Chamber Made’s ‘Permission to Speak’ played the Brisbane Powerhouse Theatre as part of the Australian Performing Arts Market (APAM) schedule for 2018. If you’ve not heard of it, APAM showcases contemporary performing arts to the international sector. This work is certainly one you can imagine touring the world. Chamber Made has presented over 90 performance seasons in Australia and internationally since 1988, so they have a history of creating relatable, contemporary, artistic pieces that translate their message around the world.
Friday the 23rd of February I arrived at the Powerhouse ‘Permission To Speak’ which is a first-time collaboration between director and Chamber Made Opera Artistic Associate Tamara Saulwick and composer Kate Neal.
The show was nothing as I expected it would be, but in a good way. The seamless combination of theatre and musical composition to construct a revealing look into the relationship between parent and child. The blend of music and theatre did not make this show feel as though it fell into the musical theatre genre. The music is contemporary and often communicated a concept to the audience without the use of words, it created contrasting atmospheres to depict four different perspectives of different contemporary family life and how that can impact a person.
Inspired by real-life interviews conducted as research, so that the team working on the project had a strong foundation and knowledge of the vast different contemporary family experiences in Western society. The dictation of the four main voices were impeccable which assisted in making it into a performance that relied mostly on sound inclusive of speech, singing, and songs.
It was truly wonderful that a theatre type performance managed to incorporate the utilisation of music to take the audience on a journey, and not just one person's journey - the contrast between each characters experience was clear with the manipulation of sound layering, harmonies and clever use of acapella bits.
“ ‘Permission to Speak’ is remarkable … What Director, Tamara Saulwick, and her cast and crew have made is a piece built on ferocious discipline, yet still manages to feel fresh … Sonic high-wire artists without a net, they caught each other every time.” – David Collins, Australian Arts Review.
Musings, diatribes, recollections and hindsight find voice as four vocalists are fused into a storyline with an assembly of pre-recorded voices. This is a performance that had me looking back at my own life evaluating my relationships, so I feel it succeeded in its delivery and was a professional performance. Utilising digital, mobile and analogue technologies, with a particular emphasis placed on the role of sound in live performance, this work reflects on how we connect, confront and negotiate with one another.
By Brianna Denmeade