you're not the boss of me: ultimate fighting

In recent times, the cage has been used to contain and separate bare knuckled punch merchants as each attempts to demolish the other before a bloodthirsty audience. But the theatre also is often an arena within which a bloody battle occurs; the difference being that this same battle is less actual and more psychodramatic. Two performers, one male, one female, crouch back to back in one corner of a vicious red cage. The audience is situated either side of the cage, enabling us to watch the action and ourselves simultaneously. It is an accusatory configuration; one which makes the audience complicit in the Bonka game that unfolds before us. The gentle and somewhat submissive little boy stands at attention and sometimes salutes. He so wants to be Captain Bonka, but is prevented from doing so by a diminutive yet dictatorial little girl.

The battle between these two children continues, but the world each inhabits is the insular world of the playground. Menacing chains and other assorted scratching rattles in the distance, and there is reference to a window from which the two children claim to see Tasmania. But each remains trapped within the confines of a cage that at once contains them, but also, protects both from an unseen manifestation of adulthood that may be physical, but might also be representational. Growing up ain't easy, and one great attraction of the theatre is its presentation of a space within which the Child in us all can recapitulate. Adults, or the adult world, often hinder this investigation. Thus the adult presence in this play and a refusal by the two children to readily explore its possibilities.

Characteristically though, the lights dim and a third, unseen performer wistfully chants Baa Baa Black Sheep before disappearing out the box office door. Time has passed and when next we meet the children, each has matured. Gone is the baby-talk of the Bonka game, replaced by sombre musings upon an unhappy existence and failed attempts at recapturing the incandescent playfulness of an innocent childhood. Like much theatre in Melbourne at the moment, a surrealist impulse underscores You're not the Boss of me. This show is a determined effort to break away from the tedious confines of a realism that has thankfully run its course. Appropriately, this desire for departure is also reflected in the cage that contains the performance. Exploring the surrealist world of dream, myth, memory and the dark impulse of the unconscious mind is no easy task. The imagination has a language all of its own, one that often defies conventional dramatic structures. Consequently, dialogue can imprison writers, preventing each from saying what in the visual arts, an image readily articulates. Gertrude Stein was aware of this, and so too were innovators of Image theatre such as Richard Foreman. Might I suggest that Natasha Jacobs check these two writers out. You're not the Boss of me is an entertaining if somewhat underdeveloped script, one heading straight for the American transcendental heart.

You're not the Boss of me

Writer: Natasha Jacobs

Director: Adam J. A. Cass

Performers: Sam Hall & Natasha Jacobs

Light: Richard Vabre & Kieran Smith

Sound: Brooke Taylor

Design: Luke Stokes

Costume: Camilla Mc Kewen

Production Manager: Elise Barton

June 30 - July 11, La Mama, Melb.