EXHIBITION FOOTNOTES

The Folding Wife
by: The Anino Shadow Collective & Urban Theatre Projects
April 19 - 28 2007
Blacktown Art Centre, Sydney

The Folding Wife

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Written by Paschal Daantos Berry and directed by Deborah Pollard in a solo performance by actress Valerie Berry, The Anino Shadow Collective/Urban Theatre Project’s The Folding Wife weaves the stories of three generation of Filipina women in the one family.

Both Berry’s in a series of 13 fragments and moments captures the burden of social and familial pressures – where even charms are for hire and love simply becomes another bargaining chip in an economic transaction. Of a nation whose people’s lives are increasingly being dispersed, landing wherever the wind takes them.

From naive faith in political sleights of hands to the dawning realization between the difference between appearance and reality, the playwright captures a distinct psycho-geography - of women caught in flux within a social milieu that can be quite contradictory, leaving a person floundering for cues on how best to live.

Valerie Berry in The Folding Wife

Puppetry - of social ventriloquy is a strong motif that runs through the work - visually in the symbolic tableaus and psychologically through the subtext of the text. A pointed observation that the “voice” a person might speak in is at times no longer their own - especially when human hope dissipates and reality bites hard. Of torch songs referenced for the very reasons that they are dramatic - and will tug at the heart.

The play does not make excuses for itself or for the lives of its characters nor for the nation that the characters’ symbolically represent as a whole however. It simply says this is who we are – in our unruliness and our comic tragedy. Rather it actually provides a social mirror to the Australian majority – which can at times be quite dismissive of the lives of those who had another life before setting foot in this land of ‘lamingtons and lemon slice’ -as Dolores, the central character pointedly tells her daughter (also played by Berry).

Inundated by Tupperware and speaking of things that no longer matter in the new world - Dolores finds herself wanting to be a part off and yet forever excluded from the micro-society she lands in. Simultaneously feeling out of depth and yet superior - pining with nostalgia for past achievements and glories, both real and imagined.

Torn between archaic values and a mother in permanent flux, the third character in the triptych - the second generation is seen to end up paying. Material security costs. I appreciated that the play didn’t try to please nor was it shrill or angry - it was just what it was. When your second-chance (and let’s face it, migrating in many instances is a wish for another go at one thing or another, be it economic or otherwise) - is at the bequest of somebody else, it carries with it an unspoken social obligation it feels - to be grateful and to be polite at the very least, to the hand that feeds.

The play & production was not polite - it was however intelligent, poignant, funny.

This post is tagged Add new tag, anino shadow collective, blacktown art centre, paschal daantos-berry, the folding wife, urban theatre projects, valerie berry