Urban Theatre Projects, Mechanix photo Harley Stumm |
On the way to liberation there are entertainments both raw and virtuosic, tense moments between individuals and between groups, the display of bizarre machines, the creation of light sculptures, and collective dance and drumming (bringing a new meaning to the term ‘drum machine’). The whole is framed by the intense musical compositions (with some fine guitar and sax) of Liberty Kerr and Reza Achman, Simon Wise’s dramatic interplay of ambient and performer-manipulated light and co-director Joey Ruigrok van der Wervens’ magical mastery of the machinery around which Mechanix is built (and which he constructed with his collaborators). With van der Werven, UTP Artistic Director Alicia Talbot and movement director Lee Wilson have transformed a cast of some 30 young performers into a pretty much coherent and confident team. Anything seems possible in Mechanix, found materials become sculptures, machines and musical instruments, artforms intersect and, thanks to some very lateral resourcefulness and a great sense of communality, a depressed horizontal world rises up with its makers into a tower of light.
Urban Theatre Projects, Mechanix, Old Town Plaza, Bankstown, Sydney, April 2-12
RealTime issue #55 June-July 2003 pg. 46
© Keith Gallasch; for permission to reproduce apply to [email protected]