We are number coded.

Five at a time, we are sucked into a tubular inflatable canal. A waiting area. Industrial fans keep the tunnel full of air and drown out any opportunity for chit-chat. Our host stands patiently with a red clipboard and a warm smile at the entrance to another space, which we soon enter.

This other space is a small backstage area. Nisha, our host, wordlessly lures us into feelings of trust and relaxation. She makes careful and gentle eye-contact with each person. Compliance is easily established. Though not speaking, instructions are conveyed through the back-and-forth of post-it notes and a black marker pen.

There is the relief of warm fuzzy moments of spontaneous and sometimes witty exchanges between Nisha and individuals in the audience. Giggling punctuates the proceedings.

Three people remain detached in their facial expressions and body language. They’re holding off for the time being. The task of creating a communal atmosphere is both symbolised and realised through the shared action of stretching and placing white sticky tape on the floor, walls, doors and people to make a cobweb that simultaneously connects and divides the space, us and the sticky notes.

Suddenly, I am being looked at intently by our host. Through small indications with her eyes she motions me to open the doors that we had entered through. I do so. The larger theatre space, which before had been concealed by the inflatable tube that ushered our initial entrance, is now open to us. It has been transformed into a universe with glowing pale green planets and stars.

A voice invites us in. The performance area is lined with seats on three sides. We are asked to find the one that has our written questionnaire and identity code on it. The mood changes from informal to formal. Ritual takes over.

Nisha strips to a leotard featuring a black sequinned top and bare legs. A stainless-steel bowl with water in it lies in the centre of the space. Geometrical lines cover the floor, reminiscent of astrological markings. The purification ceremony begins.

From washing herself, then dipping her hair into the bowl and tracing the geometrical patterns on the floor with flicking water, Nisha orbits the area in an anticlockwise direction, rolling full-length along the ground. Water is spread everywhere. She meticulously and then furiously washes the space with her whole body. Getting faster and faster, the exertion is palpable. Head arched back in her horizontal whirling dervish action, she never takes her eyes off the bowl. It is the glowing silver navel of our dark mini-verse.

Exhausted, she stops and stands in cruciform. The assistant robes her in white and wraps her head in a black turban. Now the sermon. It is dramatic, authoritative and extended. We are told that “this house is breathing” and that “from bridges we see carnage of concrete and want to destroy it”. Like all seers with divine sight, in an oblique reference to global warming and biblical forecasts, we are warned that we will all need each other when the waters rise. Following her lead, we recite a creed in unison. It is a jumbled parody of cosmic homilies with Bacchanalian inflections: “Cosmic Will is the Garden of Holy Music”; “Failure is the Food of Drunkenness And must be performed with Joy and Beauty”; “Be ready to transcend into the Company of the King and Queen on the Great Stage.”

Our number tags are called out. One at a time we advance to the Priestess who offers us water or wine. We hand our personal questionnaire to the assistant who clips it to a pulley system. Another assistant positioned in a loft above our head dutifully takes the form and puts it through a paper shredder. The shredded information falls back down on our heads in a baptismal shower of redemption and liberation. We chant: “I am here. You are there. This is the moment. We are together.” We are instructed to leave the theatre. 

Is this the end? No. The foyer has now been transformed. Streamers, balloons, dance music, plastic cups, a cask of wine. It is a ‘Going Away’ party. We sign a large card that is given to Nisha when she emerges, now in street clothes. From cosmic heights and mystic initiations we descend into the mundane world. We are transitioned back to normality and relaxed interaction. A closure with connection.
___________________________________________________ 

I reflect on the experience. When writing reviews I normally don’t like just describing what I’ve seen from beginning to end. In this case, I find myself doing it. I am not sure why I feel compelled to recapture the performance in this way. It is fun reconnecting with the work through summarising it.

Theatre is a magical place. A place of transformation. But not only from the perspective of the performance, in theory, also for the onlooker. Nisha is making this point. Instead of leaving who you are at the door and then sitting anonymously in the dark, to gain entry we are required to give as much information about ourselves as possible so that we can be ‘processed’. Theatre is often a product that delivers itself wrapped and polished to aisles of detached onlookers. However, through humorous processes of interaction, Nisha makes us intimates. Detachment and isolation dissolve in a gentle alchemy of participation. 

The space is also transformed and mobilised. It goes through a number of persona and costume changes. This is an exercise in spatial anatomy and to analogies between architectural and human bodies. Being a dancer and choreographer, I like this. I like anything that theatre practitioners do that makes space more dynamic and extends it beyond the confines of a passive decorative shell or backdrop. 

So I see us start in an oral cavity with the sharing of personal data. We pass through an oesophagus that digests us. We find ourselves in a small stomach where we are introduced to the basic enzymes and nutrients of this particular body. A realm of consciousness follows, a brain space, a cavernous stomach of the mind where distances and heights are inaccessible and where thoughts have to be grounded, ground-up, purified. And finally, excretion into the outside world and a joyous effluence of fellowship and inebriation. 

