Perpetual Frustration Machine
“The circus has a psychoanalytic undercoat and a darkly polished veneer that flashes between strangeness and familiarity, the bizarre and the banal. It feels almost complete without the words, and at its best is transfigured into a daring, disorienting visual odyssey through the paradoxes and perversities inherent in human desire.”
Creative TEam
Director: Zebastian Hunter
Writer: Stephen Sewell
Associate Director: Benjamin Sheen
Set and Costume Designer: Stephanie Howe
Lighting Designer: Richard Vabre
Sound Designer: Ian Moorhead
Cinematographer: Adam Lynch
Photographer: Jodie Hutchinson
Cast: Debra Batton, Adam O’Connor, Seth Scheuner, Stephanie Benson
Show Description
An explosive insight into the universal dilemma of modern human desire, combining surreal circus work with athletic brilliance, astonishing imagery and provocative text,
Four daring physical artists will throw themselves against the destructive desire for darkness, embracing the poetry of Sewell’s text whilst taking the audience on an adventure spanning great heights. Comical, poignant, frenetic and poetic, this joyous dance of daring circus invites audiences to cavort along with performers until the world’s end.
Co-creators, Stephen Sewell (AFI Award Winner, Head of Writing – NIDA) and Hunter, have imagined a circus drama inspired by the seminal works of psychoanalyst and philosopher, Jacques Lacan, particularly his relationship to the Death Drive.
Producer info
Theatre Works is a theatre venue, presenter and producer of independent theatre in St Kilda, Melbourne. Theatre Works was founded as Theatreworks, a theatre company, in 1980 by a group of young graduates from the Victorian College of the Arts including Hannie Rayson, Caz Howard and Peter Summerfield.
