Make the Call

As the sun was setting over Luna Park on a mild Friday night, I arrived at the designated park bench in St Kilda to find an envelope bearing my name. Looking around me to see if I was being watched, I emptied out its contents onto my lap, with messages for me alone. Then, my phone rang…

Zin’s Make The Call is a sweet individual experience, where an unknown caller guides you through an exploration of the notion of beauty, and how and where it can be found in the everyday. Wandering through the streets of St Kilda while on the phone, it is the passers-by and location that becomes core to the performance as the speaker guides you through questions and instructions.

Created and performed by Harriet Gillies and Roslyn Helper, the 20-minute piece had a comfortable warmth to it, giving the sensation that the participant was speaking to a friend. The work succeeded in making the reviewer more attuned to her surroundings, which lingered for some time after the piece’s end.

Commissioned for Theatreworks’ ENCOUNTER(S) project, Far Away… So Close and Make the Call both aim to inspire a sense of intimacy between the artist and single audience member, in spite of the distance and inadequacies of communication tools. The reviewer found herself quickly matching the warm tones of the performers in each piece. With familiarity built quickly between performer and participant, the endings of each piece inevitably feel abrupt; however, the lingering memories of the experiences feel much sharper as an active participant in one-on-one art works, rather than a passive viewer in a theatre.