Sean Burnett Dugdale-Martin
Disaster is a theatre game about game-theatre. Here’s a link to its eventfinda page. It is part of an international show exchange/long distance relationship between contemporary performance group Binge Culture and game theatre collective machina Ex. Accompanying the run at The Hannah Playhouse the companies hosted a panel at Goethe-Institut New Zealand. I was invited to write a feature on the phenomenon and I was giddy to accept because I’m nosey and would love to know if this German nerd (machina Ex) can make long-distance work with the wide-eyed and excitable New Zealand greenie (Binge Culture). The panel was hosted by Hannah Smith and Ralph McCubbin-Howell from Trick of the Light, but has this trick been right (I’m sorry) between these two companies, now that they are halfway through their correspondence?
On the German side we have Clara Ehrenwerth (machina Ex General Manager, Writer) and Lasse Marburg (machina Ex Technical Director, Programmer) who are zooming in from their home country to the charming sixth floor common space of Goethe-Institute office on Cuba Street. Sitting with us live, we have Joel Baxendale (Binge Culture Creative Director, Founding Member) and Ralph Upton (Binge Culture Dramaturg, Experience Creator, Founding Member).
Binge Culture and machina Ex began their relationship on a day not unlike any other. Two people met, spoke for a few hours, and continued to think about how similar their priorities were. Joel and Clara chatted 2 years ago when Clara journeyed south across the globe on a residency to Wellington, New Zealand, simply called “The Wellington Residency” paid for by the Goethe-Institut. In that meeting over coffee that stretched over two hours they discovered that they not only got on but had been working from very similar ideals for quite some time.
The deal struck between these companies now has been titled the “International Show Exchange” and it’s an easier alternative to touring your production, but more intensive than mailing your script across the sea. The first part of this exchange is Disaster and the second part is machina Ex performing Binge Culture’s show You and A.I. in 2025 over in Germany. Disaster, last performed in Germany before the pandemic, is seeing new life in Aotearoa. Joel describes a box showing up with 12 beige handset phones, some coloured cords, an old fax machine and other bits and pieces as well as a script in German. The Goethe-Institut was instrumental in not only translating the script but interpreting it as well. An artform overlooked in this age of google translate and A.I is that the nuances of literature can be lost from machines who are simply replacing words with their nearest, commonly clunky equivalents. Anyone in this country that has learnt a little te reo Māori will have an idea that good translation actually spills into interpretation.
The two teams kept up correspondence across the globe, meeting at one person's morning and the other's afternoon, they trouble-shot and chatted and otherwise continued to build an important relationship where they would both learn from each other, about each other. In the panel they discuss the value of learning from each other's processes, something that creative leaders don’t get much of. “It felt like the most I’d ever learned since university…” comments Baxendale, to a small crowd of us which includes his old lecturer, David O’Donnell. During the panel O’Donnell was referenced as a lecturer who hosted classes on overseas performances that inspired Binge Culture to do what it does which felt very special.
A few very obvious benefits began to shine. Firstly, artists participating on a hands-on art exchange is much more valuable and gives people a much greater sense of what others are doing than a 2-hour meeting or a week internship ever could. Secondly, comes the green element. It’s fitting that Trick of the Light facilitated the panel since they have such an eco-conscious kaupapa. The exchange gave both companies international experiences with their art by only shipping one box instead of sending and housing a team of people. They have not calculated their potential savings or carbon offset yet, but they are keen to do so. Maybe after Disaster has finished its run at The Hannah.
The costs saved and the knowledge shared made this concept of an international show exchange something that both teams have decided they would continue to do in the future with other companies from other countries. Sitting there, as a performer myself, having been taught the theatre tradition of making a show here and then touring it there, I reflect on my own plans to send an ensemble around the country in 2025. My mind wanders, dreamily, to alternatives that challenge this expensive, wasteful and large-carbon-footprinted status quo. Is there a way that we can do this locally? During the panel, both teams sing the praises of arts exchanges to meet other artists and companies to build a relationship similar to what they’ve done, and how that proved more fruitful than trying to network with venues and presenters. If you do get a presenter or a venue, they say, you’re still working remotely in a centre you don’t know, trying to market to audiences you’re unfamiliar with.
