VIRTUAL THEATRE
Created & performed by Artemis Muñoz
Produced by La Mama
Theatre, part of Midsumma Festival 2022
Virtual season until 2 March 2022 https://watch.lamama.com.au/programs/utter-mess
Reviewer: Kate Herbert
Stars: ***
This review published only on this blog. KH
Artemis Muñoz
Artemis: Utter Mess is a short show about confused identity, gender, culture – everything, really!
Creator and performer, Artemis Muñoz uses direct address to the audience and original songs to explore, explain and explode her struggles about her own identity and some broader issues relating to identity, gender and neuro-diversity that Muñoz observes in the wider community.
This personal piece is described as cabaret but is less theatrical in style and is more like a chat with one person telling personal stories. It’s insights into Muñoz’s thinking are often interesting and the content has theatrical potential, but the piece lacks a clear dramatic structure and dramatic tension.
Finding the drama and developing the dialogue to illuminate Muñoz’s stories would make this a more successful show. Currently, it rambles and still feels like therapy. as Munoz says, ‘It’s too hard to unpack in one cabaret.’
Dressed in an oversized, kids’ dinosaur costume – for no apparent reason apart from being quirky – Muñoz opens the show with a song during which Muñoz tries to fit into a cardboard box labelled ‘Girl’. Muñoz then tries a box labelled ‘Boy’, but that doesn’t fit either. It still feels wrong. Muñoz feels comfortable in the middle, between boxes, but wants the boxes to be a tiny bit wider for those who want to fit into them.
The enormous, cascading pile of cardboard boxes, says Muñoz, is a ‘visual representation of my subconscious mind.’ The pile grows, with more and more boxes bearing the labels put on Muñoz by others. These include: lazy, weird, unfunny, melodramatic, indecisive, pathetic, serious, dishonest, workaholic, pessimistic, delusional, useless, unlovable. A heavy burden to bear.
Muñoz has an attractive, bright-toned voice and engaging presence and, although the songs are repetitive in style, they function as a useful vehicle for the sung commentary.
The box metaphor is over-used and becomes tired, but it makes its point. Life is different outside the binary and labels are not useful – most of the time – unless you find a label that matches with you.
by Kate Herbert
Writing and Songwriting.....Artemis Muñoz
Performance.......................Artemis Muñoz
Producing and Direction.....Artemis Muñoz
Lighting Direction...............Persephone Waxman
Videography and Editing....Ruiqi Fu
Piano Accompaniment........ Nicholas Gray
Set and Costume Design....Artemis Muñoz
Auslan Interpretation...........Linda D'Ornay
Audio Description................Nilgun Guven
No comments:
Post a Comment