EARTH

Generation E

The WA Youth Company’s production of Earth is on show at The Blue Room Theatre, from Wednesday, November 30, ‘til Saturday, December 10. Bookings can be made through blueroom.org.au.

By 2050 or so, it is expected that the human population will have reached nine billion. Those billions will be seeking food, water and other resources on a planet where, scientists say, humans are already shaping climate and the web of life.
For a group of nine young Perth artists, conversations regarding the future of our planet have consumed their lives for the past three months as part of a playful but perceptive theatre project which examines efforts to balance human affairs with the planet’s limits from a youth perspective.
“When applying to audition for EARTH we were asked what Earth meant to us,” explains performer Lauren Lloyd Williams. “At the time I wrote; ‘Earth is my home, my habitat’. It’s constantly evolving, it’s a place that humans have been occupying, developing and destroying for many years. It is a natural wonder, filled with various flora, fauna, species and races. Earth to me also means the feeling of being grounded, a sense of place, connectedness, unity, beauty, nurturing, and exploration.
“However, when it came to approaching the idea of Earth to make a piece of theatre it became apparent that it’s not easy to categorise, especially when involving nine artists’ points of view. Our opinions and questions surrounding Earth were essentially all we had to go by.”
For the last three months, Lloyd Williams and her castmates have engaged in an interactive exploration of trends and ideas surrounding the notion of Earth through online blogs penned by their own fictional alter-egos.
“I used my blog to explore views that perhaps I would never share or express openly in every day life,” Lloyd Williams says. “I decided my character would be interested in ideas I personally wanted to explore as I way of forcing myself to learn more about them.”
Under the direction of Jeffrey Jay Fowler, a recent graduate of NIDA’s Director’s course, the blogs and characters were brought to the rehearsal room, cut to pieces and pasted back together to form EARTH.
“This subject is so broad, there were some very inspiring and sad realisations we came across. The more we explored the more questions we had,” Lloyd Williams says.
In its freewheeling spirit and scrappy style, EARTH makes no concessions to cut-and-dried forms or cultural norms, instead creating meaning and beauty from the deeply personal visions of artists who are happy to labor far from the mainstream.
“Quite simply the play can’t be put into a category. It’s really hard to compare it to any other theatre I have seen or participated in,” Lloyd Williams says, “There is quite a stigma about theatre and in particular youth theatre. I really believe we blow those concepts out of water with a cynical yet insightful look at the journey a handful of young creatives took to create this piece. It’s entertaining, unexpected, funny, honest, challenging, inappropriate but most importantly thought provoking.”

_JENNIFER PETERSON-WARD