Crisis Actor

Wednesday 27 – Friday 29 August | 7.30pm – 8.45pm
Saturday 30 August | 1pm – 2.15pm, 7.30pm – 8.45pm
Sunday 31 August | 5pm – 6.15pm

Tactile Tour and Audio Describer Guides
Thu 28 August, 7.30pm
Tactile Tour will commence 1 hour prior
Available on request – book by Wednesday 20 August

Describer guides available for meet and greet on arrival and one-on-one live descriptions of the performance

Post-show Artist Talk: Thursday 28 August for all ticket holders

If you arrive late, you may not be admitted until a suitable break

60 – 75 minutes

Low light levels

Dynamic sounds – loud or sudden noises

Loud music or sound or a sustained period

Mature themes

Crisis Actor contains coarse language, adult themes and triggering content including fictionalised themes of crisis, catastrophe, and possible themes of death, gender and racial oppression, and systemic violence. It contains possible stylised physical and verbal violence utilising digital avatars, gore and blood. The work contains haze, and possible smoke effects, high pitched frequencies, loud music and effects, sudden loud noises, low, flashing and abrupt lighting changes, lights that black out and change in colour and intensity.

The term Crisis Actor traditionally refers to an actor hired to play-act a victim for simulated disaster training. Of late, this meaning has been co-opted by the alt-right to accuse real victims of systemic and state violence of faking their distress.

In Crisis Actor we begin to imagine how the seeds of this term might mutate further. In a world of escalating disaster and technology-fuelled reality collapse, how will we watch and feel for others? In some ways, this future already blinks into our strange present in the culture of spectacle that requires minoritised bodies to compete for our attention amidst crisis. Meanwhile, most of us live in societies where memory, empathy and belief are increasingly digital playthings of the powerful.

In our show, we enter into this schism with speculative, playful critique. As the aesthetics of authenticity and entertainment consume each other, and distraction politics reigns supreme…. can we sit with some of this surreal overwhelm in a space together? And can we act?

Lead Artists: Vidya Rajan, Andrew Sutherland, Sam Mcgilp
Director & Creator: Vidya Rajan
Visual & Technical Designer: Sam Mcgilp
Dramaturgy & Assistant Director: Andrew Sutherland
Creative Technologists: Henry Lai Pyne, Ruby Quail, Quinn Franks
Performers: Jess Nyanda Moyle
Lighting & Sound Designer: Joe Paradise Lui
Production Designer: Romanie Harper
Production Manager: Harry Dowling
Producer: Performing Lines
Image Credit: Photograph by Jesse Vogelaar; Design by Sam Mcgilp and Quinn Franks

Crisis Actor has been assisted by the Australian Government through Creative Australia, its principal arts investment and advisory body, the Robert Salzer Foundation, the Victorian Government through Creative Victoria, and the City of Melbourne through Arts House and Now or Never.