actor Sherilee Kahui wearing exciting blue eye makeup looks quizzically at the cameraHank of Thread presents (a smidge of) Pidge, a black com­e­dy about iden­ti­ty and the anx­i­ety that is inex­tri­ca­bly tied to it. The show fus­es clown­ing, song and dance to show the myr­i­ad ways that we are all simul­ta­ne­ous­ly the same and dif­fer­ent, ulti­mate­ly cel­e­brat­ing the absur­di­ty of it all.  

Writ­ten by Sher­ilee Kahui and Jim­my Sut­cliffe, direct­ed by Han­nah Clarke, the show has played in cities around Aus­tralia and New Zealand. Solo per­former Sher­ilee Kahui answers some of our ques­tions.

“The first provo­ca­tion for this work came when my co-cre­ators and I were pack­ing in my Master’s Major project The Review­ers at Anvil House in 2014. A pigeon had built the sad­dest nest you ever saw: lit­er­al­ly just a cou­ple of twigs on con­crete, and there was a lone­ly, soli­tary lit­tle egg lay­ing there. It was too much.

It start­ed us think­ing about the innate tragedy of exis­tence and how ridicu­lous­ly absurd the world is. When we thought of a show with the solo per­former being a pigeon, we start­ed think­ing about what it means to be an indi­vid­ual in the world, but also what it means to be a part of your com­mu­ni­ty, or flock. We had ini­tial­ly based the struc­ture of the piece on the stages of an exis­ten­tial cri­sis, but now it is more of an explo­ration of social anx­i­ety. Much relat­able awk­ward­ness, which the pigeon phys­i­cal­i­ty lends itself to per­fect­ly!  

This show seems to res­onate with peo­ple who are into out­sider art, regard­less of age. I had thought it was­n’t real­ly for your cis het­ero dudes, but then my friend’s boyfriend loved it in Mel­bourne. He felt the “slice of life” vignettes were true reflec­tions of how he expe­ri­ences the world. In say­ing that, the “WTF” com­ments have all come from that demo­graph­ic.  

I think it is a good show for peo­ple who think a lot about life and maybe get into their own heads a bit much. I think it helps to know that were are all expe­ri­enc­ing a vari­a­tion on the same theme, and that we aren’t alone, even though we are very much alone. I hope peo­ple leave feel­ing good about them­selves. Or maybe bet­ter. Even if it’s just a smidge? Ugh. sor­ry.

Ummm. I think the show is pret­ty coo..l… ( I hate myself).”