[Not So Moving]
Disco beats are throughout in the present day’s pop music. Flared pants are making a comeback. And the dance type of waacking is extra mainstream than ever. So it appears acceptable to have a look again at 70s tradition and the place it actually got here from – that’s, queer POC nightclub scenes. It’s pure that Prowl Productions, who specialize in waacking and avenue dance types, would need to carry this historical past to our levels.
Club Waack, devised with the forged by co-directors Andrew Cornish and Hayley Walters-Tekahika, guarantees to be a fab and fantastical journey, and it does partially ship. Basement Theatre’s again wall is adorned with a disco ball and hanging information that sparkle beneath Rae Longshaw-Park’s funky lighting. The dancers who make up the majority of the forged are spectacular, delivering sharp, high-energy performances. However, the story is extraordinarily missing.
The present appears to oscillate between a moderately common overview of queer historical past – acted out (considerably awkwardly) by the forged and later by way of projected documentary and information footage – and the story of the dancers on the titular ‘Club Waack’. The membership, began by Mama Doll (Princess Halatoa) as a protected haven for queer/POC to precise themselves, comes beneath menace from the overly moralising members of the Standards Protecting Communities Everywhere, or SPCE (Alice Pearce and Vena-Rose Lennane). Though there’s a trace of the sassy however loving relationship between Mama Doll and the dancers, these characters and their dynamics are woefully underdeveloped. It is unlucky, as a result of these characters ought to have been our emotional anchor, however as a substitute I discover myself barely caring what occurs to them or the membership. The dance sequences had been definitely enjoyable and peppy, however I couldn’t totally recognize them as a result of they didn’t be grounded by the story. Considering that is Prowl Productions’ first foray into extra narrative-based theatre, they’d’ve significantly benefitted from consulting a dramaturg.
My most important critique of the present is that it lacks focus. It tries to cowl 50 years of queer historical past, in addition to the historical past of the dance kind ‘waacking’, and ship a narrative a few fictional membership, all in a 60-minute piece. The ‘acting out moments of history’ sequence at first felt clunky and will simply have been straight narration. Our introduction to the characters on the membership occurred throughout this sequence as nicely, however very out of context, which left me considerably confused. Without a specific throughline, the moments from historical past they selected to focus on felt a bit random, and there was a mixing of American and New Zealand historical past which once more muddied the main target. The projected footage was likewise too generic and arbitrary. If you might have any familiarity with queer historical past, the data introduced will probably be largely nothing new. For one thing that took up numerous runtime (and left some useless area on stage whereas the projector display was being pulled up and down) it didn’t add a lot to the dialog.
The SPCE villains had been lowered to caricatures and, although they definitely held excessive beliefs by in the present day’s requirements, I really feel it does a disservice to queer historical past to recollect them on this method. These had been actual individuals who believed homosexuality was harmful, and to not deal with them as such removes nuance from the dialog. These caricatures would possibly’ve labored if, tonally, the present was extra absurd and romp-y, however there have been scenes which made it clear we had been alleged to take these points critically.
Pearce, Halatoa and Hone Taukiri (MC Pita Donovan) had been the stand-out performers when it comes to appearing, managing to anchor their larger-than-life characters in some sense of authenticity, and confidently holding the area.
Though definitely a enjoyable night time out, Club Waack general didn’t meaningfully interact with the problems and themes it introduced up. Everything was overly simplified and floor degree because of a scarcity of focus. However, the historical past of queer tradition and rights are fascinating and vital matters, and I’d like to see Prowl Productions develop this work dramaturgically. Perhaps narrowing the main target to the historical past of waacking, or queer historical past particularly in Aotearoa, or simply to the story of the membership, would assist it to discover these concepts with extra depth. I’d have an interest to see how dance might be extra seamlessly built-in into the theatrical modes employed – how dance is perhaps used to inform these tales extra abstractly, emotively and creatively.
Club Waack performs Basement Theatre twelfth to the sixteenth of September 2023.