Is there a sale on flights to Auckland or Christchurch? I wonder, who did I meet overseas recently that has a company around them and/or seems competent? When asked for tips or advice on how to create something similar to what they’ve done, Baxendale comments that: socialisation is key. Upton chimes in and says that the talking after the show happens, meeting with audiences who stick around, is just as important as putting on the show since it’s where these crucial relationships get built. Upton also confesses that he is not great at this and is lucky to have Baxendale around who is much better at it.
Right from the get-go the overall sense is that this has been an extremely rewarding opportunity to learn and grow as artists, to promote local companies in overseas contexts which help build more sustainable companies here, as well as providing more sustainable theatre to local audiences which have distinct points of difference from other productions around town. I’m left pondering as to why there isn’t more of a culture of this kind of exchange. I’m hopeful that it will continue, and at some point I want to do it too.
Best of luck to the budding new relationship, I say (not to beat this metaphor to death). May the honeymoon last forever! It is joked about, near the end of the panel, that this is a primary relationship but both are on ‘artist tinder’ as it were, keen to find others to work with. I look forward to seeing whatever comes next as well as a culture of these kinds of exchanges becoming more prominent in the years to come as they are so obviously advantageous in pretty much every possible way.
Suddenly, so overwhelmed by my article, you (I) decide to check out the show for your(my)self.
It’s a Tuesday in Wellington and you park up down the street from The Hannah Playhouse as the sun is setting. You walk alone in through the doors and up the steps to the bar where you see some, not heaps, of familiar faces. People you’ve spotted in the scene, some people who are running the Improv fest that you recognise from pictures, and also some mates! There’s not many of you since Disaster only takes in an audience of twelve at a time. You wonder where that cap came from, the original German production or from the New Zealand team giving it new life.
We gather around the usher as she explains how it’s like “an escape room meets theatre so, feel free to touch the props but don’t touch the actors unless explicitly invited to.” For a split second it feels like a warning before a stag-do. Your motley crew bonds a little awkwardly over the amount of jackets pushed onto the usher since she generously offered to take them all downstairs. You can barely see her head as you pass by, through a dark doorway, into the performance space.
A scene is taking place with performer Arlo Gibson giving a betrayed scientist, tied up below a pinboard of his own research, with a bomb strapped to his chest. A timer begins on the bomb. 10 minutes and counting. You’ve never actually done an escape room before so you’re a bit more caught up in watching the theatre-y bit as others are already combing through props and folders and boxes and wires to cancel the detonation process. You find some protective goggles and put them on, stoked to have engaged with the show. Meanwhile, a trio have come together to input the right codes into the right machine to stop the countdown. A large, successful ding! rings out through the room. You pocket some tape you found on a shelf too, just to quell a sense of not doing enough.
Soon enough you take the wrong thing. You don a lab coat that was under a bed and at the conclusion of a plot-driven monologue the performer turns and looks straight at you. “I’m going to need my lab coat,” he says. “Dang.” you lament as you tug at the pockets causing all the buttons down the middle of the coat to pop in sequence. Arlo takes his coat and goes with gusto into a new scene.
You’re in the middle of a puzzle with eleven others around a table stocked with a dozen old phones. You try to relate the clock face image on the phone in front of you to someone else sitting in the circle. A sense of determination builds inside of you as you voice succinct, helpful notes that you’ve been given by your telephone to your sudden scene partner. Does this make up for taking that lab coat from under the bed? You think, as you listen to the instructions come through the handset.
The voice over of, and sporadic intrusion of, Karen McCracken’s designer character gives a similar vibe to the character Glados in popular puzzle computer game Portal 2. The comedic nature of moments within the experience where it’s ‘falling apart’ or ‘isn’t completed yet’ joyfully remind you of the humour you’ve had in other computer, puzzle games.
You feel a wave of nostalgia during your time at Disaster as well as a beautiful sense of play. It’s obvious to you that joy had a lot to do with the creation of this experience. As you, and your fellow audience members, are being led out of the performance space you think back onto the people in your life with whom you connected quickly. Kindred spirits in the wild. Those great little chats in foyers, on street corners, at parties. You wonder what has come from your initial sparks, and if they have led into momentous changes in your own life. As you push open the doors of The Hannah Playhouse, your disastrous journey concluded, you ponder what other colossal opportunities lie at the bottom of a coffee cup between friends who don’t know it yet.