I keep falling in and out of myself... just as I fell out of paradise...
Deborah Levy
Eliza
Steamworks Arts Productions
Eliza is a contemporary dance/theatre work combining elements of digital imagery, puppetry, and contemporary choreography, set to an evocative 'live' sound score.
Inspired by the stories and subsequent mythologies of real life figures such as the mysterious Eliza Fraser (who disappeared and later re-appeared, the sole survivor of a tragic shipwreck and the subsequent murder of her husband with the rest of the crew in far North Queensland) through to the enigmatic Lindy Chamberlain (whose newborn was taken by a dingo in central Australia). Their stance appears one of guilt by omission, where their silences speak as loudly as their actual voices. As with films such as the eerie classic Picnic at Hanging Rock (again loosely based on a real story), the landscape ultimately silences all, where we will never know what really happened, other than that something did happen out there?
Some say the Australian landscape can never be innocent, that it is a natural environment that is inhospitable to freedom. In deliberately referencing the tradition of Australian gothic horror films, the landscape is cast as a potentially malevolent and hostile character. The dominant sense is of the unknown and the unknowable, and the hidden, a landscape full of fearful secrets and unheard voices. The work is deliberately structured as a mystery, where we the audience are led to ask ourselves, what crime has she committed? What has she done?
The central character is a woman who sits alone at a table. She is waiting, she is waiting to stand and speak. She is on trial for a crime we do not as yet know. She remembers a journey, the journey of her story, of what happened to her. She begins to trace the map of this journey onto the table.. The table begins to rock, water cascades from a light fitting, she is shipwrecked, plunged into an ocean, where she will either sink or swim. She is fighting for her life.
- Sally Richardson, Director/Devisor
Sally Richardson Director/Devisor Zoe Atkinson Production Design Ashley de Prazer Vision Design Kingsley Reeve Sound Design Philip Mitchell Puppetry Director Shannon Bott Dramaturg Chrissie Parrott Choreographer Danielle Micich Choreographer Paea Leach Choreographer Shona Erskine Performer Jacob Lehrer Performer Mayuka Juber Singer