An adapt­a­tion of Shakespeare’s nar­rat­ive poem “The rape of Lucrece” by Binge Cul­ture Col­lect­ive. It’s a visual+audio install­a­tion at the Toi Poneke Gal­lery plus a live per­form­ance on Thursday and Fri­day even­ings.  Fiona McNamara’s dir­ect­or’s note states “This pro­duc­tion of Shakespeare’s poem claims the text, writ­ten by a man in a pat­ri­arch­al soci­ety, as a woman’s story and invest­ig­ates what hap­pens to per­form­ance and to an audi­ence when the female body is present and the male body is absent.”

The per­form­ance con­cen­trates on the rape sec­tion of the poem. (End­ing it at this point feels like the story is incom­plete. Fund­ing for the next rounds please Cre­at­ive New Zea­l­and.) The two female per­formers, Ally Gar­rett and Iso­bel MacKin­non, share the text of the poem between them. They are nar­rat­or and char­ac­ter both.  The audi­ence sits around them as they per­form, so as we watch the per­formers we also watch each oth­er.

It’s taken me a while to fig­ure out how I felt about this work. Is it pos­sible to like a work that is based around a despic­able act? The lush­ness and cel­eb­rat­ory vibe of the videos, con­trasts with the rape ‘jokes’ played via a sea­shell. The text is men­acing and the per­form­ance is gentle.  (Ini­tially I thought it was under­played but now I think it was very clev­erly done. It allows the audi­ence to feel Lucre­ce’s hor­ror and dis­be­lief. )  The sta­ging and per­form­ances were sup­por­ted by a sound­scape that was well craf­ted. (The chat­ter of people, the tweet­ing of birds, the sound of water, tinny voices from head­phones, a mix­ture of nat­ur­al and elec­tron­ic­ally enhanced voice. Nice work team.)

The ques­tion posed in the dir­ect­or’s note was answered on open­ing night dur­ing a lively dis­cus­sion. What hap­pens is this: 1. the audi­ence want to see the male/female dynam­ic as per­formed by two women fur­ther sub­ver­ted; 2. the audi­ence acknow­ledges the absent ele­ment (rape hap­pens to men as well); 3. the audi­ence will­ingly responds to the invit­a­tion to dis­cuss by not want­ing it to stop.

Take a friend then go out to din­ner.

Lucrece: An Adapt­a­tion of Shakespeare’s the Rape of Lucrece
Toi Poneke Gal­lery, 61 Abel Smith Street.
Exhib­i­tion: on until Sat­urday 12 May 2012, 10am-8pm week­days, 10am – 4pm week­ends
Live Per­form­ances: Thursday and Fri­day even­ings, 4, 10, 11 May, 6:30pm
Entry by koha. Book­ings: bookforlucrece@gmail.com