Two unsettling Whangārei Fringe festival shows set to challenge Northland audiences

Hamish Annan's new interactive performance invites the audience to explore their response to emotional expression. Photo / John Rata

Two upcoming Whangārei Fringe Festival performances are set to take audiences well outside their emotional comfort zones and invite them into the realm of unsettling gothic horror.

Access, an award-winning performance by Hamish Annan, and The Wedding, by the team at A Fool's Company, are showing at OneOneSix from October 4 to 7 as part of the fringe's two-week multidisciplinary festival.

Annan's new interactive performance explores human connections and vulnerability by inviting the audience to explore their response to emotional expression.

It involves the audience member sitting opposite him in a chair and choosing an emotion they want to share with him, be it anger, sadness, lust, happiness or fear.

Annan then uses his body as a place to explore and perform the emotion.

People are welcome to come and go at any time throughout the free, one-hour performance. They can choose to participate or simply observe.

Annan said the work, which sits somewhere between a theatre piece and a gallery exhibition, "speaks to the human condition".

"They are invited to choose a kind of emotional experience they want to have with me.

"They can sit there for as long as they like.

"If they choose grief, I access that. I trick my body into experiencing that and we have that experience together.

"More than that, it ripples around the room and becomes an interesting experience of multiple people being moved in different ways and feeling different things."

Annan, an interdisciplinary artist based in Auckland, said the show is also confronting and playful.

"Some people come in with a sense of playfulness and curiosity, and in the next moment, there might be a solemn or serious moment.

"It's like an hour-long improvisation, I never know what's going to happen.

"Everyone goes on a bit of a ride, whether you're participating or watching it."

The idea for the show came out of the Covid-19 lockdowns.

When Annan was invited to do a piece at an Auckland pop-up festival, the timing was perfect to try it out.

Hamish Annan's latest work Access 'speaks to the human condition'. Photo / John Rata

"It was Covid friendly [due to social distancing] and there was that sense of connection other people wanted.

"At first, I thought no one would come and sit opposite me but actually they did.

"There seemed to be this fascination with the work, and people really reaching out and wanting that connection.

"Even though it was confronting and intense at times people really leaned into that."

Annan then applied for funding and developed Access for the Auckland Fringe festival.

Made in collaboration with Katie Burson and Rob Byrne, it has support from Auckland Council and Creative New Zealand and won this year's NZ Fringe Touring Award.

Annan's previous plays have been presented at Q Theatre, Fortune Theatre, and Allen Hall Theatre.

Access is his first solo work of performance art.

Annan, who is gay, said his latest work also challenges notions of the stoic, reserved, emotionally repressed male emotional experience.

The queer experience often operates outside standard ideas of masculinity, opening a space for gay men to have more freedom in their physical behaviour and to express emotions, he said.

This provocative way of acting in the world is central to the performance.

"It embraces expression, feeling, and challenges the rigid concepts we hold about what it means to 'perform' your identity."

*Access is showing at OneOneSix on Tuesday, October 4, at 3pm and 8.30pm. Tickets are free but booking is recommended. Visit www.whangareifringe.co.nz.

Meanwhile, also at OneOneSix, The Wedding promise an hour of gothic horror and comedy, exploring the story of an ill-fated wedding in the distant land of Latnovia.

Created by theatre group A Fool's Company, the performance combines elements of physical theatre and clowning to explore conceptions of marriage, repression of female sensuality, and puritanism.

Members of A Fool's Company perform The Wedding, an hour of gothic horror and comedy, exploring the story of an ill-fated wedding in a distant land. Photo / Supplied

Producer Charlie Underhill said it is set in the Victorian era and begins with the groom arriving at church for an arranged marriage to the daughter of the wealthiest man in town.

"His mother is focused on how much money the family is going to get from marrying this girl.

"From there the show ... explores taboo topics such gay romance, feminism, women being seen as property, and marriage as a business contract rather than for love. It's all wrapped together in hilarious contexts.

"All the while, in the backdrop, the beast is stalking this town.

"The characters are there and aware of it and very much afraid of the beast and what might happen to them."

Underhill said the team at A Fool's Company - Aaron Richardson, Melissa Cameron, George Shead, Emily Hurley, Kyle Shields and director Grace Augustine – are all trained circus and acrobatic performers, so "there's a bit of physical circus in the show as well as the theatre form".

The friends had been collaborating on the piece for a while and "were interested in looking at modern ideas of marriage and feminism ... and placing the ideas in a time period that can make it quite taboo and bringing out some of the social issues we face today".

The idea for the rough draft of the play came about after putting the team in a rehearsal room, where they played clown games together and researched Victorian-era gothic novels.

With performances this Thursday and Friday, October 6 and 7, Underhill said it was great timing with the "spooky" Halloween season later in the month.

Dressing up for The Wedding is encouraged, with the dress code being "spooky fabulous".

*The Wedding is at OneOneSix, October 6 and 7, at 8pm. General admission $26.62, concession: $23.55. Tickets via www.whangareifringe.co.nz or 0800 289 849.