Cynical, abrupt, heart wrenching and hopeful all at once – this is a deeply human work of theatre. Set in the heart of Sydney on December 16, 2014 – the day after the infamous Lindt Café siege – Human Activity follows five people searching for answers as the shaken city reels in shock and grief.
There is a delicate line to tread when it comes to taking true and devastating events and turning them into a work of art or entertainment – if you’re going to excavate a wound so fresh, you need to handle it with care. For the most part, this world premiere production from bAKEHOUSE Theatre Company steers clear of trauma porn, offering its audience an honest, often brutal, window through which to observe the human experience (and the avian experience, via feathered inhabitants of the CBD). Rather than dealing directly with the siege, playwright Katie Pollock’s (Rough Trade, The Hansard Monologues) writing is mainly informed by the mood of the city at the time.
Human Activity paints a realistic portrait of how life reluctantly and necessarily ambles on in the wake of tragedy...
Soham Apte’s minimalist production design merges with Jessica Pizzinga’s composition and sound design to take us into the bustle and unease of the city on that day. The cast hustle through metal bollards that look like they have been ripped right out of the entrance to a train station; flowers multiply at their feet as a seemingly advantageous hawker charges ten bucks a bunch to pay your respects; and a canopy of birdcages flocks overhead, a reference to the Forgotten Songs art installation that fills Angel Place.
Pollock has a talent for inviting her audiences to peer into seemingly simple lives and tease out the complex trauma that swirls beneath the surface. A woman who appears meek is actually quietly plotting her escape from a controlling husband; meanwhile, a man on the train who seems aloof is actually trying to keep his head down, because it's not a good day to be a person with brown skin in this city.
Pollock's writing delicately laces together disparate stories with a deceptively technical thread. You don't even realise that you find yourself yearning for resolution – for these threads to knit together into a neat, comforting little scarf to wrap yourself in – until those paths never quite cross into a satisfying Hollywood ending. This is not a story about what happens in a fantasy, this is about the senselessness of what happens in the real world.
As Jana, an unhoused woman sleeping rough on the streets of the CBD, Katherine Shearer delivers a searing monologue reflecting on the impossible situation faced by any woman who becomes trapped in an abusive relationship. She is trying to offer support to Arti (Trishala Sharma), who arrived off a train without much more than a sock full of cash and an elusive medical appointment. Jana is putting together the pieces of what is happening at home for Arti and, as she speaks, the line between where Arti’s story ends and hers begins becomes increasingly muddled. It's a piercing comment on the pervasiveness of domestic violence.
In the meantime, as an elderly couple known only as Mum (Claudette Clarke) and Dad (Phillip Lye) are slowly making their annual pilgrimage across the city, clues unravel about the fate of their missing daughter – clues that tie their story to the other two women, and highlight one of the most devastating outcomes of the neglected epidemic of gendered violence.
It’s not until the final moments of the play, when two specialist police officers in a semblance of bomb squad uniforms meander onto the stage, speaking into their lapel mics in low tones, that we get a representation of what happened in that CBD café on that fateful day. There’s a bang, and a crescendo of gunshots storms down and fills the air as the lights dim – it’s a stark contrast to the gentle sounds of birdsong that had floated through the theatre moments earlier. In that moment, all of the brutality that precedes the tentative action of the play lashes out, unavoidable. It’s an effective trick of theatre, albeit deeply disturbing. While the other storylines are imagined, this violent scene is based on a true event, where real people died, just short of a decade ago. It would be incredibly difficult for anyone who lost someone in the tragedy, or similar circumstances, to sit through.
Human Activity is actually a companion piece to the smash-hit Jatinga, which had a critically acclaimed, sold-out season at KXT in 2017. Jatinga was the culmination of director Suzanne Millar’s work with the daughters of sex workers in Mumbai’s red-light district, Kamathipura. Here, Pollock has penned a thoroughly Australian response to the big ideas of Jatinga playwright Purva Naresh: that at the point where our lives intersect there is an opportunity for love and compassion.
In more ways than one, it makes sense that this Sydney-set play marks bAKEHOUSE Theatre Company’s debut in-house production at their new home, KXT on Broadway, which opened earlier this year and continues their mission to create space for high-risk theatre in Sydney. Replicating the traverse stage set-up that was emblematic of KXT’s previous location, the audience faces each other from either side of the performance – stationary humans bearing witness to the human activity being depicted on stage, bringing an added layer of claustrophobia to the flurry of crowd scenes and the tension of more intimate interactions. After Ultimo, the play heads to Parramatta for a short run at Riverside Theatres, which will be closer to home for a majority of the cast, many of whom reside in the outer edges of Sydney.
Human Activity doesn’t offer answers, and it doesn’t offer any airtime to the perpetrator of the attack. Rather, it paints a realistic portrait of how life reluctantly and necessarily ambles on in the wake of tragedy, be it a personal battle or an act of terrorism that disrupts and changes the fibre of public life – down to the rubberneckers and the people who don’t know how to handle themselves, like the school kids hyped up on peer pressure and their own misguided sense of immortality. By steering clear of sensationalism, the play treats the victims of the senseless tragedy in Martin Place with respect, and invites the audience to reflect.
Human Activity plays at KXT on Broadway from September 15-30 (get tickets for $35-$45 over here); then at Riverside Theatres Parramatta from October 5-8 (get tickets from $25 over here).