The Secret Room, IRAA Theatre, June 11, 2000

By Renato Cuocolo & Roberta Bosetti, IRAA Theatre

Tues to Sat from June 8, 2000

Venue revealed on booking. Available on net at www.iraatheatre.com.au

Bookings:  9349 5880 or info@iraatheatre.com.au

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

This must be a first. The entire audience of The Secret Room went for coffee together after the performance. Of course, the audience is restricted to seven.

There is nothing ordinary about this theatre piece. It may be inappropriate to call it theatre. We book by phone or email, then arrive at a secret address, actual home of actor, Roberta Bosetti and director, Renato Cuocolo.

We have crossed the boundary from public into private life. We are inside the actor's personal world, constrained by the formalities of the audience but liberated by the looser rules of our other role as dinner guest.

We seven chat perfunctorily in the front room, glancing at a mute video of Bosetti, aged eight. She serves us a fine two course meal in the dining room. Some are aware of the camera on us and the monitor that reflects our action. We are part of an internet transmission. We catch a glimpse of it on a computer in the bedroom later.

What happens during dinner must alter each night. Bosetti triggers bursts of conversations with snippets about, we presume, her own life. We talk about books, photographs, memories, childhood, religion and secrets.

We retire to the secret room and transfer into a more theatrical mode.  I will not reveal the content but it is exposing, sensual and sexual, frightening and tragic, personal and universal.

Interestingly, it echoes the content and form of Maude Davey's very personal show at La Mama this week.

Bosetti is able to make us smile and whimper in the same breath. Her performance and Cuocolo's direction are based in physical emotional style which demands enormous effort from the actor. We are so close. We wonder whether there is truth in the text (by Hélène Cixous, Karen Finlay, Holly Hughes, Peter Handke, Nadina Fusini, Bosetti, Cuocolo)

It is demanding and joyful, fun and challenging. It forces one to assess the nature of performance, the nature of femaleness and the depth of our secrecy in a world that demands we remain safe and protected.

The Secret Room is the first of a new Trilogy called Interior Sites by IRAA Theatre. It promises to push the envelope - even tear it.

By Kate Herbert