Pro­duced by ‘Woman’s Move’ from Switzer­land and co-direct­ed by chore­o­g­ra­phers Elsa Cou­vreur and Iona D’Annunzio. The Sense­mak­er starts as a clever and under­stat­ed com­e­dy that uses dance, move­ment and sound as its main devices. The­atre like this is at its best when min­i­mal and per­fect­ly timed, which is a key strength of The Sense­mak­er.

The Fringe pro­gramme describes the piece as a ‘dystopi­an bat­tle between a woman and an answer­ing machine.’

We have all had our patience test­ed when on hold, or jump­ing hoops of a bureau­crat­ic sys­tem. The wait­ing, the repet­i­tive instruc­tions and music, the back and for­wards between dif­fer­ent depart­ments, the non­sen­si­cal automa­tion, the feel­ing of not get­ting any­where and just as you are about to give up, a small moment of progress.

This show beau­ti­ful­ly finds the light-heart­ed com­e­dy of this expe­ri­ence we all know and takes it to a sur­re­al­ist realm. The pro­tag­o­nist is com­mit­ted to hav­ing their request acknowl­edged by the mys­tery ser­vice. They remain resilient against every hur­dle and we the audi­ence become invest­ed in this with them expe­ri­enc­ing all the joy of their suc­cess and despair when they are chal­lenged.

The piece remind­ed me of all the times we have to exer­cise per­sis­tence in our lives and per­haps go beyond what may be nec­es­sary to prove our­selves. The metaphor of the show brings out the anguish of job inter­views, audi­tions, nav­i­gat­ing health sys­tems and leg­isla­tive process­es and brings to light the vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty we are exposed to when our needs place pow­er in some­thing out­side our­selves. This show makes us ask the ques­tion ‘when is it enough?’ ‘when is it too much?’ and how easy it is to go beyond what we are com­fort­able with once we feel we have already invest­ed so much of our­selves in an out­come.

Myself and my friends were moved from laugh­ter to tears as the show mas­ter­ful­ly invit­ed us to be a part of the jour­ney and at times gave us the unease of feel­ing com­plic­it in the pro­tag­o­nist’s hurt.

It is inno­v­a­tive the­atre like this that reminds me why I go to see inde­pen­dent artists, so that we might see anoth­er way to expe­ri­ence the world. I think being on hold will nev­er be the same again.