Conviction | The Hive Collective

Conviction is a fascinating, dark, violent, comical yet disturbing piece of metatheatre that left me feeling like I’d had my creative little heart ripped out and handed to me.

Image + cover image: Stephen Henry

Beginning in darkness, four figures barely visible on stage, the tension is palpable. Together they deliver the one punchy monologue, setting the scene inside the wandering and turbulent creative mind of our protagonist, a self-critical independent writer. When the lights switch on, the characters launch into action in the writer’s latest play and we watch the action unfold seemingly as it is being written, edited, unwritten, and changed. We experience her busy inner world as she attempts to write something “important” and “good enough” and as she struggles to navigate imposter syndrome, questions of the personal and artistic sense of self, female subjectivity, relationship problems, self-worth and questions of feminism and imperialism. As our protagonist’s mind meanders uncertainly and painfully through the creative process, her thoughts, feelings and frustrations bleed into the characters’ dialogue in subtle, clever and thoroughly entertaining ways; from staring at the clock, to listing inane online quizzes taken in procrastination, to characters’ self-loathing comments clearly straight from the writer’s mind, to one character asking another, “Mummy, where do ideas come from?”

Image: Stephen Henry

Imposter syndrome was explored through one character’s fraudulent identity, as she aimed to carve out a place for herself in society while doing everything to avoid being outed as a fake. As a creative who also holds myself to unbelievably high standards, I felt uncomfortably seen by this play. I cycled through laughter and tears as the play unfolded, on the one hand befuddlingly absurd and on the other brutally relatable. Pockets of laughter drifted intermittently from different directions around me, making it apparent that this is a play that stirs different things in different people.

Image: Stephen Henry

The acting was superb all round. The cast of four - Emily Burton, Luisa Prosser, Kevin Spink and Jeremiah Wray had me captivated by their every move and expert comedic timing. Skillful use of light (Christine Felmingham) and sound (Anna Whitaker) added an extra dimension to the storytelling and really transported me inside the protagonist’s emotions. The script (Zoey Dawson) was brilliantly written, dynamic, witty, and layered with clever social commentary. Though I did have the sense that I didn’t quite ‘get’ all of the theatrical mockery in the piece, I understood enough of the play and saw enough of my own experiences in it for it to have a lasting impact on me.

I found the play disorienting as the storyline, genre and characters warped and changed, carrying only a few constant elements from one scene to the next. I’m compelled to assume that this confusion was part of the purpose of the piece and was intended as a nod to the experience of disquietude, uncertainty and bewilderment of being a female independent artist in the disheartening pursuit of “making it” in a society that undervalues both the arts and women’s contributions in general.

This is a play that moved me in many ways and will stay with me for a while, for its relatability as much as its perplexing nature.