This show, Titled (actually, I don’t get the title!), is organised and sleek. No messiness. Clean lines. Dissected space. Analytic precision. It is a networked space. Links, spokes, communication lines. It is a sequential space. Direct, directed and purpose-driven. The space performs. We perform. We co-perform with Nisha. It experiments with alternative theatrical formats and modes of performance. This work is absolutely necessary for new growth and originality to emerge. And for its provoking of stimulating thoughts and questions. 

It has been theorised that in the mists of antiquity, theatre grew out of pagan ritual. I see Nisha Madhan asking:
How are theatre and religious rites similar?
Might theatre as ritual have spiritual or consciousness-raising agendas?
When theatre clothes itself in the costume and role of ritual, what might it reveal about itself and its function?
How well does theatre bond people together in common cause and feeling?
What do we take with us into the outside world once the circle of the theatrical experience is broken?
How are we energised into action beyond the mere effects of edification and entertainment?
How might the theatrical mimicry and motions of enlightenment, connection and purification have deeper resonances and affect?

From the ceremonial to the sociality of a good night out amongst friendly strangers, what has been left out of this production is the true pain and horror of the sacrificial victim. 

Copyright © in the review belongs to the reviewer

“This is a ritualistic and fundamental exchange between You, Me and the Army of Administrators that run the world,” says Nisha Madhan in the media release for Titled.

In the programme, which we only get after it’s over, she quotes British artist, writer and founder of experimental performance company Forced Entertainment, Tim Etchells: “All that has to happen is that the direct lines of investment get drawn – between performers and task, between witnesses and performers.”[i]

Madhan then asks, “What if the unspoken contract between the performers and audience were a tangible thing?” and notes that Titled is the fourth performance experiment she has created to explore this question.[ii]

On arrival, consistent with Madhan’s preoccupation with bureaucracy (see endnote). we are given a questionnaire to complete which alerts us to ways were are labelled and define ourselves and stimulates concerns around privacy (you don’t have to complete it all). Elements of astrology are also included for us to respond to as we wish.

Enclosing 30-odd people in the vestibule between the BATS foyer and Propeller Stage entrance amid an ominous hum from within is the next ‘be with it as you will’ part of the experience. And from here on I must be oblique to avoid spoilers.

To say we are ‘piped in’ should not be seen as a warning to those averse to bagpipes, although the warning that those who suffer from claustrophobia should mention it to the staff remains valid. This second space is a bit larger, however.

Lines are drawn, spots are marked, ways are pointed and much labelling is done – mostly by Madhan and sometimes by audience members (if that’s what we are; inductees, perhaps, or conscripts?). The space is not conducive to all of us getting a clear view of what is going on, which may or may not be part of the point. I sense that our collective sense of intrigue, anticipation and interest is waning, although something I’ll call ‘the water test’ does add variety.

Harmonic convergence is a beautiful thing. In the context of the Performer-Audience contract it denotes a willingness to trust, participate, contribute and create. As a response to ‘Administrators who run the world’ it could be seen as mindless conformity. 

The third phase, in a much larger space, requires us to find our designated seats and be reunited with our questionnaires. Here the lines of an astrological chart with a bowl of water at the centre allows Madhan to literally let her hair down and go into a spin. This sequence also becomes predictable and goes on for a long time, leaving us as observers with little more to do than marvel at the performer’s ability to sustain all that effort.

Those steeped in astrology, or even astronomy, may find greater levels of meaning in it. Others may concur with the programme note, that astrology is “a flawed system, just like every other shitty bureaucratic system.”

The final phase involves a ritual that evokes either Holy Communion or the Jonestown Kool-Aid test of faith – take your pick. This too takes a long time. Depending on where you are on the list, then, there may be plenty of time to contemplate the significance of it all and/or consider the value of your ‘investment’.

The private ‘You and Me’ moment with Madhan, however, crowned with a shedding of all that bureaucracy, is special. Or dangerous. Take your pick.

Madhan writes of her “search for a fundamental contact, a fundamental exchange between You and Me” and admits to obsessing about her existence in relation to everything and everyone else. “Theatre is a place that is capable of creating this intense sensation of liveness and presence collectively,” she concludes. “This is the sensation I seek.”

Etchells concludes his ‘On Risk and Investment’ piece thus: “Thinking of investment we ask: when this performance finishes will it matter? Where will it matter? … I ask of each performance, will I carry this event in me tomorrow? Will it haunt me? Will it change you, will it change me, will it change things? If not it was a waste of time.”

This review proves I have carried Titled through to this morrow and, in a sense, been haunted by it. Perhaps my decades of contemplating the ‘You and Me’ relationship and implicit ‘Performer-Audience’ contract mitigates against my experiencing change, as such. My conclusion is that performance is a means to an end, and that attempting to create an “intense sensation of liveness and presence collectively” by using bureaucratic tropes to deconstruct the nature of the performance contract itself is somehow self-defeating and disengaging.

Others may feel differently and discover things that affect a change. I hope I’ve implied enough about Titled to allow you to choose whether or not to risk your investment of time and money. 

Copyright © in the review belongs to the reviewer