“Maybe they’re our cast or maybe not – the audience is constantly asking the question of what is and isn’t staged.” | NickdMiller risingmelbourne rising2020
For drama, character and sheer weirdness, it’s hard to beat people-watching in a public square. There is choreography: the unplanned weaving of unrelated bodies through the space. There is conflict and fear, and the navigation of rules laid down by society, government and architecture.Artist Sophia Brous and cast members rehearsing The Invisible Opera.
She co-created the piece with artist Lara Thoms, director Samara Hersch and American choreographer Faye Driscoll. Brous spent hours, even days, sitting in Federation Square, Union Square in New York, and the centre of Graz, Austria’s second biggest city – jotting into her notebook the actions and scenes, the interactions and microagressions, building a “taxonomy” of the squares’ life, she says.
“Or overhearing a physicist being approached by a Christian evangelist telling him Jesus will save him, and he stopped and explained to her the Big Bang. Every day, public squares are these natural menageries of all things. We see flamboyance and great beauty and we also see inequality and cruelty ... and the show is trying to explore all those things.
“Maybe they’re our cast or maybe not – the audience is constantly asking the question of what is and isn’t staged.”