SHELLY SHIVER'S PRONOUNCED L-O-V-E OF THE MAN Đ

SHELLY SHIVER'S PRONOUNCED L-O-V-E OF THE MAN Đ

DATES: 25 September - 1 October 2013, 8pm.
TICKETS: $20 full / $15 concession / $13 preview (25 & 26 September) | BOOK HERE |
VENUE: New Low Gallery. Basement, 746 Swanston St (rear entry), Carlton 3053.

WITH: Emily Tomlins, Dion Mills, Natalie Holmwood, Anna Samson.
ARTISTS: Emil Toonen (illumination), Darcey Bella Arnold (visual), Tara Cook (glitch).
DANCERS: Helen Smith, Ashley Mclellan, Fina Po.
WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY: Nana Biluš Abaffy.

A total werk play for mixedup reality.

The chronically confused Đ, accompanied by several of his multiple personalities, desperately watches relaxing YouTube towel-folding tutorials as he awaits admittance to the SleepKlinik. For Shelly Shiver, a pissed-off omnisexual, Đ is the ideal multiplicity-in-unity and she burns to make love to all of him.

Performance 80 minutes.

reviews

"Realities shiver in a shadowy dream world... Shelly Shiver’s Pronounced L-O-V-E of The Man Đ is an elaborate performance poem for four voices, a surreal fantasy and an installation-immersion.

We enter the theatre on our backs, trolleyed in one at a time like patients to an asylum, or souls ferried between worlds. It's this kind of detail, the extension of the theatrical experience, that makes Psychoknot Theatrics stand out as a serious company, a team capable of pushing boundaries and breaking new ground." [Time Out Melbourne]

"Shelly Shiver’s Pronounced L-O-V-E of the Man Đ, created by PSYCHOKNOT THEATRICS, is a confusing profusion of abstract concepts housed in a mental institution.

...Three creepy figures in black wheel the audience one-by-one into the cold, dark basement of New Low Gallery. Tin cans dangle from the ceiling; a haunting figure sits with their back to us, silently watching three television screens. Cardboard box cushions provide minimal comfort for the eighty-minute journey through insanity.

...Emily Tomlins gives an astounding performance as the troubled, stuttering, androgynous Đ (pronounced ‘dj’), swinging from mood to mood with intensity and depth through an excitingly devastating emotional journey.

...The silent stars of the piece were the dancer/trolley pushers who all had fantastic commitment to the physicality and world of the piece.

...This show was certainly a few straight jackets short of a mental asylum." [Heckler]

synopsis

Sleep Salvador sleeps at the gates of the SleepKlinik. He is the guard and administrator of the Klinik, and a genius that has revolutionised the state of sleep with the help of a spoon.

The chronically confused Đ, accompanied by several of his multiple personalities, hopes to be admitted to the Klinik. Đ knows that sleep is his only salvation, and if he can just get some then things will get better. Đ’s other personalities agree. They are tired, nay, exhausted, and are beginning to imagine all sorts of crazy things.

However, Sleep Salvador insists that Đ ought to be professionally scrutinised for an indefinite period prior to entering the Klinik. Đ reluctantly agrees and is put under close observation. Sleep Salvador, although asleep, keeps vigilant watch as Đ’s psyche unravels and detonates.

Olga Possumović is a petite but hostile old-school aristocrat turned prostitute. She is both elegant and severe, god-fearing and blasphemous. Her current disreputable lifestyle is one to which she has adapted peculiarly well.

Finally, there is Shelly Shiver. Shelly is a pissed off Gen Y protagonist. She is caught up in trying to decide what the purpose of life is. Her suspicion is that it has something to do with sexuality, and not just between the legs but between the ears too.

Although repulsed by one another at first, Shelly and Olga quickly develop an intimate bond and together unite against the rest of the world. Shelly, even though she is the younger of the two by a couple of decades, assumes the role of a saviour mother figure to Olga. This causes Olga to regress to an infant-like state of dependence on the increasingly authoritarian Shelly Shiver.

Like Sleep Salvador, Olga Possumović sleeps for the larger part of the play, burrowed comfortably in the lap of Shelly. Although Shelly herself drowses off from time to time, in her waking state she is most intrigued by the strange and troubled Đ. Shelly reckons that Đ’s various personalities make for the kind of hypercomplex and multivocal suitor that she has always longed for. Đ is an ideal multiplicity-in-unity, and Shelly burns to make love to all of him.

When Olga awakes to find that her beloved Shelly has eyes for another, her primal fear of abandonment goes into overdrive. She burrows into Shelly’s lap deeper than ever and vows to never come out. Shelly must now figure out how to get Olga off of her lap so that she can pursue Đ. Olga is good, she is like a child to Shelly, but the manifold Đ is all that and more – a father, a husband, a benign introvert, a bombastic extrovert, the boy next door, a homicidal maniac, and a brother.

Although Đ is far too preoccupied with his selves to take much notice of the aching Shelly, the watchful Sleep Salvador notes all that goes on outside the gates of his Clinic. He has a solution to Shelly’s problem – he will take Olga into his own lap. He is fond of little Olga Possumović, for like him she is an accomplished practitioner in the art of sleep.

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