Essay: Grand Theft Theatre, or a reflection on reflections
A review of Pony Cam’s Grand Theft Theatre, an interview with Dominic Weintraub and a reflection on mirrors
Devised by Pony Cam and David Williams
Essay by Martha Latham
I arrive late and wet to St Ambrose Hall. My theatre date for the night, Christiane Carr, arrives later and wetter than I, having ridden her bike. I make a snide comment to her that when you see theatre in Sydney, it’s always in an actual theatre.
That theatre might be under a pub, in a hotel or hidden down an alleyway but it is always undoubtedly a theatre. Melbourne, on the other hand, seems to only show live performances in some variant of a converted box. Whether the box is a church, a community hall, a gallery or an ex-meat market it always seems to be a “multi-purpose” space. For Grand Theft Theatre, it’s a church, or rather a hall that’s owned by a church. Christiane laughs and wrings the rain from her hair, shirt, pants and socks.
We enter the space and we are immediately greeted by three nice things; a blank sticker label to write our favourite show onto and wear in place of a nametag, the salty scent of warm bread in the air (a poorly scribbled sign would later let us know the smell was $11 pretzels that came with a G&T), and the performers moving about the space welcoming the audience, working the bar and checking on props and set.
I do a lot of art with mirrors, because I like to play with the idea of reflection. Here’s something fun for you to do to explain why:
Get a sharpie and write something on a mirror you own, the smaller the better.
Now turn off the lights and turn on your phone torch.
Hold the torch right up to the mirror’s surface and move it from one side of the word to the other.
If you did that right (or at all) you would’ve seen the word splash across the walls and move past you like a billboard in a train tunnel. You also probably noticed that it’s time to clean your mirror.
It might seem unusual that I love mirrors, because mirrors are usually a source of dysphoria for trans women. Often we don’t look the way we’d like, and what we see in a mirror isn’t a reflection of ourselves but a reflection of how others see us. Mirrors are also the thing we use to touch up our appearance. Shaving the hairs on our face, applying make-up or styling our hair. There’s nothing wrong with maintaining your appearance, but spending 20-30 minutes a day looking at yourself starts to get repetitive. It’s like saying a word over and over until it starts to lose all meaning.
This is partly why I like broken mirrors so much — because I get to see a completely different version of myself without putting in all that work. It’s still a reflection of me, the general shape and features are there, but I look totally different.
The more you mess with mirrors the greater that shift becomes. Instead of writing something on the mirror, try smashing it and glueing the pieces onto another mirror. Or what about flipping the mirror, scratching off flakes of the mirror surface and letting the light peel through like a reverse mirror ball? Better yet, buy a can of Rustoleum’s Mirror Spray Paint and paint the glass shelves of your sharehouse fridge, creating an endless void of milk and dairy.
What’s most exciting is that no matter how much you play with the mirror, the end result will always be affected by what is being reflected. The space the mirror is in, the time of day and who is looking at it all change the artwork. The result of the work is entirely dependent on who, or what, is looking at it.
I arrive late and wet to Union Kiosk about a month before the opening of Grand Theft Theatre. My interviewee for the day, Pony Cam artist Dom, arrives at Union Kiosk later and wetter than I, having ridden his scooter. Not one of those cool electric scooters everybody seems to have, but a classic analog scooter. The kind of scooter that is deadly for unsuspecting ankles and arguably no faster than walking.
I’ve met Dom once before over zoom, for a podcast he organised during one of the lockdowns, and I swear he was wearing the same outfit. Black shirt, blue jeans and classic Cons.
After I realised Dom would be late I emailed him to work out his coffee order and purchase in advance. I had to email because he doesn’t have Instagram and I don’t have Facebook. We make small talk about the anti-mask protests that made us late;
“What are they even protesting anymore?”
It’s the Melbourne equivalent of “how’s the weather?”
I’ve been thinking about the interview for days at this point. Pony Cam's website at the time was pretty empty and difficult to navigate so I had to use the old theatre artist community grapevine:
“Pony Cam? They make great stuff! Have you seen Paradise Lots yet?”
“I studied with them at VCA. Funny bunch.”
“Who?”
I could have asked some questions about their process and how they met but I don’t really like warm-up questions. Instead, I go straight for the jugular:
"Why do you make theatre? Why not make another medium that people actually care about?"
***
During my time studying directing, I had to design a version of Big Willie’s A Winter’s Tale with the spectacular designer Amy Jackson. If you’ve read or seen the play, there’s a big transition from a country that feels sterile and cold to one that feels fun and flighty. Amy came up with the idea of a gigantic mirror that stretched from one side of the stage to the other. It was tilted forward so it reflected the top of the characters’ heads to the audience.
At the transition point some ruffians run out on stage and spraypaint the mirror with a massive amount of graffiti, the first use of colour in the play, and those words are bounced across the floor the same way you saw before with the sharpie and the phone torch. The space goes from feeling stark and minimalist to feeling overwhelmingly full with the simple addition of paint.
