Apocalypse Theatre Company’s ASYLUM

Rapid-response theatre flies in the face of theatrical tradition, but it shouldn’t always be like that. The average play takes approximately two years to reach the stage, by which time any topicality it may have had initially has long-since passed. Enter rapid-response theatre, where plays appear on stage mere weeks after being pitched or commissioned. You might remember Hollywood Ending at Griffin in November 2012; where that project took nine weeks to journey from concept to the stage, Asylum – a twenty-four-play cyclical response to the federal government’s Operation Sovereign Borders – appears approximately four weeks after pitching. The plays here are raw, unsentimental, unflinching; visceral. Under the artistic direction of Dino Dimitriadis, Apocalypse Theatre Company hosts 97 artists in a fearless and challenging exploration of what it means to seek asylum, what it means to come to Australia by boat, how it affects us – personally, as a community.

The collector: Two Peas' Jennifer Forever

Jennifer Forever, playing at the Old 505 theatre space as part of the Sydney Fringe Festival, is not an easy show to watch. The story of an unnamed Man and Girl, it delves into the grey area of right and wrong, goodness and badness, societal definitions and behavioural quirks, and asks where we draw the line between tasteful and perversion?

Eggshells: Old 505's Hilt

Jane Bodie’s Hilt is a play about connections made and lost, about home – defining what it is, and finding our way back there; it’s about doing the ‘right’ thing insofar as we are able to, and trying not to regret the decisions and actions we make. It asks just how much are we willing to sacrifice to live ‘the dream’?

Playing at the Old 505 Theatre, Hilt was (we are told) written out of a disassociation with urban living and apartments in particular, the disconnection and compartmentalisation of life – like living in milk crates stacked on top of each other – is very much apparent in Bodie’s play, from the frequent muffled interruptions by the neighbours through eggshell-thin walls, to the conversations Kate and Adam share over breakfast in the middle of the play.