Being asked what you ‘do’ can be a tiring exercise for all involved – especially if what you ‘do’ is arrange manila folders in a filing cabinet or stare blankly at a computer screen for eight hours a day – and, it’s why, for most of us, we’ll never be asked about what we ‘do’ for the purposes of creating a new staged work. Ask the right person though and the answer can lead to an engaging hour of theatre.
Presented as a series of six interviews, apparently a dramatisation of a series of real interviews that began in 2010, Show Me Yours, I’ll Show You Mine introduces us to Tim Spencer, the writer, and Nick, a sex worker. Tim lays out his apparent intentions – to delve deeper into a line of work unfamiliar to most and Nick is used as Tim’s eyes and ears inside that foreign world. Understandably protective, Nick is not, as he reveals, his real name and thus he’s known as Not Nick. Not Nick speaks of challenging the preconceived notions of what it is to be sex worker and his own reservations about being the subject of a performance. With the tables soon turned on Tim, we bear witness to the parallels between these two men and the moral/artistic space that divides them.
Tim Spencer’s brutal self-awareness, both as a playwright and an actor, are clearly on display here and a silly, rather revealing moment at the top of the show endears you to him almost immediately. His interviewing technique is less journalistic and more genuinely inquisitive, delicately skirting around especially probing, severe questions. As Not Nick, Charles Purcell has but one costume change and yet he manages to look different in every interview with the slight tilt of his head and the way he holds himself in the chair. Purcell plays Not Nick as open and frank, but too intelligent not to be somewhat guarded and wary. It’s fun to watch him explore the mannerisms of someone in the interview hot seat – crossing and uncrossing his legs, scratching at stubble, fiddling with the sleeves of an oversized sweater.
Directed by Scarlet McGlynn, the magic of this work is in its ability to convince you that you aren’t watching a performance at all. The basic lighting and staging is such that it wouldn’t look much different at any other Q&A event and, with the Roundhouse Theatre on the grounds of a university, there are moments it might seem you’ve mistakenly slipped into the lecture hall next door. At times thought it can feel like a work that is cornering the audience for a very definite reaction, not so much pressuring them into a new way of thinking about sex work or Not Nick or Tim, but positioning them to react positively to the interviewing process and the play itself. Few could walk away feeling Tim had exploited Not Nick. It was, and apologies to the Fox News promo department, ‘fair and balanced’. There’s nothing wrong with a crowd walking away feeling comfortable in the sense nobody was taken advantage of, but nor is it less rewarding for an audience to feel more challenged by the obvious ethical issues producing such a work can present, and furthermore, allowing an internal conflict about what it means to be actively participating in that process as an audience member.
With a neat runtime of 60 minutes, Show Me Yours doesn’t give itself any room to outstay its welcome. Not dependent on gimmicks or props or even lurid tales, Spencer strips back all the fuss to merely fall back on the unique and empowering nature of formal conversation.
Rating: 3 ½ stars out of 5
La Boite Indie and Tamarama Rock Surfers present
Show Me Yours, I’ll Show You Mine
By Tim Spencer
Directed by Scarlet McGlynn
Dramaturg: Charles Purcell
Cast: Charles Purcell and Tim Spencer
Lighting Designer: Jason Glenwright
Sound Designer: Max Rapley
Producer: Nuala Furtado
Stage Manager: Tenneale Rogers
La Boite Roundhouse Theatre, Kelvin Grove
10 – 27 July
