Let's get physical

Jeremy Birchall, Beth Kayes, Mike Edward, Debbie Newby, Paul McDiarmid and Eve Gordon who are appearing in Ooh Baby Baby. Photo / Supplied

The female animal eyeballs the male. She looks fierce; an attack is imminent. She creeps up slowly, growling, until they're less than a metre apart. She swipes viciously at the male's face. He hits her back. She pounces, the male grips her flesh and wrenches her body sideways. They tumble to the ground and roll around in fits of primal aggression. Afterwards, smoking cigarettes in bed, they vow to not do that again. After all they're doctors who work together.

We're at The Auckland Performing Arts Centre (TAPAC) where a rehearsal of Ooh Baby Baby is taking place under the watchful eye of theatre veteran, director Margaret-Mary Hollins. This would all be a bit x-rated for your average piece of entertainment except Ooh Baby Baby is physical theatre, a comedy set in a fertility clinic that draws on French circus cabaret, slapstick and acrobatics, a performance in which sex becomes a dance.

The core cast, from Auckland's Co Theatre Physical, are trained actors. They're also former strippers, a professional gymnast and a burlesque dancer. This new breed of thespians don't just tread the boards — they catapult off them, hover over them and zip along cables attached to the ceiling, care of a clever set design.

"[Physical theatre] is such an exciting form," says Ooh Baby Baby performer Debbie Newby, a former competitive gymnast and trampolinist who spends much of the show with a fake pregnant tummy while executing the kinds of moves expectant mums would be castigated for. "Sometimes as an actor you feel stuck — whether it's in the script or on set. But there are no rules in physical theatre. You've got to be ready physically to go there. There's real freedom in that."

Watching the performers in action is like watching the cogs in a pinball machine working — a dizzying display of bodies balancing on shoulders, rolling over backs, flying through the air, slotting unexpectedly together. Performer Beth Kayes, who created the show with Hollins, spent five years with Australian physical theatre company Legs on the Wall, touring the world thanks to the universal language of her craft, before returning to New Zealand to teach and set up Co Theatre Physical. She invited the most talented students from her physical theatre classes at Unitec's Performing and Screen Arts degree to join her.

Still, it's hard to imagine there's much beyond the classroom for the likes of these nimble young actors. Despite New Zealand's robust theatre tradition, mention "physical theatre" and you're likely to be met with quizzical faces. The term is loosely applied to forms of live entertainment outside the traditional understanding of theatre or dance, one that typically uses the body rather than spoken word to tell a story. (Although Ooh Baby Baby has a script.) But with her team of fit, strong actors, Kayes regularly tours specially choreographed shows at schools and kindergartens, and performs at corporate events, art galleries, even weddings.

Four years in the making, Ooh Baby Baby was put together with $110,000 of funding from Creative New Zealand and other sponsors. The show was part of the Taranaki International Festival of the Arts two weeks ago and is on at the Auckland Town Hall until August 30. Kayes hopes it will also tour regionally and potentially, overseas. "Physical theatre is hugely popular in Australia and the rest of the world," says Kayes, who with Hollins encourages the cast members to participate in the devising process, a collaboration that involves experimentation and trust.

"If you can't get over having a bum in your face while people watch, it's not for you," says Newby. "There can be no barriers. It's about trust and respect, saying 'yes, let's,' no matter how absurd or scary."

There have been quite a few absurd and scary moments in the careers of these cast members. In 2000 Kayes scaled the Sydney Harbour Bridge as part of a spectacle for the Sydney Olympics. In 2004, her auto-biographical play, A House Across Oceans, was staged at the Silo Theatre in Auckland, fusing the worlds of mime, acrobatics and puppetry as Kayes weaved a tale of her Mt Albert childhood, where her Catholic parents opened the family home to at-risk Polynesian kids. At 45, she is the walking, talking, hand-standing embodiment of what a lifetime of keeping active will do for your health. Her former Unitec student Eve Gordon, 27, plays the resident alpha female in Ooh Baby Baby.

During the day Gordon has worked a number of jobs — stilt walker, aerialist and kids entertainer with Co Theatre Physical; by night she has starred in her own burlesque production, This is Not A Family Show, at the Auckland Fringe Festival. The show sold out, purely by word of mouth. "I became interested in the ideas of sex in performance, how women see themselves," she explains. "But I wanted to do it in a way that makes light of it."

That intellectual interest led her to take a dominatrix workshop, star in a racy short film about a threesome that screened at international gay film festivals and dress up in copper body paint for an art installation. Curious to see if sexuality also had a place in the world of art class, she took a job as a life model at Whitecliffe art school, and soon discovered it was "all anatomical," not to mention physically uncomfortable and extremely confronting.

"The funny thing is, since high school and Unitec I've struggled with body image issues big time," says Gordon. "I mean, I'm the antithesis of a model's body. I've got defined muscles, and I'm not stocky but I'm not tall and elegant and thin. I was extremely shy about my body for years. The ideas of performance fascinated me and I wanted to get over it. I don't want to live with eating problems. In true me-style I got out of the fireplace and into the fire.