After that, I had to start telling designers not to show me any reference images with mirrors. If I saw an image with a mirror in it I would become so attracted to the idea of using a mirror onstage that I would force it into the design somewhere it didn’t fit.
This is a bad thing because a mirror onstage can be incredibly difficult to control. It can even become a liability on the audience’s experience. Have you ever had to light a show where a stray lantern could hit a mirror and blast light beams into your audience's face? Ever been the performer who is constantly being pulled out of character by their own reflection? Ever been the audience member who just wants to enjoy a show but has instead been forced to look at their own ugly mug the whole time?
Back at Grand Theft Theatre, in the centre of St Ambrose Hall, is a mess of plastic chairs all pressed together. I’m chatting with some new friends I’ve made when David Williams comes on stage, does an acknowledgment of country and starts talking about his favourite show; a work by Forced Entertainment I don’t remember the name of. As he speaks, some of the other performers emerge from around the space and begin a movement sequence, speaking over the top of him. That’s it — the show’s off and away. No house light dim, no scuffling as people get comfy or shuffle to their seats. The lines between pre-show and show-show are blurred to the point that most of us have not even taken a seat.
The bravest audience members drag a seat out from amongst the mess in the centre of the room, the kindest of us start passing seats to those in need and the weakest squish themselves against the wall and awkwardly look for a place to put their bag. Within an instant, the work has become participatory. This is perhaps an answer as to why theatre over any other medium: as a good audience member, you can’t just watch theatre, you must “attend” theatre, you must “show up”.
You don’t always have to show up physically — a video game streamer works on the same participatory principle that requires an audience to be present during the performance. Whether it’s comments in the chat or laughs from a crowd, what makes live art unique is the relationship that is built between audience and artist.
Pony Cam and David Williams understand this concept fully. From the moment you put on your show-name-tag to the moment you noisily claim your seat, Grand Theft Theatre is building an immediate sense of trust with the audience.
Christiane leans over to me and nervously asks:
“Will this have audience participation?”
“Only the good kind,” I reply.
“Hmmmmmmmmmmm”
Dom is clearly struggling with the question I’ve asked him.
“It’s to do with the liveness of it all and I’ve always worked that way, y’know, like with my body and with my hands and — ”
“But then why not make a movie? You’d still be doing the same kind of performance and probably twice as many people would see it.”
“Yeah yeah I guess you’re right, it’s like — hmmmm”
I love asking why people make theatre because the people who make it all know on some level that theatre sucks. It sucks for a few reasons: it's expensive, it's inaccessible, it's not very nice to people who are new or different. Also, only 8% of all theatre attendees are under 35. Almost 15% of audiences are 75+. Wanna know why it feels like you always see someone you know pre-show? It’s because there's only 8% of us.
If you’re a young independent theatre-maker, you work in a circular industry; you put money in your friend’s pockets and they put money in yours and on and on it goes till one day you stop calling yourself “emerging” and start calling yourself “mid-career”.
Enter strawman: “But culture is important. Theatre is an important medium for telling stories so they don't get forgotten,”
Theatre? Are you kidding yourself? You spend tens of thousands of dollars (or hours of unpaid labour) on something that runs for 8 nights to maybe 2000 people before you throw the set, script and crew in the skip bin. You want your stories to not be forgotten, get a pen and write a book, pick up a camera and shoot, or download Unreal Engine and make a video game, but for God’s sake don’t make theatre?
***
Like all great post-dramatic shows, Grand Theft Theatre has an obvious format. Australian company Post used to do this really well. Whether it was Who’s the Best? a show where the performers compete using ridiculous metrics to decide the answer, or Oedipus schmoedipus, a show which gloriously acts out all of the most famous deaths in theatrical history, they always had a clear throughline for the audience (and the artists) to grab onto when things got really messy.
In Grand Theft Theatre, the structure is that the performers describe and re-enact their favourite pieces of theatre from their memories. They describe it as a collection, a database of sorts. Not one that is objective and methodical, but rather one that is entirely specific to the six performers who put it together. What becomes clear about half-way through is that 20-30% of the work is completely improvised. The performers aren’t just performing the act of memory, you can see them genuinely stop and dig into their skulls as they try and recall the work they saw in detail.
Plenty of other writers have written about Grand Theft Theatre’s exploration of memory so I won’t rehash that here. Memory plays an important part in theatre sure, but so too in gaming, film, visual art and literature. I used to think theatre was important and unique from other art forms because it was ephemeral. In reality, all art is ephemeral. Think of all the hilarious TikToks you saw last week that you will never be able to find again, old episodes of Doctor Who that sit discarded in a tip somewhere or the masterpieces of Clarice Beckett that withered away unseen. All art, unless it is cared for, ends.
