Review by Nadia Free­man

Read­ing the cues of human emo­tion is an inher­ent trait that we take for gran­ted. Some of us view emo­tion dif­fer­ently from oth­ers or can find it more chal­len­ging. Access, presents an oppor­tun­ity to ana­lyse this form of human expres­sion more closely.

After col­lect­ing our tick­ets we are asked to wait out­side Te Aua­ha Gal­lery. Inside the gal­lery are two chairs facing each oth­er about two metres apart inside a white square taped on the floor. The instruc­tions are straight­for­ward. The per­former is to take one chair and the audi­ence is invited to take the oth­er if and when they want. Once an audi­ence mem­ber sits in the seat, they may select an emo­tion from one of six. The per­former will then enact that emo­tion. The per­form­ance of the emo­tion will con­tin­ue until the audi­ence mem­ber rises from the chair, leav­ing the seat open for anoth­er per­son to hop in should they want to.

From this point, the per­form­ance slips into the hand of the audi­ence e.g. how much we choose to par­ti­cip­ate and how we inter­act with the per­former is key. The stage is set up so that we can walk around the per­form­ance 360 degrees allow­ing the audi­ence to watch not only the per­former but the audi­ence mem­ber that has chosen to take the hot seat as well as the rest of us in the room. 

It is an insight­ful look into emo­tion and how we respond. As empath­et­ic beings, it is not often that we get to be voyeurs to emo­tion. This per­form­ance allows us to stand a little sep­ar­ated from our usu­al com­pas­sion­ate response, but even so, some prim­al responses are eli­cited. For instance, I spot­ted some nuances that the audi­ence mem­bers seated oppos­ite could­n’t help but dis­play. Like how nat­ur­al it is to smile when someone oppos­ite us is happy, one of the very first things we as humans learn in beha­viour mim­ick­ing and there­fore, how chal­len­ging it can be for a per­former to main­tain this emo­tion­al rep­res­ent­a­tion if it is not reflec­ted back by the per­son they are enga­ging with. Or the nuanced indic­at­ors of our audi­ence mem­bers even when try­ing to remain com­posed through the ten­sion of muscles and hands squeez­ing chairs. 

I myself found it inter­est­ing how the indic­at­ors of Aggres­sion have many sim­il­ar­it­ies to Lust and left won­der­ing how oth­er emo­tions out­side of the six we were able to select may have been rep­res­en­ted by our per­former, par­tic­u­larly more pos­it­ive ones since many in the selec­tion were neg­at­ive.

I am curi­ous to see where the team of Ham­ish Annan, Katie Burson and Rob Byrne take this per­form­ance in the future. Access has two more show­ings on Fri­day the 23rd and Sat­urday the 25th at 7pm.