Slowly, a washerwoman's frilly cap emerges from a cotton laundry bag. There are several other cotton bags on stage, for this scene is set in an archaic laundry of the imagination. 2 further cotton carriers of dirty linen pulsate and purr, then gravitate and whirr as each of the 3 bags engage in an act of germination. Soon, 3 women stand tall; their legs, feet and abdomen preserved within 3 draw-stringed bags. With upper bodies bathed in muslin gowns and delicate, 17th century lace, a door belonging to a 20th century clothes dryer positioned centre stage is slammed shut. Now electric and alive, the repetitions and repeats, the deep sorrow and exquisite joy that characterises existence spins into being. The cycle of life begins and Care Instructions is born.
Just as there is life in birth, there is also death in life. And the 1st of 3 washerwomen is soon strewn across silent bags of immobilised linen. Her 2 companions then remove from the moody spin dryer technicolour ties and puffy red bra, brown satin slips and slingshot g-strings that are then arranged as viscera and entrails along the 1st washerwoman's slumbering length. There occurs the stonewashed cycle of the Gertrude Steinesque; expressed in chants, ritualistic songs, and unnerving nursery rhymes that hint at, yet obscure, some dastardly feminine deed. A difficult task for a director is this uncompromising text. Yet a brave stance for a writer who intuitively senses that fiction's hidden truths can only be accurately expressed in the rhythm and cadence of a text without index. Horizontal, sublime, the director's images and the writer's words entwine in the gut instinct of 3 performers mystified yet enthralled by the mysterious challenge this performance presents. If communicating to an audience was as simple as flicking a cherry coloured g-string from 1 side of the Carlton Courthouse to the other, then we'd all be in that underwear up to our armpits. The trick in this play has been to leave an impression. To somehow make that which is intangible within the feminine psyche, clear and defined. As Kristeva famously postulated, perhaps this can only be expressed as something that resides at the level of sensation. Or in other words, a feeling...
In Care Instructions, this enigmatic femininity is at once iconoclastic and divine. In contrasting scenes of laundromat ritual underscored by High Modern, self consciously scratched violin and thumping Trance music, this femininity is both puritanical and captivated by the wilderness that beckons at the back of a wild mind. It is also violent and insightful; mystical, and quite possibly obsessed with a self-righteous sense of being unfairly maligned. Above all, it is a femininity characterised by a meditative joy obtained via the ritualistic tasks of the laundry. Fluffing and folding sheets or finding a quiet and optimistic order in the chaotic puzzle of 30 separate pairs of recalcitrant socks; then expressing this optimism via the multilayered tale that is language lingering in this laundry of the mellifluous female imagination. An imagination that beckons toward yet sometimes bewilders the bricks and mortar of the average male mind.
Care Instructions
(An Aphids Production)
Writer: Cynthia Troup
Director: Margaret Cameron
Performers: Jane Bayly, Liz Jones
& Caroline Lee
Music: David Young
Lighting: Danny Pettingill
Stage Management: Amanda Prado
Video: Eugene Schlusser
Photography: Yatzek
La Mama, Melb., Nov. 19 - 29
*images by Yatzek
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