Having cut my teeth on Melbourne's performance poetry scene of the late 80's, it was a pleasure to experience its return at La Mama.
Contrabassist Nick Tsiavos trundles forth into a set comprised of painted cardboard, one representing an inner-urban street scene. Constrained within La Mama's confines, his double bass is the elephant in the room. Tsiavos wrestles with his instrument in a self-consciously awkward dance. He plucks at its strings with his fingers, then taps at the same with his bow. Pretty soon, poet Angela Costi arrives on stage spieling a set of predetermined and obsessive numbers both into and beyond a limp telephone receiver. She's trying to remember a phone number. Whether a contact for a lost lover or an isolated and slightly crazed desire to use numericals for soothing a troubled mind, the precise number Costi wants to articulate eludes her. Ain't it always the same ? The illusion is that desperate moments in a person's life are eventually smoothed over, and that everything will be alright. Of course, the bitter actuality is that when needed most, words, even when expressed as numerical patterns, fail to connect us to the people in our lives that matter most.
This same sense of language's absurd irrationality is not lost on diehard poet PO. As usual, he loves being the centre of attention. But here, PO is forced to work with 2 female poets, a wandering minstrel and a director-dramaturg who is concerned with integrating these same elements into a cohesive whole. Given his chance, PO treads the board from left to right, revealing in his deceptively simple words strange disjunctions between a love for pizza and his own idiosyncratic brand of urban mathematics. As a unique performer of his own work PO is constantly searching for the dry irony of life as it occurs within inner city Melbourne. Even when relegated to a rear wall to cool his heels as an apparent street beggar, he cannot help but find humour and political impact in the plight of the homeless. Various cardboard signs, positioned so as to be aimed at well-heeled passers-by, extrapolate upon the values implicit in the decision to accept poverty as a characteristic of the poet's life. Pummeled by the pressures of high density living in Melbourne 2009, a poet has to find conviction in his or her own oeuvre, or they may as well just fade away...
Up until this point Nick Tsiavos' double bass has been utilised as an integrated sound device within this performance. Given a solo moment though, the double bass shines. It's a repeating pattern of finger plucking and bow-diddling, one leaving the impression that this inanimate object comprised of maple and cat-gut has a poetic sensibility of its own. And 'Sensibility' is the operative word when it comes to Helena Spyrou's contribution. Whether situated on a park bench or looking out of a commission-flat window, Spyrou's words search for the intersection between her own feelings, and her observations of daily life. That this intersection can occur via the medium of language is a testimony to the delicacy of her writing, and the demands this imposes upon the poet's craft. Emotion, economy, intellectual breadth and impact... The next time you want to explain to someone how it is you actually feel, try compressing the above into eight lines or less. This is the poet's craft, one all too often a victim of its own deceptive simplicity. Brought together as a cohesive force by director Christian Leavesley, Tone Silence Speak was a reminder that poetry has always had an important oral tradition, one that will continue to find expression in its depictions of life on the street.
Tone Silence Speak
Director: Christian Leavesley
Poets: Helena Spryou, PO & Angela Costi
Contrabassist: Nick Tsiavos
Stage Manager & Light: Phoenix Bard
La Mama, Melb. October 18-20
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