"Working in physical theatre has really helped because as an actor you qualify your body as beautiful or not. But if you can do cool stuff, that's how you start to see yourself," says Gordon, who plays the sex bomb in Ooh Baby Baby. With all the acrobatic movement, much of it executed from hanging silks, we can't get too excited about her costumes, however. She'd burn her skin, dropping from the ceiling to the ground, if she wore anything too revealing. "I've come to accept the unitard. It's not something I thought I'd ever do."

Her castmate Mike Edward, 34, who plays a sperm-donor and doctor, has also dabbled in the world of striptease. The former gymnast and decathlete, who once held the New Zealand under-20 title, put himself through drama school by working as a stripper at Showboys. It all started when he got a role in Stephen Sinclair and Anthony McCarten's play Ladies Night.

"It was fun," he says. "It's a great New Zealand play, very cleverly done and it was my first introduction to dancing. When the opportunity to work at Showboys came up I thought, it can't be that different. But no, it was very different." The role required layers of fake tan and dance moves pinched from boy band music videos. "People tend to put you in a box. I came to terms with it early on. Because of my background, I was an athletic-looking person who looked a certain way. At first I struggled with it — why should I take my shirt off? My first jobs were all based on how I looked with no shirt. Eventually I just started seeing it as work."

You might remember him as buff Zak Smith on Shortland Street, or that old ACC ad in which a buff Edward slips and hits his head as he exits the shower. As a core member of Co Theatre Physical he is what's known as a "baser" — a strongman who can support "flyers" such as Gordon. He spends a lot of time lifting weights at the gym.

Newby, 30, who plays the young pregnant wife and head of the fertility clinic, did her early gymnastic training with, among others, Kiwi stunt star Zoe Bell. Her career in the arts started at 12 when she starred in a World Vision documentary with Jason Gunn. After drama school at Unitec, she scored roles in Legend of the Seeker, Outrageous Fortune (Trina), and the Tower ads (she's the appreciative wife whose hubby puts the dishwasher on). But it's her work with Co Theatre Physical that has attracted the wackiest jobs. At one gig she, Kayes and Gordon climbed a ladder from an apartment at the Viaduct and scaled a huge stone and water sculpture, performing slow-mo acrobatics, mid-air. She's also done acrobatic shows from the Sky Tower's observation deck, and even invited her workmates to give a surprise acrobatic performance at her wedding this year.

"When Beth came back from overseas she had a real hunger for experienced talent, people who were young and fresh. We all had a physical background. We're very much acting on stage, giving the same level of emotion but we're also giving the audience a very different interactive experience. Each performance is different to the next."

Physical theatre's origins can be traced back as far as the origins of Parisian clowning and mime but it also draws from the stylistic, collaborative productions of 20th century German playwright Bertolt Brecht, whose aim was not to create a sense of make believe in the theatre but to draw attention to its "epic form."

Russian method actor Constantin Stanislavski also had a part to play, as did the extreme, symbolically charged performances of English actor and writer Steven Berkoff in the 70s and 80s. It was during this period physical theatre became a recognised movement, particularly in Europe, which spawned groups such as the French Theatre de Complicite and the British companies, DV8 and Total Theatre.

Physical theatre soon became popular in Australia but only recently has it reached New Zealand. Arts events such as the biennial Auckland Festival have helped to break audiences into physical theatre. You could also argue that French-Canadian performance troupe Cirque du Soleil, and the percussive New York production of Stomp have done the same. But aside from Co Theatre Physical, there are really only two other established physical theatre companies in Auckland: Red Leap Theatre and Theatre Stampede.

Making physical theatre is expensive and a time-intensive process but when done well, says Red Leap Theatre producer Lauren Hughes, "it results in some of the most original, accessible, memorable and exportable work to be staged." While still driven by a passionate minority, Kiwi physical theatre practitioners are starting to gain recognition and appreciation for their craft. We're now more comfortable with the idea of going to see an (almost) wordless play, such as The Arrival by Red Leap Theatre, whose brilliant adaptation of Shaun Tan's award-winning graphic novel has attracted international attention, and will be staged in two other countries next year.

Kayes and Hollins are also hopeful Ooh Baby Baby has enough big, universal themes — fertility, gender politics, sex — to see it translate well to audiences overseas. The show is based around the experiences of the doctors who run a fertility clinic. Each is dealing with their own reproductive issues. "I remember reading a news article about the decline of healthy sperm in the world and the idea that one day women wouldn't need men for the human race to survive," says Kayes, who was a solo mum at 37. "It also looks at working mums, modern dating — how far we've come from meeting a partner in a dance hall. Now we have this cyber dance hall. Commitment never used to be a phobia."

Back in the rehearsal room, the sperm is ready. There's practically a rugby line-out ready to receive and deliver it: bodies are hoisted onto others, tussles break out, fights ensue. And then, incongruously, the group forms a joyous conga line, to the tune of De-Lovely: "It's de-lightful, it's de-licious, it's de-lovely." Ooh Baby Baby, it certainly is.