Crouched on a milk crate and nursing a Malbec, I wait on a bouncing knee to enter the Erskineville theatre. I can feel the diamond-shaped embossing cut into the underside of my thighs, but the wine makes good on blunting the plastic. Theodore Carroll’s latest offering for PACT's Underground program, Bacchants, sees the multi-disciplinary creative in collaboration with the musical ensemble Etiquette, a group composed of Gabriel Gregan, Milo McLaughlin and Lewis Mosley, to curate an inquiry into the turbulence of human compulsion.
As my first foray into experimental live performance, I fell headlong into Theodore Carroll’s Bacchants. As Carroll’s latest offering for PACT Underground, the performance draws upon the tradition of long-sustained Greek tragedy, ‘The Bacchae’ – and spares none of its mythic haze. This re-imagining hits all of the beats of its predecessor and chisels the viewer into the text through means of spontaneous audience participation. The performance sees the multi-disciplinary creative in close liaison with the musical ensemble Etiquette, composed of Gabriel Gregan, Milo McLaughlin and Lewis Mosley, to curate an inquiry into the turbulence of human compulsion. Immediately upon entrance, three musicians are elevated from the stage floor like a winning trifecta. Anonymised by shadowed hoods they feel, for us in the dark, like one through the composition of their soundscape. The space around us churns with an aural Metallica that revs and whirrs like a motor. Sonically, the ambient arrangement teeters on the brink of a Jonny Greenwood-esque take on proto-techno, only grounded in the clangour of its acoustics. The membranous drumskin sheaths the machine in a fraught gossamer of animalistic percussion. Still, there is an unshakable tidiness to the arrhythmics. I watch the guitarists as their hands meander along their instruments, fingers wantonly scampering up the neck, only to mull around a cluster of frets for a time, re-tuning and re-mediating, retracing their fingerprints across the board. In order to so deftly deconstruct the conventions of traditional playing styles, one must understand the minutiae of traditional play. Their hands appear to wander but know precisely where they are headed.
The space begins to flare and extend into a four dimensionality as the Bacchae filter in, washing up against the bars that crown the theatre steps. The artists make good in ensuring all attendees are implicated in their sycophancy. As much Bacchae as they, attendees paw at instruments and indulge in grapes by the bunch, as the performers burnish the ground with their stomachs and knees like fussing infants. They dance like children with the whimsy of innocence, unbridled by their adult bodies. The stage shifts yet again, as the stadium seats are primed for a ritual birth; a performer shoulders their way out of a distended flaxen womb and into a throbbing discotheque, purging their lungs of amniotic fluid in the wails of rhythmic rapture. The dancefloor oscillates between scenes from the periphery of the Roses of Heliogabalus, and evocations from the curb of a night club at witching hour. It’s a sight to behold as the audience eventually migrates to the floor to follow suit, each new participant carbon dating the performance with a mainstay move of their own. Swathes of patrons dance, but all as if someone were watching, a fascinating tension as it constricts to the beat of a disco track.
In defiance of antiquated representations of decadence, a staunch sense of modernity permeates the action – marbled, writhing bodies are underscored by an electronic symposia and ever so literally branded by Getty image watermarks projected from overhead. As if there was an addendum strung from the air, adrift upon smoke and deepened sighs, that this scene of indulgence is far from an ancient practice. Above all the sweaty bodied and digitised smudge marks stamped into the stage, it’s Theodore Carroll’s persona that embosses the show. Birthed from the balcony by muslin cloth, Carroll delivers a commanding performance that is as elusive in presence as he is in spoken word. I watch steadily from my seat as the audience begins to coast toward the centre of the stage, with craned necks and widened eyes, arms folded and in an almost disquieted awe. He manoeuvres not around, but through the space, piercing the weavings of the show in all the right places. Dangled by a Bacchae from above like a bleeding hock of meat, Carroll spouts fleshy poetry for the Bacchae to lap at and puncture with perforated teeth. His presence may be scarce, but Carroll makes sure to imbue his presence and, most importantly, his influence, within everything.
The performance swells to eventual release as Carroll, awash in a sea of chants, drowns in a mouthful of milk, stifled by his own mask. The music swells in suit, all artists beating at their instruments as hard as their hands can strike, and far beyond it; in a flourish of flailing limbs, the bass drum falls from its platform, and strikes the unmoving Carroll sprawled directly below. After several minutes of waiting and watching, an attendee takes the remaining pitcher of milk, and spills a shy effusion over Carroll’s right leg. Sensing the timid insurgent, Carroll cranes his head and cracks a smile. It’s funny, and it’s precisely this engagement he’s possessed with exploring – the fluidity of human nature.
In all of its chaos, and a little bit of collaborative serendipity, Bacchants is raw and intoxicating; gleaming while awash in the sticky sheen of milk and wine.
Amy Malcolm is a third year student undertaking a dual degree in Media (Journalism) and Arts (Film). She’s a blue moon writer, and a four season lover. Find her on Instagram at @amyymalcolm.