“We will now take a 6 minute intermission, and the bar will reopen!”
I also don’t actually think Grand Theft Theatre is about memory. Ponycam weren’t trying to recreate these works exactly as they were, they are trying to recreate how it felt to see them. The performers talk about a show they saw in Berlin that was 8 hours long, and filled with short intermissions. In the intermissions at that show the bar only sold G&T and pretzels.
While I’m sure the audience members with a long theatrical background sat and discussed the works we had seen, Thyestes, Rite of Spring, Class Act, something by Forced Entertainment, I mostly talked about the G&Ts. By the end, there was not a single show named or recreated that I had actually seen. I don’t think I ever felt left out, but I certainly felt a little less theatre-savvy.
This is something that happens a lot with postdramatic theatre. In order to appreciate and engage with postdramatic theatre you have to have appreciated and engaged with dramatic theatre. Ponycam generously guides you through the dramatic parts, explaining each moment, and each play, from a personal perspective. They use themselves as a window to look into theatre’s history and make sense of it through a human, rather than an academic, perspective. One thing that sticks with me is near the end when David Williams said something like:
“This is a collection, an attempt at collating and remembering important works of theatre. It is in no way scientific, and rather entirely idiosyncratic.”
The other reason I like to play with the surface of a mirror is because it creates a more genuine reflection of the world. That might seem counterintuitive, how can changing the surface make it a better reflection?
I’ll use a metaphor to explain. When you kiss the person you love it feels incredible. There are bubbles in your stomach, your heart starts to race and your head feels light. For everyone else, it just looks like two people touching lips. In many cases it looks gross.
If you want to reflect love on-screen you have to do so much more than show people kissing. You have to swell the music, the camera has to spin and performers need to leap into each other’s arms. Actors often get criticised for not having enough “chemistry” on screen, but nobody has any chemistry if your cinematographer has decided to film the kiss as an over the shoulder shot with cold blue lighting. Love doesn’t look like it feels.
In the same way, when I look in my bathroom mirror with the downlights that bounce across the tiles, I don’t look how I feel. But when I look in my bedroom mirror, with the words “cool girls smash shit” carved into the back, and the natural light of the sun pours through onto my skin, that’s when the mirror reflects how I actually feel.
I decide to throw Dom a line.
“Is it just because that’s what you’ve always done? At some point you learned about theatre, and trained in it, so now that’s what you do?”
I think people get caught trying to justify themselves on this question a lot. To find a “dramaturgical” reason for why theatre over other mediums when “because I like it” will do just fine.
We don’t ask why the birds choose to sing, or why the flowers choose to bloom. We accept that the birds will sing and the flowers will bloom. Those things are beautiful in a way that cannot be expressed through a logical explanation and they are made no less beautiful when you know that they bloom and sing to attract birds and bees.
This whole sequence makes Dom look a bit silly so I must admit it’s mostly a lie. Dom certainly didn’t umm and err for this long. He had clearly thought deeply on this question and had very well reasoned answers as to why he did theatre over other mediums. I also had five other interesting questions to which Dom had interesting answers. Questions about Pony Cam’s origin, the benefits of creating work in a non-hierarchical company, whether Pony Cam is actually a non-hierarchical company and where Pony Cam gets their money from.
But none of that fit as well into the story I wanted to write, of an artist who couldn’t explain “why theatre?” but yet was involved in a piece that answered just that. So I manipulated the truth to fit the story, and if I hadn’t told you, you would probably have accepted what I said as the truth. Some reflections aren’t genuine at all.
***
David Williams and Pony Cam’s Grand Theft Theatre is the closest we’ll get to an answer to “Why theatre?”
Why do we keep doing this while funding drops and artists leave? How can we justify this life of feast and famine while the cost of living rises? How can we justify encouraging our friends, family and communities to spend their time and money on us?
You won’t find the answer in this essay. You won’t find the answer written or spoken anywhere, because the answer can’t be reflected in words.
But if you go and see an incredible play, when you leave, you’ll know the answer. When you’re asked to write your favourite play on a nametag, you’ll know the answer. When you watch a troupe of six re-enact their favourite memories from their careers, you’ll know the answer.
Grand Theft Theatre knows the answer. It cannot say it outright. It can only hold up its smashed mirror with twisted reflections of works past and present, shown not as they were but as they felt, and hope that you’ll see the answer reflected back at you.
Grand Theft Theatre played at St Ambrose Hall from 13 - 23 October at the Melbourne Fringe Festival 2022. Find more info here.
Images by Wild Hardt, mirror images by Martha Latham
Martha Latham hates art and thinks it should be defunded. She also thinks Myki inspectors should have guns. We really didn’t want her but we needed to hit our gender equity quotas. Find out which of those things are true @sad_goldfish.
We paid Martha $15 for this essay, which she asked us to put towards advertising it on Instagram.
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