This year has been a signature year for interactive, small-audience theatre. There was Deviator by the PVI Collective early in the year, where each audience member was given a smart phone and sent to play games with the city. There was Crash Course at PICA, which took small audiences into a classroom environment, and the Proximity Festival of one-on-one theatre. Currently, there’s You Once Said Yes as part of Perth International Arts Festival, which coincidentally follows a similar concept to the Fringe show in question, Tag. You’re it.
Tag takes audiences of three into a room, where they are asked Trivial Pursuit questions to figure out who goes first. They are then released into Northbridge to have a series of personal, one-on-one interactions with strangers. These are short and varied and flow smoothly from one into the other, and, though connected, do not follow a distinct story arch but rather fit to a theme. Each features an invitation and asks a certain amount of courage from their audience, prompting them to engage differently with their city. ‘The city is yours’, we are told at the beginning.
The best interactions, by far, are the ones featuring strong characters. These help immerse us into the universe of the show; the actors without distinct characters have a certain awkwardness that can be distracting. A prime example of the former is a wonderful, non-verbal interaction with a man in a room above a shop front (Ben Ainsley), who communicates entirely with cue cards and draws you into his strange and beautiful little world. A prime example of the latter, in contrast, is the man at the Trivial Pursuit table at the beginning (Matthew Marino). I badly wanted him to possess a certain darkness or mystery, something to set an atmosphere for the piece. Instead, he is cordial and far too normal.
Similar flaws and weaknesses continue as the piece progresses. Some of the interactions (particularly at the start) are slightly repetitive, or don’t add enough to the show to justify their presence. Others are clumsy and need some tightening or alteration to make them sharper, relevant and more affecting. I want to be thrown deeper in, I want more of the strange or whimsical. The piece could also benefit from a stronger story arc or connection between the pieces, maybe even deviating paths, and definitely from a stronger ending. You are asked to shoot a man with a Nerf gun at one point, for example; there should be consequences for those who shoot to kill. The piece seems to feature a number of lost opportunities for moral and intellectual exploration that it simply doesn’t have the resources to pursue.
To create interactive, one-on-one theatre like Tag. You’re it takes an enormous amount of logistical wrangling, and its Fringe World appearance is very much a development season. The show is truly magical in its concept and execution – I found myself interacting with Northbridge differently, noticing details and the people around me in a way I haven’t before. But it is nowhere near perfect and has a huge potential for improvement – with work and a bunch of tweaking, this could easily become a magnificent piece of theatre. Hopefully, we haven’t seen the last of Tag. You’re it.
Rating: 3 ½ out of 5 stars
Tag. You’re it.
Performed by Matthew Marino, Renee Paterniti, Hannah Morgaine, Jeremy Mitchel, Kit Sparrow, Ben Ainsley, Moya Thomas, Paul Grabovac, Bronwyn Richards, Arlensiu Cornejo, Alexa Taylor
Creator and Director: Alexa Taylor
Blue Room Theatre, Perth Cultural Centre, Northbridge
Fringe World
www.fringeworld.com.au
6-15 February
