Unspeakable Acts of Privacy

• Are you single?
• Have you been tested for STDs in the past month?
• What is your favourite sex position?
• Do you have any secret fantasies or fetishes?
• Would you please take off your shirt?
• Kiss me, now.

Last week, I saw "Unspeakable Acts of Privacy" at UQ St Lucia, as part of the Anywhere Theatre Festival, which is now (sadly) over. During the play ("experience" might be a better word), I found myself in the front of a Holden ute, being interviewed for a role as a very upfront girl's casual sex partner. Her questions (and demands) are reproduced above. Though she "unfortunately, couldn't force me to do anything," I did end up with no shirt on, sharing fairly private information--if not "unspeakable", then at least unbloggable. For the rest of the show, I worried that my confessions would be made public. It was a visceral expression of the show's theme of privacy under threat from within.

This was only a small part of a suprisingly ambitious performance put on (and put together) by UQ drama students, under the direction of Zen Zen Zo founder Lynne Bradley. The show 'began' before it actually began, with a form for everyone to fill in with moderately private information, and a privacy policy to sign, a la Facebook. I was already loving the experience, anticipating deliciously confronting public reveals of our private information, foolishly divulged.

 From there, the audience was gathered on some Schonell theatre steps, and a troop of aggressive dancers materialised before us, appearing ninja-like from apparently empty surroundings. That was the beginning of an adventure--the term is no exaggeration--that would lead us not just into stranger's cars, but all around an eerily transformed UQ campus. I'd never realised just how 'promenade' promenade theatre could be.

 

A heady atmosphere of menace pervaded the best parts of the performance, as when the actors marched we audience members along the front of the Forgan Smith building, past various totally unprivate displays of lust, anger, and despair, shouting at us to keep time and face forward, and when I found myself following two deranged nurses, chanting "Forgive me Facebook for I have sinned" with increasing anguish, and gradually stripping as they marched. Moments like these transformed the theme of lost privacy, which at first sounded pretty dull and petty to me, into a powerful, and persuasive experience. Privacy is not as meaningless as I'd thought. 

 The general feel of prison-camp melodrama gained part of its success from the scattered moments of relief, of quiet--of poetry, even. At one point, I was pulled aside by a girl who delivered a gentle monologue about being a dancer, and the way in which her body no longer felt like her own. These gentler points were not always integrated convincingly into the larger structure of the performance, but they did provide thought-provoking contrasts in tone, as well as some excellent writing and acting.
 

"Unspeakable Acts" faltered when it abandoned its atmospheric, visceral approach to its theme in favour of more straightforward didacticism. A section on the disturbing iPhone app Girls Around Me, for example, could not have been any preachier, or less theatrical. The messages of the play resonated best when left unspoken.

What was perhaps most impressive about "Unspeakable Acts," though, was its sheer scale. The audience was continually splintered throughout into smaller and smaller groups, all lead through different experiences, rejoining at various points. My experience of the play was only one of many possibilities. My girlfriend and sister, for example, spent time helping one actor stalk another, and described it as a highlight. Maintaining the complexity of this structure, with the careful choreography required to keep everyone where they need to be when they need to be there, over such a large physical area, was a stunning technical achievement.

Congratulations to everyone involved. "Unspeakable Acts" was a genuinely impressive piece of theatre. It's even convinced me to fix my Facebook privacy settings.